Author: Sumita

Six years after knowing V and meeting her frequently, I found out that there were two of her. It was a strange sensation. How often do you come across a scenario like this? Almost, never. But here she was, with another version of herself and I couldn’t help looking at them slack jawed. There was nothing to tell them apart. Except that V wore the scarf I had gifted her last year. It was a lovely shade of aquamarine in silk with knotted edges. I had bought a similar one for me in a shade of burnt orange.

I had met V in not very regular circumstances. We had both signed up for dance classes with Guru Somnath. She was a wiry girl then, with fierce, ink black eyes and a stubborn jaw that stuck out in defiance. Like she was always fighting with the world for her rights. I had asked her about it one summer afternoon as we lay under the shade of a giant mango tree eating cucumber slices. She didn’t deny it. All she said was, ‘I was born because I fought hard to be born. Otherwise, I would not be here.

What a strange answer. I didn’t understand it and it slipped out of my mind as easily as my math lessons. It was not something worth remembering, clearly. Guru Somnath’s dance classes were much sought after and as it happened, he had only one opening. Of course, V and her stubborn jaw won. My timid, half-hearted efforts were swept aside by the force of her desire to be a classical dancer.

I would occasionally go past the dance classes and listen to the thump of 15 pairs of feet as they beat to the rhythm of the teacher’s instructions. There was a wildness to the cadence as if they were answering a call to war. The occasional twinges of jealousy on missing out the opportunity gradually faded away. And we continued to stay friends, till my parents decided to move to another part of town.

Moving away did me good. Away from her pugnaciousness I learnt to tentatively take some steps to developing my own personality. And finally, it emerged. A little frayed at the edges with self doubt. Always seeking approval and most importantly, never willing to take centre stage. Never. And then one bright Saturday afternoon I ran into V at the second hand bookshop. It was the only one in our little town. It had been over a year since I had last seen her. I walked up to her, wearing my new found confidence bravely and said hello.

She turned around, frowned and then turned away.

Strange. I walked up to her and was about to tap her on the shoulder when there was a tap on my shoulder. It was V. And that was when I knew that there were two of them. One stood before me and the other, right behind. All I could do was stare open mouthed. What kind of bizarre in-between world was I trapped in? Ordinarily, I wouldn’t make too much of it, but somehow the threads of her betrayal stretching back to six years seemed like a deception of Macbethian proportions. I edged sideways and eased myself out from between them. Just for a second it felt like one of them was hollow. Not a real person. I didn’t bother to ask her name. It didn’t matter. I gathered up my shredded feelings and left, head held high.

I’ve never been raped. But I have been violated. Emotionally, mentally and physically and it had left in me feelings of powerlessness, defeat and self-loathing that took years to clean. Ask any woman and she will tell you that deep within her is a core made up self-worth and confidence which is protected by a thin crust of empowerment. The crust is so fragile that a simple act of emotional or mental violation can shatter it. And as in any shattered piece, the little slivers that stay hidden are the crucial ones that are needed to rebuild the confidence.

I’ve been looking for those slivers ever since and even today a few stay adamantly hidden. My crust has taken a lifetime to be built and still remains wobbly. I shudder to think what it must be like for a victim of rape. Can she ever get rid of the feeling of self-loathing ? I think not. Her crust needs to be built on being brave and never blaming herself for any of what happened to her. Because, truth be told, a man who rapes is the lowest of the low and would’ve done what he did regardless of what she was wearing or drinking or simply being at an inconvenient place.

I’ve heard it being suggested that family members or extended family members are most often to blame. I agree. A good part of my emotional and mental violation came from my family members. No, they were not sexual in nature. Instead, they aimed directly at the crust and in the process I spent years trying to feel good about myself and failed miserably. I realize now, in my middle-age, that most of that came from their own feelings of inadequacy and unhappiness. But the harm was inflicted. And sadly, however much you talk yourself to believing otherwise, it sticks on…like a piece of gum. The one sure-fire medication for this is, indifference.

Aah, the joys of being indifferent. When everything is water off a duck’s back. And when there is no guilt in not rushing in to do their bidding. I can’t emphasize enough how light and joyous that feeling is and so therapeutic. It should be bottled and sold!

Violation of the emotions should have a place in the medical books. We women are a carefully balanced pile of emotions and once that balance is skewed it is almost impossible to revert to normal. No, that’s true. If you carefully study a reasonably self-confident woman you will notice that she has the capacity to take on anything and make a success of it. If you dig beneath the core you will notice that she was surrounded by people who told her that she could achieve anything she wanted.

