Indian Instincts

by Miniya Chatterji

  My father took loans and worked at jobs far beneath his calibre as an aeroplane pilot. Unable to cope with either the corruption or the callous attitude in the ‘civilian world’, as we call it, he would quit each time. We would all be relieved when this happened as none of us liked seeing him struggle. To make up for the loss of income, my mother would increase the number of students who came home every evening for tuitions. At night, my father would pick up my brother from his coaching class, so that he could study from another remote-learning coaching package he had been enrolled in, complete the homework prescribed by the teachers at his new school, and prepare for his frequent assignments and exams. Bafflingly, the curriculum for the IIT entrance exam is different from the curriculum at school. On his fifteenth birthday, I had bought him a basketball and hoop, which he immediately put up in the courtyard of our home. For three years, the only physical activity he did was shoot the ball in the basket a few times during study breaks.

  At the end of three years, my brother’s school marks dipped because of his focus on the IIT entrance exam. He was unrecognizable in appearance and spirit—he had fattened up and was irritable most of the time. He was demanding with my mother, who would sit up with him at nights, helping him learn by rote lessons in organic chemistry, a subject she had herself never studied. There was one picture of the monkey god Hanuman on his study table and one inside his books. My parents became more devout than ever before. There were always more books to be bought for my brother, and we sold our family home to continue his coaching classes and get him all the study material he needed.

  Finally, the time came for the IIT exam. My brother’s scores did not make for the top percentile, which was required to study at IIT. This meant he had failed. Moreover, his moderate performance in school got him a seat in a relatively low-ranked college in Delhi. I will never forget the reaction—my family remained unfazed by his results. My brother decided to forsake his seat in college, take the year off from any formal education, and instead prepare again for the IIT entrance test the following year. My parents supported him wholeheartedly. By then, I had moved out of India to pursue my own university education in Paris on a full scholarship. I worried for my parents in New Delhi, working as a team to support my brother, who did nothing else but sit at home and prepare for the fourth straight year to make it through to IIT.

  The following year, he succeeded in clearing the IIT entrance. It was as if an unsurmountable weight had been lifted off our family’s shoulders. We could laugh and make plans again. With the savings from my scholarship money, I organized tightly budgeted holidays for my parents in Europe. When I started working, I would get my brother to live with me in Paris during his summer vacations and send him off with a camera I’d gifted him to Amsterdam, Madrid, Rotterdam. I would hook him up as an intern at local companies in Paris, and take him out to bars. All those years of preparing for one ghastly test had to be undone.

  My brother eventually regained his social skills and physique, as well as his humour. He completed a master’s degree in the human computer interface degree at Carnegie Mellon University in the US, and after a year of work in Washington DC, he joined Google’s headquarters in San Francisco. I was not sure whose dream it was—his or my parents’—that had come true. Perhaps my parents’ dreams had become my brother’s. I was only glad that things turned out the way they did instead of going wrong as they do for so many people.

  I have often talked to my parents about those gruelling years they chose to put my brother through. We reminisce about the shared experience of the struggle, and the pride it ultimately brought us. My parents—much to mine and my brother’s frustration and admiration—have insisted on living their lives in exactly the same manner as before. They do not accept financial support from us. Indeed, the story of each child and each parent is different. However, after returning to India as an adult and a soon-to-be-parent myself, I feel I am better able to understand the sense of perennial deprivation that frames the context for this behaviour.

  First, there is an overarching sentiment among adults in India that nothing ever works here. It is not just the 21.9 per cent of Indians living below the poverty line who feel the lack of resources.6 The colossal size of our population, combined with pathetic distribution systems of food, money and health services, leaves hundreds of millions wanting more. We are habituated to expect that due resources will either not reach us at all or not be received in their entirety, and certainly not on time. Adults, no matter how wealthy, are frustrated, and do not wish this life for their children.

  Second, most of our educational institutions were established in the decade or so after Independence, by the elite who focused on higher education as that was what they themselves desired the most. They ignored the needs of the masses, who still lack primary education. Since then, education, and Macaulay’s gift of the English language, has at times become more of a divisive force than one that could unite Indians—there are many who shame those who are uneducated in English and speakers of vernacular languages. The generation that does not speak English wants their child to do so. Education is an asset that has changed fortunes—parents who have not had any know its value, and push their children towards it.

  Third, the social stratification of the caste system, fortified by class hierarchy based on wealth and societal status, bestows a feeling of relative deprivation on anyone who is not top of the pecking order. A wealthy businessman might feel he lacks the influence of a major politician. A working-class woman could feel she deserves a better job. A street beggar might feel that education could have got him money and more dignity. There are many social ladders of hierarchy in India—far more in number and rungs than any other country—and most of us are simultaneously positioned at different levels on several ladders. As a result, we are lower than someone else on one ladder or another. Often, we see the continuation of our own lives in our children, and the climb up these ladders continues through them.

