Addressing Mental Health In Caste Patriarchy- A Personal Narrative
As an adult living with child abuse trauma, sometimes I know where my heart is and what it wants. It feels that my heartbeat is in sync with my breathing. Everything feels like it is where it should be. What I mean is that everything is at peace in its relationship with me. However, the moment I allow myself to embrace the peace, my body starts crushing, and my brain can only signal the pain flowing all over my body. I am learning to live with grief-induced physical pain. I no more want to win over it. I am grateful on the days when I can play with my girlfriend’s nephew and his friends, when I do grocery shopping, invite friends over, and on a day like today since I am writing today. Playing with children assures me that I can forge connections; grocery shopping is not merely reproductive labor but also a self-care activity. I want to cook and share the items I pick up. ‘Wanting’ and desiring is a matter of hope. I am grateful to have hope. It is in writing that I wholesomely feel I belong to this world, and I feel grateful at this moment.
There are days when physical pain and the feeling of heartbeat rate exceeding beyond its limit take over me. I keep the hope under my pillow as I wait. I just wait; this wait is not directed towards anything. For instance, I don’t wait for the pain to subside. For that, I have a prescription. I just wait with hope under my pillow.
Our world is conditioned by race and caste patriarchal hegemony. This hegemonic system thrives on punishment. I used to wet my pants during sleep till the age of 18. My lower-middle-class Bahujan parents believed that physical violence and public shaming could prevent me from wetting my pants. I was five years old when they started hitting me, and it went on till I was 18. I was embodied ambition for upward class mobility in a caste society for my parents. Wetting pants is a sign of weakness. Being a boy, how could I be weak? My parents used ‘humiliation,’ a common tool of oppression, to fix me. Visiting a doctor was not considered an option because ‘wetting pants’ for them was not my issue but about what stake they had in it — being born as a male was already a matter of honor. It is an orthodox belief within a caste society that to beget a son, a mother shall be austere, and a father shall be strong. Traditionally men are assumed to be strong. It is women who live the character assassination for giving birth to a female. My birth meant pride for both parents since I was born after two daughters. My mother does not fail to mention that she prayed incessantly for my birth and how I have failed her.
Despite my presumed weakness, I received preferential treatment compared to my two elder sisters. If there were one glass of milk, it would be reserved for me; rare luxuries like fruits and dry fruits were again reserved. If there was something enough to be shared among the three of us, my mother made sure that I got extra from the ‘enough.’
With these acts, my parents gave me the message that I was more important and precious than my sisters, but I was not precious enough for them to stop hitting me. I could have done something about it if I knew why I was wetting my pants during sleep. Still, Some nights, I fought against sleep and stayed awake watching the ceiling to prevent myself from wetting my pants. I wanted to see my parents happy the following day; I wanted them to see me worthy of their love.
I was a hurting boy being fed with toxic masculinity. I have been in therapy for more than ten years. However, the work of Phenomenal radical black feminist writer bell hooks spoke to my hurting self. Her book ‘all about love’ helped me put my childhood and my relationship with caste and patriarchy in perspective. She talks about love as practice and pays significant attention to the importance of holding love for children. Her yearning for love as justice touched my soul. In the book’s introduction, hooks write about how she knew ‘love’ as a child and then lost it.
“To this day I cannot remember when that feeling of being loved left me. I just know that one day I was no longer precious. Those who had initially loved me well turned away. The absence of their recognition and regard pierced my heart and left me with a feeling of brokenheartedness…No other connection healed the hurt of that first abandonment, that first banishment from love’s paradise..like every wounded child, I just wanted to turn back time and be in that paradise again, in the moment of remembered rapture where I felt loved, where I felt a sense of belonging’” — bell hooks, “all about love,”, Introduction
I have spent a lot of my years in self-isolation. The motive behind isolating myself was to avoid any emotional conflict. A minor altercation in the playground could start a leak in my eyes. My tears did not make my parents stop hitting me. But Tears and unconscious urination during sleep both were out of my control. Both made me a weaker man. The only way I could be a real man in my socially constructed understanding was by staying away from people. Although these terms were never used in my family, when I look back now, I find what bell hooks calls ‘psychological terrorism’ was inflicted upon me to make me another medium of caste patriarchy.
