I had shelved this topic to be written for when I have time. And I do have time now.
In "The Affair" there is a powerful dialogue Helen tells her mother - "all my life, I have listened to you. And you have spoken and spoken till all that you say was drilled inside and your voice was all that I heard while the rest drowned."
The line reverberated in my head like a cranial echo - it brought back all memories that lie dormant. Sometimes, pushed away - locked into deep recesses of the brain where even I cannot recall. But that forced me to.
Looking back I would not call my childhood particularly happy. It was a very functional childhood with functional parents. The term fun in functional seems quite a rhetoric.
If you ask my parents they'll tell they've given me everything. That in itself is a statement that places the parent child relationship on the pedestal of a barter exchange. It was a comfortable life - devoid of meaning.
Its true we do remember or see reality as we wish too. Our narratives of the past seems lacquered with assumptions, own emotional filters of judgment and our own sensory evaluation of what had happened vs how we felt about it.
I have always found both my parents out of sync with each other and thereby me. My mother has always struck me as high-strung - I found her faltering me for any thing I did or felt. Every opinion I expressed was seen as "boka boka" - Bengali for dumb. It led to 2 things - it dumbed me down to mute where I preferred silence as my friend and it also dumbed me down to stupid. It killed my self confidence - I started seeking validation from others. Many a times, she had let known her latent or innate need for a son. She may have been wanting to secure her future with a son whom she felt would stand by her. Instead I was a storm.
I am everything my father never wanted in his daughter - by design, choice and voice. My hair was rarely oiled and tied back, I spoke English as my mother tongue that seemed alienating to him, I did not like singing or dancing the way Bengali kids do or basically intrinsically never liked anything about my origin led identity. An ego blow for sure.
I don't ever remember a time when he and I spent together - no walks, no talks, no memorable moments. Instead everytime we were together, my mother decided to pounce in on our space - probably dying of FOMO. Or, my father never had the time.
I found a deep negativity in my house - seeped into the walls. Most moments, I found uneven war of words going back and forth with my mother spewing out venomous language at every opportunity. I tried reasoning - was it age, flagging energy, helplessness of her fate or simply the powerless insecurity of someone who could not change her own narrative. I found me and my father mostly shut away in our rooms - which served as fish bowls or islands.
It suffocated and made breathing difficult. It extinguished the meaning of a "home". I remember in college (with a little more freedom compared to school) I started coming back home later and later - had no wish to return back to a somber place. I was an innately happy child - needed a happy place full of sunshine. Instead the drapes were grey.
I started entering into relationships with boys back then - to only get a sense of a "home" or a family. I started planting myself as an unwanted seed in their houses - absorbing their dynamics with their parents and insinuating myself for such similar simulated rapports. I literally tried adopting families.
The only thing I dreamt of was to escape and how to escape. I made no definite route for a career - my only goal was to leave. Which thereby affected my career. Today I realize my own folly in handling my life - but there was a reason. I had to run.
A child needs emotional support. Different children have different needs - its upto parents to understand the child. Children are born with old souls or new souls. Mine perhaps was an old one - that needed a deep emotional connect. Instead I was shown dilution.
I had realized early on I was different - not from where I was born at. I had known the presence of a Higher Self - unaware of the existence of the term - and it always make me feel an anomaly.
Today, I realize, being an anomaly is no crime. My parents always made me feel otherwise and them victimized.
As kids, good and able parentage was defined by the child's obedience. Child's success at school always equaled a parent's hard labor. Set rules to be followed, set practice codes to be rigidly adhered to and preset expectations always acting as the fulcrum of life and its many shades.
Parents lived by a performance. Parentage a theatrical role lived, conversations recited across generations and the gaps mainly blamed on the emergence of deviance.
Parents of earlier generation - my own parents' generation - focused on the trophies a child would bring home. Their social currency was equal to the respect a child bestowed on them in society via their own achievements. Pride was mainly materialistic - setting in motion the materialistic parlance of the give and take relative to love.
In "The Affair" Vik's parents are apathetic to him being a man with his own mind. They are regardless of his choices in life and lived in denial. Vik, an Indian immigrant in USA, is shown to have lived his life with the mission of making his parents happy - in the end, all he got was no word of love or affection instead a duty led responsibility on either side.
What I have realized sans empathy in the formative years and later on, the basic foundation of adulthood is shallow and shaky. Parents have an enormous task of creating a good human being - not just a "nice person". A nice person may just follow social prescriptions - a good person may be led by intentions but may also choose to decide on his own.
