38 Bahadurabad

38 Bahadurabad by Zeeba Sadiq.

I do not recall when I had purchased the book, or why I had purchased it. Nor do I recall why I chose to read it now when I hadn’t read it in all these years. But somehow, I had stared at the book, and the book had stared back at me, until I could no longer evade it.

Through the book, I met a young author who chose to write under the name of Zeeba. The more I read the book, the more I was intrigued by the author. I recognized a strange, uncanny resemblance to my own self…or perhaps to the elements of life that were a part of my formative years in a country that was very different from what it is today. Somehow, our lives were enmeshed in a strange way. Zeeba’s description of her childhood that drew sustenance from the soulful characters whose lives were entwined with hers, evoked in me a personal sense of loss. Her words captured the sublime elements of personality and human interactions that went into making the ordinary pattern of life extraordinary. That was an era when people lived more authentic lives, and knew the art of transforming their poverty and adversity into stories of valour. There was much that they had survived, defeated, and outlived; there was much that had enriched them from within, no matter how poor or uneducated they were on the outside. Those were years when our subcontinent retained something of our cultural and spiritual essence; our cultural soul had not yet been eroded by bloodshed, war, or the forces of globalization. The only other work that evoked a similar mood was the television series Buniyaad. Zeeba wrote about the loss of the meanings created by forgotten cities and forgotten characters. This resonated with me.

I was intrigued by Zeeba, and I looked her up. As if to complete the story of losses, I learnt that Zeeba had passed away abruptly in 2010, from an aneurysm. In 2010, I had already returned from London. But in 2004, when Zeeba was alive, we lived in the same city, never having heard about each other. Like all the souls I had never met and who became my family because their perceptions, quests, and private sorrows throbbed in me, Zeeba became my family too. The family that I had never met, but the family that I perhaps knew better than the people I know for real.

In the course of my exploration, I stumbled on two articles that touched upon Zeeba’s work. These articles were written by Taha Kehar who had never met Zeeba for real, but whose writings had accessed her world and her mind in a way that only writers are capable of. I downed both the articles, holding on to every word. One of the articles was about how 38 Bahadurabad had acquired meaning as a tangible world that was used to access something intangible shared by a mother and a son. This resonated with me because even though my mother is alive, I am already preparing for the time she will be gone. Sometimes, the words I write, are my means of holding on to her- to all that she stood for. The other article was about the forgotten soul of Karachi. My own equivalent of this is the sense of loss I feel when I think of the Bangalore and the India that I left behind.

In an author’s work, if we can find a bit of our own worlds- the part that is private, personally meaningful, that we cherish deeply, and that cannot be described casually or carelessly, the author becomes family. Zeeba, Taha, and me. We have never met. But 38 Bahadurabad ties us together. In 38 Bahadurabad, are the perceptions and the memories that time took away from us, and that can never again be found in the external reality of our lives. 38 Bahadurabad helps me pick up the pen where Zeeba left off.

The Things That People Leave Behind

Places, people, events.

Should we look for them outside of us, or do they only reside in those pockets of our minds where time stands still, and where nothing ever changes? Those pockets where people, places, and events are immortal, and where everything that was magical and once-in-a-lifetime can be re-experienced? Those pockets where our youth is in eternal blossom, and where we never grow old? What meaning could our lives independently have, save for the meaning created in our beautiful minds?

There are such places in my mind, and these are places that were left behind by the people, places, and events that touched me. I have never liked change; I am rooted deeply in my world. When people, places, and phases change, I experience a disruption of my very being. I feel a sense of loss; I miss how we were. I have learnt to respond to this inevitable change by immortalizing the memories and the meanings created by them in my mind.

I am saddened by how people’s worlds are taken away from them. When tribes lose the forests that have been their home for centuries to corporations, I feel uprooted. When people lose their homes to war, I feel uprooted. When people lose their homes to earthquakes and floods, I feel uprooted. To lose a place, is to lose everything that it stood for. When I think of Bangalore– the city where I grew up, I do not think of its anatomy. I think of all that it meant to me when we were growing up. I think of all that it stood for, and that can never be again. I know that how much ever I go about looking for vestiges of all that I experienced in that city, I will never experience it outside of me. It exists only in my mind- and perhaps in the minds of those who experienced it with me, and who hold on to the meanings created. It is perhaps for this reason that I can never love Kerala. Bangalore is an emotional construct in my mind, while Kerala is a cognitive construct. In my mind, Kerala is the place that took away from me all that I cherished. It gave me a path of growth, but there is nothing that I cherish here. There is nothing that I like to reminisce.

Some of us have minds that have a child-like quality. We see the world as children see their worlds- with innocence, awe, curiosity, and excitement. We believe in magic. Bangalore and London were cities that accommodated this part of my personality. The child is the most important part of my personality. To lose it, is to lose myself. In Kerala, there is no space for this child. In that sense, the cities that protected the child in me, were nothing short of my parents.

Our parents spend all their lives, safeguarding our worlds, protecting us from the forces that have the power of dismantling our worlds. One would almost think they would never die. But they die, and they leave us all alone in a world where we find ourselves at the mercy of the very forces that they shielded us from. In these forces, we then begin to rediscover our parents. Buried in our journeys, are our parents’ relentless journeys. Buried in our journeys, are the authors we read, and the people whose work touched us. We pick up the pen from where they left off.

