Standing on My Brother's Shoulders

by Tara J Lal

  ‘Everything is going to be okay,’ she said simply and she smiled at me with an angel-like purity. Then she ran away. I was dumbfounded. Bewildered, I stared at the single wild flower that sat in my hand. When I looked up, her father caught my eye and smiled at me. ‘It’s just something nice we like to do, to make someone happy.’

  That little girl could never have known the impact she had on me, that day. In that fleeting moment she touched my soul; she gave me hope.

  Therapy gave me tools and helped me to understand how they worked, so that I could bash a path through the thicket of my sadness. Therapy opened the door of awareness. I was no longer running blindly but had slowed to a walk, which had enabled me to look around at the beauty and the pain. Gradually I began to emerge, and again glimpsed the mountain ahead. I began to ascend once more, occasionally stopping to plan my climb, but often forgetting, in my haste, to look behind to see how far I had come.

  CHAPTER 23

  Hannah once said to me, ‘Therapy comes in many forms, Tara.’ I had smiled at the time, a little confused. For years while living in Bondi I walked tentatively past North Bondi Surf Lifesaving Club, wondering if people like me could go in. It always felt intimidating, bustling and busy, full of bronzed fit bodies carrying surf craft and rescue gear in and out of the club, proudly wearing their red-and-yellow patrol uniforms. It took me eight years before I finally found the courage to walk into the club and enrol in the bronze medallion course, driven in part by the memory of my mother’s dying words to Adam: Always remember that whatever you do, you are part of the community, the wider world, and every citizen has a responsibility toward that community, to care, to give and to take a share in responsibility for it.

  I became a volunteer surf lifesaver and almost by accident I was introduced to the sport of surfboat rowing, where four rowers power through the surf directed by the sweep standing at the back – the captain and the eyes of the boat. The sport is a part of lifesaving by virtue of the fact that prior to the advent of motorized craft the boats were used to rescue people.

  I had never rowed in my life as became evident when I first got in a surfboat and promptly sat facing the wrong direction. The episode with my dad attempting to push-start the car by rocking it side to side did spring to mind.

  After that initial mishap I discovered that surfboat rowing was indeed a type of therapy for me. It brought me far more than I could ever have imagined on that first day when I stepped in a boat at Botany Bay.

  After I learned the basics of the sport in the flat water it was time to venture out into the surf. We had planned to go out on a day when the ocean was calm. Unfortunately when we turned up at Maroubra beach, the swell had other ideas. It suddenly looked bigger and angrier than it ever had before, but I felt a tingle of nervous excitement course through my body. We walked the boat into the water, jumping in quickly as the waves crashed around us, tossing the two-hundred-kilo boat around as if it were a feather. Once on the water, we found ourselves engaged in a wrestle with the ocean, smacked and jostled around by the waves. My fear dissipated, dissolving into the ocean, replaced by an overriding sense of joy. I squealed and laughed in a way I never had as a child. It was liberating, like the rafting on the Zambezi. There is something almost spiritual about finding that unison between your body, your sport and nature. Back on the beach I found myself throwing cartwheels, carefree and joyous. I had found my passion, and with passion comes clarity and connection.

  We started training together as a crew. Rowing, unlike athletics, is all about the team. It’s about timing, about doing everything together. We went to ridiculous extremes to ensure we were in time with each other, even training in the gym to a metronome. We built a team and being part of that team gave me an incredible sense of belonging. It was almost as if I had another family, for surfboat rowing can be dangerous. You have to look out for your crew. If the boat capsizes, the first thing you do is ‘count heads’, making sure your crew are all safe. You train together eight or nine times a week, seeing each other at your absolute worst and your absolute best and everything in between. It binds you to each other.