Is it a collaborative society like ours that merely teaches submission and obedience as pillars of love? Is love not about candid expressions, free spirit and passion - where did that go amiss. Is a collaborative society too controlling as a corollary?
Going back to Vik's story, there were uncanny parallels to mine.I come from an abusive household where domestic abuse was rampant. My childhood is marred by screams, shouts and fights between family members. The trauma still lives on - today if anyone shouts or even strikes out, it immediately leads to a "fight or flight response"
It impacted my academics. I remember freezing for an hour almost during my class 10 boards as I could not get past the horrifics of the night before.
It impacted my own relations. Maybe bred in too deep an insecurity and a fear of being too close to anyone - I don't want the same outcome.
It made me question definition of a man. And a father. Till date I have found none.
What irked me was my family's unique ability to brush it all under the carpet and carry on unfettered. I tried seeking justice - instead was ostracized.
Even today, the objectification carries over to future mile stones. Talks of marriage is mainly equated with a social stamp - feeding the faceless and formless relatives who pop in the picture as levers of social sanction. Its as if parents seek permission from them to celebrate or simply be happy. Which brings me to my other question - is happiness society led for them? How are they happy? What are the constituents of happiness for them? How is it that the very definition of happiness has evolved for me to only be individualistic or privacy dominated?
Templation runs in our society - its footprints in all households. There is no celebration of fairness, love and ownership of one's actions. Instead Indians (most of them) may choose an Ostrich akin lifestyle - head burrowed, eyes blinkered.
As I introspect, I find my inability to love my parents, not my fault. I do care - mainly duty led. But I do not love them. There is no positive memory structure to inspire the softer emotions. We are always taught that not to love our parents is a sin. Maybe its time to rethink. Maybe its time to really tell the true feelings. There can be co-existence without love. Maybe its also time to absolve ourselves of the wrong notions of bond - we must learn to differentiate between love, duty, responsibility and care - and distill actions to emotions.
A sensitive child like me needed strong hands to hold - not wrong hands to lead astray.
The grown up in me now celebrated the child that I was and am - perhaps now trying to retrace back to the childhood memories and be the parent that I never had.
In "The Affair" there is a powerful dialogue Helen tells her mother - "all my life, I have listened to you. And you have spoken and spoken till all that you say was drilled inside and your voice was all that I heard while the rest drowned."
The line reverberated in my head like a cranial echo - it brought back all memories that lie dormant. Sometimes, pushed away - locked into deep recesses of the brain where even I cannot recall. But that forced me to.
Looking back I would not call my childhood particularly happy. It was a very functional childhood with functional parents. The term fun in functional seems quite a rhetoric.
If you ask my parents they'll tell they've given me everything. That in itself is a statement that places the parent child relationship on the pedestal of a barter exchange. It was a comfortable life - devoid of meaning.
Its true we do remember or see reality as we wish too. Our narratives of the past seems lacquered with assumptions, own emotional filters of judgment and our own sensory evaluation of what had happened vs how we felt about it.
I have always found both my parents out of sync with each other and thereby me. My mother has always struck me as high-strung - I found her faltering me for any thing I did or felt. Every opinion I expressed was seen as "boka boka" - Bengali for dumb. It led to 2 things - it dumbed me down to mute where I preferred silence as my friend and it also dumbed me down to stupid. It killed my self confidence - I started seeking validation from others. Many a times, she had let known her latent or innate need for a son. She may have been wanting to secure her future with a son whom she felt would stand by her. Instead I was a storm.
I am everything my father never wanted in his daughter - by design, choice and voice. My hair was rarely oiled and tied back, I spoke English as my mother tongue that seemed alienating to him, I did not like singing or dancing the way Bengali kids do or basically intrinsically never liked anything about my origin led identity. An ego blow for sure.
I don't ever remember a time when he and I spent together - no walks, no talks, no memorable moments. Instead everytime we were together, my mother decided to pounce in on our space - probably dying of FOMO. Or, my father never had the time.
I found a deep negativity in my house - seeped into the walls. Most moments, I found uneven war of words going back and forth with my mother spewing out venomous language at every opportunity. I tried reasoning - was it age, flagging energy, helplessness of her fate or simply the powerless insecurity of someone who could not change her own narrative. I found me and my father mostly shut away in our rooms - which served as fish bowls or islands.
