When words ruin everything we are trying to say
MY daughter, Sahar, sent me a WhatsApp message from her room, and it created a cocoon of silence around me for a while.
“I wonder if it is exhausting
to be a tree.
To lose something,
year after year,
only to trust that it will
someday grow back.”
This is a quote from American author Jasmine Warga’s lyrical, life-affirming story of a Syrian teenager dealing with the sudden loss of her home and relocation in America. I replied with a ‘hug’ emoji to acknowledge receiving the message.
These minimal words had made Sahar pause when they appeared in the book she is reading. By sending them to me, my teenager was letting me know what speaks to her. She is hurting about something. She is seeking to heal. She is tired, but she knows she will recover. She is sharing a part of her with me, using someone else’s poetry.
Talking is not always a reliable way to communicate. It is indispensable, of course. It is also over-rated.
I know I struggle to not sound bitter and frustrated when I am trying to juggle the everyday roles of parent, householder, team leader, pet-carer and a person whose phone and door-bell ring a lot. The endless pandemic months have only exacerbated matters by dismantling boundaries and confining our multiple selves in the same time zone and space. We are collectively exhausted, and it is not the fault of the person closest to us.
When the sun came out after many grim winter days in Delhi this week, my daughters and I found ourselves moving out towards pools of sunlight to thaw our bones and souls. I took a photo of Sahar and our dog in the park next door and sent it to my husband, Afzal. I captioned it, ‘Dhoop, daughter and dog’.
Afzal was driving towards his home in a village in east Uttar Pradesh and replied with a photo of the wide expressway stretched ahead of him. ‘Dhoop, road aur tanhai,’ he typed. I sent him the YouTube link of ‘Tu Jhoom’ from Coke Studio’s Season 14. I felt reassured that the transcendent voices of Abida Parveen and Naseebo Lal will elevate the quality of his solitude. I felt lucky to have something other than spoken words that help us talk to each other.
In our family, we often relish the time when we are away from each other, because it is also a time when we manage to connect with each other a lot more tenderly and with deeper humour. We feel safer sharing our moods, conflicts and challenges. We take each other’s issues a lot less personally. We are able to care for the other without feeling overwhelmed ourselves.
In her book, ‘Reviving Ophelia — Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls’, psychotherapist Mary Pipher makes a distinction between the intellectual abilities of teenagers and their emotional needs. “Often because they are so bright, adults expect them to be mature emotionally. They are, but they aren’t. They react to global tragedies with the emotional intensity of adolescents. They may be able to see through the empty values and shallow culture of their peers, but they have the social needs of adolescents. They feel utterly alone in their suffering.”
Before I saw my daughters in these lines, I saw my own adolescent self. I was hyper-aware about international events and injustice in the world around me, but unable to imagine a solution and lacking agency, my response would often veer towards self-harm and abject despair. The gap between my intuitive morality and my inability to regulate my emotions was vast. It was hard to tell whether I was ahead of my peers, or hopelessly lagging behind. Perhaps, because both where accurate at different times.
A younger friend recently confided in me with these words: “I feel like a villain, like a totally useless person. Everyone hates me, no one trusts me.”
“That’s not true,” I said to him.“But there is a term for your feelings — emotional dysregulation”.
I stopped myself from over-speaking. I just wanted him to know that the same feeling that seemed to isolate and trap him was also so surprisingly universal that psychologists have a phrase for it. I wanted to help him create a separation between himself and the emotion. To understand that, however nagging the feeling may be, it is an exaggerated response. It will deflate. It will be replaced with self-worth and joy.
“Jo bhi mai kehna chahoon, barbaad karey alfaaz mere,” sings Jordan, the lead character played by Ranbir Kapoor in Imtiaz Ali’s ‘Rockstar’.
“Whatever I am trying to say gets ruined by the words I use.” It is a useful line to remind us of the limitations of discussions, debates and arguments. To take our intellectual prowess less seriously in our relationships and park it aside for significant periods of time.
“What should I write about,” I had lamented in my usual way just before I started typing this column. “Mamma, write about your children lurking around in strange corners,” our youngest child said quickly. “You mean my strange children lurking in corners,” I responded. They laughed and laughed as if it was the funniest thing I had ever said.
— The writer is a filmmaker & author.
