On Inheritances
On what it means to be a child and the legacies we receive
It has been a while since my last Substack post. The fever and fret of life AND the gnawing voice that whispers, “What and how does one write when the world we inhabit seems to spin in uncertainty and threatens to burn?” kept me staring at a blank screen. Anything I write would have seemed ineffectual and trite in the context of the living present.
I began this Sunday morning with a Substack post shared by a friend The Last Salute, and this opened floodgates of memory, of rumination, and a fleeting sense of recognition of the world that Gen Shokin evoked.
If The Parent Trap (link) was a post on what it means to be a parent, this post is about what it is to view the world through the eyes of a child or what it means to inherit a worldview.
All my life I have furiously waved (and will continue to wave) the flag of an unapologetic pacifist. In every sense of the term—literal and figurative—I will walk a mile and more to avoid anything that seemingly appears like a conflict or confrontation. Strange words from the daughter of ex-service personnel. Truth be told, my father’s reasons to enlist in the Air Force had nothing to do with any grand ideas of ‘patriotism’ or a continued family legacy—the reasons were far more mundane: to survive. After all, how many options were available to a young man from a village in Kerala? (Though I sadly suspect things have not changed much in India even today).
Whether his years in service shaped him to be the person he is today or if these are his basic personality traits—I lack the objectivity and the skill to fathom them. Perhaps it is both, but I do know that his stint in the Air Force—15 years to be precise—has left an indelible mark on my father. I know this because I see it in all aspects of his life—his fierce independence; his stubborn refusal to be ‘dependent’; his reverence for order; his relentless insistence on honesty (this is almost laughable had it not been a telling comment on our social and political lives—the extinct nature of this word); and above all else, his bond with his friends—his brothers in arms, his comrades, call them what you will.
A reunion of his regiment was one of the few high points of his life. After my mother’s loss, this was one occasion I saw the spark and light that once made him effervescent return again. My eternal gratitude to his comrades.
Perhaps this is the one singular trait I can stake a claim to having inherited from him when I am asked, “How do you sustain your friendships despite distance and time?” I pause for but a fleeting second—I grew up seeing that friends are family. So the equation was easy for me. I still see and am witness to this bond that he shares with his friends from various walks and phases of his life.
Did I mention ‘patriotism’ a few sentences ago? Like many other definitions—I add one more to the list of things I am no longer sure about—that is my own cross to bear.
For as long as I can remember, my father, ever since we had a color television set at home, never missed a Republic Day parade. As for me, except for the initial childhood enthusiasm of watching the colorful floats representing different states, I lost interest soon.
My father never wavered, that is, not until the recent few years. The import of that is not lost even to my jaded eyes.
I have often wondered if there must be an orientation school for average Indian middle-class parents (each word without an apology or a trace of self-consciousness). Conversations with friends and family have convinced me there must have been an unwritten code of laws and rules ingrained, which was then handed down. A pattern emerges, as you will see, and the maxims are simple. No one sat us down and told us these things, yet we saw. If we were lucky, we learned in time; if not, we learned in hindsight:
Play fair.
Study (notice the emphasis was never get rich, be successful, or be famous—it was simple—study because it was the only ticket to earn an honest living).
Respect Everyone (this was inviolable—and applied to everyone).
Hold no grudges (oh, how I still struggle with this one!!!)
That’s it. The key to life.
Over the years and over countless conversations, I learned that this was a recurring pattern in many lives.
A cousin recounted how a few days after our aunt’s demise—when she visited the local vegetable market with her aging, grieving father—a few local shopkeepers gathered around, a chair was respectfully conjured in the midst of a teeming market place and people she considered to be strangers, those she never knew, stopped to offer their condolences to him. One of them murmured, “Your father gave me books and money to buy books when I was a struggling student… I owe him a lot.”
As the late Nat King Cole crooned, “Love is a many-splendored thing...”
As children, our parents are just that to us. Parents. Mom and Dad. Amma. Acchan. They are eternally imprisoned in the one-dimensional constraints of a child’s eye. Irrespective of age. The loss of love often becomes an eye-opener in more ways than one.
As we were reminiscing about the loss of a beloved parent figure, my friend said, “Papa had his favorite select stores; he would always give away some money to the young attendant who delivered the groceries home.” No wonder, then, even after relocating from their home for over 30 years, whenever he would revisit the city, Mama and he would be surprised at the warm solicitousness of the staff. Till one of them confessed, “Saab nahin pehchana aapne? Aap ko yaad hain, main ghar aata tha samaan dene... aap hamesha paise dete they aur kehte, jaao beta apne liye kuuch le lo, vada paav kha lo…” (Sir, don’t you recognize me? You would always give me some money when I came home to deliver the groceries. You always said, “Son, buy something for yourself. Eat something you like.”)
We wept together for love, for loss, and for the privilege of loving one such as this.
Small acts of quiet generosity. Of luminous humanity.
Love whispers, speaks, and sometimes sings differently. The people we love and those that love us are the constellations of our lives: cherished friends, family, spouse, partner, and children. But our modest triumphs, our small achievements, shine brightest in the eyes of parental figures.
Middle-class Indian homes stoically bear many lacks—space, money, and resources, to name but a few. Yet, most of us will recall open houses—endless streams of visitors, cousins, and extended family coming to the city in search of jobs—and no one was ever turned away.
We speak today of food being a love language. If my mother, my aunts, my mother-in-law, and the many women of a certain generation I cherish and respect (a few of them who skillfully juggled a home and the workplace) were ever to hear this, they would possibly dismiss it with a disdainful mirthless laugh. I can visualize my mother’s response—as I wilt under her scornful, withering glance—“What love? What language? You did what you could and should,” would have been her dry response.
Do what you can and should.
As for me, “I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!” (with reverential apologies to Shelley).
For I cannot help but wonder—do I live up to my many inheritances?
Notes: Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley