Why be Limited by Our Blind Spots?

 

“By God’s Grace, everything is good with us. Everything is fine, we are happy, and touchwood, no issues like that.”

RK’s smile was bursting with pride and relief, and something else indefinable. She rubbed her hands. In glee, or relief, or was it thanksgiving? MV could not say. The impassioned comment was a response to a question MV had asked. A question about marital status. MV had no intention or interest in RK’s marital status, though. They had met for a work related conversation. They didn’t know each other personally or socially. But just a minute ago, RK had raised the matter of MV’s marital status.

“You support these causes with passion and put in so much work. It is very admirable.” The comment was one MV heard often. She took it as a compliment. She thanked RK for the acknowledgement. RK’s was an impressive CV, with global business success and pioneering, groundbreaking initiatives to her credit. MV felt good that such a sassy, smart woman appreciated her own small-scale pioneering endeavors. MV felt especially gratified when women built the sisterhood, when they leaned in.

But RK wasn’t done. “I haven’t heard a mention of a spouse all this time. I am assuming you are single, or divorced? Not that it matters to me. But you seem so free, so unburdened.”

“None of your business” was the response MV almost let out. But then she decided to play RK a little. She had asked for it, really. MV told her that while she was still legally married, the very cordial relationship she and her (un)spouse shared no longer fit the conventional rules of marital engagement. That she believed there were ways and ways to configure domestic arrangements, within or outside the framework of a typical heteronormative marriage, and it should really be no one else’s business except of those really in the thick of the situation. And then, she asked RK the same question.

“I didn’t think any of this was relevant to our conversation or the task we are working on, but since you brought it up, I felt I must take it head-on, and make a few things clear. And then RK, I must also ask you, what is your marital status?”

“By God’s Grace, everything is good with us. Everything is fine, we are happy, and touchwood, no issues like yours. It’s all working well.”

MV was not taken aback at all. That RK had needed to ask the question, framing it the way she did, had already revealed a blind spot.

“By God’s Grace. Really? No Issues like yours? Will you listen to yourself?” MV wasn’t letting this pass.

Surprise lit up RK’s face. Like a searchlight pulling apart a dark night.

MV would not let anyone force-fit her customised, hard-won, unique and rather fine, rather pleasant version of a good life, a good home, into RK’s definitions of lack of grace, lack of happiness, or not ‘working well.’ She had to lean in, push some notions aside.

“Did I say there were issues? Just because mine is a different situation from yours does not make it an ‘issue’. Okay? And what makes you think I do not feel fortunate to have the arrangement I have? Why this narrow imagination of what God’s grace can touch and not touch? My rules work well for me. What didn’t work was trying to fit into others versions of my life, my marriage. And you, of all people, should know better.”

—

The Wikipedia, describes a blind spot as “an obscuration of the visual field. A particular blind spot known as the physiological blind spot, “blind point”, or punctum caecum in medical literature, is the place in the visual field that lacks light-detecting photoreceptor cells on the optic disc of the retina. Because there are no cells to detect light on the optic disc, the corresponding part of the field of vision is invisible.”

Metaphorically, though, blind spots aren’t a matter of just our physical field of vision, or for motor vehicle drivers alone. Let me bring up a few more examples.

Mr A : “I live alone, so I can’t bring anything to the potluck.”

When I heard this from an adult male, I couldn’t let it pass.

“What does living alone have to do with getting some bit of nashta to this meet-up?” I asked.

Mr A’s face was a perfect composite of coy smile and superior grin.

“You see, you didn’t get me. I am unmarried. And I live alone.”

“Alright, so what is your issue, if you live alone? Thing is, if you are eating at home, you could also bring something for these sessions. We aren’t talking big amounts or complicated dishes.”

The grin had left his face. Silent stupefaction remained. The conversation was interrupted and then moved on to other logistical matters.

As the meeting came to an end, my friend and I walked to the door. Mr S, who was already at the door, smiled at us.

“I love the interesting points you ladies raise. Would love to know more about your thoughts. But tell me, how do you manage to come here, all the way early in the morning?”

“Oh, it is truly no problem with the Metro and all the cab options…”

He wasn’t really asking how we got there, more the fool me. He wanted to know how we managed to get away at all. Even while he and ten other men were also there at the same time as us, on the same Sundays.

“No, no, of course, of course Uber and Metro are fine. I meant, how do you come – I mean, you cook breakfast and lunch early on Sunday, for the family, before you come here? How do you manage that?”

I am sure Mr S was very interested in us. He just couldn’t see us as anything beyond a certain role he had framed in his mind’s eye.

—-

What are we going to do about these automatic patterns, these blind spots of thought and belief and words?  To add to the biology lesson I shared earlier, “as there are no cells to detect light on a part of the optic disc, the corresponding part of the field of vision is invisible.” Our biology may be a given in this matter. But not so our mental perceptual field. Why must we block the light of open-minded acceptance, of alternate possibilities, in our mental models? How about more inclusive, diversity-spectrum thinking, in place of this or that, black or white categories?

To go back to the physiology of vision, ” although all vertebrates (humans being included) have this blind spot, cephalopod eyes (of which the octopus is an example), though superficially similar, do not. In them, the optic nerve approaches the receptors from behind, so it does not create a break in the retina.” Therefore, cephalopod eyes have complete visual perception of their visual field.

May we all learn to see from the cephalopods then. May we channel our inner octopus. Let that be the new metaphor for perfect vision.  May we build fresh possibilities of connection, instead of rigid, predetermined frames, which box us in isolation and otherness.

—

This was first published here.

https://www.shethepeople.tv/top-stories/channel-inner-octopus-perfect-vision-kiranjeet-chaturvedi?sfns=mo&fbclid=IwAR2q3QavfBFq3_fyQw4Sja5uQKpwBUKsmb6g8yGQjYpkY3AXrns5Nzh5Ue4

A Fractured Life. February 2019 Book Review

A Fractured Life : Shabnam Samuel. Green Writers Press.

—

I came to know about this book and its author through Facebook, and what I came to know made me most curious. A Fractured Life is a memoir, and it is an unusual story in so many of the facts. Yet, it is a most relatable and universal story too. It is a woman’s need to tell her story to herself above all, to ‘prove that I exist’ after all the mixed messages her life has been full of.

Shabnam’s is a cross-race and cross religion family, and her story for me is a palimpsest of the lives of all our forbears. We quite often do not know or forget the intermingling and the boxing in that all of our stories and pasts necessarily involve. Reading A Fractured Life reminded me that all of us are looking through a tunnel of limited vision at fragments of our stories, arranged in a vast and ever moving mosaic, quite like the images seen at the far end of a kaleidoscope. A shift in focus, a twist of the wrist, and the image changes, never to be the same again.

Shabnam is the granddaughter of a Russian Revolution refugee and am Indian man from Orissa. They were working – she as a nurse and he as a soldier- for the British Empire in Iraq during WW1. When the war ended the two married and come back to Cuttack to start a new life. The two had little in common except the Christian faith, which made the marriage possible at all. Moving to India, the family found worldly success, and many children were born to the couple.

The Russian refugee’s life as a displaced, alien presence in a land she came to without any connection is described and evoked wonderfully by Shabnam, with her own memories and from her grandmother’s musings. Those parts of the book filled me with wonder.

Shabnam’s mother marries against her parents wishes, and later her’s turns out to be an unhappy marriage. Its breakdown leads to Shabnam’s abandonment by her mother, at age two. Shabnam is brought up by her grandparents. The conflict, the tension between love and loyalty, anger and betrayal falls heavy on the child caught in the middle of it.

The parts of the book dealing with Shabnam’s family background and how it was for her to grow up with her grandparents, and her own state of mind as nobody’s child are what gripped my attention and had me emotionally invested in the story. It is heart rending storytelling, and is written with fearless openness. Shabnam shares her grandfather’s journal to show us his point of view on the matter, and we get to see the situation from different perspectives.

In the later half of the book, when Shabnam is an adult, and then married and when she moves to America with her estranged husband and little son, I felt the richness of views and stories petered out somewhat. But then it is here that the real shift in Shabnam’s life and personality emerge, as she finally finds her own sense of self and can begin to live by her truths, on her own, overcoming a lifetime of fragmented fragility, thwarted dreams and suppressed longings. The book ends on a happy and hopeful note, with a promise by the author to tell more about the current and more recent story of her life in another book, soon.

I am glad Facebook led me to this book and its author. In the simple, stark, at times uneven and rough telling of her own life, in her insights and her heartfelt questions, Shabnam Samuel and her book have made me relook my own life experiences from yet another angle, and discern new patterns.

In Love with your Body…Truly?

The world used to go on about ‘don’t ask a lady her age’ when I was growing up. These days, I hear this phrase far less. Does it mean that we are more easy with the idea of being/not being a certain age-bracket? Or have we eased up on hiding our age because we are more and more able to look ‘youthful’ for far longer than the generations before us?

When we don’t mind saying we are forty-five, or thirty… is it about our ease with our age, and what it implies for our body, and our physical form, and the place of all that in the scheme of things? Or is it really the knowledge that even at forty-five we can elicit the comment, ‘you don’t look a day older than thirty…?’

