A few weekends ago I suffered a crisis of moral compass in that I failed to live up to the principle of atithi devo bhava - an ideal I was raised on and had many opportunities to learn by observation in my own family. Guests were treated with kindness and respect, made to feel at home and when they left they knew they would be welcome back. It was how I was treated by the overwhelming majority of hosts I have spent time with in my life. It is also how I observed my parents conduct themselves.
With that being my background, I don't have an excuse to fail at being the kind host I have come to expect as a norm - behave like the exception. Yet, I failed quite resoundingly. The guest in question, S is a friend of a friend. We know of him more than we know him. That Friday, he texted us that he was visiting his daughter a few hundred miles north of us on his way down south to where he lived.
I assumed he would be driving but he was not - he was coming by bus. I also assumed that he was dropping by to say hello, rest a bit before resuming his journey. I was wrong there too. At first, he asked to stay overnight - and this was before we knew he lacked transportation. So we said yes. Upon arrival we find he will need a ride to whatever place is next and it was upto us to make it happen. It was unclear why the bus would no longer work.
Even that would be okay, if S had any shred of grace or politeness - showed any appreciation for us making space in our lives to accommodate him. I went about cooking for him, giving up our weekend after having had a long week and a tough one to look forward to. Somewhere in the middle of his three night stay as it ended up being, I decided to completely ignore his presence in my house and carry on like he did not exist. It was the only way for me to reclaim some of the loss of control in the situation that I had stupidly got myself into.
We promised ourselves this is the last time we would welcome S home for any duration of stay - mainly because I was so outraged at what I viewed as his connivance. All of those nights he was in our home, I slept deeply uneasy thinking about how I had failed my family, the values that I was raised on and become the very thing I had once found so abhorrent.
Part of me wanted to reach out to to V for the events of 2003 at her house, where I was the unwelcome guest. I wanted to tell her I still do not understand what happened then but I also don't understand my own reaction to S. So in that sense there is something to share between us.
Had I made V feel stupid in the same way as S had made me feel, had I shown some lack of grace and consideration given my pre-occupation with my life unraveling at speed of light. I must have done something unwittingly or not to trigger the high level of unease V had felt. I know that now that I have been in her shoes even if for a much shorter period of time.
Comments