Tag Archives: Parent

And I have forgiven you, too

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Being able to forgive your parents. It’s a strange notion, is it not? Especially in a culture where parents are hailed as gods. 
But so many of us carry hurts, pains, and grudges against our parents, for what they did or did not do. We will not say them out loud because we are expected to love and worship them. Perhaps we will not accept this even to ourselves, for that would make you us ungrateful offspring. In the same way that any expression of ‘reluctance’ on the part of the mother makes her an ungrateful woman. 
And yet, strange though it may sound, it is possible to love someone while having a hundred complaints against them. It is possible for someone to love you, and still hurt you badly. In the end, everyone is human. Parents are humans who are doing the best they can- and yet, and yet, there is a lot to forgive your parents for. 
For not understanding you. For not giving you the space to open up to them. For being emotionally distant. For being controlling. For constantly comparing you to others. For constantly exercising authority, for trying to make you what they wanted you to be without understanding what you wanted to be. For not understanding your dreams and ambitions.
Oh yes, there is quite a lot, sometimes, to forgive your parents for. 
And when that happens, when you are able to forgive them, you liberate yourself from the bonds of generational oppression. 
When we acknowledge the mistakes of our parents, we are able to prevent ourselves from replicating those mistakes with our own children. And we are able to see ourselves as humans, not gods. Very often, traditional parents suffer from the God Complex: the idea that the parent is always right. That as a mother or father, I can never do anything wrong. No, that’s not true. We all stumble, we all fail. The important thing is to learn and evolve. 
By accepting the fallibility of our parents, we accept our own fallibility as parents, too. And once we have done that, we can ask forgiveness from our own children. For everything that we did that hurt them, for everything that we did not do when we should have. That is how we learn to do better. 
I learnt this first from you, our mother. That a parent can say sorry, that a parent can say thank you. That a parent can learn from her children, and that a parent can be wrong as well. You did not present yourself as the mother who was always right, and if you realised you were not, you openly accepted it. From you we learnt that there is no shame in accepting our mistakes and that the elder can learn from the younger as well. 
My son seems to have learnt this instinctively – perhaps children learn by watching, or perhaps all children have that instinct until it is crushed out of them.  Little H came to me one day, after we had a little tiff, and said: Mummy aapne mujhe maaf kar diya? 
Mummy, have you forgiven me? 
I chuckled and nodded, I had forgotten by then what I was angry with him for.  
And then with sweet innocence he said the thing that gave me pause: Maine bhi aap ko maaf kar diya. I have forgiven you, too. 
What a lovely boy you are, dearest H. You may not know it yet, but your heart is filled with wisdom. May you find it in that heart to forgive the mistakes of your parents, and may you never pass them on to the ones that you care for. 

What’s your primary love language?

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I never thought I’d say this, but motherhood grows on you.

I have begun to realise, slowly, that I am so much more comfortable in the role of a young boy’s mother, than I ever was in the role of a toddler’s mother. 

I think it is because my primary mode of communication, and expression of love, is verbal. Words are my preferred channel. My primary method of bonding is intellectual exchange, which is obviously done through words. 
Physical touch comes a close second- I am a very physically expressive mother: kisses, cuddles, smothering hugs. But that is still second, and no substitute for the joy of words. 

Thus I find myself taking far more delight in the role of a mother now – now that my son can clearly express and converse with me, now that I can hear the thoughts that go through his remarkable brain and marvel at the fascinating intellect he possesses. 
I find myself relishing the role of the mother far more with the growing up of my child, as he develops more fully into a distinct human being with a mind of his own, contradicting me and adding to my thoughts with the freshness and depth of his own. 
It is a great delight to find my son thinking independently enough to contradict his mother – though it’s exhausting as hell, too! But I find myself bursting with pride when he adds a different dimension to my understanding of the world. Pride at the magnificent, compassionate and empathetic person he is turning out to be. 
It isn’t as though I didn’t enjoy being a mother to Little H when he was tiny. I distinctly remember what a bundle of joy he was, how he listened carefully and began speaking at the early age of 10 months, so that one could chuckle at the nearly grown-up sentences uttered by those tiny lips. 
How delightful and adorable he was when he tried to copy his father in every tiny thing: right down to how he lay on the bed while talking: lying on his side, propping an elbow under his head, and crossing one leg over another. We roared with laughter on watching 10 month old Little H lying on the bed in exactly this manner: complete with crossed legs and elbow propping up the head ! 
How marvelous it was to see his wonder and joy at the world, to see commonplace everyday objects with a child’s fascination- a child discovering the new world, a world that holds infinite delights for him. “And children’s faces looking up, holding wonder like a cup!” If you’ve ever seen a child with his mouth wide open in a joyous grin and his eyes sparkling with wonder, you’ll know exactly what this means.  And yet, I think I was so exhausted and worn out all the time, because he was such a bundle of energy and mischief, that I couldn’t really appreciate or enjoy it as much as I would have liked. 