Have we truly come to accept ageing and the changes it brings, or it is that we have got better filters than ever, on our cameras and our minds, and therefore find it easier to claim ageing agnosticism? What is it that we have come to terms/not come to terms with? And what is, or isn’t, the issue at hand – being older, or how older woman are thought about by some others in terms of sexual attraction and desirability? Could it be that, we too still acceed to that discourse, despite saying age is just a number? Doth the lady protest too much, then?

Have we truly come to accept ageing and the changes it brings, or it is that we have got better filters than ever, on our cameras and our minds, and therefore find it easier to claim ageing agnosticism?

What were the assumptions underlying the idea that to ask a woman her age was somehow impolite, and that to expect a woman to answer factually was not right? At what age did this rule start applying, and till when was it valid? What was there to hide, really, which necessitated this usage? Was it to be circuitous and seemingly avoiding making calculations of a certain kind, related to a woman’s fertility potential? Was it to avoid the instant judgement of how many years a woman had remained unclaimed on the marriage market? Was it to avoid being instantly slotted as past-the-prime, of no longer being optimum mate material, or of carrying child-bearing potential?

It could have been all of that. And have we really moved on, despite or in spite of IVF and Embryo banks and surrogacy and Botox and body sculpting and honeymoon stitches? Why the insistence of the whole world treating every age the same? I am not the same from one day to the next, so why carry the notion that I must look the same years down the line, forever 21 once I reach a certain age?

Why the insistence of the whole world treating every age the same? I am not the same from one day to the next, so why carry the notion that I must look the same years down the line, forever 21 once I reach a certain age?

What is really being said, when it is said that women of a certain age are ‘invisible’ in the world? Invisible to whom, and to what intent? Is that sort of visibility really something one even desires? Because if it is simply a matter of being noticed and being attracted and liked and appreciated, I can vouch for so many of us having felt visible at every stage of our life, age no bar. But if seek the same male gaze, and treat the desire we prompted at twenty with the desire one evokes at forty, I guess things will be different. But then again, would I  judge my worth, my attraction and desirability, with the yardstick of how much men notice me and acknowledge me as a potential mate at different ages?

What is really being said, when it is said that women of a certain age are ‘invisible’ in the world? Invisible to whom, and to what intent? Is that sort of visibility really something one even desires?

At the ripe old age of fifty, I do not agree with all the noise that is made about the ‘invisibility’ of older women. Simply because I do not look at ‘visibility’ in the same way as is implied in those claims. If a man of fifty wants to date a woman of twenty or thirty or whatever, isn’t that is his choice? I know of men of thirty, wanting to date a woman in her forties or fifties. Obviously, she is visible to them. Indra Nooyi is very much visible now as she was in her younger days, for yet another set of reasons. My daughter’s music guru is past sixty and her professional and personal visibility is global. My visibility since my forties has surpassed anything in my twenties and thirties for various reasons, mainly to do with the way I began to look at myself and my life, than how and where was the focus of the gaze of others. Are we to feel invisible just because a man does not feel attracted to us romantically or drawn to notice us for our looks or the allure of a mate-worthy body? The question for me today (and I regret that it wasn’t always so) is simply this  –  do we really ‘see’ ourselves, and  are our bodies still ‘visible’ to ourselves in ways that are affirming, accepting, and appreciative?

My visibility since my forties has surpassed anything in my twenties and thirties for various reasons, mainly to do with the way I began to look at myself and my life, than how and where was the focus of the gaze of others.

A few days ago I read an article where French author Yann Moix, 50, told a glossy magazine “Come on now, let’s not exaggerate! That’s not possible … too, too old.” He was talking about older women and love. Moix then added that women in their 50s were “invisible” to him. And he didn’t just stop at that. There was more coming.

“I prefer younger women’s bodies…The body of a 25-year-old woman is extraordinary. The body of a woman of 50 is not extraordinary at all.”

Now, those words say many things, but mainly what they tell me is how happy I am to not be a 25-year-old woman on such a man’s radar. This is a fifty-year-old man reducing a woman to just her ‘body’, and passing judgements on women’s bodies like they were some assembly line item of food production. Let us never do the same to ourselves.

Let us not be afraid or ashamed of our age or our bodies, because  it is through them that we live and love.

Age may be a quantity of time, but it is no depreciation chart for the lovability of any body’s ‘extraordinary’ quotient. Love isn’t something transacted in numbers, with quantified measurements. It is our quality of awareness, experiences, learning, loving, and living, which make each moment expand or shrink to nothingness, or stretch into eternity. Let us know and honour the extraordinary in our hearts, in our bodies, at any age. Because we are not someone’s plaything or  specimen for evaluation. Let us not be afraid or ashamed of our age or our bodies, because  it is through them that we live and love. We are invisible at any and every age only to those who have some serious blinkers on. Let us not be blind to ourselves.

(Image courtsey http://beautifuldecay.tumblr.com/post/82197661829/anatomically-correct-body-art-turns-the-human-body)

(This article first appeared as a column on SheThePeople.tv as https://www.shethepeople.tv/top-stories/truly-accept-ageing-changes-brings-kiranjeet-outloud?fbclid=IwAR0V_VV0YJ9LRz0HkW2eQBpgtMEWFyBhnbcxUPLMamdZJ9PuoYffjqNw4kc)

Reclaim Your Life. Book Report

December 2018 Book Report.

Reclaim Your Life. Shelja Sen. Westland Books
#mentalhealth #depression #anxiety #narrativetherapy #mindfulness#nostigmanoshame

Closing another year of posting about books that have made me learn, grow and live. In this series of monthly posts I almost always write about books which have left a lasting impact on me, are meaningful personally, and are therefore books that I will go back to again and again.
Reclaim Your Life is definitely one such book. It is my good fortune that I also happen to know the psychologist- therapist-author Shelja Sen and her work at Children First through my two children. But that connection apart, this is a book that stands on its own merit, and is a refreshing mix of the personal and the professional in talking about mental health issues. Specifically, the book is about looking at depression, anxiety and other related matters with the belief in personal agency, and potential for change inherent in all of us. It is also a book very much aimed at ‘normalising’ the fact that that people with mental health difficulties are faced with a particular set of disability, but that their life is not just the disability. To thrive and cope well, their difficulties needs acceptance, not silence and shame, and they need coping skills rather than stigma. I would also say that this book would be great read for those caring for loved ones with diagnosed, labelled difficulties, but falling in the ‘normal’ category themselves. Because these difficulties lie outside what is accepted as the typical way to be, they are difficulties not just for the one with the issue, but also for those they are in relationships with, and frequent contact with. So as much as it is a guide for the person with anxiety, depression and so on, it is also a manual for those not diagnosed but still affected by these issues by proximity and emotional labour.
Using her grounding in Narrative Therapy, Situation Focused Brief Therapy and the Buddhist practice of mindfulness and loving-kindness Shelja Sen shows us what is meant by the principle “The person is not the problem, the problem is the problem”. With this kind of an empowering and positive lens, she has structured the book into seven sections of Lightposts of COURAGE, which is her acronym for the tools and means of coping which are expanded on in specific chapters.
The author argues her case with the help of her own lived experience with depression and with the stories of her clients. Throughout the book she affirms her unalloyed hope and acceptance of the magic possible despite the dark and painful destructive episodes that visit each life, some more devastatingly than others. She offers many practical and simple ways to practice reclaiming one’s life, be it Owning your Light or Change the Channel or tuning out the Radio of Negativity and switching to the Mindful Brain, for example. She shares the progress and triumph of her clients and her own successful negotiations with anxiety and depression.
While it tells us about the horror of abuse, of depression and the disability it brings on, of anorexia and grief and guilt, it also shows us that it was possible to come through those and heal, with the right kind of interventions. The book is free from heavy jargon and impersonal labels and expert-speak. The accounts feel personal and compassionate, are imbued with care and dignity, and therefore all the more appreciable and believable. The simplistic acronym-making and light bantering tone of the book also helps make a heavy, little known and disturbing topic accessible and easier to come to grips with. Above all, Shelja’s personal experience as part of the story makes the powerful point that while we are all – in varying degrees- less than perfect, we are all deserving of life’s richness and beauty, and capable of reclaiming our lives, re-scripting our stories, no matter what.
Do yourself and your friends and family the good deed of adding this book to the Christmas hampers. This is a gift of love.

Champagne & Caviar Woman

I’d say I am that woman. Not literally though. I don’t even like caviar. But it is the symbolism of the idea that I like. I think it gives an irrepressible bohemian tinge to my commitment to self-care. Today, when Gunjan Pant, a writer friend posed a question to her readers, I was reminded of the time I first thought of myself like this. Did we manage with mismatched leftovers for a meal if we didn’t have someone else to cook for, Gunjan wrote and wondered. Were we bread and sambar women, putting ourselves last, essentially, in catering to the needs and preferences of everyone else in our care? I was travelling on a much longed for, much planned for family holiday. We had already lost a week’s booking in Spain because of Visa delays. Those were high-pressure times for us. My son was almost nine years old, and my daughter almost two. I had a full-time job during the weekdays, and carried home lots of office work. I was chronically sleep deprived. I’d leave home before 8 am and reach back around 8 pm. After dinner, I’d clear the kitchen, prepare for next morning’s breakfast and tiffins, then get back to dealing with office work, before turning in for the night. I was struggling to keep everything in control, and was on edge all the time, because nothing would stay in control the way I wanted it to.

