the first time I lived away from Mumbai, in a house all to myself, in a place that I still think of as home, was in Chicago. I moved there in August 2019 to start my Fall Semester – MA in Digital Humanities, Loyola University Chicago. My lifestyle there was, poverty-induced minimalism, perfect for a solo rider and the occasional guest. Two plates, two glasses for water, two spoons, two pans, one pressure cooker – the immigrant student starter kit in the USA.
one day, one of those glasses fell off the kitchen counter and broke. my first reaction was fear at what my parents would say. then I remembered, I am alone. far away. they don’t need to know I broke a glass. still, I kept feeling bad for breaking it. when I went to sleep that night, my head was filled with what they would have said if they knew.
“you need to be careful”
“how careless this is of you, beta?”
“how could you have been so irresponsible?”
***
this is not about my parents. they worked hard to raise us during an extremely scarce time of their lives and their mindset is justified. every rupee mattered in the years before we kids starting earning something, and if you have thought about resources in one way for nearly 40 years of your life, it’s tough to move out of it.
the thing is, even 9000 kms away, it was their voice that rang in my ears, head, and heart. it was their mindset, the words they used growing up, the way they viewed mistakes that showed up in how I spoke to myself.
the bigger problem was, I knew i did not want to speak to myself that way. i did not want to be disproportionately anxious about the loss of 1$. and I did not want to move through life in this new and strange city by keeping an ever-running ledger of my mistakes and the resultant financial loss that defines scarcity.
but that is how I thought of every loss. that is how I spoke to myself every time I made a mistake – labelling it as a flaw rather than a natural byproduct of living life abundantly – so whether I was late for class, had over spent on a girls night out, taken the wrong train my first time on the Loop, or misjudged how almond milk would react when used in traditionally boiled masala chai (terribly. please never use it) – i was constantly beating myself up for not knowing enough, not doing better, and for wasting so much money and resources as a result.
***
this is natural. parents and family are the OG influencers, with a totalitarian ability to control our heart and mind, how we think and react to the world and to ourselves, even when we don’t realise it.
whatever name you want to give this phenomenon, however hard you try to ignore this fact – it will show up in every day life. there’s enough and more memes and jokes about this. in how we talk, our body language, the way our mouths move when we pronounce a particular word or how our hand gestures mirror those of our life-givers.
but perhaps we don’t have to become exactly like them, to love, honour and respect them? in order to validate them?
***
when I caught myself talking to myself in my mom’s voice over a broken glass, i thought for the first time – is that how I wanted to react? i did not like that i was unable to move past this one tiny incident. long after i had picked the broken pieces and vacuumed my studio apartment twice over, the questions kept swirling in my head. why, how, impossible, irresponsible, silly.
I read a lot of books. I am a journalist and a writer and so observing people and how they move in this world is somewhat of a second nature to me.
so when I tried to find an answer to my self-imposed question, “how did you want to have reacted?”, i looked through the roster of my memories. Was there a frame of reference I could borrow from? a reaction that felt more me?
An image came to my mind. 2015. I was in the admin office at SPJIMR, my first real job. We shared that space with TAs/RA’s of different departments. One of them was Harneet, who worked in Marketing, one of the most outwardly calm persons my 21-year-old self had ever met. One day, her Borosil bottle fell with a clang to the floor, creating a pool of water in the middle of that tiny office. I remember Harneet, she sat at her desk, let the last echo die down, and then quietly called the cleaning staff to help her. In under 5 minutes, she was back at work.
I remember thinking then how such a small incident would have frazzled me to the core!
My own glass broke over 4 years after this incident, but her calm composed reaction had stuck with me, and in that state of anxiety, I thought to myself, “this is how I wanted to have reacted.”
not just superficial cool, but actually cool. the ability to move past missteps without losing your sense of inner balance.
***
we have no option growing up, we are our parents’ mirrors. and that’s adorable, until we start unconsciously repeating patterns that are best left broken. but first, we need to recognise them.
and once you start, you will not stop noticing:
- the many ways you prepare food
- your body clock even defined by how your childhood home thought of time
- the kind of guest you are (do you also always say ‘no’ when asked if you would like a cup of tea or coffee?)
- how you are at your office (are you unable to speak up to your seniors because it’s considered back answering?)
- your relationship with your spouse, and your own child (the place where perhaps you most need to ask yourself, is this me or my parent talking?)
I won’t call all of it trauma (now the word has been overused). To me, it’s just conditioning, which is easily undone. but to undo that, you have to decentre your parents’ from your own life. bring a degree of distance for some clarity, for some reflection, to build a life that’s designed as you have imagined it, as you would like it.
in my experience, doing that has increased my respect for them, empathy for their circumstances, and allowed me to stop blaming them for the poorer decisions of my life, even those I earlier thought had been subconsciously guided by them.
Over the years, as adults, the best thing I have learnt is that your relationship with your parent is healthier if you put in the work to disagree for a couple of years. It’s not mindless teenage rebellion, but a more thoughtful respect for differences, giving you the greatest of gifts – a life in which you are not only happy, but feel at home in, and find only one dominant voice in your head. yours.