Do we know our parents?

Do we know our parents? This may look like a very stupid and nonsensical question on the face of its first occurrence. But if the obvious answer is "Yes", let us ask another nonsensical question to ourselves, "Really?". There were two recent, otherwise-not-to-be-noticed incidents in my life that led me to put this question to myself. 

First one was my father's retirement ceremony in Sept 2018. In their farewell speeches for my father, his colleagues of more than 30 years told anecdotes from his past. In one of the anecdotes, they told how, during the initial days of their service at Chandigarh, they all enjoyed the tea times at a very small tea stall near their office building in Sector 17. Sector 17 of Chandigarh has been a very popular spot for the people of Chandigarh, well known as a go-to place to check out and appreciate beautiful girls (this was called in Hindi as "Nayan Sukh Prapti", a college slang), who were mostly from Punjab. I was startled at that anecdote, because for the first time I was coming across a story about my father's non-sacramental, non-patriotic, not-so-principle-oriented side. The moment was very light and passed by fast and unnoticed in the grandeur of the event. But the moment was well registered in my mind, waiting to be given its due attention via this post :). Prior to this event, there were extremely rare and very short references of my father's inter-caste love interest before marrying my mom. But in last 2 years post retirement, at least a little more details have come out in that context. My father's then love interest was from the same caste as my wife, and that caste also happens to be the one which my father and his family despised almost throughout their lives. My father's family's reservations against the caste must have been one of the main reasons for that relationship to have not materialized, I can only assume because like I said even now only a "little" more details have come out in the context. However, the irony, which has been stated multiple times at casual family functions and gatherings, is that what my father despised all through his life, his son (that is me) brought it right to the center of the scheme of things of our family :). 

Apart from the light moment from the farewell speeches, the other worth noting piece of information was given by my mother. Dad's retirement was a known but never-experienced-before event in our lives. All of us were feeling emotional as well as anxious about the event. While I was drafting my own speech in my mind, my sister drafted and sent her speech over an email. I also asked my mother to prepare and deliver a speech at the function. I could sense it that she wanted to do that very desperately, but she could not gather the courage to do that. Apart from that day, I guess she had never ever even given a thought to the idea of speaking at a gathering like that, with the spotlight on her. In her own little imagination of how things would be at the event, she prepared and was planning to sing a song for my father, which was very innocent and cute. Being very confused about her own feelings, emotions, and insecurities, she told me to include this second important piece of not unknown but lesser known side of my father. The info was that my father joined RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) somewhere in 1960s (I don't remember the exact year which she told, but that's not important), when he was somewhere less than 12 years of age. All this while until this moment, I knew that my father had a very strong intent to serve the society and the country at large, but I didn't know that he started on that journey that early in his life.

The second incident that led me to the question was in Jan 2020, when I traveled to New Delhi to attend Bauji's (my grandfather's) last rites. A few days before my travel, I got a call from my mother while I was in office. That was quite unusual, as for last many years I spoke to my parents over phone only over the weekends, or in case of emergencies. I was in the habit of avoiding my phone for any non-office socialization related work. Without getting into the real context of my conversation with my mother, let me just mention that it was about a not-so-critical money-matter in which my father and my mother had a difference of opinions. My mother presented her thought process which was right in its own perspective and which I understood. I pretty much knew both the parents' individual thought process on the matter, as the matter did not come up for the first time for a debate. Still, I called up my father and talked to him to reassure that he has the same perspective which I assumed he would be having, and which I believed to be correct in his own world of thinking. I discussed this with my fellow-philosopher colleague, and he concurred with my understanding that both my parents are correct in their own perspectives. This is the same colleague whom I mention in my last post "Shamshanam Bairagam", my tea-time was not as happening as my father's during his youthful service days ;). The open end where we finished our tea-time discussion was that why cant these two people (my parents) understand each other's perspectives and be at peace with themselves and with each other. Like any other unanswered open ended question about human behavior, particularly of our close ones, this open ended question kept lingering in my mind for some time. Because of the sudden demise of Bauji in Jan 2020, I traveled to Delhi. While I was there I was talking to one of my cousins who is very elder to me and who has spent more time living with my parents than our any other relative. When I brought up this open ended question in my conversation with him over a local drive in his car, he asked me a question - "Do you know your maternal grandfather did not live with your maternal grandmother for a considerable time of his life? And that's not because of work or professional commitments..". My answer to the question was "No", and I had and still have mixed feelings on whether I want to go to the depth of that question and search for the answer. But I got a very strong realization in that moment - "How much do I know my mother?".