I was struggling to keep everything in control, and was on edge all the time, because nothing would stay in control the way I wanted it to.

I was a kind of superwoman wannabe, most concerned that my house be picture-perfect, my children be fed the most balanced meals, and their time be spent in the best-planned manner with the right kind of activities, interactions, stimulation, rest and recreation. My husband who had as busy an office schedule as mine, would somehow just slip into the relax-at-home mode once he entered the house. How he absolved himself of most ‘domestic’ chores by some automatic inherent programming, while managing to also gain a reputation for always ‘helping’ is one of the great mysteries to which I no doubt subconsciously contributed. We had only part-time house help and a part-time Nanny for the children. I wanted to relax, and yet felt guilty about the tiniest of self-indulgence.

How he absolved himself of most ‘domestic’ chores by some automatic inherent programming, while managing to also gain a reputation for always ‘helping’ is one of the great mysteries to which I no doubt subconsciously contributed.

Inside the airplane, the first in-flight meal service had started. Baby girl was in my lap, our meal aprons were in place, the tray table was open, and the pasta smelled delicious. My son sat separately from us, wanting very much to be a big boy travelling on his own. I lifted the spoon to baby girl’s mouth, and she simultaneously lifted the tray table up and slipped off my lap. As the pasta arrabbiata fell on her shoes, my lap, and on the plane floor, I tried to stop tears of helpless rage. Baby girl was howling and struggling to get away from the mess, but I was immobile. There go my grand holiday plans, and how the other passengers must hate us, I thought. That’s when the tall blonde senior air hostess saved me from myself. She picked baby girl up, and gently offered me a wet towel to clean my dress with. Then she told me to drop my soiled apron next to the seat, and she led me to the washroom, while she took baby girl off to the pantry area. Strangely, baby girl had stopped howling by now. When I returned to my seat, the air hostess was waiting next to my now spotless seat. “It is my job to make sure you enjoy your holiday, Madame. Stop worrying. Have a glass of Champagne. With caviar. Your daughter is enjoying her meal with the cabin crew. Then she will watch a film with her brother.” She held out a champagne flute for me, and pointed to a bottle of authentic French bubbly. The holiday had begun. This post was first published on my new monthly column OutLoud With Kiranjeet, in SheThePeople.Tv on 13th November 2018. https://www.shethepeople.tv/top-stories/startedair-hostess-offered-champagne-caviar?fbclid=IwAR0VkRJOSxLrjYd701e8idKttFiIkuGniVANq-hW6w295eeNOLl-nxdzNHE

Solo. Slower. Inward.

I travel slower, I travel inward. When I travel solo.

 

—

 

Yesterday a journalist messaged me to ask if I would speak to her about my experience as a solo woman traveller, and also share contacts of other woman who travelled solo. She was interested in Gurgaon residents only for the piece. It was fun reliving some of my experiences in talking to her, though I am sure she would have liked some more sensational or sound byte friendly stories than what I could offer. I also realised that so few of the people I know actually go solo when they travel. Women or men.

 

My solo travel experiences have been the mellow and miraculous type, by and large; never very newsworthy in clickbait manner. Also, the whole issue of ‘woman’ and ‘safety’ has not connected in my mind in a big way in this context. Touchwood. Actually I haven’t felt any different or been faced with situations too different on my solo travels than what we go through as a family, when we travel. In fact, overall, solo travel is far easier and simpler, for the sort of person I am.

 

I know some of you are going to say I must be super protected and super privileged or super blind to be able to say something like this. Maybe, Maybe not. All I know is that I have been super lucky to be travelling solo and to have the kind of experiences I have had.

 

Not that I don’t notice how my existence as a solo woman traveler in places where clearly I have no ‘work’, evokes certain questions, concerns and behaviours from others. But they are not my business to be bothered with. At best, I am amused or touched by the concern shown; at worst I put it down to just how the world is, and carry on.

 

Though I travelled solo for work for years, the almost agenda-less personal voyages of my more recent past have been the real deal, by way of a vital rite of passage to being my own person. I believe that travelling solo, to a more or less unfamiliar place, with a very open-ended program, a very rough itinerary and some loose ends, without a work agenda, minus a visiting so and so plan as the central purpose, is a wonderful way to get to know yourself. It can be transformational in the most pleasant, memorable and lasting of ways. I say this for both men and women.

 

When I was young I travelled with an outward focus. It was so much about the place I went to, the people I met, the things I did. Now, while all that is still of course part of the picture, I travel slower, and inward. It helps that being older I am more at ease with the novelties I might encounter. I have less at stake in being a certain way, in presenting a certain front or holding on to an image of who I am.

 

Not surprisingly, the journalist who messaged me was someone I met on a recent solo sojourn in the hills. She had been sent on assignment to the local bureau of her paper. I was breaking a long journey with a stop-over. We met and talked over lunch with the BnB host family, and she took down my name, saying she was interested in a few things that I was doing. Two months later she gets in touch again – she has this story to write and she remembers me, the solo woman traveller she met. She tells me that on that same assignment soon after we met, she too went on her first solo trek. A certain story lead had not worked out, so she had time on her hand, and the trail beckoned. She says a local tea-stall owner told her she was so bahadur to do this. I tell her how a sister-in-law called me Jhansi ki Rani for taking off alone into parts unknown, on my own. We agree there is nothing brave or warlike in this. And yet, we realise, as we talk, that this – you are so bahadur, you are such a Jhansi Ki Rani- is just the sort of thing so many will think is needed, when they think of venturing out as they are.

Lost Connections: Johann Hari. May 2018 Book Report.

For all the familiarity with the term Depression, it is still shrouded in confusion. For all the exhortations for removing stigma and shame around those who suffer, there is still too little focus on context and systemic causes. Johann Harris is an award winning journalist and best selling writer who has suffered from depression since childhood. He has been taking medications since his teen years and believed that his condition was all about a chemical Imbalance that pills could put right. But his experience with drugs- while it provided some relief, specially early on, did not lead to lasting improvements. It led him to ask what wasn’t working and why. 

What he found in the course of his wide ranging investigation is the story of this book. 

The stories and data he investigates are surprising and shocking, as well as commonsensical and intuitive – sometimes all together. He looks at the nature of pharmaceutical research and trials and publishing of trial results. He looks at the nature of the experience of grief and other emotional and relational trauma. He looks at social context. He looks at man as part of the natural world. He talks to scientific and scholars and doctors and social workers. 

He comes to see that Depression is a lot more than a chemical imbalance that pills can put right for ever. Some of his suggestions for course correction are utopian and because they point to the need for systemic changes, they may sound impractical; and yet there is a core idea in all of it that is possible for us to follow in our lives and interactions.
Given pervasive thoughts of stress and anxiety in our lives, this is a book for all of us, a book that takes a wide angle sweep and a close up into what all of us are now touched by directly or indirectly. 

About a Birthday

 

I turned 50 last month, and it was a birthday that felt special and meaningful in ways birthdays had stopped feeling, in the years since my childhood and teen years. In my childhood every birthday felt special. Every number on the age scale was a significant step up. A new class at school, a growing body, an expanding knowledge of the world, and a build up of skills. All very tangible, visible and noted by self and others.
Then came the twenties, and slowly, but increasingly, birthdays were markers that felt like the scores of a crucial, tense cricket test match. After college, each year gone by meant another round of stocktaking, comparisons, deadlines and the body clock. More of the same in the 30s. Birthdays turned ritualistic, performative and repetitive. It didn’t help that my husband didn’t understand what the fuss was about in the first place, and heartbreakingly for me at that time, did nothing at all to mark the my first birthday after our wedding. I caught the affliction and began to forget the date as well, and lost the previous excitement for this celebration for mine or anyone’s birthday, except for those of my children. Largely, a birthday was now only another excuse to throw a party and pretend this was something more than just another day. 

After decades of this jadedness, my own excitement and sense of reaching a milestone on my 50th took me by surprise. For days before the event-which happens to be also International Women’s Day, I felt that old old thrill that used to build up days before a birthday in my childhood. I began to tell people (strangers included) that I was turning 50. I planned different, small, private celebrations to mark the half decade of living a rather fortunate, ordinary and trouble free life. I gifted myself special treats, specifically, for this specific reason. 

I know it’s not like I did anything special to be 50 – I cannot take credit for being born, or for the supply of breath and everything else that keeps me alive. I owe much of that to my family. My parents specially can pat themselves on the back for giving me the best life they could, and then some more. And yet there is a feeling of achievement at having come to an age I could only think of as being monumentally old and unimaginable, when I was a small child. 

You can tell yourself many things about middle age in your 40s. But to me, middle age, aka the 40s felt like a no good half-way house. 50 is surer, crisper, clearer. It is over the fence and over the hill in every best way possible, done and dusted.
Here’s to new beginnings for the freer happier me, who is closer today to what I thought I should be, and never imagined I’d find at the ripe round number of 50.

Your Views are Extreme, I Am Told.

There is a lot of talk these days of what do you tell your children about the miserable atrocities of this world. I am thinking of what makes it so hard for us. Is it that we want to stay cushioned in some sort of safe-zone and pretend that these things like child abduction, rape, murder, sadistic rituals as cover for ghoulish actions, greed for land and power and money over-riding more humane considerations, do not happen much? Or that maybe they do happen, but as long as we don’t hear about them it does not have to disturb our conscience and consciousness?

It could also be something else. That we know it is a part of who we are, and what we do, in some form or the other. And so we cannot be coal calling the kettle black. We must say evil is always someone else, some others, people not like us. Of course, a lot of us do call it out among ourselves, and feel very self-righteous. But a lot of us hesitate to speak with our children about how evil is real and here and not just something in films and stories and mythology. We should get a lot more real, and out of a lot of unexamined cliches and prejudices, if we really wish to have an honest understanding of what happens when evil is fostered, and why and how it is fostered. We must talk of this openly with our children, and with each other, without the crutch of propaganda and inherited untruths. We must examine motives behind every story or explanation we are fed, and think for ourselves ab initio.

We must teach them about politics and power games, and talk about all the ways women and children have been pawns of war, and wars have been fought over control of resources. We must make this connection very obvious. With real life. Not as abstract things mugged up from books for exams with no real life context. We need to link it to the question of moral choices.

Why does a little nomad girl get abducted? Why is she a good choice for the land mafia to use as a tool of intimidation? What about her identity makes her the pick? Female, powerless child, minority…discuss all that. Discuss the history of the conflict in the region. first, actually, educate yourself beyond propaganda. Why hide her in a temple? Ask yourself about the role and symbolism of that space. What advantage it affords the abusers? Get over your own sentimental thoughts about the idea of temple and look at it anew. Look at the history of land rights and displacement and settler-nomad conflict in the Indian context. Educate yourself. Educate your children.

Do not give in to the temptation of convenient cliches, to talk of bad persons doing bad things and move on to a distraction.

Talk of moral corruption that allows a human to sell his soul for power. Educate yourself about literature on this, movies on this. Delve into art. Delve into philosophy. This is the human condition. And rising above it too is human. A matter of choice, also?

We can choose silence or we can keep trying to voice our values. And live by them. By aligning our thoughts, words and actions. I am sure all of us have at some time or the other wished someone dead because of where they came from. But we know even as we think that thought, we don’t mean it. But then comes a time when we stop knowing. Or turn a blind eye to that knowing. When from it being a passing thought we dismiss, it becomes something we call being practical.

We may say that forest rights need rationalisation for industry. That if human progress calls for tragic but inevitable extermination of endangered flora and fauna, so be it. If dams displace people, tough luck; they happened to be living in the way of development. There is a price to pay after all. There are no free lunches. We forget though that the one paying the price is not invited to the lunch. Nomads don’t matter. They need to be shifted. Spread fear so they leave. Weapon of choice – the weakest ever. A child. A female. Drugged. Unable to resist unable to even scream to cause you later nightmares. Passive and untouched. Till mammon and blind power landed on her like vultures.

We need a Truth & Reconciliation Commission of our own in this hurt and bleeding country where we have othered and hated and ridden rough shod over so many for so long. We need to talk about our pain and forgive what can’t be forgotten, instead of devouring our own. But first we must see them as having a stake to what we claim as our own.

If the Rajsamand killer’s supporters could lay siege to the DC’s office against his arrest, and it was not a matter of national outcry why would things not get more brazen the next time? If Godhra and 2002 go by with the perpetrators being deified as saviours, if 1984 killers are not convicted and removed from public life, if riots are part of political tactics, if 1947 stories are only black and white if ever aired but mostly remain unspoken….certainly there will be a next time. And a next. And so on.

There was talk of eggs have to be cracked to make omelette in 2002. I wonder if people ever imagine themselves and their loved ones as those eggs when they talk like this. I was in class XII when two Sikh bodyguards shot Mrs. Gandhi and thousands of Sikhs paid the blood money. There is chain of who did what to whom going way back from there. Communal distrust and hate are fostered and used as fodder to grow power. We allow ourselves to be cogs in the wheels of the juggernaut that rolls over us finally. In Calcutta in 1984 a top level political decision was taken and announced that there coud be no harm done to anyone following the killing of Mrs. Gandhi. Which means that those leaders clearly knew what is standard procedure in such times, for whichever desired outcome. The situation can be very much under control, no matter how tanaavpoorn. It was fortunate for the Sikhs that at that time the choice was made for peaceful co-existence. For whatever ideological or tactical reasons. Those reasons are the key choice. Can we influence that choice with our individual and collective voice?

When Mahatma Gandhi was killed too peace prevailed though the public grief and sorrow was large scale. He was a far bigger tree that had fallen, yet his persona itself eschewed some choices for those left to grapple with the shock. On the other hand, there was definitely enough intelligence available that he was a target on killers radar and after few failed attempts another one was going to be made. Somehow that attack wasn’t prevented. Maybe some eggs outlive their utility. That is also a choice.

But when you have a point to make by saving some eggs, then you get your act together accordingly, like Jyoti Basu in October 1984 in Calcutta. It isn’t like the public had any nobler thoughts than the average Indian anywhere else. I was at someone’s house and they didn’t know I was Sikh and the radio and TV were announcing that there had been some unruliness on roads. Police was called out. The ladies of the house spoke up to say that it was a shame such unruliness was being spread. “Just attack the Sardars. Leave others alone. Why bother them”. I kept quiet. Took me years to talk about this to anyone. I regret my silence then. It is such silences that power evil.

After three days at home I went to school and found that the girl I shared my bench with had moved to a different place. No one, really no one talked to me or even made eye contact or said hello. For days. No one shared my tiffin for days. There were two more Sikh girls in my class. Neither came to school for a whole week. Such fear and silence also feeds evil. The class teacher, Ms. Doita Dutta was the only person who spoke about what had happened, and appreciated my coming back to school. She spoke of the constitution and of rule of law and not scapegoating innocents. And of not playing the communal identity game in politics. I took solace from her words. The bad stuff didn’t seem random aberration or a sudden spontaneous rise of evil; it was a choice made in cold blood, with calculations, is what Ms. Dutta implied. Her words did thaw some small gap in the ice. Still, I didn’t quite understand the enormity of my classmates’ silence or the absence of the other Sikh students from school. People like Ms. Dutta are our bulwark against evil. She also made a choice that day and has made such choices all her life.

People like the classmates who shunned me and those who stayed away and those ladies who said let them attack only Sardars are kindling too weak in themselves but given the right hawa they help stoke the fires of hate. I lived in Calcutta and we didn’t hear much about the real horrors in Delhi and other places till a bit later. But while AIR and Doordarshan played stooge to the government, there were journalists and citizens recording the genocide and protesting it and at times preventing it and also organising help. They were the ones who did not look away. They kept truth alive, they show us how gangs were organised, how evil was given strength and how those who could have checked it made a choice to look away and also encourage the spread of evil.  The work they did then is helping us know the facts even today. It also told the victims that at least someone else saw their truth. In the absence of any other succour sometimes knowing you are heard and seen is the only straw keeping someone afloat.

A few months ago there were house guests visiting us. The Rajsamad murder had just happened. The defence of the accused had mounted an attack on the District administration office building to protest his arrest. I spoke about this and said a culture of lawlessness was being promoted in the guise of the resurgent pride of so called beleaguered identity of the majority. I was told I was exaggerating. I asked them, have you seen the videos? They hadn’t. I asked them if they l condoned such actions? They said no no, that was a bit extreme. Itna nahin hona chahiye. They couldn’t say kitna is acceptable. Point is, there is no naap tol and kamm zyaada when you decide that certain people are impediments and dispensable others. It is only a matter then of latak ke marega yaan kat ke.

The relatives asked me if I didn’t see the vikas all around me. I asked them for facts and figures. They had none. I found some and they did not stand scrutiny. They said this Sarkar really gets what needs to be done to make us developed and free of corruption. I asked them if they were ready to condone repression of minorities as the price of development and if they saw moral corruption of the soul as a fair trade off. They said I had become very extreme in my views.

The lives and love of pets

At six years of age I had my first intimations of a future me as an adult. I imagined myself walking along in a place of adult power and importance- maybe an office or a school, dressed in a sari in some moments and in pants in some others. I was no longer a child who was clueless and had to be cared for. I was the one in control, in the know. Things ran the way I wanted them to.

This was soon after my first ever hospitalisation due to a complicated brush with chicken pox. I had been quarantined in a sprawling military hospital in Devlali and had seen only professional adult people for some days. People who seemed to have the power to get me through a terrible illness. I felt confident because they were so confident. I wasn’t lonely even though it was the longest I had been away alone without my sibling or my parents.

A few years later at age ten loneliness was a lingering backdrop to all I did. I was a paradox of introversion and strong opinions. Soft spoken of voice but cutting in my critical views. Socialising felt fraught and yet was essential to an army brat who so often shifted school and homes. I wanted to go away to a boarding school to have some constancy. To feel more in control. No doubt I was unduly influenced by all the Enid Blyton I devoured those days. My parents wrote to a few schools. The prospectus arrived in post from Simla. My brother protested when he heard what I had asked for. Said he wouldn’t ever go. My parents said okay then she cannot go either. I was so mad at him, at them. I can go alone, I said. They said no, That Inhad no idea how tough that would be. That when one was young one always needed someone known and familiar to be with us in new places, in times of change. And that they could only ever consider sending us away together else not at all. I didn’t say much but now I wonder if that must have been the beginning of something. I started stepping out more as my own person. I made a friend who was all mine away from the common group we had played in so far. I started going out on my own at playtime. I started reading books separate from him. I started wanting a dog for a pet. I picked up a puppy from a neighbor’s pet’s litter and walked home naming and renaming him all the way. Mummy made me take it back without even letting me step into the house. I told Suman didi no matter, I would get a pup first thing when I had my own house as a grown up.