Not being able to understand his needs, not being able to communicate my concerns with him was the most frustrating thing I ever experienced. Like constantly groping in the dark to find the light switch, and falling in the darkness and hurting yourself countless times in the process. 
And slowly, you learn where the light switch is- so you can find it even when it’s dark. 
Little H growing up enough to communicate properly- and understand his mother’s words properly – is the light that’s suddenly been switched on for me. 
We have finally reached a place where we can, to a largely comforting extent, understand each other. 

What an extraordinary amount of hard work it has been! 
But it’s a beautiful feeling for me, the Reluctant One, to find that I can finally enjoy motherhood, that I, too, can find it fulfilling, instead of constantly and exhaustingly struggling against it. 

I feel like ending this with a quote from the Quran. It is my favorite verse, and it is the verse I used to repeat most often when Little H was tumbling around in my belly.  It is also the verse I chanted over and over to myself when I was experiencing the most excruciating pain of my life: as Little H was being born. 

Fa Inna Ma’al Usrey Yusra. Inna Ma’al Usrey Yusra

Verily, with hardship comes ease. With hardship comes ease. 
It does, indeed.

“In the vastness of space and the immensity of time…”

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The first thing that struck me about Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, when I first read it in 2017, was the heart-stopping dedication from Carl to his wife Ann Druyan.

“For Ann Druyan,” said the dedication. “In the vastness of space and the immensity of time, it is my joy to share a planet and an epoch with Annie.”

The words seemed to fill the page, enveloping the book and the reader in their embrace – in the intensity of love conveyed in a single line.

Last week ­- nearly three years later – I came across a post on Facebook, no doubt a popular post but one that I’d never seen before, containing the words of Ann Druyan.

Ann’s thoughts about Carl.

“When my husband died,” she said, “because he was so famous and known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me-it still sometimes happens-and ask me if Carl changed at the end and converted to a belief in an afterlife. They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again. Carl faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don’t ever expect to be reunited with Carl. But, the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief and precious life is. We never trivialized the meaning of death by pretending it was anything other than a final parting. Every single moment that we were alive and we were together was miraculous-not miraculous in the sense of inexplicable or supernatural. We knew we were beneficiaries of chance. . . . That pure chance could be so generous and so kind. . . . That we could find each other, as Carl wrote so beautifully in Cosmos, you know, in the vastness of space and the immensity of time. . . . That we could be together for twenty years. That is something which sustains me and it’s much more meaningful. . . . The way he treated me and the way I treated him, the way we took care of each other and our family, while he lived. That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday. I don’t think I’ll ever see Carl again. But I saw him. We saw each other. We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful.”

Picture: NASA

Let me take a moment here to catch my breath and repeat.

‘We found each other in the cosmos and that was wonderful.’

I’m not an atheist. Never have been. Spent all my years believing in the afterlife, believing in something being present beyond the here and now. But I’m also a curious, inquisitive person, and I like to look at things from various angles. And therefore, over the years several times I have tried to consciously imagine what my life would be like if I were an atheist. If I stopped believing in the things that moulded and formed my life right now, would I live any differently?

And the answer has always been that other than the prayers and community rituals, nothing would really change in my life. I’d be the same person I am now, because human values are universal.  

But then, following this chain of thought I’d slowly come to the aspect of afterlife: of life after life, life beyond life. And every time I tried to imagine a world that ends here, ends definitively on this earth, my imagination would bound back with a jolt, the kind of jolt one gets from a high voltage electric fence, throwing you back with unprecedented force. Every time I tried to imagine this being the end, my mind rebelled. For one reason: my father.