When I thought over these incidents, the nonsensical question started making a lot of sense to me. Following dialogue with self started:

Q: Do I know my parents?
A: Yes, I know them but only as my parent. 

Q: Did I try to know them in their individual perspectives of themselves and their life?
A: No, I know them either in their combined perspective as my parent or in their perspectives about each other and our family.

Q: Can I claim that I understand my parents?
A: No, I might have understood my own life to a great level in terms of metaphysics, I might have an above average understanding of typical Indian middle-class human behavior, but I am a failure when it comes to understanding what my parents actually are in their own individual selves.

Q: Why am I so ignorant about my parents?
A: Because it never occurred to give a serious thought and effort towards understanding them. During and post adolescence, I was too busy exploring and trying to understand my own growing self, finding and then building upon a career path, chasing girlfriend and then love, and finally when some of these pursuits were laid to rest, I got married and within 2.5 years of that had a kid. And then I was "being" a parent myself.

And then the easy to ask but difficult to answer question - "Do I want to know my parents now?". To be honest, the answer is "Not really..". I believe that this understanding can be and should be better established during adolescence and early adulthood. Now, there's too much ground to cover and too many layers of time and human self to peel. I believe that an ideal upbringing is the one in which we are able to introduce our children to at least some if not a major part of our individual selves, other than our family-oriented, responsible, idealistic, parental selves. My upbringing was not based on this open-up-your-self principle. As much as I imbibed and demonstrated the qualities taught to me by my parents' sacramental parenting, I guess I have held back and not presented to them a lot of my individual self which is not aligned with those qualities. I cherish my upbringing by my parents, it has made me into a very stable, self-sustaining man, and a socially acceptable human being. I cherish it as much as I cherish the journey of development of the other features of my self. However, if I ask myself - "Do I cherish my personal connection with my parents?" The answer is "No". Because it is not open. "Has there been an attempt at my parents' side to understand this other side of my self? ". The answer is "No". As a family, we live, exist, survive, feel, care and even thrive practically with each other. But do we understand each other? The answer is No.

This lack of interest in understanding another person is a general human characteristic. How much so ever idealistic we may want to sound by claiming that "I am very open minded, I welcome any perspective and any thought, I am a family man and I understand my family, and so on..", its our basic instinct to keep our perspective above everyone else's, to not give weight or sufficient attention to a counter-perspective, and also to present only the best non challenge-able perspective of our selves to the rest of the world, be it within the family or outside. 

Can we make this situation better? 

Yes, we can. For that we first need to be completely aware of our own selves, and be comfortable with its both good and the bad parts. "Acceptance" is a buzz word these days, thanks to the exponential growth of the spirituality and enlightenment business in India. We must accept that as humans it is absolutely normal not to be perfect or the best. One common mistake that Indian parents do is that they portray a perfect or best picture of themselves in front of their adolescent or just-turned-adult kids. This is done with mainly two intentions - first that the kid should imbibe only what's good in them, and second that their kid should not resisting imbibing that good if he/she comes to know of the not-so-good in them. This is where generation gap is set for a take off, because only good sides of things has been synced. If we think about it, the talks of generation gap mostly initiate with some bad quality of the younger person which counters the good quality of the elderly. The talks seldom initiate from a discussion on a bad quality of the elderly, because it has always been protected and never discussed. 

Another mistake that the parents do is that they don't stop parenting and being "the parent" even when their kid has crossed the teens. A learning, from one of the my recently read books, comes to my mind. The book is about teachings of Chanakya, who is one of India's most revered ancient Indian teacher, philosopher, economist, jurist and royal advisor. In one of the chapters of the book, the author shares Chanakya's following simple and time-tested "Secret of Good Parenting":

For the first five years, love your child unconditionally, for the next ten years, discipline him. From the sixteenth year onward, treat him as a friend.

Towards the end of their teens, we need to befriend our children and stop being a hardcore parent. I know my peers who are 30+ and are still being parented as if they were in their teens or early twenties. I have observed in the corporate world that a senior will never let go of his most sincere and obedient subordinate, no matter what. The same corporate rule applies in parenting. Out of their natural human instincts, parents do not let their sincere and obedient children venture out of the safe cast of idealistic family values that they have set for them over so many years. They direct most of their energies in guiding the kid in who and who not to befriend, trying to find another kid who is inside a similar cast. And they advice to not be with people who defy their set ideals. 