I got my wish a few months after my marriage. It was almost an after thought by my non dog/pet fancying husband. A sort of peace offering, from the new litter in our building ka parking lot that I was taking care of with some neighbouring teenagers. It was a surprise to see her brought home, and I was confused about keeping her. I felt her fragile life in my arms and was equal parts terrified and smitten. Baby Doll was the four year old boss of our home when we welcomed our first born. When she passed away at fourteen years, after progressive organ failure, I promised myself I would never bring a pet into my home again. But I had not been a good reader of my own heart, a second time over. The kids (now there was Keya too) were insistent in their demands. I read something about how pets help shy and introverted people. How they can make a special needs child more confident. I longed for the loving playfulness that thrived between Baby Doll and the kids and all of us. The fabric of home had a dog sized tear that only seemed to sunder more with time. I stayed firm and made sure we did lots of things together. Outdoor games. Indoor games. Picnics. Cooking. Movies. Books. Holidays. Studies. Painting. I told myself I needed to get out more. I volunteered at school. Acted in a play. Rejoined yoga class. Attended a Stock Trading class. And the trainer said she was also doing a Bach Flower course next, would I like to join? It was for emotional healing and didn’t include much psychobabble, and it would not do any harm. Why not try it? Why not, I said.

In the class a participant passed around the picture of a new Spaniel pup who seems to miss its mother and cried often. The course teacher suggested flower remedies for the pup. I asked where had the pup come from. The new master said there were still two left in the litter and I might want to go see them. So some days later we had Truffle and Siberioo with us. Siberioo was Keya’s pet, supposedly, and Ken claimed Truffle. In a couple of days we realised they were both not quite well. They had the dreaded Parvo virus and within a week of their coming home to us, golden furred Siberioo was no more. His tortured tiny form lay still in my palm as the sun’s first rays slanted through the glass window. Truffle survived, recovering from the brink but he has never been quite fully well since. The vet and other people suggested that getting him a companion quickly would be good idea. I looked at five year old Keya and how kind and brave she had been with the sick pups. With Baby Doll she had always been somewhat hesitant, intimidated both by the bigness of her size and the loudness of her bark. And being the smallest and latest arrival in the family Keya could not quite yet do much for Baby Doll. Taking her for a walk was beyond her, as was handling her feeding. She would watch her older and bigger sibling do all that and wonder at her own smallness and Baby Doll’s power. l asked the vet to look for a pup. A month later we welcomed Oreo to our home. He was the opposite of Truffle in every way. A carefree singing dog that could beg for food the whole day long, and was genial and kind to everyone except other building dogs he met in the lift. Averse to being picked up or brushed. But very fond of climbing on every sofa chair carpet and bed and cuddling up on cushions and pillows to sleep. Truffle is much more particular and aloof, but will happily snuggle onto your shoulder if you lift him, and likes to be the Raja. After the initial bossing around, Truffle accepted Oreo in the home but never let him forget he had come in here before him.

With these two tiny pups, Keya too came into her own in many ways. She could feed the pups, and handle them in other ways. They were tiny and manageable for her. She gained confidence as she started taking them for walks. She learnt about discipline as she trained them. My years of no-dogs-on beds rule was done away with by the children.Truffle and Oreo started sleeping on my son’s bed. When he went away to college they went back to their own little beds for a while till Keya allowed them to cuddle up with her. It is now almost ten years since we got these two home.

End of last year Oreo was detected with a malignant carcinoma. It was removed surgically. The day of the surgery as Oreo recovered from anaesthesia and the pain, Truffle was by his side, at times just snuggled up to Oreo’s flank and at times licking him in what I can only assume was a gesture of care. As is my habit when the pets or kids are not well, I let him rest on my bed. I let him treat my quilt like his own little cave and refuge and am getting used to his one sided don’t touch me please kind of wish to be near us. I remember how being helped to the bathroom by Dad had brought me incredible relief and strength after my own first caesarean. Being physically held makes love real. Being held is what we can always do first for another being who suffers, and it what we can still do when we can do little else. Even when it is the kind of holding Oreo seeks- our being near him but not really catch him tight or squeeze close.bMore like letting him plonk himself where he likes, while we squeeze and adjust around him.

Touchwood the rest of the tests done on Oreo have been clear so far and he seems to be fine in every way. The vet and others we have shown his reports to say he is so old and really there is not much to do medically that would change anything. We tell ourselves he has lived well and we can only love him all the more for however much longer he is with us. So there will be no stopping Oreo from continuing to make himself at home on my bed. Never mind that now Truffle too has followed him there. Things do feel a bit like a crowded railway platform late at night though. Guess this is the grown up life. And I am not in control.

 

Reader Report: Driven to Distraction. By Edward M. Hallowell & John J. Ratey.

“I felt a Cleaving in my Mind –

As if my Brain had split –

I tried to match it – Seam by Seam –

But could not make them fit

The thought behind, I strove to join

Unto the thought before –

But Sequence ravelled out of Sound –

Like Balls – upon a Floor.”

Emily Dickinson

——-

This time I report on a non fiction book about the little understood neuro biological condition of ADHD. This report is two days overdue by the deadline I set myself. The only good thing I can say about missing the end of month to post this is that such behaviour is perfectly in synch with the book I am reporting on.

ADHD, or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (earlier known as ADD) is a controversial and complex issue about which doctors, psychologists, educators, counselors, neuroscientists and researchers are still figuring out the finer points of origin, causes, treatment and control. Not just that, even the existence of this, the validity of a diagnosis with ADHD and the various current modalities of coping are subject to conflicting views and support or the lack of it. I recently met a noted cardiologist friend and shared with him my son’s diagnosis and the casual way he told me not pay attention to it was astoundingly shocking, coming as it did from the medical profession.

Needless to say, the attitude towards the often common sounding traits of ADHD complicates the situation for those thus diagnosed or unable to access a diagnosis and those who live with ADD in their family or in close relationships. In this simple to read and easy to understand book two doctors give a very detailed overview of the basket of traits and behaviours that show up in ADD, through sharing a series of extremely detailed case stories, explanations and decades of clinical experience.

They describe and define, and explain the diagnostic criteria and the treatment methods. They delve into the different manifestations of ADHD in children and adults, and how it impacts other aspects of one’s life and relationships and performance and self worth. All of this is done with graphic, vivid, engaging write ups of cases, of correspondence from patients and their families, and the authors’ own life.

Through compelling and compassionate accounts of diagnosis and progress of treatment of their patients, the authors make a convincing and comprehensive case for the need for early diagnosis and consistent multi-pronged interventions.

The authors have extensive experience in working and researching ADD/ ADHD and also personally live with the condition, so everything in the book comes from close experience of their cases and personal life. The case studies used are wide ranging, and each case is unique yet typical in its specificities. The three key components of ADHD- impulsivity, distractibility and hyperactivity are displayed in minute detail and all shades of manifestation. The distinction between various similar seeming psychiatric and behavioural conditions is explained and made clear.

There are checklists and guidelines, making the book a helpful practical manual besides a great introduction to ADHD. There are references to other researches and books that cover the history and latest findings in the field throughout the text, for those who want to explore the topic further. In that sense this is also a great reference resource.

In their approach to ADD the authors are categorical in approaching it as a neurological, biological phenomenon but they also stress the need for a comprehensive treatment plan that goes beyond mere medication, and at times need not include medication at all. To quote, they stress ”how important a comprehensive treatment plan is, a plan that incorporates education, understanding, empathy, structure, coaching, a plan for success and physical exercise as well as medication. …how important human connection is every step of the way…see the human connection as the single most powerful therapeutic force in the treatment of ADHD….Human connection is indispensable..the other Vitamin C, Vitamin Connect. “

What worked for me particularly in this book was the straightforward and detailed descriptions of the many ways the ADHD presents in the lives of people, and the numerous helpful checklists and resources included. It is a highly empathetic work of professionals, aimed at making the general public and those directly affected by the condition approach the idea of ADHD with open minds and and hopeful hearts. The authors seek to go beyond merely identifying something as a pathology, to acknowledging the issue as a composite of its problems and strengths. Instead of fear and stigma and misunderstanding, they advocate for acceptance and action.

Making of friends as making of self

I mostly made acquaintances and not friends in my 20s and 30s. On the matter of friends I was settled for life, I thought. I didn’t need new friends. Not the real, know you inside out type, at least. Deep intense friendships from high school and college were enough. Who had ever heard of grown ups making new friends anyway, back then? With the old friends we had wondered at the world and its puzzling, often scary ways. We had shared dreams and fears. We had been vulnerable and strong together. Now was the time to make something of ourselves in the grown up world. 

Most of my friends were not geographically close anymore, and I missed their constant unplanned presence in my life outside campus. I had moved homes and jobs. That made it harder to not miss my circle of close buddies. I did hang out with new people. There was the office gang, and a fun boss with whom I discovered so much of Delhi’s cultural heritage. There were the old college friends and new colleagues I went travelling impromptu with.

