'Papa Takle Ho Gaye'

 

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There is a neighborhood kid of about 6 who used to play with me a lot. He was visiting our home after a few weeks. I had recently colored my hair, hence I showed it to him and asked him how did my grey hair turn into total black? He did not reply. After repeating the question and making him recall how my hair had lots of whites earlier, he finally said that he did not know how it turned back. I realized that he had not noticed my hair; whether grey or white! It reminded me of another incident.

My kids were seeing me after a long gap. My daughter was about 3.5. I went to get a hair cut and as soon as I returned home, she came, noticed me, and said, “Papa takle ho gaye”, pointing to my short hair! She had not only noticed that I had a haircut, but she had also noticed that I had short hair now! Plus, she thought to share her observation with me. I was really impressed with her intelligence as well as thoughtfulness. And somewhere, it was also got to do with gender. My son did not notice my haircut at all!

At any given age, we can notice in small children that most of the times girls are cleverer than boys. Their minds work in slightly different manner than boys. We can notice the differences in the way they choose toys or express themselves. Now, imagine a society which tries to raise boys and girls in the same manner! Will that be called feminism? By all means, it will cause harm to both boys and girls. We need not force our gender-righteousness on our kids. Let girls be ‘girly’ and boys be like ‘boys’ if their natural inclinations are showing in that manner. Let us not force them to behave and be the “same”.

Thoughts triggered by the kind of news media outlets expose to me these days.

- Rahul Tiwary

Empathy

 

There have been many instances when I have felt that I have a kind of ‘excess empathy’. I am able to connect and “feel more” than what I notice most others around me do. At times this ability gives me deeper insights into things than would otherwise. Sometime back, there was a weird incident which made me reflect and come to conclusion that it had something to do with the “empathy” too.

A carpenter had fixed door frame which resulted in some misalignment when I first used it after he was gone. Entire frame was making an unusual sound as well as shaking whenever the door was closed. I was annoyed with the carpenter since he had done many other mistakes in other works too. And I started feeling discomfort with the fact that my door frame was in “trouble”.

I immediately checked it out from all angles, noticing how the pieces of wood and steel moved and how those resulted in vibration and stress in the door frame. I noticed a small piece of plyboard which was thrust between a larger outer piece and the iron frame and concluded that it had to be removed in order to fix the problem. I called up the carpenter who promised to check and fix it next morning.

Next morning, the carpenter checked and started hitting the frame with a hammer in order to fix it. I told him to stop and asked him how it was going to fix it? He believed that hitting it with a hammer will push the portion enough so that it will bend and no longer cause trouble. But I told him my diagnostic – that the small plyboard piece needed to be removed and then everything will be alright. I ordered him that he had to do as I told and then he obliged. The moment that piece was taken out, the door frame came back into its normal state. I was proven right.

Afterwards, I reflected about how I could be right in that situation while the carpenter was not; despite it not being my forte and he being an expert in that area. I came to only conclusion that it was because I could relate to the door since it belonged to my home and hence I had looked deeper with more empathy; while the carpenter was as careless in his diagnostics as careless he was while fixing the door frame causing the problem. Difference was in the “sense of ownership” and “responsibility”.

This incident highlighted the importance of empathizing with things which leads to managing the situations in a different manner.

- Rahul Tiwary 

Society: Should Marriages Be Saved At All Costs?

I remember an old incident. There was a viral video being shown on TV and circulating in the media at that time. It was a scene from CCTV camera of some home in Gujarat where a daughter-in-law was beating up her mother-in-law with a wooden stick. The old lady was sleeping on a cot when the daughter-in-law enters and starts beating her up brutally with a wooden stick. She beats her up black and blue. The incident had invited large scale condemnation. To that, one person said something which remained in my memory forever. He said, “When the man tries to save his marriage at all costs, such things happen”.

I think what he would have tried to say was that every big incident had some background. If a person does a small wrong thing and gets away with it, the person may be encouraged to feel safe and might do a bigger wrong deed next time. If that is also ignored by others, the person may do still bigger act next time. This goes on and one day we hear news like the above incident. No one becomes a hardened criminal at once – normally there is a “background”, as we see in the movies too.

Realizing this, it can be argued that the above woman may have done some smaller sins before and would have gone unpunished. Hence, she would have ended up doing the above. What is the message for married people from this?

The message is that one should not ignore small incidents of bad behavior from one’s spouse. It is true for men as well as women. If they would ignore small incidents of abusive behavior, the spouse may be encouraged to do worse next time. The idea is to stop the evil from sprouting into a big tree by stopping it while it is just a small thing.