Friends is one of the few human communities which demonstrates acceptance at its best. We must agree that we learn a lot of things in life by being around with friends. Not only do we learn from our friends' stories of idealism and heroism, we also learn from the diversity of the dynamic experiences of their lives, which include some not-so-good side's stories of them. 

Ever since I moved to Bangalore in 2016, I have been fortunate to have friends in my apartments who became my extended family. The difference between extended and main family is that the extended family of friends is temporary while the main family is permanent. Other than this, there is very less difference in the "knowing" aspect of the members of both the families. We do not know the complete life story of this extended family, but we not both good and bad stories. We know much more details of the life story of the main family, but we know only the good stories.

So, what do I conclude?

I conclude that I do not know my parents completely. If our lifetimes and life commitments allow, I would like to know my parents completely but that's not what I seek on a priority right now. But I will ensure that my son knows both my good and bad sides, and his answer to this nonsensical question is a plain "Yes".

Shamshanam Bairagam

17th January 2020, it was just another busy day of my life. After a hectic day at work, I reached home at around 5:00 PM in the evening and, while settling down at home, I checked my unread WhatsApp messages. I came to know that Bauji (my grandfather) was extremely unwell and had been admitted to the hospital.

At around 2:00 PM on that day, my cousin had shared a video in which Bauji was talking to one of his sons. In the video he looked gasping for breath very badly, he was not able to speak properly, and looked to be in a lot of discomfort. My father saw that video at around 3:30 PM and he sensed that Bauji's health was really bad and it needed immediate medical attention. So my father, who lived approx. 30 Km away from Bauji's place, just rushed to his place and, along with my cousins, took him to a nearby hospital and got him admitted there. When I saw Bauji's video in the evening, I also sensed that his condition was really bad. I immediately called my father to get an update on the situation. It was one of that rare occasions when my father sounded nervous. He told that we should have taken him to the hospital much earlier, one of the private hospitals to which they took Bauji for treatment had refused to give treatment because of his precarious condition. I sensed the apocalyptic news that was about to come.

I became very uncomfortable in that moment. Suddenly, my mind became empty of all mundane things that filled it up, and it was just thinking about Bauji. The WhatsApp group was filled with messages with prayers, queries on his latest situation, and of course the updates. Though some updates were reassuring in the sense that he responded well to the treatment being given to him, I was getting that intuition that we needed a miracle for him to recover from that condition. This was my first experience of being on the verge of losing a person whom I understood, respected, and felt connected with. I talked to my wife and my mother, my father was completely occupied at the hospital. They tried to give me hope and assurance that he might survive. I wanted to believe in them but I could not. However, by their repeated efforts and talks, I settled down a little bit as the afternoon turned into evening and then into the night.

It happens a lot with me that when I have to catch a flight early morning next day, or if I have any other commitment for early morning next day, then I keep getting up at night too often and keep checking the clock to check that I did not oversleep. Similar thing happened to me on the night of 17th Jan. Normally, I have a very light sleep, and that night it was even lighter. At around 4:00 AM on 18th Jan, my son, who was sleeping next to me, took a normal turn in his sleep and ended up touching me. I immediately woke up and ran for my phone and, with my heart pounding fast and praying to not see the unwanted update, saw the WhatsApp message that Bauji had left us at around 3:20 AM that morning.

My mind went blank for few minutes. In those few minutes I probably un-learnt whatever I have been doing for the past many years. The mind was flooded with all the memories and thoughts about Bauji. My wife, who normally wakes up only after 6 AM, woke up at that moment, maybe because of the same apprehension that made me sleep lighter than normal on that night. I called my uncle who lived in Bangalore, and checked with him on the details of the flight that he had booked to go to Delhi. I planned to accompany him for the last rites. The flight was at 10 AM in the morning, so I booked a cab to go to my uncle's place at 6:30 AM. 