But something was shifting. The new connections had an adult formality to them. I made friends in the new neighborhood too. They were girls who had nothing in common with me in background or education. But we liked each other. With them it was all about learning to fit in and not stand out. It was nice to not be always alone but it was not fulfilling at all.

I call it the year of my anomie. It was horrible.

I was buried deep in books, preparing for the civil services exam. And commuting hours daily in a chartered bus across New Delhi to another new job. I remember sharing my sense of missing the constancy of close friends with my best buddy from university. She had also been my co-worker at our first job. Now we worked in different places. She told me it was childish of me to hanker after old friends. I should focus more on making a career and not yearn for friends, she said, with some irritated puzzlement. In today’s parlance I guess she meant I had a lot of adulting to do. She herself was busy with a new job, an old boyfriend and an impending marriage and had no time for reflections on the lost rhythm of old friendships.

On a visit to an out of town college friend I met her new circle of colleagues and friends. Finally, after two years, here was the atmosphere I craved. The collegiate camaraderie. The company of people like us. The sense of home-coming was strong and seductive. And of course, delusional. But I had fallen in love. Suddenly it didn’t matter that all my friends were far away. Romance has that way of filling you up. The web of your connectedness feels expansive like the ever-stretching universe, complete with its own black-holes of no return. A misunderstanding around the new developments pulled a common friend down the vortex of non-friendship. New constellations were formed. Possibilities loomed.

I married and moved to another town after a tumultuous year of courtship. The only friends there were his work colleagues and their collective (mostly new) friends. The work of adopting them as my/ our friends began. From a very individualistic, one on one friend maker I tried to become good at being a part of a gang. Letters and then email and then mobile phone calls became a lifeline back to the ‘real’ friendships of a simpler more innocent time. For the first time I started holding back from sharing with my old friends, even while staying in touch. I guess I was hiding from myself in a way. A wifely loyalty and mother’s guilt fought to censor friendship’s candour.

Over time, across the world, I kept making up and and breaking up with more new friends. The ones who knew me only in the avatar of wife, mother, home-maker and corporate worker. For years, through my 30s I honed the art of making and keeping ‘situational’ friends. One of those bonds has lasted for over twenty years. But most served to fit in a specific sphere and time of my life.

In my 40s I reconnected with a lot of old college and high school friends. I found it was like we had not moved away at all. The years in between and all the highs and lows of life we had faced seem to make us like each other more. The acceptance seems to have turned more authentic, the trust stronger, the wish to stand by and for each other even more spontaneous. Even black-holes yield to the pull of friendships formed in one’s youth. After more than twenty years, friendship has triumphed over misunderstandings, strongly rejecting lies and meanness. Censorship has been put aside. Candour rules. You don’t fake it and you don’t make time or space for the fake-ness of others. 

In my late 40s I have come full circle about friendship. I have begun to make new friends just like I did in my high school and college days. By being just me, sans roles, sans reserve, sans censor. The most active churning of friends in my life is happening now. I am also finally my own best friend, which makes it so much more fun to be friends with others.

 

The Fine Art and Science of the apology. My Review of “Why Won’t You Apologize?’ By Harriet Lerner

Written by a psychologist who has worked for many years as a therapist and teacher, this is a self help manual in the best tradition of that genre.

A vexing topic that plagues almost everyone at some point of time is the how, why and when of apology. We are taught good manners and so saying sorry for mistakes and transgressions becomes almost a reflex in mundane day to day interactions. And yet it is also the most difficult thing in certain circumstances to be genuinely able to apologise.

Offering apologies that are meaningful and apt and not self-sabotaging can be hard for many people. Typically, these are circumstances that can poison relationships deeply and for long. The hurt of not being heard and not being given due redressal after being wronged calls for a healing touch. Oftentimes the parties on either end of the equation are ill equipped to do what is required.

So the hurts linger. The pain festers.

That is where a book like this plays a role. In making us understand what goes on in the minds of those who cannot and will not apologise. How it is the result of not taking responsibility and dodging accountability. How do some people get to be this way and how can one overcome such behaviour. All of these topics are dealt with In a straightforward way with examples and sans jargon or theorising. The tone remains anecdotal and engaging and light while the intensity of the phenomenon and its impact is fully examined from different perspectives.

“The need for apologies and repair is a singularly human one – both on giving and receiving ends. We are hardwired to seek justice and fairness )however we see it), so the need to receive a sincere apology that’s due is deeply felt. We are also imperfect human beings and prone to error and defensiveness, so the challenge of offering a heartfelt apology permeates almost every relationship.”

Reading this book is an act of healing and validation and being understood. Read it to know yourself better. You may be able to apologise where you need to. You may be able to also drop the expectations of apology from some people. Most importantly you will also be able to see why it is not always necessary or effective to forgive those who wronged us.

If ever you have felt an apology is pending to you, you must read this book NOW. If you have wondered how could you say sorry for what you did wrong, here is all that you need to know.

In Hot Blood. By Bachi Karkaria. A Review.

I have not watched a single one of the Nanavati murder trial and ménage-e-trios inspired movies, not have I ever been remotely curios about this so-called national sensation. Yet, after this book came out last month my book club decided to go for it. That compulsion, rather than the topic made me read it. And it turned out to be more than worth the time and effort. An enjoyable, educative and thought provoking read, in so many ways this turned out to be.

 

Bachi Karkaria has gone through exhaustive and extensive research to make the story richly detailed, in-depth, and almost a full sociological treatise on the times (1950-60) of the events, their background, context and aftermath on various aspects of the nation’s judicial systems and particularly Bombay’s socio-cultural life. From interviews with those who were around in those times, and those who can tell us something new as well as retell the old facts, she presents a fresh look at one of the most talked about murder cases in the history of modern India. Not a simple task, this, which Bachi carries off with élan.

 

The facts are supposedly known to everyone, but I will recap. Kawas Nanavati is being cheated on by his wife, Sylvia. She confesses to the husband, and tells him to be careful – she fears for his life as her lover, Prem Ahuja has a gun. The shattered husband is a naval commander. He too can get a gun. Which he does. And he then goes to confront the lover- to ask him what his intentions are, and if he plans to do the honorable thing by marrying Sylvia and taking care of the children. Kawas is seen going to Prem Ahuja’s room. There is no witness to what happens inside. Three shots ring out from behind closed doors. Nanavati walks out, his white dress unblemished and surrenders himself to the naval police for having shot a man. Ahuja is found dead with gun shot wounds.

 

In court, Kawas pleads not guilty. On purely circumstantial evidence the jury too calls him not guilty. Throughout the trail, Nanavati is the hero of the masses and the media. The jury system earns its nail in the coffin with this case and is never used again in India. Nanavati is found guilty on appeal, but again pardoned by the state governor.

 

These are the facts. But behind them lies a fascinating maze of coincidences, manipulations, prejudices, class and community networks of allegiance and privilege. Partisan media uses its power of mass opinion making, and forgets journalistic neutrality. The Blitz goes all out to defend Nanavati and runs petitions for him. How did all this actually play out? What factors could have worked behind the scenes to move which levers? Why was murder not seen as murder but a point of honor? What made Nanavati the hero he seemed to be viewed as? What made Sylvia not a vamp but an object of sympathy or even indifference? What made Ahuja a villain who no one shed tears for?

 

All this and more is the focus of Bachi Karkaria’s elaborate delving into this old story. Her recreation of the Bombay of the late 50s is picture perfect, in all details. The courts, the Navy areas, the localities of posh Malabar Hill, the cinemas, the markets, the streets all come alive as if a movie runs in real time. The dialogues, the imagery, the aura and ethos of the communities that play the main roles are all vividly and precisely depicted.

 

The writing does get over the top at just a very few places, in typical Bachi style, which I (in a case of absolutely subjective aesthetic preference) found a tad out of place in reading a serious book of investigative/reconstructive journalism, but I can’t say it took away much from the book. For a case as sensational as this, hyperbole and drama is part of the territory in the retelling. Bachi manages to keep the drama alive while she remains almost clinically detached in the retelling. Nothing is assumed or taken at face value, and the alternate possibility is considered and the alternate voice is given a legitimate place. Through it all if the author tends to lean towards anything, then it is to constitutional values and the spirit of constitutional law, and a sense of fairness and open minded questioning.

 

It can tend to feel repetitive and maybe slow reading for those looking for the more juicy kind of sleaze and gossip, but that is not the author’s intention, though she does not shy from presenting all of those facts too.

 

After all the points of law and constitutional propriety and Naval and Parsi privilege are debated and understood, the book still leaves me with the biggest mystery unsolved. How does a couple pick up the shot to hell pieces of their relationship after a man is killed in hot blood, over the matter of the wife’s infidelity, and go on to build a new life? The author does reveal a lot of factual details of the Nanavati’s life after their move to Canada, but those chapters lack the insights and depth of the proceedings of the trial, or of the context around it.

 

How did these people later forgive each other, if not totally forget the tragedy? I guess that will remain for us to guess and for them to know. Or food for another book.

 

 

 

What’s In A Name?

If my son had expressed the slightest reservation, this would not be a public matter. I could only be so open standing on his shoulders! What a rock, that young man.

