When my brother and I were old enough to go to school, my mother started working at a Tesco supermarket, stacking shelves with toilet paper. She tells me she saw so much toilet paper that at night she’d dream of rolls of it raining down upon her. She was looking for better-paid work and ended up being employed by the same Job Centre she frequented. They were so impressed with her that they offered her a position in that office, and she spent the rest of her working years as a civil servant there, helping others to find employment.
For some years, while working toward building a business, my father was a taxi driver. It was an unstable income; sometimes people ran off without paying, and once, he was physically assaulted on the job. When he was able to put taxi driving behind him, there was a period of a few years where my dad would be gone for days at a time, either running the convenience store in Surrey (then we’d only see him on school holidays when we went there and helped in the shop, or on Sunday afternoons when he closed the shop early and drove home for the evening), or trying to make a business work somewhere else in the country, like in Staffordshire (then he was gone for three to four days a week). It was my father’s dream to become a millionaire, to live in a house like the ones we’d sometimes been invited to for dinner parties, and to drive a car like the ones he saw in other people’s driveways. Unfortunately for us all, each time he tried to build a business, there always seemed to be a spanner in the works. We nearly lost our home several times.
My father spent a lot of time away working, but when he was back, we still didn’t see him much. He had some friends who lived up the road from us. I felt sure my dad liked that family better than us because on the days he returned from working in Staffordshire, on the way home from school, I’d see his car parked outside their house. He’d always go there first, whether the husband was there or not, have a drink and a catch-up there, and only then come home to us later in the evening. Sometimes after dinner, he’d go back there until after our bedtime. I couldn’t understand why my dad didn’t want to see us with the same urgency he saw that family. Whenever he was at home, he was usually extremely stressed.
He began taking his stress out on my mother, verbally, emotionally or physically, and then on me.
A tendency towards unhealthy amounts of alcohol and ill health ran in my father’s family. His father and some of his brothers had passed away in their early adult lives, and as the youngest son, the pain of so much loss and the pressure to prove himself a success ate away at him. My parents had had a love marriage, so I know my father had at least once truly loved my mother. When they married, he assured her he wasn’t that kind of man – violent or abusive. But once the stress kicked in, the hardened, patriarchal traits he’d picked up and brought over with him from Kenya gripped him without mercy.
In many of the households he’d seen growing up, women were there to spawn offspring, clean the house, shut their mouths, bow their heads and serve food. As a child, I once witnessed my dad say exactly that, “Shut up, put your face down and serve me my food.” And my mother did it without a word.
I wondered why women stayed in such relationships. Why didn’t they stand up for themselves? I never wanted to become like that.
It ignited such a fire in me that if my parents fought in earshot of me, I’d run in and jump on my dad, punching at him with my little fists, screaming at him to get off my mum and leave her alone. My brother was more sensitive and shut himself in his room a lot when my parents fought. He stayed in his room and imploded. He could punch a dent in his bedroom wall, but couldn’t dare stand up to our father. I was the explosive one; I’d do anything to defend my mother. I called the police on my dad, and they came and gave him a warning. Needless to say, I didn’t earn any brownie points with him.
In the aftermath of the fights, I’d try to comfort my mother when she cried. Somewhere, in the midst of drowning in her pain, the mother-daughter dynamic changed, and I felt we lost what should have been a natural maternal bond with each other.
My father was full of so much fire and rage that at the age of thirty-nine, he suffered a massive heart attack, the first of multiple smaller attacks to follow over the preceding decades.
After that first attack, once he was released from hospital, he was at home in recovery for approximately six weeks. My mother worked at the office, took care of us, cooked for us, kept the entire house spotless (with my brother and me helping with some chores here and there), and served father’s every need. His body might have taken a pause, but his mind had not. Used to having the freedom to do whatever he wanted, he was now confined to the house and was not shy in hiding how grumpy he was about it. It was the nastiest I’d seen him without being physically violent.
In the midst of the whirlpool we were drowning in, my mother found a lifeline. I realised then that it was her faith in a higher power that kept her going. She dived into the depths of her being and called out to the Divine in the best way she knew how – with music and song. Mum converted our dining room into a temple with an altar and invited all her friends and relatives to come and sing together every Thursday evening. We had artwork and deities from many world religions, and two beautiful marble idols of Sri Radha and Bhagwan Krishna.
We all sang devotional songs, bhajans and kirtan, after which we shared conversation and plates of food lovingly prepared by my mother. My father, not exactly a devout man, had no choice but to sit there. But he did enjoy it. More and more people came to sing and pray. My father loved the attention and making new friends. As word spread of the weekly bhajans at ‘Vip and Naina’s place’, people started coming in droves.
Eventually, so many came that the two reception rooms were full, and some had to sit in the kitchen or hallway, or on the staircase, but nobody minded. Even the neighbours didn’t mind the noise and the influx of cars on the street.
With all the love and attention he received, my father made a steady recovery.
