People need people. For connections and love and what not. Sure. But there are other, wiser, more poetic blogs to talk about all those positive things. Fuck that.
People need people. To be annoyed by. To gossip about. To dislike. To DESPISE! To HATE! TO ABHOR!
As I watched one of the 6 advertisements advertising “Parle Marie” for the 18th time while watching the IPL match between Mumbai and Lucknow, I was grossed out that in 2025 they were using the years old trope of daughter-in-law hates mother-in-law to sell biscuits. Mainly grossed by the lack of originality, but also by the encouragement of toxic domestic lifestyles.
And then I had it. My epiphany for the day. (If you have followed this space, you are aware it is extremely easy for me to have epiphanies because I forget any prior occurrences of the exact same epiphany).
A daughter-in-law in a traditional Indian household is a housewife. Her entire social network is her husband, her children, her friends from the neighbourhood(optional), and her in-laws. And within this set of 6-8 people, she will find someone to absolutely love (the better looking child), and someone to absolutely hate (the mother-in-law). And Parle was just exploiting a very relatable premise. It’s just good business. (And mediocre biscuits outside of Parle-G.)
And of course there are other explanations on this coming from Indian man-children having a toxic relationship with their mothers, etc. But, upon reflection, I have seen that act out with other such family dynamics. Joint families with the wives of the brothers not getting along being another extremely common one. And yet again, something I never understood, from a place of them all being absolutely lovely people, suddenly made sense.
As people, we need to hate people to have the ability to love.
And the smaller our set of people we interact with, the more we are forced to hate someone within that spectrum. Your entire social life might be full of people you absolutely align with on every aspect, and still absolutely be annoyed by Sam for having a stupid haircut.
It is why “people have that person they hate at their work place” is a relatable life trope.
It is why “a friend group has that one pariah” is a relatable life trope.
It is why this was another extremely relatable community episode.
An example of this is children whose entire “social” network is their parents. (Especially true for COVID children) They tend to have a favourite parent, and then “dislike” the other parent, when it need not be a contest.
A darker example is abusive partners not letting their partners interact with their other friends/family. If I am your entire social life, I am the entire spectrum, and while I am the worst human you know, I am also the best human you know, and you can’t leave me.
This was re-inforced by my personal behaviours. (Late edit to add: Not the abusive part, the having people on a spectrum part)
What?! An actual personal observation in a personal blog! Someone call the earthquake department, because this is groundbreaking stuff!
Pre-Covid, I hung around my colleagues and friends and everyone, and was generally considered a “positive” person. And by “considered” a positive person, I mean my friends saw me be positive, while I still bitched about some colleagues/acquaintances I did not like, but they did not count because who is thinking about them. As the astute among you, with excellent understanding of extrapolation and storytelling have already figured out, things changed during/post covid. I hung around with only people I chose to hang out with. Colleagues AND friends.
One thing led to another, and for 3 sessions in a row in 2023, my topic with my therapist was me hating myself for having mean thoughts about my friends, or feeling bad about talking shit about the improv troupe I was a part of, or liking my friend a little less because they would gossip with me, but sharing that with my partner felt like gossip itself.
Until my therapist did what I paid her for, and made me feel okay about human need to gossip.(Side note: Therapy does not count as gossip, which is a nice cheat code)
I had never addressed the underlying annoyance though. That I “used to be a positive person”.
Until Parle Marie.
I have not become a negative nelly. I always was.
It just is directed at people I love now, causing emotional incongruence. I sometimes don’t like my friends, and talk mean shit about them behind their back. because when my entire social circle is people I love, my need to despise makes me find the smallest annoyance and make a mountain out of a molehill.
I need to be forced into hanging out with people I dislike, so I can love the people I love to the fullest. And until then, if you are reading this, you are probably a friend, and I have probably disliked you at certain times or bitched about you in the last 4-5 years, and I am sorry.
I still love you. (Except you. I really don’t like you)
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