Society and its influence on our Self-worth

The word "Self-worth" seemed to be stuck in my head since yesterday. While I was cutting brinjals this morning I looked at either halves and little pieces to check there were no trapped insects (dead or alive). That is how I've seen my mother inspect while cutting brinjals. Aren't we all like those insects caught between society and self-worth?

Suddenly I went back to January of 2000, I was working in Warick and was also pursing my MBA in the evening. My sister had got married that January, I still remember the exact date because it also happens to be her birthday. Not sure if it is a good idea to let these two days overlap; especially if you one of them fails it takes away your self-worth and drags those emotional attached along with you. 

Birthday and wedding day

After her marriage, my sister and her husband moved to US. He was a year away from finishing his PhD at UIUC. He was a year senior to me at school and this alliance was all arranged. My sister is of the type that let her life decisions with our parents and that was one of the reasons why she didn't question when her marriage date and birthday fell on the same day. True, nobody begins a new union with a skepticism, but still it is good to anticipate accidents and break-downs along the way or have maturity to deal with it.

One-way ticket

One way tickets sound death knell, and that fall all the suspects who rammed aircraft into the WTC and Pentagon had purchased one way-tickets. Within 3 months after her marriage, my sister was sent to visit me on a short trip. My brother-in-law and his mother booked her a one-way trip to RI and my sister was too naive to understand and question their intent. 

That spring became a long winter

That was the last time she saw them and what soon followed was a divorce notice. An unconsummated marriage run by an educated mother-in-law and probably son who behaved like a pet animal and their marriage seemed like a social obligation. During the three months my parents were checking with my sister on her physical intimacy, domestic peace like every parent of 23 year old who would send their only daughter 10,000 miles away. When my sister confronted him for lack of physical intimacy things started to snowball at my sister. He blamed the stress from his impending dissertation and alongside blamed my sister for not being smart enough and academic oriented. 

I was 26 and between a full-time job and a part-time MBA class three times a week I had an additional responsibility of now attending to my sister and sort her marital discord and associated legal entanglement. I went and met Prof. John Dunn whose Business Law course I was enrolled in that spring semester and he put me in touch with a friend who practiced family law in Illinois. 

Fitting into definitions 

Coming from a conservative Brahmin family and we were finding it difficult to explain the situation to my sister, to relatives and friends and to ourselves. Let me explain the definition of conservative at our household: women stayed in a separate room during their periods, wearing anything other than a half-saree or a saree was unacceptable, and my male classmates were not allowed into the house and me or my brother had to escort my sister if she had to step out of our house. For male members, we were not allowed to wear jeans or shorts and we were not allowed to watch movies or leave home after dark.

In a Brahmin household a marriage is seen a lifetime relationship and for it to be broken within 4 months was apocalyptic. While the lawyer started to discuss the grounds with the lawyer on the other side, the crowd back in India started to blame my parents and my sister for their karma. Bad husband and a failed marriage equals bad karma of a family. While some relatives who mean our well-being started to blame our karma, while more nobler ones started to cast aspersions on my sister and her character affecting all our self-worth. 

The fall begins

By that fall, all possibilities to salvage the marriage failed and we were heading for the full and final settlement. Since I had a full-time job and had enrolled 3 more courses in fall, I had asked my dad to come down and finish the court formalities which included travel to the court in Illinois. And on December 10, 200 my dad and sister had returned home with a failed marriage and a court notice that proved her innocence. 

In fact my sister had begged her husband not to divorce her and that she was prepared to live in an unconsummated marriage for life rather than going back home and disappointing her family. I don't know why women are expected to to live through bad marriages and why a divorce is considered a curse on the family?  

I could see my family struggling from the evaluations made by the society and their own friends and relatives. I didn't want them to go down and since I was emotionally attached to them I had to put a fight and get them back on their legs. I finished my MBA the following spring, shelved my PhD plan, resigned my job and came back home. Constructing my sisters life and resurrecting the self-worth of the family was on top of my list. 