At the same time, if the threshold has been crossed, one should have the courage to “let go”. One should not tolerate abuse just to save one’s marriage. Of course, this does not mean that one should always expect “perfection” from one’s spouse. Mistakes happen and we all do mistakes. But intentional abuse is a different thing and we all can identify when it happens. In such cases, one should be ready even to sacrifice the marriage rather than keep tolerating the abusive behavior from one’s spouse. What is the threshold and when to know that time is up? It is an individual case and one can decide this for oneself. And of course, never feel shy to take expert help from others before making the decision.

- Rahul Tiwary

Psychology: Father Son Conversation

The other day in office washroom I overheard a telephonic conversation between a father and his kid. The person called up his child (let us assume it was his son) and told him that he had received a Whatsapp message from school that the kid had not submitted an assignment which he knew he had taken to submit the previous day. “You had taken that assignment yesterday to school. Why did you not submit it?” The kid said that he had indeed submitted his assignment. Then the person asked him if that was the case then why did he receive a message reminder from school. The kid answered that the message must be a common message to all irrespective of whether the concerned student had submitted the assignment or not. The father simply said okay; accepting the reasoning. Then the kid asked him if he had received individual message or in the group. The father accepted that he had received the message in the “group” i.e. Whatsapp group. 

Two things struck me in the conversation. 

First, the father did not trust his son. When the son said that he had submitted the assignment, the person tried to trick him into accepting the opposite by doubting “if son had submitted the assignment then school won’t have to send a reminder!” The son had to explain how the generic messages work and then the father was satisfied. 

Secondly, the father was proven stupid when he confirmed that the “message was sent in the group and hence was a generic reminder” and it was not sent individually to him. The father should have understood this very simple fact by using common sense. So, the son would either have noticed that his father was stupid or else he would have noticed that he did not trust him. Either way the inference coming out from the conversation was not healthy. 

Lastly, these generic reminders are weird and often create confusion. I remember in my previous organization all of us used to receive emails asking us to take some mandatory actions and then in the end there would be a sentence saying, “Please ignore if you have already done this”. In the age of advance analytics and artificial intelligence, such “generic mailers” are simply time-wasting stuff which also add to the unnecessary stress to the employees. The fact that this was happening in an IT company makes it look more stupid. 

Now in my childhood days, my father never checked upon me if I had done assignments or not. I would of course do the assignments most of the times, since otherwise I would look stupid in front of others in the class and would also get punishments. Therefore, I do not understand this need to add a new check and “alert” mechanism which today’s parents are trying to put. If kids know that parents would remind them and alert them if they were missing something, they would have some less serious “sense of responsibility” and rather focus on having some better excuse making capability and certainly better “argumentative capability”. Now these may not be totally useless skills but still I would choose the scenario where the kid owns his decisions regarding school matters and has his own mechanisms of reminders, rather than his father calling him from washroom and asking him stupid questions to trap him, while being involved in something more urgent (using the washroom). 

- Rahul Tiwary

The Exam: For Psychology Enthusiasts

During MBA, our communications teacher had shown us a movie called “12 Angry Men”. We were asked to observe and analyse the communication skills and patterns of all the major characters in the movie and later submit a report. It was a good learning and we enjoyed doing it. Some days back I watched a movie “The Exam”, which I found more interesting than the former. I think any student of psychology should not miss this one flick. The story rotates around a bunch of guys and girls, all from different ethnic backgrounds, left in a room to find answer for a question which apparently didn’t exist! They end up fighting, even attempting to kill each other! How the plot leads to that moment, and how different characters behave all through the movie, is clearly a delight to observe and explore…

So if you are interested in psychology, do try to find “The Exam”! You are sure to finish the movie with lots of foods for thoughts and many discoveries too…

- Rahul

Role of Expression in Parent Child Relationship

Have you seen your parents cry?

I guess you may not have seen it many times. But how would be the feeling? I guess that would take the world out of you…

Does it happen the same way when parents see their children cry?

Do they get a sinking feeling when they see their children cry? Do they see the world collapse in front of their stoned eyes; do they feel something as if bursting out in their hearts? I guess we would answer in the negation. They must not feel so deeply every time they see their children cry. After all, they are grownups. They are mature, have seen life and are not easily shaken. But even then there should be times and situations when no matter how much they have seen life, all would seem trivial; when no matter how grownup they are they would feel helpless in front of the situation. I hope you would agree with me. In those situations, what do you think - would their pain and grief be graver than ours? I think it is difficult to answer, though the pointer would be tilted towards “yes”.

