How’s your family now?

What is one question you hate to be asked? Explain.

“You have the right to perform your prescribed duties, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions. Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your activities, and never be attached to not doing your duty.” — Bhagavad Gita

The question I hate to be asked is simple: “How is your family now?”

After my father died, something inside me hardened. Not with grief. Not with sadness. Just a quiet realization.My father always said proudly that his nephews and nieces would come and take care of his cremation one day.

He believed they were loyal to him. He believed they respected him. He believed family blood meant something.But death has a way of revealing truth.During the thirty-one days of mourning, they came only twice. The first day. The last day.

Nothing in between. No presence. No effort. No attachment.

Their absence said everything.In that silence I understood my father’s life more clearly than when he was alive. He had never built relationships. He had spent years criticizing people, running down his own family, tearing them apart with words and judgment.

He destroyed bridges long before he died.So when he finally left this world, there were no bridges left for anyone to cross.The nieces and nephews did not come because there was nothing binding them to him. No affection. No loyalty.

Only distance.And watching all of that taught me something cold but simple.People are exactly what they show themselves to be.

From that moment I saw them differently. Not as family. Not as relatives. Just people who had no place in my life. Their politeness was hollow. Their presence was ceremonial. Their concern was empty.

I removed them.Quietly. Completely.No anger. No confrontation. No explanation.Just absence.

Like throwing away a rag that has already served its purpose.Now when someone asks me, “How is your family now?”

I feel nothing. Because those people no longer exist in my world.They belong to the past, along with my father.And the door that closed when he died will never open again.

“A person who is not disturbed by happiness and distress and is steady in both is certainly eligible for liberation.” — Bhagavad Gita