Until I boarded the cab, I had some control on my conduct. However, as soon as I sat in the cab, I broke down and I cried like anything. There were 2 types of thoughts going on in my mind. One type was extremely emotional, the moment it pictured Bauji from the past memories it made me burst into tears like anything. The other type observed how I was acting in that moment and tried to understand why that was happening to me. I tried to make the observer type stronger by repeating in mind what it said to me, but emotional type was way too strong to beat in that moment. The observer type reminded me of the article about the human capability of being able to be equanimous in times of such emotional sorrows, it kept telling me that Bauji had lived a complete life and he died with minimal agony from complex medical procedures. But still, the emotional thoughts refused to give way and overpowered. It was only just before I met my uncle, aunt and my cousin that morning, that I could control that emotional outburst. Throughout the 1 hour journey to the Bangalore airport, there were momentary outbursts but I was able to control them by starting some talk with my co-passengers. Until we reached airport, at around 8:20 AM, I was a bit more settled. Then the emotional thoughts took a break because of the overpowering as well as unavoidable airport check-in formalities. Through the episode thus far, I realized that I cried only when I was alone. Another Chautauqua came - is it that in such emotionally demanding situations, it is better to be alone and cry and let it out, or be in some company to control that practically nonsensical emotional outburst and try to come to terms with reality. Whatever be the answer, the time kept moving and so was the travel and the subsequent developments with respect to Bauji's farewell from this world.

It was 3:30 PM when we reached the venue of the last rites of Bauji. Everyone was waiting just for my uncle who traveled with me from Bangalore, to begin the rites. As soon as we reached the venue, we were asked to quickly go to the room where Bauji was supposed to be bathed before being laid on the funeral bier. For the first time in my life I saw the naked body of a man whom I knew and respected for the way he lived his life, lying on earth without life. All the men in the room, including my dad and his brothers, started bathing the body. The emotions again got heavy and I cried. They asked me also to touch the body and rub a small portion of his body slightly, to participate in the ritual. I rubbed him slightly at his shoulder, my hand was shaking, I was touching a dead body for the first time. The bathing ritual got over in few minutes, and then Bauji was dressed in a new white colored kurta and pajama. Then he was laid on the funeral bier which was kept outside in the veranda of the venue, where everybody could see Bauji for the final time and offer their last words/prayers for him.

I cried every time I looked at his face. In that moment, with him in sight, that controlling affect of being among the people did not hold me from crying. Even though some part of me told me to stop crying, I could not. I remembered all his birthday celebrations which I had been a part of in recent years, I remembered how happy he was on seeing all his descendants celebrate his birthday. I remembered him saying "tu har saptah aa jata hai, mil jata hai toh bada accha lagta hai!" (I feel very happy whenever you come and meet me on the weekends), I remembered his teachings like "a beggar never sleeps with an empty stomach. It is easy to earn bread but it is very difficult to earn respect". I remembered when he cried while sharing his grief with me. All that came to me in that moment, when I was looking at that man lying lifeless in front of me.

After everyone had paid their last respects, Bauji's sons and grandsons lifted the funeral bier on their shoulders and took him to the funeral place which is called "Shamshan" in Hindi. There at the Shamshan I got the first and the strongest realization of the ultimate truth of life which is Death. "You will not take away anything with you, you came into the world naked and with empty hands, you will leave alike" - I had heard and maybe said this infinite number of times in my life, but I experience the meaning for the first time when I saw his funeral pyre. When the pyre was lit with fire I could see the stages in which this human embodiment of life goes back to its five basic constituents - air (breath), soil (skin n all body parts), sky or space (the space occupied by the body), fire (the evident constituent at that moment), and water (Ganga, the final destination for the remains). The funeral completed at around 6:00 PM in the evening and, coincidentally, by the end of the funeral my emotions had also settled down a bit. Bauji had dissolved into 4 out of the life's 5 basic constituents, and now his final journey to the 5th and the final constituent was left.

The funeral happened on Saturday and, as per Hindu rituals, the ashes and bodily remains are not flown into the holy Ganga on a Sunday. So it was decided that we will leave for "Asthi Visarjan" (flowing of remains into a holy river) on Monday, early in the morning. It was a very cold North Indian winter morning. On such days, normally, people can't even think of taking a bath early in the morning. They get that chilling feeling just by the thought of it. As per Hindu ritual, all of us who were taking Bauji to his final destination were supposed to take a dip in the Holy Ganga. My father, the uncle who traveled with me from Bangalore, Bauji's 3 other grandsons and I were the ones up for the task. As much as we were happy to be with Bauji on his last journey, we were at the same time scared and already shivering thinking about the dip in the icy cold water of Holy Ganga. However, with the courage bestowed upon us by the almighty, and with the strength of our love for Bauji, all of us took that holy dip to mark the end of Bauji's final journey. It was around 11:00 AM when we took the dip, fog was dense and there was no sign of a sunshine so far that morning. Miraculously, as soon as we completed our bath in the Holy Ganga, the Sun shone just for four to five minutes. With that sudden unexpected sunshine, we got a feeling that Bauji conveyed his blessings to us, and acknowledged that he has reached his final destination happily.