  An entire book can be written on the number of reasons Indians feel constantly deprived of resources. The approach to parenting in India has been severely affected by this, with parents hoping that their children will make up for what they lack, in terms of the evolution of social and/or economic status. We ask ourselves as parents: How can I ensure that my child has what I do not have? Can my child improve my own condition?

  While the first question seems altruistic, the second question is considered selfish and unspeakable. A parent who sacrifices many years of his life to further the career of their child, and does not work hard enough towards their own, is regarded as morally superior to the parent who works at achieving his own personal ambition. This is odd, because by this logic, an industrialist who toils to produce a fortune and a man who robs a bank can be regarded as equally immoral, since they both have sought wealth for their selfish benefit. There is a demonization of selfishness that has created double standards and contradictions in relationships, including that between a parent and a child.

  Working mothers suffer from the guilt and social stigma of being too selfish to not be with their children all day. In India the forces that make them feel so are at work even before a child is born.

  Around the time I began writing this essay, I discovered I was pregnant. Elated at the news, I immediately went to a gynaecologist at a well-known clinic in the posh Khan Market area of central Delhi. The doctor was a pleasant, middle-aged woman dressed in a pastel cotton salwar kameez. Swinging out of her chair behind the desk, she briskly walked over to her ultrasound machine and asked me to lie down on the bed next to it. A quick check later, it was confirmed that a child was indeed in the making. Thereafter, she was chatty, obviously accustomed to naive first-time mothers-to-be like myself, and was ready to offer ample advice.

  ‘You must now restrict yourself to the bed. Just lie still and avoid movement,’ she said.

  ‘Lie in bed for the next seven months?!’ I asked, aghast. ‘What about travel? I have to be in Dubai and Paris for wo
rk next month!’

  ‘No, no, avoid air travel. No exercise. No sex. Eat bland food,’ she admonished. ‘Make these sacrifices for your baby.’

  I sat there staring at her, devastated at the pronouncement and the prospect of the next few months. A few moments later, I felt even worse, guilty that I was thinking about lifestyle and work commitments instead of the well-being of my unborn child. But I had erroneously presumed that an experienced doctor’s advice must be based on scientific facts.

  ‘Do not eat papaya and pineapple,’ the doctor continued with her advice.

  A few months later, at a jazz bar in one of Delhi’s luxury boutique hotels, I was stopped by a bouncer at the door.

  ‘Madam, no. You cannot enter,’ he said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You are pregnant.’

  ‘Yes, so?’ I asked, surprised. ‘I have a few months to go before I deliver!’

  ‘Sorry, we can’t let you in—hotel policy,’ he said, holding me by my elbow and taking me aside.

  ‘Which law is this hotel policy based on?’ I asked. By now, the man had been joined by his colleague, both dressed in black pant suits with walkie-talkies in hand.

  ‘No, no policy, there is just loud music and a lot of movement inside. People are walking around, it is not safe for pregnant women,’ the second man said.

  ‘And who are you to decide what is safe for me?’ I asked. ‘A pregnant woman is capable of using her own judgement about what is best for her.’

  ‘I have heard pregnant women should not go to bars,’ said the first man. ‘You cannot enter, madam.’

  Another two months later, in the last trimester of my pregnancy, I began to wonder and plan how I could best manage all the changes that would come with the baby. I decided to work till the end of my pregnancy, until the delivery, and thereafter take about three months of maternity leave. The Government of India had recently and generously extended the duration of paid maternity leave from three months to six. I wanted to be active, productive and financially secure as well as a good mother, and give my utmost to my firstborn. In all the previous organizations I worked at—none of them in India—I came across women who were pregnant, yet living a healthy, active and efficient work and social life until the last day of their pregnancy. That was how I had always aspired to be. Moreover, since age seventeen, I had earned my living and I wanted to continue doing that to fend for myself and ensure my baby’s comfort. I had checked that I was medically healthy enough to do so.

  ‘You must keep your priorities straight,’ a top human resources executive once told me.7

  ‘And which are?’

  ‘Your priority is your baby. In the last two months before your delivery, you should stop working. There is nothing much to do at work anyway. Budgets have been squeezed as well.’

  ‘Of course not. I am in good health, and I will work till the end of my pregnancy.’

  ‘No, it will not be possible for us to allow that. I have consulted all our colleagues and we think it is best for you to rest and return only after six months or so.’

  ‘Six months! That is for me to decide, isn’t it?’ I asked, rolling my eyes at this judgement passed by the company’s all-male top management. ‘What about maternity? Will these six months be paid?’

  ‘No. You can avail the medical insurance provided by the company. We have a very good insurance package that will cover a lot of the medical costs,’ he said.

