Matrai Nam Kamngal Matru

It is quite true that a man who has utterly
surrendered to the sway of uncontrollable feelings of
"kaama" aroused by love for his house can quite easily
self-destruct in very much the same way as when he is
carried away by "kaamic" feelings for a woman.

Earlier postings (#18 to #21) in this series described
how when a fleeting maelstrom in the form of "kaama"
struck the saint Tondar-adi-podi AzhwAr, he became
possessed by unworthy love for a low woman, and it
reduced him to a near-ruinous state of existence. If
our awareness of the world is keen enough we would
easily observe that it abounds in equally dramatic
examples wherein "kaama" for a house -- for pieces of
valuable real-estate -- can similarly destroy too the
happiness of individuals, families and generations.

Looking around us within our own family or coummunity
circles, many of us will most certainly be able to
recall someone or other who came to financial ruin on
account of crippling indebtedness. Reason? Because he
or she borrowed heavily for the sake of acquiring a
"dream" house.

Personally, I have myself witnessed how harmony and
affection within some families instantly turned to
mutual hatred and jealousy all because feuding broke
out suddenly between brother and brother, sister and
sister, or mother and children over issues of
inheritance and possession of a grand old ancestral
home bequeathed to them by a father or grand-father.
Where once only laughter and good cheer echoed through
the walls and rooms of such a happy house, later,
after the bitter family feuding erupted, only a dark
and brooding sullenness seemed to haunt and pervade
the entire air inside.

Similarly, in the homes of some close friends I have
known for many years, I thought I sometimes sensed a
certain silent but deep, simmering discord between
husband and wife over such trifling yet rancorous
domestic disagreements as, for example, over the way
the home interiors ought to have been decorated, or
over the exact shade of colour of the wall-paint or
over how the nagging problem of a perennially leaking
kitchen-roof needed fixing. Husband and wife in such a
house not seeing eye-to-eye at all, seemed to me to be
ever locked and engaged in a sort of "shadow cold-
war" --- a "war" of slow attrition that seemed to
continually interfere with and impair what otherwise
must have surely been a warm and loving relationship.


Just as the extreme of covetous attachment and
possessiveness for a woman lands man in all manner of
strange predicaments (example, Vipranarayana of the
earlier postings) so too, surely, do feelings of
misplaced "kaama" for one's home, its surroundings and
all its paraphernalia bring all manner of
unpredictable and unsavory tensions, yearnings and
anxieties into the life of men and women.