One of my uncles spread some documents across one of the chairs in the anteroom like someone who is proud of his own competence and doings. All the necessary signatures have been put in place, including all the necessary stamps at the exact places where the lawyers have instructed him to place them. "I feel it is on point now, looks like everything is in place," what he said, checking the papers all over again and again like he was missing something. The way you check the money you are counting to see if it is the exact amount they told you it is. That type of counting.
He was the oldest amongst us all. And according to our family tradition and customs, and even by law, I guess, he is meant to administer the family land as he deems fit. But already, he has sold half or even more than half to some people and developers, and he has collected the moment and kept it in an account no one knows about without telling anyone I don't think his wife even knows about his movement on that. And with a bold face and no rumors, he casually told some of us that it is very normal and that there is nothing wrong in what he did. And to be honest, I feel he was right because the land has his name on it, and even two lawyers have reviewed it at intervals.
I was there amidst everything, and I was trying to locate exactly where my anger should bring out itself because to project an anger, I need to locate a specific target, and at that moment, I found none because he has not broken any rules, anything wrong about voiding any contract, nor has he broken or failed to abide by any written agreement.
From what is on the ground, he has been permitted to do so, which is just another way of saying he is free and straying from the promise to use it in a responsible way. But according to the rest of us, we were only expectant, nothing written to us in the form of inheritance in a way we inherit a language, or saying that the family land existed for everyone's benefit, not one man's advantage.
But you see that gap between what was legally his and what I still believed was rightfully ours, made me realize something crucial about where in that situation morality actually comes into play. It is not necessarily about the law because, on paper, they are always with him. It has nothing to do with my religion either, because we all belong to the same faith, and we even go to church, sit beside each other, and sing from the same hymn book sometimes without any contradiction or argument.
But what I kept returning to and what kept coming through my mind was something calm, something very fair and calm that supersedes any written agreement, passed down through years of staying around my grandma sharing the smallest things with us equally, even to the other children who were not hers that came to play around.
There was nothing enforceable that my uncle broke, though. But what he broke was something that I feel had never required writing from anyone until the day he decided it should have been.
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