Resurrection is only after crucifixion 

I reached home on May 31, 2001 and had already put together a plan on various fronts. Give me sister freedom and independence to choose and make her life decisions and probably get here employed before starting to think about her marriage again. In parallel, I had to mute the relatives and friends who were sometimes talking shit behind our backs. I wrote a polite half-page letter addressing my friends and relatives and asking them to take moral responsibility to understand the truth and not gossip and kill a family with their words. Subject of the mail read: There was no free lunches even in marriages and I had enclosed a copy of the annulment not if where my brother-in-law had told the court that he was a psychological gay (at that time it wasn't legal to be gay in US) and the court had annulled the marriage. In fact I had also shared a paragraph on the difference between annulment and divorce and why my sister and family needed more of their love and blessings and immediate need to shutdown gossips and rumor mills.

What followed was a decade of experiences on health front, specially for my dad. Stress took a toll on his self-worth and eventually ended up for an emergency by-pass. And I had just begun to work in India and I was overqualified and underpaid whore (I'm borrowing your terminology) and it was difficult I make both ends meet especially when there is no medical insurance for the family. 

If you look at history and analyze reasons for wars, independence movements and revolutions they point at self-worth. When self-worth of individuals in power or the overall society is  undermined or disrespected, the change occurs. We were neither powerful nor large in numbers to start a revolution, but such occurrences are a part of every home today and I must say reformation is on its way and outlooks are changing. 

My dad's siblings watched us from a distance and some made fake promises to show up the next morning with money. My mother jewels and some fixed-deposit receipts were mortgaged to meet the medical expenses over the next 12 months my sister and I used our pay-checks to get out of our financial obligations. During the period of recuperation, my father was emotionally shattered from watching his children fend for him and putting up with the harsh words of his elder brother asking him to go back to the village and look at the family lands. If my father was smart enough he would have built substantial savings for his family from the agricultural income, but instead he saved up and gave money for his elder brother to get his daughters married. 

With my brother getting closer to 30, he was peaking his marriageable age, but with my sister at home we couldn't predict the dynamics of another girl walking into the house. Eventually, 7 years later my sister was married to another divorcee who lives with his family in Vasant Kunj in Delhi. While our prime was put to use reconstruct her life and all our self-worth and save the family from the aspersions of this society and community. 

Finally arrives the spring

They are Brahmins from Trichy who had migrated to Lucknow and Delhi in early years after independence. This time around I asked my parents to visit them and stay with them at their place for a few days and also asked them to come down and stay with us for a few days to do the due diligence and ensure there was a cultural fit and more so on the values front. My nephew is 9 years old (going to 4th grade) and here is a video on him at the age of 2.5 singing a complex Sanskrit krithi by Muthuswami Dikshithar, one of the trinity composers of Carnatic Music - https://youtu.be/h3rDK4uBW1M 

Krithi by Shyama Sastri: https://youtu.be/w5UTkCO_b8Q

Another Krithi by Muthuswami Dikshithar: https://youtu.be/n-WBr8ipM7w

Astapathi of Jeyadeva: https://youtu.be/svuNt_4grjk

Project of our lives

He still learns Carnatic music in Delhi and my sister was a performing musician until her first marriage. When he was a year old, my sister and present BIL had an opportunity to move to US on a 2-year project and this gave my sister an opportunity to erase her fears and bad memories associated with US and I sent my family to visit her so that they get over the trauma of US and horrible experience. And at last, I made a trip in 2011 August, a year after my heart surgery to visit US and get closure from my abrupt departure in 2001.

The past decade has been busy learning lessons of life and more importantly resurrecting our own self-worth and extricating ourselves from the hunters web (society and relatives) and walking back to life using our sticks called values. Today, I see my nephew as success for all our trials and tribulations. Hopefully, he will grow up to be a responsible son, and understand the importance of self-worth and battle one needs to wage to protect it. 

While these thoughts were cooking in my mind, I finished making one-half of the brinjal into South Indian style dry seasoned with coconut, coriander and red chili grind and the other half into Mysore style gravy (cut brinjal into small square pieces) cooked with tamarind paste and added boiled toor dal and with fistful jaggery at the end.