I’ll always be grateful for what I learned during those spiritual gatherings. I enjoyed learning and singing bhajans, and I met some very interesting people – all kinds of artists, musicians, people from all over the world, people with all kinds of spiritual beliefs. And there were people who came from India, the country of my ancestors, the air of which I had yet to breathe. These people had been to places called ashrams and followed something called ayurveda, things I’d never heard of.
We became friends with a world-renowned South Indian classical singer, a famous Indian music producer, and the man who first brought bhangra music to the UK, and a beautiful English woman named Lois who wore saris and wouldn’t blow out the candle on her birthday cake when we presented her with one, because she ‘honoured the light’, as she would say. She held the cake, praying for everyone’s well-being with a beaming smile and an otherworldly glow on her face.
Through these people, we got to know others in the spiritual circles in the UK. We met other people who had temples in their homes and visited them for more gatherings. I met mediums, people with psychic abilities, life guides, astrologers, and people who could see auras. Some seemed like they genuinely wanted to help people, and some perhaps had some slight ability, but mostly, from my perspective, there were a lot of clever weirdos who knew how to get money out of vulnerable people. Many people performed rituals for a fee, some Vedic rituals like fire offerings, and some I’d never heard of. One man claimed to perform spiritual medical surgery. My father had a session on this man’s ‘operating table’. He said my dad had to keep his eyes closed, and after a few minutes of prodding and poking him, he claimed to have repaired my dad’s heart. My father’s cardiologist proved otherwise, though.
I also heard fantastical tales of divine ‘miracles’ and ‘godmen.’ I had some watery experiences of my own. But I was still sceptical. I hadn’t seen any of those miracles happen right in front of me, nor was there a way to verify the ones I’d been shown, such as vibhuti (holy ash) miraculously appearing on an apple in the shape of an Om, or honey-like ‘divine nectar’ appearing behind the glass of a framed picture of a god.
Around this time, I was also regularly going to the ISKCON temple near our house (I’ve written about that here), and my interest in India was piqued, so much so that when my mother was told to visit a particular place in India to pray for my father, I insisted on going with her.
I was barely a teen the first time I set foot in this holy country, and even though I was watching a rat the size of a cat leaping around the luggage belt at Mumbai airport, I turned to my mother and told her, “I belong here. I’m going to end up here. I know it.” (I’ll write more about this another time.)
From Mumbai, we went to pray at a place near Bangalore. There was a guru who lived there, and people said he was actually God in human form and performed miracles. He wore a long orange dress and had big frizzy hair. They said that if we prayed to him, everything would be better. Upon returning to London, though, even though 40% of my father’s heart was permanently damaged, he went back to his old ways as if nothing had changed; the same habits, the same old temperament. When the candles had been extinguished, when the guests left with their lively chatter and musical instruments in tow, we returned to the humdrum of our daily lives, and my father’s smile would vanish again.
My mother was exhausted from her job, housework, taking care of us, dealing with my father, and hosting the bhajans every week. After some time, our gatherings reduced in frequency to a couple of times a month, then once a month, until they eventually stopped. My mother found another way to cope.
From an outward show of devotion and running here and there, my mother turned inward. Never once wondering whether God had abandoned her, and truly believing it was her duty to uphold her marriage vows, she found a quiet strength. No matter what happened behind closed doors, the smile she wore and the kindness with which she treated others outshone any trace of the darkness.
Sometimes at night, I’d be awoken by the deep bass of my father’s voice, followed by a fearful, higher-pitched murmur of my mother’s coming through the bedroom walls. It made my heart jump and my stomach knot. I’d hold my breath to see if the voices would die down or escalate. As soon as they hit a certain decibel, I knew none of us was going to get any sleep that night.
Here’s my two cents’ worth from the perspective of a child:
Some parents feel obliged to stay together for the sake of the children. If the situation is so tense, especially if there is violence, even mental and emotional abuse, in the household, I feel children are far more likely to thrive if the parents can live happily, separately. They may even work out their differences with a little distance and a shift in perspectives.
If they still love each other deep down and want to work on the relationship, then that is what’s required – work. Running from one guru, astrologer, medium, psychic healer to another (many of whom were charlatans, we later found out), and throwing away your money on them isn’t going to fix anything.
And it’s pointless to sit down at an altar or chant or meditate when you’re shouting at each other the next second. Remembering God in prayer or song might make you feel good temporarily, like our gatherings did, but there is no point without a commitment to change, without compassion for each other, without making a conscious effort to work on our negative tendencies, and thinking of the best interests of the whole family.
Perhaps both parties can put their differences aside enough to go through marriage counselling, or ultimately decide they no longer wish to live together and happily co-parent. This happens more often now, but times were certainly different then, and children were more likely to grow up in a violent household where separation and divorce were taboo, no matter what.
What’s most important is that the children feel loved, safe and secure, whether the parents are together or not.
(Originally published on os.me on February 2, 2021)