Privileged Baby Talks

Teza Jose
Teza Jose
Jul 10, 2017 · 6 min read

I was born. And that day, I simply was I. I had some things going on in my DNA. Things that would work with the circumstances in my life to create a new me every day, every moment. But for a few days at least I was raw DNA and I. Life was simple. There was no concept of responsibility. I was precious. Some people seemed to love me a lot irrespective of how much I pooped, peed or cried. There seems to have been no thoughts. I didn’t seem to give a rats ass whether people loved me unconditionally or whether they expected anything in return. I was just going to make them feed me and clean after me anyways. There was no money, no ambition, no long term plans, no opinions. I was just minding my own little business of eating and pooping and taking for granted that everybody in the room prioritised me.

Then one day they dressed me in some uncomfortable long white lacy dress. There was a boy and a girl dressed in similar long lacy dresses next to me. I was irritated. It was so hot. Stupid people dressing me in clothing tailored for a polar bear with no cares for the hot tropical weather of my South Asian country! We were carried one after the other into this weird shaped hall with a giant cross made of gold before the hall way. I didn’t know gold was a precious metal and it was stupid to make crosses out of it unless you where an observer of the economy and making supposedly intelligent investments in cross shaped forms of gold rather than in coins. I liked the glow and the shine of it. It was my new toy for some time. Then few men in long white non lacy dresses came, dunked mine and the other laced up babies head in some water and drew some crosses in the air and on our foreheads. Everybody around closed their eyes, folded their palms and repeated in unison whatever those men said. And bam! Turns out there were three new Catholics in the world and they didn’t know about it. It’s as though you went to your barber for a haircut and he put some warm water on you, did the drawing of the cross thing when you weren’t looking and you walk out a baptised Christian. Sounds so evil, yet so normal a deed in some of our lives.

Then this man and woman who prioritised me the most, paraded me in pretty comfortable and uncomfortable clothes around town. Posted pictures of me on this weird screen thing called Facebook. I as a Christian baby had no right to privacy and was slowly surrendering all of me to google. Meanwhile, the man and woman entertained me. Took me to the hall with the golden cross every seven days. Celebrated the day I was born. Gradually started telling me that they were to be called pa and ma. That the older looking man and woman would be grandpa and grandma. I was told that the irritating small human who lived with us was my brother. They shrieked in joy for every stupid thing I did. When I said a new word, learned to crawl, walk, jump, eat on my own. I felt like I was the creator of all things new and amazing. I lived in a very kind world of forgiveness, acceptance and awesomeness. Of course, it was amazing! I had to make no efforts.

Then slowly the sinister plan of redemption of all love that was being given to me started unfolding. The giving of love continued, and a parallel process of redeeming the price of the love began. By this time the man and woman — pa and ma had become the center of my universe. I was addicted. There were no de-addiction centers. I started loving them more than all the other humans I knew. It seemed like true love. The redemption was gradual and subtle and hence very effective. When I questioned or refused to redeem the price, I’d be spanked once in a while or denied love. Then I’d become sad and believe that I was wrong to not pay and redeem by refusing to believe whatever they said. They gave me a name Oolalaa — their gift. The price I had to pay was to believe that I was Oolalaa and respond to it. Then my pa-man said you have to be Oolalaa Hue. Because he was Hue, and Lilly the ma-woman kept quiet because she was financially dependent on the pa-man. She couldn’t name me OOlalaa Lilly, I am sure she didn’t dare think of that prospect to even raise it. Over the first decade of my life, with absolutely no evidence or research, I was so smart and intelligent that I realised and engraved in me some of the biggest things that would shape my life. Out of the love that they had for me, Pa-man and Ma-woman did an excellent job of transitioning it into me and some of them included the below:

1. My pa-man and ma-woman were the smartest pa and ma on the planet. Everything my pa-man did would always be right. He is as right as Jesus. And everything my ma-woman would be right unless pa-man had a different view. In which case, she stood corrected to that exact extend. Of-course, I didn’t know nor did I know that I was allowed to think back then that all men and all women couldn’t be “smartest”. But all men and women are allowed to have babies. Years passed and, I was addicted to the thought of my pa-man and ma-woman being super heroes. And of-course, there aren’t de-addiction centers for this kind of problem. I had also become an emotional ornament that couldn’t stand the sight of logic when it questioned my addictions.

2. that I was a Catholic and then that there is God and that there was only Jesus who was God and everybody else who didn’t know Jesus would go to hell. I also learnt that my ancestors were upper caste Indians who converted to Christianity a long time ago and hence would go to heaven quicker than the backward caste Indians who were converted to Christianity. You know because this Jesus person was very cool and loved the whole world and everything but he was a caste-ist and a fanatic and out of his love for the whole world, he was going to send all those other babies to hell because their pa-men didn’t dunk their heads in holy water when they were born. See, I told ya, my pa-man was the best.

3. Men only fall in love with women and vice versa.

4. Men don’t wear what women wear and women don’t wear what men wear. And that’s not just the bra. Oops, also, you are not allowed to say bra or periods or menstruation in public. Boys shall not cry and girls can cry except not of-course to boys of their menstrual cramps.

5. Men have to be rich, richer and richest. They have to be demanding and loud, as though they are insecure about their masculinity. That is what makes them attractive. Women have to be petite, fair, docile and submissive to be attractive. Even when she is firm she loses here elegance if she is loud. Her beauty lies in asserting her independence to the extant it doesn’t make society uncomfortable.

So began and continued his lessons and power struggle in life with faint surfacing of logic and questions that were most often dismissed as teenage or pre-teen tantrums. After the first two decades of character re-enforcing, he had to step out of home, out of the wings of his superheroes into a society of many differently privileged babies. There in the wild, slowly yet firmly, each privileged baby broke the illusions of each other privileged baby — through friendship, love, hate, travel, death, work and education. Each bitter truth, each broken illusion left him empty by the time he was 25 years of age. He struggled to let go of what he knew was wrong, yet what he knew he identified himself with. He thought that he must be ready to be buried.

Let’s tell him that he is just born.

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