The iconic moments when genes say Déjà vu ;)

August 2016

 (Source: Google)

I burst into laughter watching the latest John Oliver segment on the absurdity of Trump insinuating that Barack Obama was the founder and Hillary Clinton was the co-founder of ISIS; John Oliver, host of HBO's popular show Last Week Tonight, is redefining comedy and journalism in profound ways (Time has termed it the John Oliver effect) - the show is a satire that covers politics, news and current events. While I was watching this, hubby returned from work and even before the poor guy could say "Hi", I started animatedly telling him about this episode. To recreate a picture perfect image of this moment in your mind, imagine a person walking 🚶 being suddenly hit by a torrential rain of words☔ and waves of laughter 🌊 - its on these days that hubby feels he has married a blizzard 👰😜😇! At that exact moment, I suddenly had an uncanny feeling that I had "been there, done that"; and lo behold, rewinding my memory reel a couple of years, the flashback revealed an eerily similar scene albeit with the protagonists interchanged - Dad continuously being glued to the news channels, and regaling us with the latest updates!

My introspective neuron popped the intriguing question "Wasn't I this girl who detested these news programs: a) Screeching people talking at the same time shown on six windows on one screen and b) The anchor repeatedly asking the same annoying question over and over again so much so that you want to throw something at the idiot box! When and how did this transformation of tracking Republican and Democratic conventions as well as updated poll results take place?" While I was contemplating this role reversal, I came across an interesting article The Inheritance Of Emotions: Why We End Up Becoming Like Our Parents. The author, a clinical psychologist, rightly points out that learning happens in three main ways: by active education, by observation and lastly, vicariously from other people's experiences. She makes a similar point to the one I made in my earlier article 'Maids of honour' - in a family setting, we learn the most by observing our parents. And in this context, she talks about Intergenerational transference. Simply put, it refers to the transmission of beliefs, values, attitudes and behaviours across cultural, religious and social aspects specific to that family. Although Intergenerational transference was mainly a research topic to understand family discord and violence, we can draw inferences and patterns from our daily lives as well. The author concludes by saying that our issues with our parents are not so much because we are different, but because we are too similar; I would view this from a different perspective - this similarity helps us in understanding the decisions our parents make, irrespective of whether we choose to make the same decision or not.

For instance, in our family, raucous debates over current affairs is an integral part of the staple diet at our dinner table - the medium through which we gather news might be different; while Dad watches the hitherto mentioned news channels and Mom reads the newspaper end-to-end, my sister and I prefer a combination of reading online and watching YouTube. Another example is Mom's perfectionist streak and excellent cooking skills churning out delicious dishes -  my sister has inherited this trait of experimenting with new dishes and Dad is the happiest person with satiated taste buds:) And though I do not like spending too much time in the kitchen and my cooking style is akin to explaining Ramayana in three words - buy (diced vegetables), mix (whatever I find in a microwave safe bowl) and press set (the appropriate setting in a microwave oven) - I do like trying out different recipes with the timer on;) I'm sure we can all think of innumerable examples across all facets of life to illustrate this - lifestyle choices, career choices, whether we end up marrying a person similar to our parents, as a couple do we fight about the same things as our parents did and how we choose to resolve it (lol), how we save money and more importantly, how we choose to spend it (assets or experiential living), our sense of humour and the list goes on. Our choice is what makes each individual different, but taking a moment to analyse this throws light on our parents decisions as well as our own biases, perceptions and decisions. Now that's some food for thought right!