I had gone through life, one day at a time, imagining him around me, beside me, asking him questions and listening to his answers. I had gone through life waiting for that moment when I would see him again, in the fathomless beyond. Every time I tried to imagine there being nothing beyond, my mind reared high like an aggressive insolent stallion, refusing to comply. And that would be the end of my atheist imaginings.
   

Until now.

Until Ann’s words moved me to tears and I wept for a long moment. “I don’t think I’ll ever see Carl again. But I saw him. We saw each other. We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful.”

This was the first time that something different gave me solace, something other than the thought of the afterlife, of seeing my father again.

I saw him. We saw each other.

He was my father and I knew him for 9 years. In the vastness of space and the immensity of time, how beautiful it was that I had him as my father – a man like him, so ahead of his times, so full of energy and vitality, brimming with joy and cheer, and yet steeped in profound philosophy, in poetry, in spirituality – in sync with the rhythm of the universe. It was my joy to share a planet and an epoch with him, to know him and to learn from him, if only for a little while. We found each other in the cosmos and that was wonderful.

This was the first explanation that soothed me, without promising life beyond life. I tried to turn the thought over and over in my mind, absorbing it from various angles.

And then I thought of little Hasan.

My sensitive, philosophical 7 year old, who already reflects so much on life and death, on life after death. And even more than that, cries for his grandfather whom he never met.  My astonishing little boy who sheds actual tears for a man he never knew, never saw, never spoke to. He cries for my father because “Why did I never meet my Nana?”

And this is where Ann Druyan’s words fall short. For me, perhaps, her words may work. I saw him. We saw each other.

But what of Hasan? His grandfather never saw him. He never saw his grandfather. They did not have a chance to spend years together. They did not find the opportunity to share a planet and an epoch together, at the same time. What of that?

I think then, that we – Hasan and I — we’ll have to hold on to the idea of afterlife a little longer. To feel and to know that my father – his grandfather – is still there, and even though Hasan did not see him, he sees Hasan. He watches over him, guides him, and answers his questions, like he has answered mine for twenty years now.

We will wait then, I think.

Wait for the time when we can find each other in the cosmos again – for the cosmos is not merely the parts that you can see, is it?

Every person you ever truly loved will find you again. In the vastness of space and the immensity of time; vastness that stretches far beyond human imagination.  


    

Picture: NASA

Little philosopher: Talking of death with my 5-year-old

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Reading about Stephen Hawking’s death reminded me, for some reason, about my 5 year old’s obsession with death. This originated when he attended a funeral with me about 6 months ago, the funeral of a very young mother who left behind two kids quite close to my son’s age. It originated from him watching her still body and everyone else crying around it. It is far, far too early for him to be watching this spectacle. My mom never let me go to funerals and the first funeral I attended was after my marriage. I still remember how crushed I felt at seeing the silent face in the shroud, even though the lady was not closely related to me. For a 5 year old, the spectacle must have a profound impact.

Since then he often asks me whether I will die and whether he will, too. Importantly, the questions on death are always about him and me, never anyone else. And I tell him, yes, we will. Everyone dies. But I soften the blow by saying that we won’t die until we live to be a hundred years. I will be a hundred at least before I die, and you will be a hundred or more before you do ! He is satisfied for the time being, but the next day he will talk of death again– his and mine.
I hear him out patiently and answer his questions again. Questions on the body, questions on the spirit, questions on graves and questions on the afterlife. And one day, his baby-sitter who lives with us could bear it no more.

“Kyun karte rehte ho aisi batein?” She interjected restlessly, clearly distressed. Why do you keep saying such things?

And I was struck by how I, despite being his mother, never stopped him and never felt disturbed by his talks of our deaths. Talking and thinking of death has been a way of life with me. I am not perturbed by this, I do not consider it an ill omen and I do not feel afraid. I can talk calmly about death. Because I have been dealing with it since I was 9.

And yet it is sometimes surprising to me that my son can talk about it at 5.

In all of these 5 years, for the first time I realised what I enjoy the most with my boy. Quiet, heart to heart talks on topics far too philosophical for 5 year olds.
And I remember then, that I used to call him ‘little philosopher’ , for the expression on his face when he was 5 days old.