I think we take expression too seriously. If we love someone, we are taught that we should express so. If we like someone, we should tell him or her how much they are for us. After some time, we tend to think “seriously” that expression is a necessary indication of what goes inside our heart. It may not always be so! And this is where I find connect with my example of parent-child pain situation.

If parents start expressing all their pains, problems and objections, I think our life would become very depressed. On the other hand, though we would always love to see them express their happiness, pleasure and applause, this knowledge can also make us over confident, relaxed and uncaring in extreme situations. Therefore, I think “trust” is an immensely important ingredient in a parent-child relationship. Though it is important in all other relationships too, it plays a very critical role in parent-child relationship because when children grow up and become laden with responsibilities while parents become old and non-contributing in worldly matters, the dynamics of relationship changes. A “trust” between them makes them perceive, imagine, empathize and feel more than simply react according to the expressions of the other.

I think expression is important, but not always necessary. It is good, but its absence is not always bad. A trustful relationship based on mutual empathy would turn the silence into another language of expression…

- Rahul

If you got it Easy

There are some universal laws which apply so perfectly to the human nature irrespective to the variations in culture or in background. One of them is that we value less what comes easily to us. To some extent we capture it in the Hindi anecdote “Ghar ki murgi daal barabar”. It can also be described by the tendency to undermine self possessions.

This maxim applies to all aspects of our life. What we get after much struggle, feels dear to us. But what we got by chance or by gift, loses its sheen after some time. It also applies to relationships to some extent. Friendships which happened by chance and without any efforts from our side may lose our attraction but for whom we ‘tried’ to reach out, no matter what the outcome, may seem dear to us. In the times of matrimony, if an offer came to us easily or without our efforts, we tend to be casual about it no matter if it was really perfect for us. In matrimony matters many times we realise later on that we had ignored some very good initial offers (we ignored, may be, because they came easily to us). Or a person who got unexpectedly better or superior spouse may also start valuing him/her less because of this very psychology. The sad part is that this tendency only makes our life more difficult because we ignore the true merit in most of the cases and don’t take decisions rationally.

This is why decision making remains the toughest task in any job or in any relationship.

- Rahul

Seeking Attention

This comes from a real life incident that happened recently.

We visited their home after a long gap. The only kid in the family was naturally the centre of our attraction. After some initial period of pause, the boy opened up and started playing with the guests. He was chatting, showing off his toys and running around. It was then that his grandfather arrived from his morning walk. As the old grandpa sat down and started talking with the visitors, we noticed something unusual. While the kiddo was mixing up well with the guests and also talked some times to his parents, it so happened that about ten minutes had passed and the kid didn’t talk to the grandpa even once. He seemed to be too excited to see the visitors and was engaged in other things, and hence naturally forgot the need to talk to his grandpa at that time.

Now there he was running and passing in front of the grandpa, still not looking at him. What happened next was shocking. We saw grandpa raising his one leg and catching the kid unaware. As the kid fell down, grandpa raised his other leg and caught hold of him. The kid, realising that he had fell down and his fun had come to an interruption, started crying. Now grandpa got up, pulled the kid up in his arms, wiped out tears from his cheeks and played with him to stop his crying. The kiddo still said in his hurt and tears: “grandpa made me fell down…” But grandpa seemed happy and content now. What I quickly analysed the incident into, was a very sad realisation.

It seemed to me that the grandpa was an absolute self-satisfying attention seeker. When the kid whom he loved so much didn’t give him any attention, he created a situation where the kid had to be consoled by him and hence he would get enough importance that he thought he deserved. Was it because he, a retired professional, was missing his ‘important’ days on job? Or was it his true nature where he craved for attention from others and if not provided gratification, would do ‘something’ to fetch it for him? I remember a piece of news from some place in Europe where an elderly couple had a unique and perverted case. The husband kept administering a kind of poison to his wife for years, so that she kept on felling sick and he got chance to nurse her! Their marriage was not going on very well and he had devised this method for them to come ‘close’… It seemed to me that a similar game was put on here in front of us. The child was made to pay enough attention and importance by being interrupted and harmed, and the retired grandpa didn’t miss such an opportunity to fetch out some moments of gratification for him. While all of us know how children cry and create scenes seeking attention of elders, this case of a similar but more perverse behaviour from an old man made me wonder.

Of course truth is more interesting than fiction.

- Rahul