  The beginning of the journey of parenthood is often scarred by stereotypes based on the personal beliefs of doctors, entertainment providers and employers, who would usually be expected to abide by science, fact and law. But in India, this is not always the case. For example, I later discovered that my gynaecologist had mixed old granny tales of abstinence from papaya and pineapple into her medical beliefs. Regular exercise and a healthy sex life, I later learnt, are beneficial during pregnancy. My unborn baby and I travelled to six countries and there was no problem. All this makes me wonder how many pregnant women in India are grounded by the agents of society, their health ruined by lack of activity, spirits dampened by clichés, and their careers written off by narrow-minded employers who wrongly undermine their capabilities. If they do not give in to these pressures, they are made to feel terribly guilty about being bad parents.

  The demonization of selfishness continues to be inflicted on parents even after their baby is born. Parents who cannot afford to provide the best material facilities for their child are made to feel that they have been egoistic and not sacrificed enough. On the other hand, young couples who are both working hard to earn a livelihood in the 24/7 corporate work culture in India are shamed for being ‘absent parents’.

  Divorced parents face the social stigma of choosing their own happiness over that of their children, who are assumed to derive a benefit from the presence of quarrelling parents. In contrast, as I pointed out earlier, parents who make great sacrifices of their own happiness, for the education or careers or well-being of their children, are considered by society to be morally superior to those who have not done so. Often, this is despite the tendency of the sacrificing parent to suffer a deep sense of resentment. Such a parent might hope that the child would make sacrifices for the parent’s benefit as well, making it akin to a burden.

  These ethical parenting conflicts are common in India’s urban pockets as well as in the sixteen-million-strong Indian diaspora, where parents struggle to build a life in a new environment as well as raise a family. The majority of Indians—68 per cent of our population, or 833 million people—who live in villages, have other additional issues.

  In rural India, a farmer who needs more male hands for farm work might have his infant daughter killed as she is perceived as useless while he seeks to pursue the economic stability of the family. Female infanticide has been banned since 18708 in parts of the subcontinent, but it persists in many corners of our country even today. One of the major reasons it occurs is the uneven allocation of resources (not always the lack of them).9 Limited resources are often distributed unevenly, and so within poor households, the least-advantaged person, often the girl child, is likely to suffer the most from shortfalls and incomplete protection. And so, even if she is allowed to live, the daughter is still likely to be treated as a burden because her eventual marriage will involve dowry and gifts demanded by the groom’s family. She is not considered much help on the work front anyway.

  Meanwhile, it is common to hear in public conversations among the educated lot in India that a daughter is a great liability for the parents, which ends only when the daughter gets married. The socio-economic context is such that this is said without hesitation, and often as a gesture of parental love for daughters. This attitude is ultimately echoed in contemporary Indian films, popular television shows and literature. It is a dangerous chicken-and-egg situation that produces a highly regressive attitude towards the girl child who is perceived to have little to do in improving her own condition or that of her parents, and is therefore considered better off married and gone.

  The attitude is so pervasive that girls are married off dangerously young across the country. Currently, 320,000 girls below the age of fifteen in India are married, and have already given birth to two children—an alarming increase of 88 per cent from 2001. Further, 280,000 married girls in the age group of fifteen to nineteen have already given birth to four children, which is also an increase of 65 per cent from 170,000 in 2001.10

  This trend is not symptomatic of only parental neglect or aversion—it is also a consequence of the persistently degrading socio-economic scenario in India. While the GDP was soaring, 82 per cent of rural India still lacked basic amenities in 2010, and 240 million Indians do not have access to basic electricity even in 2017.11 Moreover, the presence of television and other media have made them aware of what they are not privileged enough to possess. Therefore, if undue parental pressure, female infanticide, regarding a daughter’s education inferior to a son’s12 and early marriage are consid
ered actions taken by desperate parents to improve their socio-economic condition, we can agree that the only way to put an end to these practices is ensuring more equitable economic growth.

  The state of parenting in India, when seen through this lens of resource deprivation, shows us the darkest side of unequal economic growth. In a fast developing economy that lacks equality, the risks for the most vulnerable sections are cumulative. The greatest burdens fall on those who are disadvantaged to begin with, and the greatest threat is to the development of young children in families who feel pressured and disadvantaged.

  Children are influenced by their experiences, actions and interactions, as well as by broader environmental influences, including the values and feelings of their parents, which in turn are coloured by the condition they grow up in.13 If parents feel pressured by societal expectations and financial constraints, their angst is reflected in the upbringing of their children. The quality of children’s social, emotional and moral development, especially their sense of identity and self-worth, is shaped by how they understand this, and their interpretation of their role in causing pain to their parents. This is how children gradually gauge their relative social position, competence and access to opportunities for personal, social and economic advancement. And so, growing up in an atmosphere of the parents’ real or perceived resource deprivation has adverse influences on a child.

  For India’s economic growth to benefit our children, we need equitable access to jobs, effective fiscal regimes, and policies to support families, especially those that have been consistently excluded till date. We need growth that promotes good health, a safe environment, law-abiding employers, and a strong social security net, provided by the government and the private sector, which eliminates absolute poverty and reduces feelings of relative deprivation.