What an ADHD assessment for my son has meant to me. My piece in Daily O today.

http://www.dailyo.in/voices/adhd-parenting-sps-health-neurology/story/1/17000.html

Friendship, like Wine

 

Its has been said about me, in various shades of approval, praise, judgment, criticism or condemnation that I make too many friends, and too easily. I can only see this is a blessing. Friends have been my go to for too much for too long. Friends across all spectrums of age, interests, personality and life situations have played a big role in all I am.

Friends come in all types, and friendships come in all shades. Some last for a few fleeting encounters. Some are seasonal. Some come unbidden, and leave of their whim. Some seep into you like breath. While I like and enjoy all connections, I cherish most those bonds of  fondness that last beyond situational exigencies and fleeting personal tastes and trends. Friendship that can hold its centre when time and circumstance make past certainties unfamiliar, is an elixir.

I have been told forever that I am an introvert. I live a lot of my life in my mind. I do not belong easily to groups. I am not a party person, certainly cannot be a social butterfly. But when I meet with an old gang of familiars, it is not just another social formality to structured around small talk. A shared past breeds comfort. It reaffirms acceptance.  There is support offered, trust treasured, help given and help taken, fears faced and courage acknowledged. Co-travellers on this journey of life, we look out for each other. We walk different paths but we seek similar destinations. It is a bond that holds tighter with time, even while it uses no ties at all. In its maturing mutuality we each find recognition and a reflection.

Almost all the good things I learnt outside of what was taught to me by family, books, school and college, have come to me via friends  – gardening, cooking, health support, alternate healing, investment advice, even business help, mentoring and networking. But the maturing of old friendships has brought the biggest treasure of all. The gift of acceptance.

So this is my salaam to all old friends. For looking out for me, listening to me, sharing your lives with me, and holding me in your acceptance. Yes, you are a blessing.

Desperately seeking Romance. The Spin on Karwa Chauth.

Most ladies of my mother’s generation never called their husband by name. Most women in my generation have not held hands with or made willing and happy eye-contact openly in public with their husbands, except to glare or signal something urgent. Many of us in any generation before or after my age cohort have not had a romance before marriage, and even less had a ‘love-marriage’.

But to watch our films one would think every street corner had a dozen love stories blooming. Actually, they may have bloomed in secret, but the path of true love never did run smooth in our part of the world.

Into this culture of romantic lack comes the glamour of married, fully legitimate and socially approved romance, with the filmy version of Karwa Chauth. It is the stuff of dreams. What is not to like? And then, along comes liberalization and the big push on consumerism. A heady cocktail of unarticulated, burning  desire meeting unlimited supply. A match made in consumerism heaven.

Thus unfurls the yashchoprafication of an old, outdated, regressive and cautionary tale of patriarchal control.

Today, I wonder how many of the modern, financially well off women who fast and feast on this festival know the story that forms the bedrock of the rituals they follow in the name of celebration?

When they say they should have the choice to celebrate their marriage and the love in their marriage, do they know what their choice endorses?

The Karwa Chauth story I know is a cautionary tale for women. It stresses in no uncertain terms how marriage was a woman’s sole security and refuge, under the benign grace and fidelity of her husband.

This grace and fidelity though, is most precarious, the story warns. It could be lost at the slightest slip. So you have to be very careful you never let your devotion falter, least of all in favor of your own physical needs or your paternal family’s ‘misguided’ concern over you. Husband comes first, last and everything in-between. After all, you derive your existence and role and validation only as his wife.

So, the story goes…

Once upon a time there was a girl named Veerawati.

She married a brave and handsome chieftain and was delighted with all her finery and the position of a chief’s wife. But this was a spoiled and pampered girl, the little sister of seven doting brothers.

The brothers often took her to visit them back in her parental home. And there, during her Karwa Chauth fast, this girl was going to faint with weakness and hunger. Her brothers, concerned for her, tricked her into believing that the moon had risen, when it had not, and made her break her fast.

Barely had she taken some food and drink, that her misdemeanour brought a curse on her marriage. Her husband fell ill/ was wounded in battle and fell into a coma. Veerawati realised her mistake, and repented and prayed and begged gods and goddesses …and they said ok, he will not die but after many years, if you are good and fast well, he will awaken to life again.

So, began the PUNISHMENT of Veerawati, and her penance.

She took care of the husband, fasted properly every year…and took out the pins which pricked his body. When the last pin was left, she went out to arrange for her fast…in the meanwhile, the maid came and removed the pin, and the husband woke up and in his jumbled up memory, mistook the maid for the wife (maybe it was part of the continuing curse of punishment for the wife). Darn!

Now, the wife had the husband alive, but not with her! The maid became the wife, the wife now was the maid. Still Veerawati devotedly served him as a maid, and sang a song all the time about the switching of two dolls…at length, the chief asked her what this meant, and she told him the whole story. Then finally, he recognised her , and all her seva bore fruit and the husband – wife were re-united.

Bad Veerawati. Bad brothers who led her astray from her devotion.

What do we choose when we sing this katha as we pass the thaali around in the Karwa Chauth Puja.

Are we Veerawati? Should we be? Do we want to be her ?

If the modern KC following woman has no truck with this story, I wish she would drop the Veerawati song and katha from her thaali round  and her moon gazing ritual. I wish there was no ‘touching the feet’ of the husband.

I wish we were a society more open to romance in our lives overall and did not need the cover of filmy fantasies which glamorise misogyny, to fulfil our dreams.

Write it Out. Without Fear. 19th Nov.

So what is our next Write & Beyond workshop about?

“Where the mind is without fear….into that heaven of freedom…” let all writers awake. Fear is the quicksand. Fear is the block. To be fearless is the most fearful idea for many of us. Certainly was for me.

Writing came naturally to me. I was told I wrote well. But it was only a certain kind of writing. School essays that had pros and cons. Work reports that took tons of data apart and then put it together with insights.

Nothing personal, you see. There was no need.

Letters to friends were a different matter. Descriptions, details, stories filled page after page. Of where I was, what had happened in school, what I was painting, which party had I gone to, which college I was applying to. But not what any of it meant to me, not really. Not what I felt inside. The fears, the longings, the highs, the lows. No, that was not what a sorted smart girl like me did. I had it all together, I knew what I was doing , why and where it would get me. There were no questions, no doubts. None I would admit to, at any rate.

The fear was so huge it could not be named or owned.

And then, under the influence of some friends, I wrote a few poems about something in the news. They frightened me with their power. I met my pain on the page for the first time. I had not known I had such views, or that I felt so strongly about certain matters. I felt I had met myself more fully for the first time, because of those poems. And that is how I continue to feel with most of the writing I have done since. In my journals, in my blog, and in the few published articles and poems and short stories I have sent out, I come closer to myself with each written word.

Our next creative expression workshop at Write & Beyond charts the steps to writing beyond fear.

Come join us and know the lightness of rising above much that holds us  stagnant. If you struggle to find our voice, feel a dearth of ideas, or are just stuck in that plain old ‘writers’ block’, find the freedom to flow into writing that is joyful and fun.

https://www.facebook.com/events/533949100144090/

Why Does Chetan Bhagat Get Your Goat

I am no fan of Chetan Bhagat (CB). The mediocrity of craft in CB’s books keeps me away from them. His tweets and columns and speeches are often terribly offensive and rather unintelligent and crass.

I cannot wish him away just as I cannot wish away the reality of Dengue and Chikungunya. Some try, of course.

UK-based journalist-writer Salil Tripathi says “He exists for readers who are new to the English language and new to the idea of reading.” Author-columnist Santosh Desai agrees, “It marks a breakthrough of sorts – writing in English becoming popular in a mainstream sort of a way, moving away from a desire to exclude, speaking to a new set of aspirations with simple but resonant stories, cocking a snook at elitism.”

Moving away from a Desire to Exclude! I am not going to focus on the Desire, but lets just go with the word Exclude. Along comes CB and INCLUDES. Of course he has devoted fans, won’t you, if you spoke for and to someone, about things that they mull over, dream of, and if you took their thoughts as worth any attention? When the arbiters of ‘taste’ and ‘art’ and ‘culture’ made these multitudes feel not quite ‘suitable’, not quite ‘in’and ‘just like them’?

Ranting against CB might do a lot of things for the one who rants, and for those who go “yeah!” with those rants. It does not change anything for those who are his fans and readers. It makes them love him all the more. It shows, in fact, a rather close-minded, one size fits all mentality of entitlement among the ranters. A smugness that comes from a lack of any examination of their own position.

A refusal to understand or acknowledge that there are logical, real reasons behind his success, and not CB’s magical ability to ‘fool a generation of readers’ is an arrogant refusal to face colossal shifts and new fault lines in our nation. It is a refusal to see who holds what kind of cultural, economic and social power.

So, I‘d go beyond. I’d like to offer explanations, understanding, and hold out a hopeful call for a more creative response to the world’s realities.

I am a compulsive student of society. So I take an interest in what makes CB click so well with millions of my desh-waasis (English and non-English reading), and many in foreign lands too. (Yes, his books are translated in to many Indian and foreign tongues- French and Japanese included). He opened a new market segment for books, created a new breed of readers. He does not necessarily have to be the one who helps them evolve as well. Bacche ki jaan loge kyaa? He is not God, even though his stamina and self-belief might make him a demi-god to those who don’t know better.