Sounds simple, right? But no, it is not.

So, if you have a sister or a daughter or a mother make sure you never touch that core inside. Instead, work with them on making it stronger. It is not necessary to be vicious to prove any point. And more importantly, making a woman stronger is so much better than stomping her self-confidence and self-love to the ground. Who knows, it may actually make you feeling good about yourself!

 

 

There is a horseback riding adventurer in my genes. He lived, by some accounts, during the time of the First World War or thereabouts. He had a majestic beard, wore rimless glasses and had the spirit of a lion tamer. He lived and loved the land where he made his fortune…Burma. Yes, Burma because that’s what it used to be called in his days. He was the stuff that fireside stories are made of. He was a connoisseur and exporter of precious gems. Legend has it that he could look a gemstone in the eye and tell its pedigree. His love of gemstones had taken him to the wilds of Mogok where he settled down to live a life of trading these liquid orbs of lights in the international market.

By day he was a lawyer. He became one because he intended to be a landowner and needed to be able to study relevant documents without any interpretation that would take away the basic integrity of the words. He was that kind of a man. Whatever he took up he embraced tightly and completely. No half measures for him.

Since he had moved away from a life of urban pleasures to embrace the joys of the rough and tumble of the boonies he needed a family that would suit that life and so it came to pass that he took on another wife. With whom he had children. Generations later, I found this straightforwardness oddly appealing. A wife for the city and a wife for the country, one for each lifestyle. New age political correctness and feminism would’ve come down heavily on him if he had done this in the 21st century. But in the 19th century, things were more fluid and judgements, less overbearing.

Of his three sons from his urban life, one went on to become my grandfather. He was a gentle, unobtrusive soul who gave his sons unquestioned love. It was difficult to relate him in any way to the lusty, bearded man who was his father.

Some time after the First World War had broken out the adventurer sent the best gems in his collection to the Paris gem auctions. The story goes that the ship was blown to bits during gun fire and the shock of the news killed him. The abrupt way his life ended was almost as startling as his beginnings. Till date I’ve not found a trace of him in my genes. Perhaps that incredible appetite for life died with him.

All her life G wanted to be the ultimate party girl. Hanging out with friends who would praise her jewelry and clothes. Tell her how accomplished she is and how perfect is her life. She wanted to have money to spend, a husband who would accompany her to movies and parties. In short, a middle-class life without the usual boundaries. Unfortunately, life and circumstances had other plans and while some of these wishes did come true, they did so fleetingly. For G, this disappointment would scar her life forever.

G came from almost impoverished circumstances. Her father had passed away suddenly leaving the family penniless…. a fact she always romanticized so that it would help her to cope better. She was barely seventeen, at the cusp of an adulthood that seemed shorn of all hope. Academic skills were not her forte, while anything else was out of the question because money was always in very short supply. The only way out, as in most families in such situations, was a good marriage. G was good looking, lively, happy and eager to take on the world, except that she was unprepared about how to.

Marriage was an adventure and she took to it. Wholeheartedly at first and then when the cracks began to appear she started retreating. The fights, the foul language, the bitterness and the eventual disgust evolved and grew till it completely engulfed her. Misery, loneliness and depression leached away all feelings till what was left behind was a shell. Through it all she blamed him. With every fibre of her being, she blamed him. For reducing her to this.

It was when her mind started to give way that she decided that this would be her revenge. A revenge so insidious that it would poison his every living, breathing moment and even if he wanted to, there would be no escape.

And so her mind started slipping away. The doctors called it a form of dementia. A woman who had loved life to the hilt, enjoyed dressing up and going out was now restricted to a small corner of her home. And he suffered through it all with her because that was what she willed him to do. He continued to cling on to life by a wisp of a thread. A frail, weak-minded and frightened man who could not break away. He could feel himself suffocating and dying slowly…brain cell by brain cell. Just like he had killed her passion for life with his overbearing negativity.

Yet he loved her. Finally she was fully dependent on him. She was incapable of defying him because he had killed her spirit. Now he could love her in his way. He talked to her. Referred to her in his conversations. Checked on her. All he got in response was grunts and wild rants. But it didn’t bother him.

