Excess Baggage

Lend a helping hand! Some luggage are tough to carry and helping hand makes life so much easier…. So went the classic Hindi lyric featured in the 1957 movie ‘Naya Daur’. The movie focus was not relationships but nation building – a common motif in the 1950s and 1960s – early days of independent India, but this theme could work for relationships as well.

 By the time you are 30, you would have had your fair share of emotional baggage from various life experiences. Some carry a light case while others have heavy baggage containing issues from unhappy childhood as well. In a society which is moving towards low attention span as well as low emotional capacity, which means, people are more willing to break away from relationships than deal with partners’ emotional baggage. It’s like we are constantly evaluating our partners, friends and people around us and a slightest chink in the armor is enough for us to walk out of our relationships (romantic or otherwise). I have myself been aware of close friends (from my college circle) not keeping in touch as one of them is going through hard times and other feels these hardships have turned him needy and it’s difficult to have a conversation with him.  I remember feeling the same... whenever we get together; this individual would bring up the topic about his hard times and would mope about it. We would feel terrible about it, almost guilty that we are having a good time with our life; but then we would try to cheer him up and take him clubbing. For those few hours every month or once in two months, he would have fun and forget all about his problems. We don’t claim we were doing him a favor, because for us he was still the 17 year old kid from college we used to hang out with. Our regular meets and reminiscing about college days were acting like stress valve to our friend - useful to blow some steam and get back to facing life with new vigor. 

 Make no mistake, we all have had our fair share of misfortunes / bad phases / family tragedy and / or financial problems when we have found it difficult to cope up and even more difficult to face our friends. You see, what we don’t realize is that the most difficult thing in this world is to show your vulnerability to others. Mostly, people end up insulating themselves from friends and family and try to fight the bad times alone. Add to that, the burden of selfish individuals around us who feel they are doing a favor by even listening to our problems, leave alone helping us solve them. This cocktail is hazardous and toxic. It triggers a viscous cycle of depression that does not end well. In the end, they are not asking for much, just a friendly ear. It’s a blessed feeling to be able to help someone and one must thank the individual for opening up about their problems to us rather than avoid them thinking talking to them drags down our spirits. It might seem fantastic, but each one of us has done this to someone close to us at some point of time or other- knowingly or unknowingly. I myself have done this to my own mother – something I will never stop thinking about or have never forgotten. This keeps me aware of such situations festering around myself and where ever possible, I try to be of some help. Maybe, in the end it will make up for the mistakes I made earlier. That is my baggage.

Getting back to the topic, now that we are aware of emotional baggage of people surrounding us, what we normally don’t understand is that we ourselves have substantial baggage of our own. In some cases enough to put off people around us. We do not realize it mostly because we don’t hear ourselves talk. Like we critically evaluate every new person we meet to catch the trigger words that point to possible emotional baggage, I wish we took time to take one hard look at ourselves and things we speak and how it comes off on others so that we realize, we are no different. If we still wish people around us should not desert us due to our emotional baggage, we must extend that benefit people around us as well.

So long…...

Butterfly effect

Events are largely value neutral. There are no bad or good events in life. It is all about what perspective we have towards them and how we mold our life around them that makes them seem good or bad. Similar events in the life of different people bring out different results and many a times we are astounded by the variety in the repercussion of similar events of different people. Consider an event of losing ones parents at a tender age – it can either make you a mentally strong person who can take on the world or the same event could break you down or make you take on substance abuse to cope up with the loss. Again the event is the same, different people react to it differently. There is a whole theory built upon how seemingly unimportant events lead to important events and change course of ones’ life. This is called as ‘chaos theory’ or “butterfly effect”. Many thinkers suggest that there is a set goal for every ones life and these events just help us draw a path towards the eventual goal. Some path are easy and some not so much but each event is strictly value neutral. Ever thought how your life would have turned out if any significant event had gone the other way? Would you still be where you are; doing what you do; would you still be with whom you are? Fascinating isn’t it?

Roopam was a regular 12 year old girl – bubbly and always paying pranks with the neighboring kids in central Mumbai. One day while she played with her nephew (brother’s kid) there broke out a childish altercation between the two and being the elder one, she slapped him hard across the face. That night, her brother and his wife confronted her and were livid with her behavior. During the course of the dress down, her sister in law made it clear that being an adopted child, she should be more careful about how she behaved and never forget that she is living on their charity. That information was too much for a 12 year old kid to understand and assimilate. It completely crumbled her world. All this while, she believed that the house and everything inside belonged to her, all of sudden she felt like an outsider in her own country.