  We started to compete. I hadn’t competed in sport since my teenage days as a long jumper when my coach despaired of me for I loved training, but I hated competing. I was always one of those athletes that ‘should have done better’. As my current coach says, racing is ninety per cent mental and ten per cent physical. I had all the physical attributes but my mind betrayed me. When I lost a race it merely proved what I already knew, that I wasn’t as good as everyone thought I was. Really I was a fraud, just as Adam believed he was when he had written; I have lied all my life …

  In many ways I found the challenges of surfboat rowing to be a metaphor for life. When the ocean is flat and calm, the race is simple, the obstacles small, but so then the excitement and the opportunities for learning are diminished. When the surf picks up and the ocean is rough, the stakes are higher, the risks greater, the obstacles bigger, the highs are higher, the falls larger, but the joy, as well as the fear, is magnified. And so are the lessons learned.

  I always went into races driven by the fear of losing rather than the desire to win. Not exactly the psychological attributes of a top athlete. I kept thinking that if I could just win this medal or that medal then I’d be good enough, but I never was. Then one day at the New South Wales state surf lifesaving titles something shifted. We had made the final and I walked toward the boat carrying my oar, nothing between me and the sun and the breeze and the water but a swimming costume. In that instant I was completely myself, one hundred per cent in my own skin, grounded in the present. I stood on the beach, staring at the ocean, waiting for our race to be called. The ocean was rough but a sense of calm prevailed within me. I knew all I had to do was my best. That was good enough, no matter the outcome. My heart and my body and my mind seemed to merge into one. In that instant the struggle dissolved.

  The race was almost effortless, surreal. I felt a graceful power surge through my oar into my body as the boat sliced through the water. I saw a beautiful green wave building behind us, feeling its force build beneath us. With one powerful stroke, we pulled the nose of the boat over the lip of the wave and felt it take off, accelerating and scudding through the water, breathing life into my soul, the very essence of passion. We came home with a silver medal that day. It is one of the proudest medals I have ever won, for it was the day that I realized I didn’t have to be perfect. I could let go of the curse of perfectionism* that had hounded my brother: I wasn’t perfect and I couldn’t accept it.

  In rowing we talk of inches. With every stroke you might only gain an inch on the crew in front of you, so that you don’t notice the ground you’re making until suddenly you’ve gained a boat length. So it is with healing. It comes in inches. Grief comes in waves; healing comes in inches.

  * Research has demonstrated that there is an association between perfectionism and risk of suicide. It is important to point out, however, that there are many risk factors for suicide. A person may possess many such risk factors without ever experiencing suicidal thoughts or behaviour.

  PART THREE

  Making Peace with the Past

  CHAPTER 24

  I decided that it was time for me to visit India with my dad. I had been on my own for several years now, building my confidence and my strength. Now was the time to take another step into my past. It had been over seventy years since my father had left his home country as a six-year-old. In all those years he had never been back. He had last seen his brother Shambhuji in London in 1970. They knew nothing of each other’s lives. I needed to trace my roots and give my father the opportunity to trace his.

  I looked out of the aeroplane window at the clouds below, aware of the tension in my body, the tightness in my stomach. Adam had loved India passionately but he had also become depressed while he was there. Had going to India been a catalyst for his suicide? Would it be the same for me? Was I strong enough? Would the emotional stress on
my father be too great? Might it spark another manic episode?

  I knew that this trip was about facing fears – mine and my father’s. We were heading off on a journey laden with meaning and emotion.

  I had flown to England so I could travel with my father. Now I glanced at him, at his soft chubby fingers as he fumbled with the finicky aeroplane food. His hands trembled as he battled with a yoghurt container that seemed intent on frustrating him. His anxiety was rubbing off on me.

  Would he have anything in common with his brother? How would he cope with the poverty? Adam had died only two months after returning from India …

  ‘Oh, uh … Tara.’ I was woken from my reverie by my father’s voice.

  ‘Yes, Dad.’

  ‘I need to use the bathroom.’

  ‘Okay, Dad. Here, give me your tray. I’ll come with you.’

  I watched him tremble as he tried to undo the seat belt.

  ‘I’ll get it for you, Dad.’

  Finally, after some kerfuffle, he was safely up and standing in the aisle, only to find there was a queue.

  ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Oh, oh dear … uh, uh … I think it’s too late.’

  I looked down to see a dark shadow track its way down my father’s beige trousers. My mind flicked back to that morning, and the sight of his open suitcase. I remembered seeing only some absorbent pants, a couple of books, a razor, a toothbrush, and a pair of pyjamas. Nothing else.

  At that moment, I realized just how hard this trip was going to be. My father was an old man and he was frightened. He had nearly pulled out of the trip altogether a couple of months before. I had promised I would look after him.

  He had vivid images of the India he knew as a young boy: the village in which he had spent the first six years of his life; the house in which he had been born; his mother; sacred memories. I was worried they would be tarnished when Dad discovered that the place no longer looked the same as that tiny village in northern India that he remembered. I wanted to give my father peace, for I saw his torment and it devastated me to see him live it.

  I had brought Adam’s diaries with me, knowing that in many ways this journey was a pilgrimage in his memory, something I needed to do for my brother and for myself. I smiled as I recalled his first impressions of India.

  In India at last! What an incredible place it is. I think perhaps one aspect of India worth noting is how totally unfrightening a place it is. Obviously, at first, initial bewilderment causes slight anxiety, but this rapidly evaporates, leaving only curiosity and delight. I feel so comfortable here, so unafraid of encountering new people and places. One also develops from this confidence a greater willingness to be independent and a greater desire to investigate further. People do not intimidate you but show you friendship and respect.

  One becomes so submerged in the transient abstraction of India that there develops an unconscious acceptance of life and its miseries in your mind far deeper and broader than you would have ever previously imagined. Everything finds its place, just as the colour and the beauty do, so does the pain. But that is not to say one loses reactions to it all, they still pervade your general existence – the surprise, the bewilderment and the disgust. Yet somehow they are less raw, borne with a greater and growing assuredness, their edges refined and melted into one, sitting with a comfortable wholeness inside your head.

  I hoped this trip would allow me to be at peace with the past at last, so that I would be able to sit comfortably with it, to respect and appreciate it for what it gave me, rather than suffering for what it had taken from me.

  I had never met my uncle Shambhuji. After he had returned to India at the age of nine, he and my father had been worlds apart. Their lives, their education, could not have been more different. Shambhuji had had very little formal schooling; at the age of twenty he had been commissioned into the infantry, where he’d served for twenty-nine years, fighting battles in Pakistan and Kashmir. My father had two university degrees and a PhD.

  Apart from Christmas cards sent every year they’d had no contact.

  I wondered what my uncle would think of me, in my thirties, unmarried and without children, a woman who rowed surfboats. I was the antithesis of a typical Indian woman. I had been reassured by the email he had sent in response to my letter. He sounded like the opposite of my father; he wrote with passion about his life, and his love of the army.

  At the arrivals hall at Mumbai airport we walked into a sea of Indian faces. I cast around to find one that resembled the photo Adam had taken of my uncle twenty years before, but one face seemed to melt into another. Where are you, Uncle? Where are you? No one came forward to claim us, the rejects, the last pick on the school soccer team. Only the taxi drivers seemed keen to adopt us.

  ‘It’s okay, Dad. Don’t worry. I’ll find a phone and call Aunty Urmila.’

  Dad shrank into himself, cowering, as more and more people crowded around us, fascinated.

  Finally, I managed to get through to the house in Pune. To my relief, my aunt answered.

  ‘You are here, no?’ I loved that Indian habit of putting a negative at the end of a question.

  ‘Yes, but we can’t find Uncle.’

  She tutted. ‘Oh, dear girl, Uncle has borrowed a mobile phone. You must call him.’

  I dialled the number she gave and it rang for an eternity. Finally I heard a voice.

  ‘Allo.’

  ‘Hello, Uncle. It’s Tara.’

  ‘Oh dear, we must have missed each other!’ my uncle replied in a beautiful, slightly staccato, Indian accent. ‘What do you look like?’ He giggled.