During this episode of never-expected emotional and physical experiences, of extreme intensities, I got around 3 days to spent at Bahadurgarh, with only my parents and myself in the house. This situation of only me being with my parents had happened after a very very long time. I was unwell throughout this episode, and the emotional and physical stress had worsened my health. My parents were taking great care of me, by serving me really good and healthy food, the morning tea at around 6:00 AM, home remedies for acute cough, carrot halwa (pudding) and some other delicious ghee sweets. My wife was busy in Bangalore, taking care of my son and managing household along with her three-hour daily job at a local dental clinic. So there were minimal phone calls from her during this period of 3 days. Those 3 days turned into a kind of an unplanned solo vacation for me. Because of some unpleasant emotional episodes within my family in recent years, regarding differences of opinions, there was minimal effort from both my and my parents' side to get into discussions related to our conducts and other aspects of our mundane lives. (I am yet to unleash my expressions on those). At the same time, we did not have any hard feelings against each other from those past episodes, and we were just around each other in a comfortable space of time and being. This brought to me another realization that sometimes, driven by the emotion of our care for our immediate family members, we just think about potential problems of their lives and then start putting all our mental faculties into an unwarranted thought process to give them advice and extravagant discourses on how they can make things better. Avoiding the start of another Chautauqua on these family issues, I will restrict this one to the point wherein I was feeling very comfortable just being there with my parents.

During those 3 days of unplanned solo vacation, with minimal disturbances of phone, work, and intrusions into my personal space, I had plenty of time to feel bored. I realized that I had not got that feeling of boredom since quite some time in my life. I started looking around in the house, for the changes that had happened since I stopped living there, that was 4 years back. I was looking at a mini-cupboard which my parents had recently got constructed, it was stacked with books and some files and documents. Suddenly, I found my old mine of gold - the books which I had read many years back. These were the books that gave my thinking a new direction many years back. They helped me break free of the conventional cast of thinking, which many of my peers were and are put into through an upbringing based on the copybook style of the Indian middle-class upbringing. I re-read "The Alchemist - by Paulo Coelho" and then hopped on to "Who will cry when you die - by Robin Sharma" which I completed after coming back to Bangalore. These 2 books helped resume metamorphosis of my mind. The metamorphosis had been paused because of indulgence in setting, meeting and achieving some professional, family and society driven, and some other vague material desires. I was happy that it resumed for some reason.

This whole experience started on 17th Jan 2020 and it ended on 21st Jan 2020 when I flew back to Bangalore. I felt like a changed person after this experience. It kept coming back to me randomly during my days, and I kept getting the urge to dive deeper into the fresh as well as renewed feelings that marked the resumption of my metamorphosis. I shared these feelings with one of my colleagues in office. He happens to be one of the few people who shares with me the feeling of the need to break free from the conventional thought process, the thought process which we develop because of external influences that bury our innate senses of realization. Somehow the divine blesses me with one such companion everywhere I go, as if "the universe is conspiring to help me reach where I want to" (The Alchemist) :). He is a South Indian guy. For me he is a kind of a book that gives me fresh perspectives on self realization, along with some insights into the South Indian culture. On listening to my experience from Bauji's demise, he told me that the thoughts that were going on in my mind at the moment can be termed as "Shamshanam Bairagam". That is, when we participate in the funeral of a close one at the funeral site, which is called "Shamshan" in Hindi and some other Indian languages, these thoughts sweep into our minds. These thoughts disconnect us from many, if not all, materialistic things that we do in our daily lives. I thought about it a lot and then also realized the feeling. Along with that realization, I liked the term that he gave me as a possible way to identify these feelings, and that's how I arrived at the title of this post :).

I will end this with a realization that Bauji's demise from this world gave me this experience, these feelings, and the associated learning. I feel blessed to be a part of his lineage.