If you were to ask my friends about me or view my Facebook profile, chances are that your impression of me would be that of a successful woman in her mid-30s, an avid traveler and a lean and fit high-altitude trekker. You might even be a little jealous of my revelries and lack of family duties and burden. In that case, I would count that as a win because this is the image of myself that I've striven to portray to the outside world.
However, since the pandemic struck, like all of us I was also made painfully aware of the temporariness of our existence. That made me ponder, if I were to die today, would anyone know who I really was? Would anyone know how much I have endured and overcome, especially because I have seen people being celebrated for far less. This made me want to pen down my story. My intention is not to shout my achievements from the rooftops, but rather to create a memoir that narrates that I too was someone.
Many of us feel that our life is a series of never-ending tragedies but I strongly believe I have more number of tragedies in my life than an average human being. It seems like nothing ever happens the right way for me and I have to struggle way more to get something which most others can take as granted.
The first of such things is family and home. My misery starts way back in 1987 when my parents decided to get married after a long and difficult courtship that neither families approved. For my parents, then 34 and 45 years old, marriage was more of a societal requirement rather than an act of love. After the marriage, there were enormous problems at home and my mother, who never wanted to bear a child, had to give birth to me under family pressure. My father, on the other hand, was keen on having a male child so I was born to a mother who never wanted me in the first place, and a father who hated that he had a girl child so much that he kept my existence hidden from his friends and colleagues for several months.
I had a difficult childhood: both parents would go off to work and there would be no one at home to take care of me, so I learnt to be independent from a very young age. I was 6 years old and in standard 2, when I would return from school in the school-bus, walk alone from the bus-stop to our home, open the door lock with my own set of keys, neatly fold my school uniform, serve myself food, place the used dishes in the dishwasher, take a short nap, wake up and work on my class assignments until one of the parents returned home. At this age, the rest of my classmates or their parents could never imagine such a thing. Also, when the following year my parents put me in the hostel, I was one of the youngest kids there. However, I must mention that my parents always made sure I had all the resources needed for my education and I never faced any issues due to financial constraint. I was lucky though, that despite not wanting me, my parents never failed to mete out their duties towards me.
Hostel was difficult initially, as it should be for a 7 year old who needs the love and care of family. My parents always justified it saying that they were bringing me home in the weekends so I was away only for the week-days. However what they never took into account is that whatever time I did spend at home was in a toxic environment sandwiched between constantly warring parents. Ironically, just when I was actually getting comfortable in the hostel life and made some good friends, my father retired from work and decided that it would be a great idea to tear me away from my happiness and they de-listed me from the hostel.
Many a times in my bouts of day-dreaming, I've often wondered how it would be to have a different set of parents. Or, to exchange parents and ward for a few days with some other people that I know. How would my parents react to a daughter that spends all her time on the phone or make-up, or a son who would get average marks in his exam, or a child that constantly asks for money, or smokes, or gets into legal trouble. Would a different set of parents be proud of me when I consistently aced my exams, never asked for anything except what I needed for my studies, saved pennies from my meager pocket money of Rs.10, never wore make-up or got involved with the opposite gender. On hindsight, I realize now that I was always trying to be the ideal, obedient daughter just in the hope to make my parents proud but they were too engrossed in their own issues to even notice.
I specifically remember an incident -in standard 7, I secured full-marks in my Chemistry exam. A perfect 100 - an epitome of success, right? I thought my mother would finally be happy and congratulate me. I jumped for joy and told her that I got full marks, and her reaction was "I heard that another student has also got it, so you haven't really done anything exceptional". Well, I can ensure my success but I cannot ensure the failure of others. I realized that day that it was impossible to please my mother.
The right thing to do at that point would have been to stop trying to impress my parents but the human brain is wired in a strange and inexplicable way so rather than stopping, I tried even harder to gain their approval. I gave up my social life (and any chance of a romantic encounter) for better marks in board exams, secured 95% in ICSE, went through an insane routine during my Higher secondary exams (I would spend more than 14 hours traveling to school and tuition everyday and would come back home and study for school the next day), secured 93% in ISCE, got admission into all 3 prestigious colleges of Kolkata : Presidency, St. Xavier's and Jadavpur University, and stuck with JU because my mother liked it, although my personal preference was Xavier's, and then completed Masters in Chemistry with First Class. Despite all of this, and even today, that now I'm a Senior Associate with PwC after a successful stint with IT giants like Cognizant and Infosys, I have never heard a word of praise or appreciation from either of them.
Well, I guess I didn't hit the parental lottery but so what. There are hundreds like me who have grown up with family issues. But how many of them have been subjected to a culpable homicide attempt? Let me explain why my tragedy extends beyond just unappreciative parents.
