“Once I came back from the grocery shop with the bread packet in my hand and two coupons of one rupee each.
That was my first introduction to public humiliation.
My mom beat me up in front of my friends who were waiting for me to bat. I was clueless why was I beaten up so mercilessly. It was the coupons. That was the time when there was a shortage of change and shopkeepers had started making coupons of different denomination.
Later in life when I learnt economics and managed to spell the word Government, I cursed them both.
That episode was just the beginning of my childlike ego threshing.
Mom, once, similarly thrashed me up for telling the truth. I had scored six on twenty in my mathematics paper.
I never could get along with division we almost had a hate hate relationship.
On being asked why I couldn’t score, instead of blaming division, I put the blame on my tuition teacher, who took it personally and convinced my mom that mathematics wasn’t my glass of milk. That was it; I was thrashed up again, this time because of mathematics and an incompetent teacher.
Those spankings especially in full public view, in slow measures can completely crush a child’s confidence and belief in self.
I dreaded taking decisions. I felt I always took the wrong ones.
I couldn’t stand up to a shopkeeper and tell him that I didn’t want that piece of paper resembling money...
I didn’t have the courage to tell my teacher that I didn’t understand the damn thing called division...
and most importantly I had no steam to stand in front of this towering figure filled with rage, my mom, and tell her that I was shivering with fright and that I so much wanted her to show some mercy on me.
She would , at the dinner table, when she would place two Paankh (chicken wing pieces) pieces in my plate and in spite of my naïve rebelliousness I had to finish it off simply so that she could be assured that I had forgiven her.”
*Do catch up, next Friday, with your late afternoon cup of tea or maybe coffee, the story of hE continues.
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