Life is a slow process of being orphaned– of losing all the identities that we built in our physical worlds. I have learnt to respond to this loss through the words I leave behind. In these words, are the meanings I created with people, places, and events. In these words, are the moments that I came alive. And so, I must write relentlessly, until I have exuded everything that is me, and somebody else can pick up the pen from where I have left.

A lifetime of writing. That is my aspiration.

The Path to Psychology

I used to be a rank student in school. But I never felt like one. It may have been because my parents never made a big deal of it. Like Swaminathan’s father in Swami and friends; my father was disappointed in me. On the days that he taught me Mathematics, he made me feel grossly inadequate. Why was it so hard for me to grasp something as simple as computing the area of a path or getting a hang of the profit and loss problems? When he gave me problems to solve, my brain would just freeze. I would feel like a school drop out with no self-esteem. However, there were those rare occasions when my father would give me a difficult problem that he did not expect me to solve, and I would ironically grasp the connection between its different elements and blurt out the answer. The truth was that even I did not know how I had worked it out; it would just be one of those aha moments. On such days, my father would be in a good mood, and he would overlook other mistakes that I made.

Now that I think about it, all through my school years, I was confused about my aptitude and ability. There were times when I would go all over the place, trying to solve a simple problem that almost everybody solved. And then, there were times when I could think of something extraordinary. My relationship with the science subjects was one of love and fear; I was in love with what I learnt, but I also believed that my logic defied me at times. That was not the case with language; I loved language, and I had a more realistic self-concept of my ability at language. However, things changed towards the later years of school when our teachers changed. I lost interest in mathematics, and my fascination for physics and chemistry grew. In medical college, I was an average student who rarely did well on tests, but I demonstrated a capacity for abstraction that some of my teachers recognized. It took me years to understand that my inclination and aptitude has always been in areas that require abstract thinking. I chew on abstract ideas all the time; my mind is always a factory of half-baked ideas that are trying to work themselves to completion. I always find myself hooked to domains where I have to read into the invisible interconnections between the elements, and where visible facts mean nothing by themselves. I love the domains where the facts have flexibility and are brought to life because of the interconnections that govern them. I explored multiple domains, hoping to find a domain where the opportunity for abstraction was tremendous. Not surprisingly, that domain turned out to be psychology– what can be more abstract than the human mind?

Now that I think about it, I have always perceived people not as physical bodies, but as behaviours and minds. When I am in a crowd- on the streets, in a public function, or at workplace, I perceive people as an ocean of behaviours. My curiosity is aroused by behaviours, not by physical appearances. I always find myself looking out for behaviours that stand out and are exemplary. I am always looking out for people whose behavioural responses to different situations help me expand my own behavioral repertoire. I am also curious when I meet somebody whose behaviour is deviant; I am curious about the motives that drive such behaviours.

I have a committed relationship with psychology; we are in that phase of the relationship where my commitment is being tested. How much am I willing to sacrifice to be in this relationship? How much am I willing to endure? How much am I willing to give? Am I able to protect its merit and worth? Can I hold myself to high standards in this relationship? Will I be swayed by other influences? I am being tested thoroughly on all these aspects.

The Art of Distorting Reality

We are all vulnerable, some of us more so than others. If we did not have the ability to distort the truth, our vulnerability may not have survived the assaults of an insensitive and cruel world. Relationships have the capacity to hurt. The sad irony of relationships is that those closest to us, have the capacity to hurt us the most. We stand the risk of being abandoned, harmed, deceived, or exploited by those closest to us. And yet, we must be trusting and believing. We must put ourselves at stake, and be patient. We must take a chance, and wait until the relationship reveals itself over time. People we loved deeply, can eventually become a painful memory. But that must not stop us from putting our trust in relationships. A diamond is only revealed over time; unless one has the patience and perseverance to look through unpolished stones, one may miss it. That is the hardship we must endure- the courage to walk rugged paths with naked feet, to be bitten by insects and grazed by thorns, to endure the wounds and bleeds, to endure the disappointment of discovering that a stone that we put our hopes on, was worthless.

There is no way out of the cold reality of our worlds. What would we do if we did not have the ability to distort reality? When I say distort reality, I don’t really mean manipulating reality in ways where we lose sight of reality; I only mean changing the way we look at things. Switch on the lights where our concrete reality is beautiful and can be treaded on with confidence, without losing our footing. Drape fairly lights over the portions that are engulfed in darkness and refuse to be lit. The only choice we have with the dark realities of our lives is to transform them through fantasy so that they acquire newer meanings. These are the places that offer us the freedom to experiment and explore, the places where interesting things happen. These are the places where one may encounter fireflies or stars- those magical creatures of darkness that do not lend themselves to the brightness of daylight. If we wait long enough, this darkness may transform into the most beautiful reality of our lives. While our concrete realities may provide us security, it is this darkness that treats us to the magic of life. We take more risks with the darkness because we have nothing to lose or protect. If we were to alienate these darker portions and not represent them in our minds, we would be holding on too strongly to our concrete reality, and be disappointed by it. We would stop feeling alive. The darkness is where we come alive.

Distortions make the truth bearable and acceptable. Some distortions are disturbing and deplorable; they alienate us from life and from ourselves. We may end up despising ourselves. Yet others have enough aesthetics to keep us hooked; they reveal to us complex and valuable dimensions of our own behavioral repertoire that we are unaware of. They can make us fall in love with who we are.