Touch Starved

Sensory deprivation in conservative societies

Love is the most dangerous thing in the world because it cuts across barriers of caste, class, gender. I come from a touch starved family. I touch people when I am speaking as if to assure myself they are listening. it took me years to understand this, plus my dabbling into psychology to understand that since the time I was 2 year, 2 months and 2 days old, my mother’s attention, care and nurturing was taken up by the birth of my sister. I remember this significant gap because my mother fondly told anyone who cared to listen to this numerological ‘funny’ difference. This difference in age took on a whole new meaning years later when we sisters drifted poles apart in our ideology and perspectives.

Anyway, as happens with a first borne, mothers tend to get preoccupied with the sibling baby’s care and if there are no other substitute caregivers, the first born tends to become isolated. In my case, having been left to my own devices for entertainment (in my part of the region there is this notion that children somehow grow up, live, beyond the age of diapers and breast feeding and don’t need the ‘frivolous’ hugging, kissing and general pats), I termed this period of my life as “rejection”. And I was vindicated by Freudian psychology. Being touch starved, I grew up a very affectionate child always smiling, hugging, and kissing. Now I see it as the natural inclination of a human being’s innate need to feel — the most sensory of our five senses — one on which our lives depend sometimes.

But living and growing into one’s teens in a conservative society is like being deprived of one’s senses — can’t listen to music; can’t look at boys; aren’t supposed to sing; absolutely no “inappropriate” touching; shouldn’t have this food and that food (an example, Maggie noodles contains pig fat); no strong perfumes except the sickly, nauseous ‘attar’ extract which made me puckish, so on and so forth. So you can imagine what it would have done to my psyche.

But I was blessed with the gift of reading and love of books. Hence knew there were people, cultures out there where all this was perfectly normal. So I subconsciously imbibed those value systems- the fierce individuality and love for an individual’s rights. What my innocent, uncorrupted nature didn’t realise was that such feelings, emotions, thinking does not vibe well with a conservative society.

It was jolted to me in my early twenties by my very own sister when she out rightly accused me of being “promiscuous”. I have never gotten over the sting of it, though I forgave her for that, knowing she didn’t even know the exact meaning of it, just a big dictionary word she had picked up, with a vague sense of it. It so happened that along with my tendency to touch people with my hands while conversing it so happened that I did not like the ‘normal’ girlie things to talk about — such as shopping, clothes, make-up, boys, etc. Like Jo in Louisa Alcott’s Little Women, I constantly wanted to go to the ‘other’ room to discuss cricket, travel, astronomy, the natural world and all. And since it was always boys who would be indulging in it, it put me in close “proximity” with the other sex.

I think you get the picture! I had no idea there was this rumored ‘perception’ developing about me. Come to think of it, I now can say with certainty what must have made the cousin who started incestuous advances towards me at age 13! Going back further, when we were living in New Delhi, it was fairly common for man servants to make advances on their charges and the boys in the locality we lived in. But what struck me a few years later was in both the cases, the perpetrators were from my “culture” — repressed sexuality and all. I had very healthy friendships with the kids of the “other” culture where there was open boozing, natural sexuality, etc. I still maintain those childhood friendships — both genders and some have taken on the role of the ‘sacred’ — we see each other once a decade, but we start off right where we left off, exchanging kids names, careers, deaths, births and all that makes up life. These friendships are closer than family because even though there is hardly any communication, our value systems came from the childhood companionship and even today when faced with moral dilemmas in our current lives, there is always the compass of “what would Raju think of me, or how would Shanti do it, to guide us.

Coming back to my ‘repressed’ society, it has taken a good part of my life to understand what I wrote in the beginning — “love is the most dangerous thing in the world, because it crosses all barriers of caste, class, gender, etc.” Hence people are terrified of it. So you have this affectionate child going around giving hugs and kisses! It was bound to have been my undoing. Now when I am working on my character of Zoya who falls in love with someone forbidden to her because of class differences, I wanted to explore the question why it would be so. And this is what I came up with.

The people are so terrified of natural inclinations that they make a person feel “unclean”, “impure”, and practically crucify one for what may come naturally — jumping, running, dancing, anything in which the body is involved. If you see the rituals for cleaning we have, they make one literally feel ashamed of one’s self.

I hated my whole being for a long time, I never saw myself only what others told me — big feet, rough hands, dark skin, too tall, ‘tomboy’, mannish walk, ‘free’ translated into ‘loose’ — you get the idea! And so, I developed nail biting, a nervous tic, and pathological habit of lying about family, things, self. A child develops these things to cope with the perceptions given subconsciously by culture and the environment — but it is a vicious cycle — if found out, the child hates himself/herself more, relying more on these mechanisms and generally leading to self-destructive lifestyles.

I was again lucky. Those years of reading had exposed me to the effects of substance abuse and actual ‘promiscuity’ having read from survivors of drug abuse, etc. so there was no question of taking up smoking, drinking or other such harmful habit. And yet the people around me were convinced I was doing all of that. For the simple reason that I was very open about my disagreements and sense of unfairness or injustice. I will speak out no matter what! And that is highly unladylike, therefore… You do the math! Coupled with my disdain for the veil you can see how demonized I am to my young cousins of the second generation, who though fascinated hardly find the nerve to face me. One glance at them and I can literally read their ‘parents’ comments going through their minds and I laugh — now. Earlier I had no idea why this sudden vibe of hatred would be coming from them if I chanced upon them. But now I just pity them. They are deprived of my experience and most of all an empathetic, listening ear of a person who no matter what would have always stood by them.