Vardah

The howling of the wind stopped. But I could hear silent tears the trees were shedding, long after the rains stopped and the winds took a breather. It was pitch dark outside and I tried to get back to sleep though my dreams were full of flying leaves and a war dance that the trees seemed to be doing around Mother earth.

The morning was a different story. I opened the windows and what I saw made me go silent and numb. I could get a clear view of the road from my bedroom window, as all the trees in the line of my vision were lying stark on the road. There were parts of ripped branches still left hanging from a couple of the odd trees that had survived the holocaust, and these branches reminded me of wounded soldiers in a battle, who would beg to be put out of their misery. There were hesitant sounds of birds, who came searching for their nests, and when they did not even find a trace of the tree let alone the nests, the cacophony of grief started. The stray sounds of motor vehicles broke the silence, while people slowly started coming out of their houses, trying to make sense of nature’s wrath. The sense of dismay, shock and helplessness was palpable. Life would never be the same again, without the breeze of the neem trees on my balcony, and the absence of the chirpy birds, who would fight with the squirrels for the morning crumbs. Coffee tasted bitter that morning.

The uprooting of giant trees defied logic. The gaping craters on the roads, ripping the concrete pavements bore testimony to the fact that the roots imprisoned underneath the concrete prison man built under the guise of civilisation and development are way too strong to be curtailed. Maybe the roots could no longer meander around under the earth in search of water, and desperate for survival, they started growing upwards? And too close to the surface, they could not withstand the onslaught of the fury of the slashing winds and just leaned over and fell? Though not like gentle giants, but like huge monsters, in a last attempt to perhaps let man know, that everything has a price: and sometimes, the price we pay is way, way too great for us to ever recover from the bargain.

I am writing this after a week of the onslaught of the cyclone. The view from the window is still clear, I still miss the familiar view of various hues of green leaves of the trees that shielded me from the view of the road. But I saw a new palm frond in one of the surviving tree today morning. My eyes welled up when I saw it, for some strange reason. It made me realise that while nature punishes, she also is very gentle and caring. She understands pain; and maybe this was her way of telling me not to lose hope?

The Squeaky World of Ethics...

I remember penning my thoughts on being a responsible healer.  I think we need to first become responsible human beings. Responsible towards self.  And when I say that, I mean, we need to understand that we all are here to grow, evolve into better human beings, and while we do tend to slip and slide now and then, our larger responsibility lies in leaving this place better than we came in.

That is why, when I see a corrosion of ethics and the way we twist our pattern of thinking to suit our own narrow self-centered ends, I get very agitated and wish I could do something more than just sit and watch.  I am not a coach; I can’t be on the side-lines and watch the game.  But then neither do I know the game to play it the way it is being played!  So what am I ? A spectator perhaps?

A colleague of mine took up an assignment which was ethically wrong; I am not going into the reasons why she did so; I was not looking into justifications. Suffice it to say that choosing what she did totally undermined what I thought she was as a person. It also pained me because her action made me partly responsible for the affected party, and I wish she had kept the communication channels open for me to intervene and help the affected party to make an informed choice.  I know we all have vested interests in the way we think and act, and that I suppose, is the Way of the World as William Congreve says.  But I am not able to digest the fact that a person so dear to me personally, could mess up so badly professionally. And the messing up is not on the grounds of ability but on ethical issues.  

The icing on the cake is the fact that it is not even viewed as a problem that has created so much of turmoil in me!  Maybe I am over-reacting to a situation which is a win-win one for all?  And I don’t stand to lose anything either; except perhaps a teeny weeny bit of faith in humanity, which has led to me gaining a little bit more of cynicism. 

Some stories never end...

The torch on the bed under the pillow. The spectacle case neatly arranged next to the day’s newspaper... The pile of neatly folded laundry. Everything looked just the same, but the silence came from the blank TV screen. The silence came from the stationery walker which now held his last worn dhoti and vest...   I could no longer sense the lingering smell of the sandalwood powder.... It was his trademarked aura. 

