Acts of Courage
Three Generations. Three Stories
The Mother: Relearning the Grammar of Life
May 1989. She was 44.
Bespectacled. Pretty. Demure. Shy. Living the middle-class dream of the 80’s. Secure in the confidence of her role as a home-maker. Her existence revolved around her family. The older son had finished his engineering and had just started working. Well-known Engineering company. Metropolitan City. Eligible bachelor son of a proud mother. The younger one was at a turning point – the one of many to come. The husband was in a good job. Not the best he could have got, but near enough to her parents for her to be the attentive, dutiful caregiver her parents needed her to be.
Mostly happy. Mostly contented. Mostly like a million others. It was going as she had indeed imagined it might.
Until it was no longer.
The husband passed away – a sudden cardiac arrest in the middle of a nondescript street plucked away that one thing she had taken for granted.
Widowed at 44. Fifteen days go, they had celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary. In the only way they knew to celebrate. Quietly. Just. Like. Any. Other. Day.
Fifteen days later, her life had been altered in an unimaginable way. A full life ahead - with that one person she had counted on to be an enduring presence - snatched away.
It is in the days following a tragedy that the full import of it reveals itself. The absence makes itself searingly felt. The stifling vacuum of the empty side of the bed. The oppressive silence from the pervasive, undulating rhythm of the snoring gone quiet. The overflowing ashtray now bare.
The condolence visits brought well-meaning and caring sympathisers. The sight and presence of families – unbroken, full, together – signalled to her even more what she had lost. The promise of a secure, safe future shattered. The wail from the bottom of her soul reverberated through the large quiet house - asking the world “how should I live here on?”
In the decades that followed, she fashioned her own existence. A professor of English in a private college. A gardener whose front yard overflowed with blooming anthuriums of every shade. A counsellor in a suicide-prevention helpline. An avid student of the Bhagavad Gita. A tuition teacher to young children. A single, loving parent to her two sons who were busy fashioning their own lives. But most of all as a caregiver. To her own mother - through her frailty, her falls, her dementia.
There is a grammar to such existence.
Bury the syntax of the tragedy. Not completely. But just enough to not let it overwhelm you.
And, then move.
One step at a time. One day at a time. To find rituals. To discover rhythms to those rituals.
To not think too far into the distance. But just enough, to keep sanity.
She is herself eighty-two now. The years have taken their toll. She has her own care-giver now. A phase of aging where logic and reasoning are over-rated. Love and Affection under-rated. It is the old memories and the echoes of the past that are amongst the most vivid.
She wistfully repeats sometimes, “I have gone through a lot in life, haven’t I? But I managed. I had to manage”.
Yes, you have, amma. You have more than managed.
Way, way more.
The Son: Speaking Up - The Foolishness of Courage
June 1994.
It was his first job. A freshly minted MBA from a premier institute. The company was new to recruiting MBAs. Stars in his eyes - he checked the boxes of all the cliches that could be applied to his ilk.
He had arrived at the corporate office in Bangalore. For two weeks he would be staying in a 4-star hotel just off upscale MG Road. His first time staying alone in a hotel. It was the boy-man’s first time as an earning adult.
The office was plush. The Board Room, even more so. Corporate Orientation, they had called it.
The British chairperson of the company had addressed them. All these freshly minted game changers. He looked dapper. In a three-piece suit. The rest - in ‘formals’. Full-sleeve blue or white shirts, they had been told. Formal trousers. Ties were optional (which was as well because he didn’t know how to knot one).
“Integrity is the foundation of our company. We pride ourselves in the principles of honesty and hard work. That is how we are successful – built on the honest, hard work of our people in our factories”. He spoke with quiet firmness and practiced authority.
“Each one of you represents a new generation of leadership for the company. I am available to all of you. My office doors are open”, he had said as he concluded with a flourish. The lilt of his British accent helped. The boy-man fell in love.
They were told mighty stories of corporate greatness.
They were dined. They were feted. They were wooed.
The boy-man was sent to one of the flagship factories. Nearly a hundred years old, he was told. In a beautiful village, deep down south in Tamil Nadu. It was a big factory, within a bigger colony. Wide roads. A posh club where one could hob-nob with the senior leaders, after-hours over free Vat 69. Or, Old Monk Rum.
The dream was getting better. And better.
And then like all dreams, the boy-man woke up to reality.
The factory managers had no plan for these young boy-men. They didn’t know what to do with them. They didn’t believe the company needed to bring management graduates in. And when someone in power feels threatened, bullying is not far behind. It can take many shapes. It took all those shapes.
The boy-men conferred. Some were okay. “This is life”, they said. “My father has told me to just shut up and do as they say”. Some were scared to say anything.
This boy-man stayed quiet. For a while. Not knowing what was right. And what was wrong.
Until staying quiet was no longer an option. So, the shy, timid, diffident boy-man did the only thing that a scared young man who had come there with a huge hope in his heart and stars in his eyes could conceive of doing.
He wrote to the British Chairperson.
Two weeks later, he got a type written letter. Inside an envelope. Hand delivered to him by the Factory Manager.
“Thank you for your services. Your Management Training has been suspended. Please resign with immediate effect”.
The boy-man was out of a job. At 23. Fired within six months of his first job.
Courage?
Foolishness?
Or, the Foolishness of Courage?
The Baby Girl: Shifting the swim lanes of life
2012. She was nearly nineteen.
“I want to do an under-graduate degree in psychology”, she had said. For the longest, she had been unsure of what she wanted to study. So, this clarity was a good sign.
“You should send her abroad”, said her favourite psychology teacher from school. “If you keep her here, the system will kill her love for the subject”.
So, it came to pass that she left home for England just before her nineteenth birthday.
An undergraduate degree was followed by a Masters. And then a doctoral degree – one to which she said “I would have never gotten into this, if I had known just how hard I would have to work”.
2019. She was twenty-six.
A Ph.D. at the intersection of Psychology and Engineering, and a corporate job in hand.
Where the corporate job did not sustain her, her abiding love for comedy and theatre did. The economic fallout of the pandemic saw her lose her job, but not her joy.
She took that as a sign. “I am going to give this a serious try”, she said.
And so, it came to pass that at 28, she became a full-time stand-up artiste. Specialising in observational comedy and roasts. When she was not saying absolutely the most wicked things about other human beings, she was busy making scathing observations of the society around her.
It is back breaking work. To observe constantly. To think funny. To write persistently. To time your punchlines. To practice your delivery.
To be vulnerable. Daily.
Not just in one place. But in many places - within the same evening. Sometimes to two-person audiences. Sometimes to critical appreciation. Sometimes to raucous drunkenness. Sometimes to an ‘Emerging Comedian of the Year’ award.
It is work that requires love. It is work that requires confidence. It is work that requires a sturdy ruggedness.
And, to my daughter, I say “you are the most courageous person, I know. You make me the proudest I can be”.
Author’s Note:
This essay was written as part of the course work for a program on ‘Leadership and Selfhood Through Creative Writing”, from AshokaX.
more power to your mum, your daughter and you! very well written.