The dysfunctional relationship continues. As he dies bit by bit, she continues on. A woman with no functioning brain cell willing him to live on. Occasionally, her eyes betray the hint of something. Feelings? A vicious pleasure in denying him both life and death? Every breath she takes now is a breath taken away from him and that will continue till she decides that he has paid enough.

The perfect revenge, indeed.

The mind is a cluttered up place where stray thoughts, half-remembered insults and little bubbles of happiness jostle for space. A gossamer thin veil of forgetfulness covers this randomness. Lately I’ve wondered if it is possible to bring some order to it with new age design thinking.

A recent article said that design is at the core of commercial successes. Terms like user-centric, informed design rattled around in my already cluttered mind and I figured that it was time I thought about bringing order to the untidiness. The first to go out would be the half-remembered the insults. Surprisingly, when I did a deep dive and turned some of them over to look under all I found was a little bit of myself trapped in there struggling to get out. Like the time a parent insulted me in front of a dear friend. I freed the hurt and watched it fly away dragging a strange little tail behind it. Hmmm…wonder if that was informed design!

I found that the stray thoughts had piled up and sitting in a corner weighing down more important things like, the name of the cute guy who had sworn that he would never get over his crush for me as long as he lived! I took a shovel to the stray pile. Broken down like that some of them just disappeared into nothingness, some of them which were weighing down my sense of self-worth on closer look vanished into thin air ….can’t believe that they had contributed to so many bad dreams over the years. This design thinking thing was quite amazing, my pixie voice squeaked into my head.

The bubbles of happy thoughts I decided needed no re-touching or re-designing. The times when I had keeled over with laughter at silly jokes and incidents which didn’t mean anything to anyone except to me and to those who had been in that laughter zone deserved to be pushed to the top of the pile. Maybe that’s what informed design meant. It informed me that a sliver of a happy thought was balanced precariously on top of the clutter and that’s where it would stay. Hey, I was getting good at it!!

I had poked around for so long that the gossamer thin veil was now in shreds. Good…because it was just an inconvenience that had far outlived its purpose. It had been there because growing up I needed to be sheltered. Now I was ready to re-design and no veils were needed. I shook out the dust from all those thoughts and memories, held them up to the light and realized that what I had been keeping a tight lid on all these years was just some ghosts. Now that I had de-fanged them the clutter was gone. For good.

Design thinking was helping me to de-risk development. Who said that I didn’t understand management terms!!

Cholera found Nityananda at the age of 43 and his dazzling story was forced to come to a premature end in the village of Kelisahar where his family lived.

By modern standards, Kelisahar which is a part of Chittagong district, continues to be a village. It is hemmed in by Agartala and Aizawl in India and Barisal and Chittagong in Bangladesh. Nityananda’s family comprising of his wife Syama Sundari and her sons (I believe she had three, but that fact may not be entirely accurate) were left orphaned by his death. The eldest son, Sarat Chandra a magnificently handsome man, was my great grandfather. Sarat was just 15 years old when his father succumbed to cholera and the mantle of head of the family fell on his young shoulders. However, his mother was a feisty woman and was determined that her children should not be burdened at such a young age. She used her savings and the family property to keep things going and as a result Sarat managed to complete his law education.

Syama Sundari means dusky beauty and by all accounts she was one. My great, great grandmother was known for her sharp tongue and for being totally fearless, qualities that made everyone stop in their tracks, including her husband who was no pushover himself. Syama’s paternal family was originally from Uttar Pradesh who had settled in Kelisahar. Her marriage to Nityananda produced six sons of whom three survived, my great grandfather Sarat Chandra of the magnificent good looks, was the eldest of her sons. He had inherited the dragon slaying spirit of his father and the fearlessness of his mother and not surprisingly, he led the family to new adventures.

Like most people who are aware that they are made for greater glory Sarat Chandra Chakrabarty exhibited certain tell-tale signs. He was restless, had a large appetite for achieving, didn’t believe in giving up easily and took risks …for a Bengali man of reasonable means living in 19^th century Bengal it was seismic.

His name has cropped up regularly during the occasional discussion among family members and distant cousins. A part of  his larger than life achievements even finds representation in the Smithsonian. His picture in a pin-striped suit accessorized with a fob watch used to sternly stare back at me from my grandmother’s dresser. He looked like an English lord and I was certain that he rode a horse as well as he wore his fob watch.

The legend of Sarat Chandra Chakrabarty has permeated the family history indelibly and till date we love to hear of his exploits with slack-jawed wonder.