  Like we walked straight out of a comedy show, I felt like saying.

  ‘I’m big with dark curly hair …’

  ‘Ah, yes yes …’

  I saw a spritely and lithe-looking man strolling toward us with a broad smile on his face. Was this him? My father merely stood bewildered. Then the man reached out his hand to Dad with a tear in his eye, and I watched as the brothers’ hands met for the first time in nearly four decades.

  Dad’s face lit up. ‘Ah, Shambhu!’

  My uncle ushered us off to a waiting car, chuckling all the while. He explained how he had felt something ‘tickling his thigh’ but that he had not realized that it was his mobile phone ringing until a gentleman standing next to him had alerted him to the fact. It turned out that he had not received the photos I had sent him so he’d had no idea what I looked like.

  I felt instantly at ease with my uncle, and thought how accurate Adam’s description of him had been:

  Yesterday Shambhu and I visited Bombay. It was lovely to be with him. My uncle, what a human he is. He was as teasing and relentless as ever. You should have seen him playing monsters with the kids, the little girl a wide-eyed princess and the boy a naughty little monkey. How playful Shambhu is. He has that endearing sense of mischief. He is so human, so full of life and so different from Dad and Samarth.

  Shambhu did indeed have a lovely cheekiness about him that almost seemed at odds with his military background.

  On our first night in India I searched through my luggage to find the album of old family photographs I had put together at Shambhu’s request. I had struggled to find any photographs of the five of us together. When I handed the album to him I felt the warmth and joy and sadness in his heart as he carefully turned each page, piecing together the last four decades.

  ‘You know, Shambhu, I think it was wrong of our father to make you come back to India as a child.’

  I heard the familiar rumbling anger in my father’s voice.

  ‘Ah no. No, Shivaji. It was my choice. Father never made me.’

  ‘That’s rubbish, Shambhu. You were a child. You had to face so much hardship.’

  One of the many demons Dad carried with him was his guilt that Shambhu had grown up in India in a substantially less privileged environment than himself and Samarth in England. He had thought that by talking with Shambhu he might absolve
himself of some of this guilt.

  ‘No no, Shivaji, you are very wrong. Yes, it is true, for the first six months when I returned to India I found it very difficult.’ My uncle chuckled as he recalled how he had not known how the toilet worked, could not understand the language, and how his uncle always pocketed the money that his father sent to support him.

  ‘Yes, Uncle was a crook, but he meant well.’ Shambhuji laughed and nodded his head; Dad tutted and shook his.

  ‘You didn’t have an education.’

  ‘Ah, but Shivaji, I wanted to join the army. I’d always wanted that. It was not just our father’s wish, it was mine too.’ Then the tears welled in his eyes. ‘You know, just the thought of Kashmir. Huddling together with my men under one blanket at fourteen thousand feet and walking out in front of them on the battlefield as they followed me …’

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear.’ I heard my dad mumble under his breath.

  Can’t you feel the passion, Dad? I could connect so easily with what my uncle was saying. I recalled my time in Zimbabwe, and the feeling of belonging that came with rowing; the shared struggle, the shared joys.

  When my uncle spoke, it came from his heart.

  ‘I have had a very good life and I have been lucky to have had a career of my choice and to have enjoyed it so thoroughly. I would never trade that.’

  My father continued shaking his head.

  I wanted to shout, Because life really isn’t about material things, Dad! But I didn’t. I merely sat and admired the insight my brother had had at just eighteen years of age:

  Surely happiness in life comes from sharing it with others … a binding of oneself to its essence … what a Western product I am – to think of happiness in terms of affluence … Happiness in its essence is sharing and caring or compassion.

  Even in his seventies my father was unable to accept that a life in India, a life less abundant in material wealth, could bring happiness. It seemed like a terrible irony when I looked from one brother to the other: Shambhu’s vitality, his upright stance, eyes ahead; my father stooped over, looking down. A man bound by regret and fear; his own son, with all his privileged upbringing, lost to suicide.