The pictures of the divine powers in their myriad forms all looked at me benevolently, and the forms all slowly turned into the many faces he used to cajole, threaten, and worm his way into people’s thoughts and hearts.  

A commander ....... Said one of the persons who clung to me tightly.. he sang away to the nurses, complained about the lousy food at the hospital, but also used his famous pick up line, “I have met you before...”

He had his beatific smile on his face when his pressure fell alarmingly. And when he finally decided to move on, all his grandchildren stood around him and sang that one song that he had made up for their lullaby when they were babies.... Nani ma nani ma nani manni nani ma naani ma ni.... The room resonated with his presence in our hearts... He was around. Some stories have no ending. Neither does this one.

Appa...

When I touch the wet mud to replant my roses I think of appa, for he inculcated in me the love for gardening.

When the light flickers  I remember appa because he taught me to to change a bulb, replace a fuse or repair a plug.

When the tape gets stuck in my recorder, his voice calls me out to use a cellotape to stick the pieces together. 

He taught me to ride a bike.and be independent....
To polish my shoes...
To iron my clothes....

When I see evenly, finely cut raw mangoes for pickle...

When I don't get math sums right...

My knuckles remind me of his stern discipline when it came to math formulae.

He taught me skills. He taught me it's good to enjoy good things and be happy. He taught me to laugh at myself, when he would talk broken hindi, and we would make fun of him. He taught me to love animals, he taught me it's okay to cry...and he taught me to be who I am today. I miss you... But I miss more, the fact that I can never say good bye to you again and have you cry like a baby anymore. But rest in peace appa. You are the angel who is going to smile all the time now.

A different kind of holiday

I woke up to the sounds of peacocks calling out to each other. Sturdy, comforting hills beyond a range of coconut trees greeted my view as i parted the curtains and gazed out of the window. My friend had kept calling me to visit her in the retirement home she had shifted to recently. I decided to take her up on her invitation over a weekend. I came, expecting to be greeted by a staid run of the mill boarding atmosphere, surrounded by senior citizens who would seem to be dull, lost and desolate. What greeted me is something I am still registering. The place looked no less than a well developed resort, with laid out green lawns, cobbled pathways with lush green plants at regular intervals. There was a clubhouse for lectures and extra curricular activities, a dining hall, a temple all interspersed with benches to sit around, and patches of green.

But all this was what was provided by the developers. What caught me and left me pleasantly surprised was the contribution to the atmosphere by the inmates of the place. I could only see smiling faces greet each other. I was not a stranger but a part in of the place. Everyone had a word of greeting for me, a nod of recognition, though I did not even know them. People were using walkers, some were being helped by the assistants employed by the place, others were just sitting, too tired or old to walk around. But all this simply did not deter them from being warm and exchanging social greetings.

Were they here out of choice? Or compulsion? Were they living up to the stigma attached to the idea of children not taking care of their parents in their old age and resorting to an old age home? It did not seem so. It seemed more like community living, following a regular schedule of meal times and exercises, attending lectures and religious functions, exchanging notes with each other about their families. The living quarters were tastefully done, but at the same time functional.

We all have such fixed notions about things, and I was no different. This visit opened my eyes to the sheer practical angle of such a beautiful shared life, in a serene environment. At a time in your life when you certainly don't want to worry about bill payments, house maintenance, leaking roofs and garbage disposal, such a living seemed god sent. Then why do we look at such community living with such a negative opinion, and in such a judgemental view? Why can't we accept that "The old order changeth giving place to new", with grace?

A Responsible Healer

In my practice as a counsellor and family therapist, I do a lot of training work and supervision with upcoming counsellors. While most of them show great promise and I am hopeful that the future of counselling is in safe hands, there is still a lot that needs to be done. And I mean personal work, intense inner work.