In sneering at CB, we also sneer at his readers. Why be so snide and superior about us versus them? What do we have to offer them, instead, that will be resonant and connecting? Which voice will speak to their yearnings, and can someone help them find a more sophisticated and refined, nuanced awareness of that yearning?

Respect another’s experience and life view, because it comes from a different place. Would you be you had you been in their place? Too much to ask, I know. I got carried away. Why be so serious? WHY ever not?

Market forces understand consuming power. Money talks. Sales figures are the kingmakers. What is to rant about? Don’t like what the system throws up? Want to rant against the real root of things, and not the symptoms, maybe? Rant against the forces of consumerism, which turn everything into a market product. Give it a thought.

Sadly for the ‘English’ types, CB got on to the hotline too easy. And then the gods of the market put all their armies at his disposal. He keeps going. It pays him handsomely. Why would he do any different? Once he hit the mark, non-book markets came to cash in on him. He sold out. Given his clout should he choose better? Maybe, maybe he can’t. Would you? Have others? Give it a thought!

Look at the basic premise that the advertising and marketing industry works on. Seriously, GIVE IT ALL A THOUGHT. A lot of thought.

It is a free world, people. No, it is a ‘free’-market world, specifically. When CB first came into the market he had a unique and novel product. Five Point Someone spoke to a segment of youth about things no one had publicly talked about, but which were ripe for articulation. He did it soothingly, gently, without making the reader uncomfortable. In the newly liberalizing Indian middle class, comfort was at a high premium.

My neighbor told me excitedly that on reading this book, she felt she could understand where her husband came from, a little better. And she thanked CB for it. This was a Loretto school educated Delhi University girl married to an IIT IIM boy. That segment may not be his core audience anymore, but give the devil his due- he spoke to someone’s heart.

CB has moved on to other topics. He picks the stories carefully; with studied deliberation I am sure. Then, he plays the market. He touches on pain points but does not go for the jugular. He gives you resonance, but does not break your heart. That is his choice. And the reader’s too. We cannot rant against that. C’mon, not everyone wants to be shown all the skeletons in their cupboard. You cannot give babies real knives and scissors to play with. There are a few who are born to high art. For the rest it takes growing into. The consumer society public discourse and media does not help that growth. It wants to paint a utopian, no difficult questions scenario, where every answer is achievable, every problem solvable with something readymade off the shelf. Like it is with the situations and characters in CB’s novels. Or it wants to scare you about impending doom. There is no nuance.

Give it a thought.

Having seen that he could catch reader’s attention, and a slice of the book market, CB turned bolder. Tier two and tier three towns, the lesser known engineering colleges and regular graduates with dreams fuelled by liberalization and globalization of the job-market were a big market hungering to hear about people like them. People whose young lives had changed in unimagined ways in a matter of very few years. The narratives of their parents were a misfit in their new world. Nor could they relate to the writers who wrote in ‘elite’ English for the elites readers. This was the setting ripe for One Night @The Call Centre. Lets not forget, this was the time when “most people like us’ sneered at those taking up call center jobs.

How judgy is it of some of us to decide that people different from us must adhere to our tastes and not like what connects with them?

The thing that strikes me most about all the vitriol raised by the CB haters is how little of it is actually useful literary criticism. Quite lacking in anything educative for the seeker of good reading guidance, or for someone looking to develop a higher order taste in reading, and offering nothing to help readers understand what makes CB a poor writer. There is word in Hindi that I think of when I see the outrage against CB. ‘Tilmilahat’. It captures the essence of the reaction.

I saw the film Two States with a ladyfriend who loved the book and the film because it was the story of her life. Who is to judge the value of her fondness for what holds meaning for her at such a personal, deep level?

I found my tailor reading Half-Girlfriend. I asked him what he thought of the book. He said he found it realistic, and enjoyable. I got a copy and read it (it was a drag, honestly) to know what was working for this book. As a piece of art, and for its craft, I could trash the book. But I admired it as a product. Could have been better. But then, CB never claims perfection. Just that he sells. DDLJ sold. Dil Chahta Hai sold. Both left me cold. But they were cult hits, I keep hearing. Why? Give it a thought.

On a recent visit to the parlor, I was reading Ramachandra Guha’s massive tome, India after Gandhi, while getting a pedicure. The boy attending to me was a young lad from Madhubani, sweet and curious and confident. He talked in English, and asked me to correct him if needed, so he could improve. He asked questions about the topics in the book. We discussed the role of mass media, book publishing, the role of English as the language of power and knowledge. And I wondered if there was a simpler, easy to read version of this history book I could recommend to him. I am sure the same boy could read CB. And that is the underserved market we have in this country, hungry for so much. Junk will be lapped up as greedily as long as it is available and somewhat understood. As of now, all this pedicure boy can perhaps reach for, in English, is CB. Will there be a better book for him to read in English soon?

I want to end with this old quote from … http://danieldmello.blogspot.in/2010/03/why-we-hate-chetan-bhagat.html

“CB’s work is mediocre….it isn’t snobbishness to find a piece of work mediocre and reject it for being so. But as to the question of holding the creators and their fans in contempt for patronising mediocrity, and denying them any form of attention, that’s just wrong, and could well be snobbishness….. Some of them read his books because they don’t know any better or they don’t enjoy reading good Indian fiction or contemporary international literature, or even the classics. No wonder then that they worship Chetan Bhagat. …. Is this Chetan’s fault? Of course not. He didn’t force all these millions of Indians to buy or read his books. He simply used his natural talent to write within his capacity, and the masses happened to love his work. Why blame Chetan for the reading habits of the masses? Our anger at Chetan Bhagat’s success could actually be our displaced anger at the masses….. if you’re a lover of good literature, and are amazed by the constant attention CB gets, my advice is to ignore it. That’s right. We are an evolving society. Until we all evolve to a point we we appreciate good literature, we should realise that there will always be some people who will enjoy reading CB. What’s more, no one’s forcing you to read his books. “

For those who still want to stay angry, is being angry and full of hate all we can do? Can we instead turn our anger to something more positive, creative and better?

Give it a thought.

 

 

 

 

The Cradle of the High Peaks

Yesterday I had an epiphany about man’s eternal pull to the mountains. It was triggered, fittingly, by the words of a Bhutanese landscape planner on Youtube. He reinforced something already felt in the deep dormant layers of my own knowing, never quite fully understood and owned, unsaid by me so far.

The man from Bhutan talked about how he can never fully physically feel at home anywhere else the way he does in his mountain kingdom. That the body makes its home as a part of the physical landscape and sometimes so does our soul. And how mountains, to his mind, did this precisely because of what seems their distancing features.

While they are no doubt difficult to get to, and beset with a lot of natural extreme conditions and access problems, it is these very qualities of impregnability that lend a sense of a charmed, protected and even secure sense of self to those who live in the cradle of the high peaks. I was pulled back to just such a discovery I and a friend had shared, years ago, to our own surprise. We were on a long road journey in the relatively remote and wild Central Himalayas, driving down to the plains through high, rugged peaks on roads that on one side hugged steep slopes going up and on the other side ended in deep and sharp drops into a raging river below. Tough as the terrain was, we found ourselves in a sort of flow after a while, and the winding road and the constant turns of the wheels became nearly as normal and natural to us as our breathing. We were one with the land, with the road and with the journey, and it was a happy time.

Then after a whole day’s drive, the road  stopped curving quite so much and  started stretching out straight in front of us. The cliffs and drops on our sides gave way to small mounds  and rocks and then endless vistas of flat green and brown and man made blocks placed together.  Almost at the same time, my friend and I looked at each other and wondered aloud, that though the driving was now easy, what was this odd sense of loss, a sense of being adrift that we were experiencing?

What we felt missing was the physical embrace, the cradling, the scaffolding of the ever-present looming massive bulk of earth, the rock solid presence of those peaks, and not just the beauty, not just the grandeur and snowy brilliance or the verdant bounty of the mountains.

Listening to the Youtube recording, I heard the landscape design expert say that for him and his country folks, the terrain of their mountain kingdom was their biggest source of sustenance and SECURITY! And he further went on to say that those mountains were indeed the protectors of the people in a very real physical sense in olden times, and today the culture still sees them as such. Well, I say !! This was just so like what I had felt – that the mountains were somehow holding us safe, enclosed, enfolded, with all their curves and highs and recesses and valleys, and when we reached the plains we were left wide open and on our own – so distant from the large, benign, overarching physically powerful entities that are the mountains.

I wonder if any of you have also felt this way, or feel a connection with what I am saying. The mountains, to me seem to be about arriving, settling in, and falling into rhythm.  They are about being rooted, about being one with something solid and unconquered and perhaps never fully conquerable. They are also about a certain surrender, a certain acceptance. They are saying, like little else can, that this is it, this is here, this is now.

So tell me, do you feel that any place, any physical landscape that pulls us, pulls us for a similar reason, or is the pull of every kind of landscape feature a random matter of simple sensual or sensorial appeal?  What would those of you say who love heading out to the sea rather than the mountains? For me, the sea is all about another kind of a trance, about losing sense of time and boundaries. It is about being literally, adrift. The mountains are all about being rooted. Present. Is it the same for some of you, and how is it different for others? Do keep the thoughts flowing…..