On a fateful afternoon in Feb, 2010, I returned home after a long day at the laboratory. My mother was in her office and dad was on a trip away with his friends. I felt thirsty and took a small sip from my water bottle, only to realize that the liquid in it wasn't water. Someone had poisoned it with an unknown chemical, (later confirmed as mercuric chloride by the CBI Forensics laboratory, Mumbai) deliberately or as a prank, and it landed me in the ICU for 2 months and cost my parents a fortune. I suffered multi-organ failure- pretty much everything except my brain was affected, suffered 3 cardiac arrests, went through de-cortication of lungs surgery(where a chunk of my lungs was discarded), and underwent dialysis 63 times. After a long battle in the hospital, most of my organs were restored except my kidneys. Even to this day I bear the effects of the incident as I'm a stage 4 Chronic Kidney Disease patient for the last 12 years.
I think I can segregate my life pretty much into two time periods - before and after the incident. I would not say that I came out of the ICU a brand new person, but there are a lot of things that have changed, and I firmly believe that the change is for the better. For example, I am no longer the person whose ultimate goal in life is to gain approval. I still crave appreciation, but not at the cost of my happiness. The uncertainty of life that I experienced in the hospital made me realize that all my life all I have done is accumulate marks, so now I focus on gathering memories and experiences. I have limited patience now, given the brevity of life, so I place a lot of emphasis on things and actions that my heart desires.
I did not get any counseling or psychiatric help after the incident even though I had asked for it. It was partly because my parents do not care about mental health and partly because psychiatrists shy away from treating kidney patients because only a limited number of medications are allowed to be administered to us. Less than six months after I was released from the hospital, I had to return to the same laboratory where my water was spiked. It wasn't easy to go back, and the fact that some of my relatives and teachers tried to blame me for what happened did not make it any easier. I was never given the choice to pursue another discipline or to discontinue my higher studies in the same traumatic environment, because my parents would not allow me to drop out of masters. So I spent another 3 years in the same university amongst the same people one of whom had literally tried to kill me.
If you thought this is where the tragedy ends, welcome to the story to my marriage! Well, technically more like a story of attempts at marriage because I'm still unmarried. After completing my Masters, I was hired by Cognizant as a campus recruit and posted in Bangalore. When I returned from my lucrative position in Bangalore in 2014 (not by will but by parental pressure, and my mother's threat to commit suicide if I didn't return) thereby giving up all hopes of a great career, my parents decided that it was time to search for a suitable groom. They went the common route- ad in the newspaper and inviting prospective grooms to our house for meet and greet.
Every encounter was a nightmare! All the men that my parents had shortlisted were less qualified than me academically, had zero career ambitions of their own, made it perfectly clear that I should have none as well, and some of them had outright bizarre demands like I must not meet my family anymore after the marriage, or I must leave my lucrative career and become a tuition teacher! As you can guess, none of the proposals came even close to being accepted and if I have managed to describe my parents correctly in the previous stanzas, it should not surprise you to know that they both blamed me for this failure. My dad's reason being- I was too choosy, and my mom's reason being- I was too ugly.
After a dozen or so failed attempts, my parents decided not to pursue the topic of marriage any more. So the only choice left for me was to find a groom by myself, which was difficult because I'm not a very social person and I have little or no scope of meeting new people. This arrangement deemed fine with my parents, especially with my mom, who has always discouraged me to get married or have children. So at 32, I am stuck with my 70 and 81 year old parents, who get their needed support from me, but aren't really concerned about what will happen to me when I get older.
I honestly don't think I will get old though. I'm a stage 4 CKD patient who hasn't seen a nephrologist for over 5 years. I have completed 9 high-altitude treks in the Himalayas despite my CKD, resulting hypertension, and de-cortication of lungs. My accident has shown me that life is short, so I don't shy away from experiences. I have done bungee-jumping, jet-skiing, zip-lining, paragliding, parasailing, scuba-diving, snorkeling, solo trips. In short, I have lived to my heart's content despite all the troubles that life has thrown at me and continues to throw at regular intervals. I suddenly found myself unemployed for a few months in the middle of the pandemic, after that was thrown in a toxic environment in Infosys and really had to run for the door to save my sanity, and I don't really have any trusted friend to talk to which makes dealing with things more difficult.
The purpose of this article is not to blame my parents or anyone else for the problems in my life. I understand that everyone has their own troubles but I feel like my life has been a constant source of trauma and pain at every stage. I would be happy if people would take away some of the lessons that I have learnt from my life, the biggest of them is to not have children if you are unhappy or unsure of your marriage. There is immense social stigma associated with marriages but had my parents decided to separate and be happy in their individual lives instead of dragging me into this world and into their unresolved issues, perhaps I would not be inflicted with commitment phobia and pining for approval right now.