It took me 28 years to understand that the caste patriarchy is killing my ability to be whole. When I isolated and poured myself into intoxication, it gave me a kind of peace, comforting. But there were times when my rage, anger, sexism, and misogynies came out. I used to believe that I wasn’t this man. But in reality, I was practicing patriarchy from the very beginning. It started in my childhood when my friends and family used to tease me over crying about my feelings. After some point, I forced myself to believe that, to be a man, I have to be strong and stop being vulnerable. Vulnerability creates compassion and empathy; if someone accepts your vulnerability, they allow you to feel every emotion running over your body and mind. It bridges the gap of love between humans and creates mutuality. At the same time, patriarchal culture is wholly based upon domination.
In finding a whole person within myself, I learned a lot of things about myself and society. Most of them were those which became part of my unlearning — for instance, the practice of patriarchy. At the same time, I also learned how I was ignored in my childhood. For almost three decades, I blamed myself for everything I did, which later I realized was a case of casteist and patriarchal parenting and not my incompetence. I have decided to re-parent myself and try to live what I missed during my childhood within my healing process. The process of re-parenting makes me tired every day; the enthusiasm of living childhood in the present day comes with all those lost emotions and happiness which I couldn’t feel in my childhood. For my brain and body, it’s a feeling that I never lived but always wanted to.
The weight of those desired unlived moments tolls me whenever I try to re-live my childhood. The fragrance of orchids mixed up with the trauma and fear makes me tired. I may try to put tiredness in words, but I believe I would never justify it. For me, tiredness is not something that clearly looks on my face but still drains me and forces me to stay in bed even after a good sleep. Most of the night, I struggle to sleep to not live with the pain and tiredness of my body; sometimes, I succeed with the hope of waking up without any pain. And in the morning, mostly, I wake up with nightmares that never left my body for the next three-four days. This tiredness is not just from a night or because of single nightmares (which sometimes I don’t recall, but my body and mind can feel I had an episode), but my body has been tired since the day I lost my childhood and started running away from every emotion which makes me a whole person.
The caste patriarchy didn’t only snatch my childhood but also my willingness to feel emotions and put me on the edge of killing myself many times. But when I moved into trauma-informed therapy, I figured out a way with myself not to hurt myself anymore. I am struggling with words to describe how it helped me but below is one of my Ghazal, which I wrote struggling with thoughts of killing myself.
आख़िर को ज़हर ही पिया उसने
इक उम्र बाद दामन सिया उसनेख़ुदकुशी ज़िया* रही हमेशा चेहरे
सवाल वही “ऐसा क्यों किया उसने?”
*चमकबात-बात पर ज़ुबां नोचने वाले यहाँ
चीख़ रहे “कायर काम किया उसने”दोस्ती-दुश्मनी सब कुछ ज़ाया यहाँ
बता दिया, साबित भी किया उसनेहवा कहाँ किसी क़ाबू में आई कभी
फ़िज़ूल ही जला रक्खा दिया उसनेख़ुदकुशी बेहतरीन तमाशा है शायद
लोग हैराँ हैं ऐसा कैसे किया उसने?“असीर” रुकिए तमाशा बाक़ी हुआ
अख़बार का पन्ना सजा दिया उसने !!~ Ankit Gupta “Aseer.”
I know I am not just made up of pain and sorrows; somewhere inside me, a fragrance of orchids is surging; it speaks with me on the odd days when I find myself connected to each part of mine. It talks to me about love and mutuality and makes me smile. Like fear, the feeling of orchids flourishing inside my body has the power to influence my other parts. And that’s the only fragrance I want to nurture; because when all my neurological wires connect with this fragrance, I can sleep peacefully without any worries or nightmares.
Every day In our country, millions of Dalit Adivasi and Vimukta children are robbed of their childhood through systemic oppression of casteist patriarchal society. I have pledged to share the support I receive with the children of the Vimukta community through a registered organization Nirmal Initiative.
I take your leave for now with a beautiful message from bell hooks-
“Love is as love does, and it is our responsibility to give children love. When we love children we acknowledge by our every action that they are not property, that they have rights-that we respect and uphold their rights.
Without justice there can be no love.”
~ bell hooks, “all about love,” pg. 30