It suffocated and made breathing difficult. It extinguished the meaning of a "home". I remember in college (with a little more freedom compared to school) I started coming back home later and later - had no wish to return back to a somber place. I was an innately happy child - needed a happy place full of sunshine. Instead the drapes were grey.
I started entering into relationships with boys back then - to only get a sense of a "home" or a family. I started planting myself as an unwanted seed in their houses - absorbing their dynamics with their parents and insinuating myself for such similar simulated rapports. I literally tried adopting families.
The only thing I dreamt of was to escape and how to escape. I made no definite route for a career - my only goal was to leave. Which thereby affected my career. Today I realize my own folly in handling my life - but there was a reason. I had to run.
A child needs emotional support. Different children have different needs - its upto parents to understand the child. Children are born with old souls or new souls. Mine perhaps was an old one - that needed a deep emotional connect. Instead I was shown dilution.
I had realized early on I was different - not from where I was born at. I had known the presence of a Higher Self - unaware of the existence of the term - and it always make me feel an anomaly.
Today, I realize, being an anomaly is no crime. My parents always made me feel otherwise and them victimized.
As kids, good and able parentage was defined by the child's obedience. Child's success at school always equaled a parent's hard labor. Set rules to be followed, set practice codes to be rigidly adhered to and preset expectations always acting as the fulcrum of life and its many shades.
Parents lived by a performance. Parentage a theatrical role lived, conversations recited across generations and the gaps mainly blamed on the emergence of deviance.
Parents of earlier generation - my own parents' generation - focused on the trophies a child would bring home. Their social currency was equal to the respect a child bestowed on them in society via their own achievements. Pride was mainly materialistic - setting in motion the materialistic parlance of the give and take relative to love.
In "The Affair" Vik's parents are apathetic to him being a man with his own mind. They are regardless of his choices in life and lived in denial. Vik, an Indian immigrant in USA, is shown to have lived his life with the mission of making his parents happy - in the end, all he got was no word of love or affection instead a duty led responsibility on either side.
What I have realized sans empathy in the formative years and later on, the basic foundation of adulthood is shallow and shaky. Parents have an enormous task of creating a good human being - not just a "nice person". A nice person may just follow social prescriptions - a good person may be led by intentions but may also choose to decide on his own.
Is it a collaborative society like ours that merely teaches submission and obedience as pillars of love? Is love not about candid expressions, free spirit and passion - where did that go amiss. Is a collaborative society too controlling as a corollary?
Going back to Vik's story, there were uncanny parallels to mine.I come from an abusive household where domestic abuse was rampant. My childhood is marred by screams, shouts and fights between family members. The trauma still lives on - today if anyone shouts or even strikes out, it immediately leads to a "fight or flight response"
It impacted my academics. I remember freezing for an hour almost during my class 10 boards as I could not get past the horrifics of the night before.
It impacted my own relations. Maybe bred in too deep an insecurity and a fear of being too close to anyone - I don't want the same outcome.
It made me question definition of a man. And a father. Till date I have found none.
What irked me was my family's unique ability to brush it all under the carpet and carry on unfettered. I tried seeking justice - instead was ostracized.
Even today, the objectification carries over to future mile stones. Talks of marriage is mainly equated with a social stamp - feeding the faceless and formless relatives who pop in the picture as levers of social sanction. Its as if parents seek permission from them to celebrate or simply be happy. Which brings me to my other question - is happiness society led for them? How are they happy? What are the constituents of happiness for them? How is it that the very definition of happiness has evolved for me to only be individualistic or privacy dominated?
Templation runs in our society - its footprints in all households. There is no celebration of fairness, love and ownership of one's actions. Instead Indians (most of them) may choose an Ostrich akin lifestyle - head burrowed, eyes blinkered.
As I introspect, I find my inability to love my parents, not my fault. I do care - mainly duty led. But I do not love them. There is no positive memory structure to inspire the softer emotions. We are always taught that not to love our parents is a sin. Maybe its time to rethink. Maybe its time to really tell the true feelings. There can be co-existence without love. Maybe its also time to absolve ourselves of the wrong notions of bond - we must learn to differentiate between love, duty, responsibility and care - and distill actions to emotions.
A sensitive child like me needed strong hands to hold - not wrong hands to lead astray.
The grown up in me now celebrated the child that I was and am - perhaps now trying to retrace back to the childhood memories and be the parent that I never had.
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