Sunday, July 29, 2018

Family

Our collective obsession as a nation with joint families and 'intact' families is worrisome. No matter where I go, and this includes a gathering of college professors, there's always someone waxing eloquent on joint family, and lamenting the rise of nuclear families and the godforsaken 'phoren' idea of single parenthood. This in itself is not so problematic as many people do have a wonderful experience with the joint family system and there's no doubt that single parents and parents in a nuclear family lack the support system that a joint family has the potential to provide. The problem arises when the issue takes on a moralistic tone and nuclear families and single parents are demonised.

Attaching a 'large and intact' family with happiness is so automatic for us that we don't pause to think about the fact that our good experiences may not be shared by everyone, and end up vilifying those choosing a different lifestyle from us. Maybe people can be happy in small families! Why not? And sometimes maybe people can only be happy somewhere far away from some of their toxic family members!


The sacrosanct nature attributed to families needs to be questioned. We need to start expecting good behaviour from family members, all family members regardless of age and gender, and be responsible for good behaviour towards them from our end. If a particular family member is hampering one's emotional wellbeing, that needs to be openly tackled by discussion. And if the other party doesn't own up to how their behaviour could be influencing us or isn't ready to work on the relationship, then clearly our relationship isn't a priority for them. In such a case, moving away should definitely be a legitimate option.

Age can't be one's excuse to keep engaging in toxic behaviour. I have seen verbal abuse and open emotional abuse in front of strangers having been normalised in a lot of families. Some 'bade-buzurg', full of wisdom, are sometimes those most lacking in compassion. The gender angle makes it even more complicated. You as a young girl/woman dare not question the elders or comment on their words/actions, be they male or female. "Apni maryada mein raho." Every member of the family contributes to its emotional climate, and it should be everyone's responsibility to keep peace- not just of the women or the daughters-in-law. Knowing one's worth and not tolerating abuse plus insisting on getting respect if one is giving respect could help for starters in making a change for the better. If change is not possible, why shouldn't it be alright to move away, be it emotionally or physically?


Most of the times, the argument against 'breaking up' a family is the welfare of the children. It is assumed that stability and being sorrounded by elders and their blessings would somehow neutralize any problems going on. That somehow breathing air impregnated with the poison of marital discord and domestic violence would be harmless if everyone stays under the same roof!
One needs to understand that sometimes taking a child out of a toxic family arrangement, to be raised by a single parent could actually be the most child-friendly decision possible in that context. There's no dearth of research showing the debilitating impact of domestic violence and marital discord on children, and many of these effects last well upto adulthood. Very often, these children become adults that have a tendency to either become abusers themselves or to accept abuse because that's what was modelled as normal behaviour in a marriage/family for them. Grandparents, uncles and aunts, and lots of cousins living with us, sharing in our joys and troubles, having both of our parents living with us, may well make for a wonderful life- stuff of dreams for many of us- but only as long as staying together doesn't become more important than the wellbeing of the individual members. Family can be the best thing ever- our own army against the rest of the world and the one place where we can always take refuge; family can also be the one thing that has the most potential to bring us down- an invisible soul sucking enemy. So, if some day the institution of family becomes more important than the sanity of any of the individual members, a long hard look becomes imperative at what one is getting out of the family and at what cost. 


Monday, March 12, 2018

#1

The world demands that you get back to it. The sooner you do, the better because it's only your and your family's life that has stopped; the rest of the universe has no clue that it needs to slow down for any reason and it won't.

Even in a shared grief, one's pain is ultimately one's own. People can empathize, and even sit and cry beside you, or be there by your side on sleepless nights or for mindlessly watching television but ultimately the periodic stabbing of your heart from the inside is only for you to experience.

Will things ever be the same again? Yes, the pain will lessen (even if it doesn't seem believable right now) but no, you don't really completely recover from a brother's death whose (tithi) birthday falls on Raksha Bandhan, ever. You can't and you won't.

What is humbling and at the same time like a punch in the stomach is the realisation that there are people whose loss is unimaginably more than yours. It's not just your pain you have to deal with- the perceived pain of the parents, the grandparents and the 4 year old elder sibling, who shared their lives with him far more than you ever did... the heart breaks all over again with the weight. If I'm feeling like this, they must be feeling a thousand times worse, experiencing his absence in every waking moment. How does a parent deal with a 3 year old son's death? How does a grandparent face the taking away of their best reason for staying alive? How does a 4 year girl deal with the fact that her younger brother is not coming back? The heart breaks and breaks some more. There's a violent desire to protect my kid sister from the ugliness of what death has done. But how painfully weak we are that call ourselves adults. I am still in Delhi. I'm afraid that if I go to Bhubaneswar, I won't want to come back. Not in 3-4 days, not in a week... I'm afraid not even in a month. My self preservation instincts suggest that I should not go and I'm heeding them.

Human selfishness truly has no limits.

Or maybe it's self care. But even then I don't know how right it is. How right is this careful immersion in the pages of a colouring book, preparing myself little by little to get back to the world? How right is posting my small projects on Instagram so that I feel that I did at least one useful thing in the day? How right is this preoccupation with getting back to normalcy at the earliest? I sense that I have been doing it since the first day of my grieving. Feels like strategically cheating my heart.

The funny thing is, grieving not a linear process. You get complacent that you are handling it well, and out of nowhere there's a kick on a part of your body you didn't know could feel things.