Then came another rumor that her elder sister Rupali – a theatre artist was in fact her mother. Roopam was a love child who had been given to her grandmother’s care as she was not wanted by her mother. Her mother, Rupali got married to a small time film producer when she was 3 years old and had moved out. During her tender age, she liked to believe that Rupali was her mother. Being born to a beautiful actress made her happy. However, this was not the only rumor doing the rounds; some people said she was left to die in a garbage bin from where her mother picked her up. Yet another story doing the rounds was that she was result of a rape by a wealthy man. Even though she was living in decent surroundings that by any stretch of imagination could not be called a slum, the fact that everyone believed that she was an unwanted child hurt her a lot.

Even though her mother never brought up the topic of her biological parents, the fact that she got to know about her being an adopted child made her an introvert and a loner. Her mother loved her immensely and would often scold her for sitting quietly in the corner moping at a time when she should be playing outside. After her father died, their financial situation deteriorated rapidly. For a while, her bother tried to support her and her mother financially but he had his own burdens and pretty soon they were pawning off pieces of mother’s jewelry to get by. That phase didn’t last long either. Roopam felt miserable that she was not able to help the woman who raised her as her own child in times of desperate need. One day, a friend told her that people have private parties in which they invite dancers – who are paid very well. Roopam had learnt Kathak (an Indian dance form) as a young child and was very good at it. She took up the offer to dance at private parties at the age of 13.

  

These parties were her safe space. Roopam was always accompanied by her mother to these parties and most of these parties were in farm houses or penthouses located on top floors. Rich men were her patrons and they often brought along hookers or mistresses. Roopam was perfectly legit and began earning a lot of money. She had a sense of satisfaction that she was running the house hold. This went on for 4 years. One day, when she was dancing at a party as a 17 year old, one of the patrons came up to her and lifted her in his arms. She started screaming and trying to get out of his grasp but he held on. Everyone around her were laughing and having a good time. Even her mother did not come to her rescue. The man then let go of her and went and sat with the hooker he brought along. Roopam had learnt a lesson that day; the job was not as secure as she thought, nor was anyone going to stand up for her if need be. She got to know a few hookers at these parties who seduced her to get into the profession. Before she turned 18, she was hooking for rich men who liked young girls. This went on for another 10 years and brought in more money than she could have imagined. Due to her connections with rich men, she was never harassed by the police authorities.

One day her brother in law killed her sister and his children before committing suicide. He had run into financial difficulties and his films were doing badly. This event came as a huge shock to Roopam and she gave up hooking. It was not clear to her as to why. Probably she hated the city or ran in the same circles as her late brother in law.  She took up a job as dancer in Dubai and moved there. The job was very good. She earned 10 times of what she earned and did not have to hook up with clients. Every month she sent a good amount home to meet her mother’s expenses and also started saving. Then one day, her mother was diagnosed with cancer and she had to move back to take care of her. Roopam did not like the dance bars in Bombay as they were mostly dingy places and often had police raids. Many times she thought of going back to hooking for money but something stopped her. One fine day, the Government brought a ban on dance bars and she was out of work. So many girls whose livelihood depended on that income were forced to get into prostitution but Roopam did not. She had a considerable saving and she used the time writing about her experiences. One day, one of her former client who was making a movie, called her up and asked her to work for him as an assistant director. The money was not great but she used the opportunity to build network in the film industry and tried pitching her scripts. One fine day, one of her scripts was liked but the director asked her to flesh in more details so that a proper movie could be filmed. Roopam had finally arrived in the glamour industry – the world that always fascinated her. She went on to write many movie scripts and is currently a very successful script writer in the film industry. Roopam admits that she always wanted to be here and even though the path she took was a tedious one, the experience helps with her writing job and she can bring in that X factor into the script.

If we look back, we could think…what would have happened if Roopam has not found at age 12 that she was an adopted child? What if….. she had not taken up dancing? What if…. She did not get into prostitution? WHAT IF…  We always feel that events in our life mold our personality and many times make us give up on life and seek to end it. We blame events. Roopam was meant to be in the film industry no matter what, so even if she faced a lot of tough events, each one helped her move towards her goal. Each one of us is destined to achieve few goals in our life time but many a times we blame insignificant events to give up on life not knowing that each one of these events are helping us reach our eventual goal.

Credits: Events in the story are based on the life of Shagufta Rafique who recently gave an television interview about her experience as a dancer working in a bar. Liberal dosage of fiction has been intertwined with few real life events. I thank Shagufta for her candor during the interview without which this post would not have been possible. 

So long……