Of hugs, kisses & emotions

I come from a fairly emotional family which believes in expression of emotions quite plainly. When i was small my father used to say, "How will I know that you love me, unless you say so or do things that show that love?". He's right, no point hoarding all that love in your heart & not do anything about it or say nothing about it. I still remember how my brother & I used to jump at him, crawling all over him like monkeys, overjoyed when he came home on friday nights after his week long tour. When I became a big girl, i used to stand on the side, watching my brother do the same, perhaps sad that i could no longer do it. Hugs and kisses meant everything to me. Showing love physically is still an important way of expression for me. Perhaps that is why when some great tragedy befalls someone and you dont find words to console, it does wonders just to hug and cry with them. It does much more than any amount of words could possibly do. But, when you have friends of the opposite sex, sometimes our minds are too narrow to see reason or emotion behind the physicality. It is easier to hug a girl who is an acquaintance than to hug a guy who is your best friend. I cant understand how people can bottle their emotions up. I have a friend who I can relate to as someone with "supressed" emotions & I realised a lot of it depends on the upbringing also. A long time back when i was onsite in a very cold country with even colder people, there was this couple who stayed in the same building as me, who taught me the basics of how live in that place. His pregnant wife was not very literate & so there was no common language between the two of us. But we managed with my really bad hindi & her even worse english. once when they took me to a nearby shopping mall, i still remember how she held my hand on that cold night. It was a very small gesture but i've not forgotten how it made me feel. Small things make a big difference. When amma was in hospital for her hysterectomy & achan was having his chemotherapy, I was the bystander for amma. One sunday i came home to get fresh clothes & in the amount of time that i was at home, i changed the bedsheets & made tea for him. I remember him telling me that it felt like having a woman in the house & that the tea tasted like payasam. I know that he didnt have the sense of taste much, but the thought behind the act made the sweetness i guess. On the day of my wedding, amma & I had a very small private crying session in the privacy of our bedroom. As we hugged each other and sobbed, we were both relieved that the great groom hunting ordeal was finally over, a sense of relief flooded over us. As luck would have it, I married into a family which had zilch emotions, very matter of fact & normal all the time. If you had to plot a emotional graph, it would just be a straight horizontal line, while mine would go up and down and wherever it pleased. For his kind of upbringing, my better half has fared better i guess. He left no stone unturned to please me in our brief but sweet courtship, flooding me with surprises like flowers & chocolates & many more. When we were about to leave, i had this long session of hugging & kissing every aunt, uncle & cousin good bye, while he & his family simply nodded at each other. It totally stumped me that people could be so emotionless. As long as he wasnt so with me, i didnt have room to complain. i could not see the bond between siblings or the bond between mother & children, in fact there seemed to be no bond at all or probably i couldnt see if there was. Amma could immediately sense trouble if I spoke less, because I always clamped up when i was disturbed. He's also learning the tricks now. In 2 months time, i feel that we have progressed beyond monosyllables. People see the change in him post marriage and are surprised. Well, if the change is for good then why not.