Counselling is very serious work. We are dealing with people’s minds and feelings. We cannot afford to go wrong here. And unless we are sorted out within ourselves to a large extent, I don’t think it is fair that we hand out platitudes to our clients. The responsibility of self-care and self-growth is tremendous in our line of work. But unfortunately, a large population of the mental health professionals do not seem to understand this aspect or if they do, choose to undermine its importance.

 
I met a young graduate who was raring to go, and one of the first doubts she asked me was nothing to do with the subject or training. It was: how much do you think we can charge as our fees?
Was being a counsellor just that to her? A source of income? Though no doubt it is a profession and she was going to make a career of it, the focus seemed to be skewed to me. When I gently reminded her that she needed to hone her skills before she even contemplated employment, I am sure it did not sit well with her.

Yet another enthusiast had closed her mind to the kind of population she would not work with, which happened to be children. She said she would not feel comfortable working with them..
I wonder what history went behind her shutting herself off from children... The way the society is moving, I think children need the maximum emotional support in the coming years. What was it in her life that made her uncomfortable handling cases involving children?

Still another candidate who fitted in the above category would be so casual and easy-going, it seemed to be a defence of a quiet storm underneath. She was anxious to be seen as one who was in control at all times. Though this would be a strength in her, it would only be so, if she had worked on the deeper underlying issues, and resolved them. It is not possible that one has no problems to resolve; but according to her, there was nothing wrong in her life. Which seemed to be a total blind spot in her personal Johari Window.

And finally the kind who feel they have the power to change the world: and that the responsibility for the client being healed rested solely on their young shoulders. These people are the most dangerous ones. The sense of omnipotence they exude is frightening. They believe they have the power to correct a lot of wrongs, which has the danger of making them extremely judgemental and opinionated, two of the greatest faults in a counsellor.

The most senior of therapists come up with issues they are not able to resolve within themselves. The dangers of transference and countertransference is forever lurking in the background. Unless the person is emotionally sorted out to a large extent from within, she would at best be doing what a compounder does in the absence of a duty doctor in a hospital. And with physical wounds that may work. But with emotions, you can never say you know… you can mar a life for a lifetime if you don't know what you are doing…

Let us become strangers once again...

The hardest part in letting go is not the fact that you need to let go.  It is the fact that you are not ready to do so without knowing the reason why.  And I guess this is true of any relationship.  A friend of mine I met the other day for coffee was talking to me about how she is unable to understand why suddenly another friend just dropped out of her life without any warning.  They used to meet up every weekend, go out together as a family and share a lot of personal stories. It suddenly came to pass that the friend had her sister visiting her, and the calls tapered off.  She put it down to the visit of her sister, and she went to visit them too. But she came away feeling very cold about the whole visit, for reasons she could not explain.  The sister left, she messaged a couple of times, the response was perfunctory … As far as she was concerned, it ended here.

She also spoke about another friend, who used to practically live in her house, but of late was hardly to be seen. Of course, her new job kept her busy, but then she was not talking about meeting- even the usual phone connect had dimmed. However, she openly confronted this friend about this fact, and told her how much she felt the absence.  Though the friend did agree that she was not around as much as she was before, and she too felt the lacuna, what hurt was that there were no attempts to even minimise the distance between them, even after this talk. I guess this hurt her more.

Realigning an existing relationship is extremely difficult.  In the case of the earlier friend, she could honestly say she did not feel like even wanting to find out what went wrong; in the case of the second friend, she tried and there were no results.  What I could observe in both these cases were that the relationship had shifted gears.  The connect was totally missing, because of which the score for count, the feeling that she mattered enough in the other person’s life, was very low.

She had the option of picking up the phone and confronting them with this fact: to tell them she was nursing a bruised feeling, a hurt.  But she was too tired.  And though she was still coming to terms with the whole new dynamics of the relationships, she believed in : “If you cannot bring the story to a happy ending, then it is better to give it a beautiful turn and then forget the story... Let us become strangers once again…” Lines from an old Bollywood song!