My Baba

With a tiny baby, battling post-natal depression and severely underweight, I came to my parental home to find my sister back home, very agitated and troubling my parents as she had always done. She had always been a thorn in the side. It was just overwhelming and I cried silently in the bathroom and lay awake in the night worrying about what my parents were going through. My mother would point out that my personality had changed, that I was withdrawn and looked exhausted. But it never translated into an analysis of the reasons. I was facing intense abuse from a mother-in-law that I can only describe as possessing all the seven traits of the ungodly in full measure. Anger, hate, jealousy, lying, greed, lust and deception. Never in my life had I been made to feel so helpless, so worthless and miserable. The manipulativeness, the sway she had over her family who suffered from complete spiritual paralysis was incredible. I had never faced bullying on this scale before, where everyone was an implicit abettor. She got away with absolutely vile behaviour, quite simply because her husband and sons chose to deny it. If someone came from outside, her tone changed in an instant and she would even praise me, emphatically and falsely. It was chilling and creepy but the mixed messages left me drained and confused.

If I tried to put my point across, I was accused of answering back. She tore into me with horribly loud, violent words which were very very crude and hurtful. I simply could not understand it. The others in the family were in the business of pretending as though nothing was wrong. There was this fawning and cringing of the males in the family like dogs who face the whip of their master. In this case, I was the one who got the lashings, but the dogs simply wagged their tails at her anyway. It was the respect of the Nazi party for Hitler, inspired quite simply, by fear and brainwashing.

From rosy dreams of marriage and a career as an engineer, it had been a terribly bewildering time in an alien culture where they did not care a hoot about qualifications. All that mattered was money. Gossipy, crass neighbours, relatives whose saccharine sweetness meant nothing, the psychological isolation in by far the worst city in India and above all the dread that the husband I thought was a good man had a lot of his mother in him. He had an absolute mental blindness to any communication about her. And he shared plenty of her traits, the abusiveness, the control, attributing the worst intentions to others, the relentless suspicions, isolating me from everything that gave me joy. It was calculated to cut me off from any source of strength but I was so bewildered and sad that I could not make sense of my life at all. I had neither the vocabulary nor the analysis to process the situation back then. And then there was this little baby, so helpless and unaware. I could not bring myself to tell my parents any of the reality I was living through.


My father was worried about my sister and hiding behind his books, as always. My mother, had she figured out that my marriage was a hellhole, would have suffered beyond words. I did not say anything, I just lived in a numb emotional void, trying not to feel anything. Looking back at how badly I was suffering I am amazed at the emotional resilience I had. In some part it was pure stupidity, pretending not to see what was staring me in the face and insisting to myself that these horrible people were my family. It was the fact that my self-esteem had been ground into the dirt, that the control and lies that coated the poison with sugar, were too difficult to deal with. I was a coward who did not want to face the truth. Who would believe me, with the kind of masks they have on? I did not know then that the only person who needed to believe me was God and I would be alright. So I told myself I was okay. I was like the frog in the experiment, with the water that heats slowly until the frog is boiled to death, but it never jumps out of the pot. It can, but it does not realize. Ever.

In an effort to cheer me up, my mother began talking about the book she was reading then, which was the biography of the saint of Shirdi, Sai Baba, who lived not more than a hundred years ago. He was a unique holy man, whose parentage was unknown. At sixteen, he appeared under a tree in the sleepy little village of Shirdi, already with the signs of a Self-Realized saint. He began to live in an abandoned Masjid, wore the robes of a fakir, a wandering Muslim mystic. Yet he followed Hindu rituals, such as keeping a fire burning all his life, just as a Hindu agnihotra would do. He had absolute command of all holy texts in Hinduism as well. Nobody could  figure out whether he was Hindu or Muslim; at a time when the colonial power was trying to drive a wedge between the two communities, he was a symbol of unity and the common spiritual aspirations of all mankind. Rich, poor, Hindus, Muslims, Parsis, Sindhis, men and women, the diseased and dying all flocked to him and His divine grace was given to all without exception; his compassion was all-encompassing. I found him extremely intriguing and listened to my mother’s recounting of his miraculous cures and the use of divine powers for the good of suffering humanity.

So Sai Baba made his way into my heart and stayed there. I spoke to him when I was distressed and his kind eyes somehow soothed me. Even through the depths of depression I would think of a movie song from the 70’s which was about his help to anyone in need. That was all I knew and I sang it to him as an offering. A couple of years later, I was back in Delhi with the in-laws, in the eye of the storm. Out of the blue, a young woman  about my age who lived next door rang the doorbell. She had a book in her hand, which she handed me, saying, ‘Take it. For some reason I feel like giving it to you, though others have asked for it, I did not give it to anyone until now. Baba is there.’ I had hardly talked to her and she knew nothing about my life. I glanced down at the book. It was the life of Baba in English. I read it from cover to cover through the night. In the daytime I would think of him, my kindly God who knew what I was going through and who soothed me when I was exhausted and felt unloved. I never felt alone since then and there have been many instances when I escaped from what could have been terrible situations. I could sense his reassurance, his presence. I would think of him and instantly, on some little shop, or at the back of a vehicle, he would be there in the form of his photograph. It happened so many times that I would smile back at him.   

He sustained me through all the years of an abusive marriage; the fact that I did not lose my marbles or become a mere shell, locked in a mental prison-cell, outwardly trying to keep up appearances, is testimony to the fact that through all the torment, I could turn to him in my heart, my God, the Silent Witness, the keeper of my soul. And in those eyes I found a peace that the world had denied me.

Matters came to a head after twenty years; having tried to find meaning and purpose in life simply in the children, in the company of books, in some good friends whose concern for my safety helped me through the grim phases, things got absolutely terrible. I could have died due to the violence or worse, become a vegetable. But Baba was right there and the right people showed up at the right time; medical help, spiritual and support from friends, the healing smiles of children, nature, strangers who talked to me out of the blue; Baba was there for me. When I sat down in front of his photograph in the darkness of the night, praying for help, sleepless and in anguish, tears falling on the prayer book, He calmed me down. There was a time I could not sleep the entire night and was paralyzed by fear. In the next room was the human equivalent of a raging bull with the cunning of a snake. And he was very drunk. My heart was pounding and I could not breathe. All I could do was repeat over and over, ‘Baba, Baba....’

Out of the web of lost memories, the strains of a Hindi poem came to me. We had it in seventh grade and at the time were more concerned with having to memorize five stanzas to recite in oral exams. It was a tribute to Rani Lakshmibai, the heroic queen of Jhansi who was at the forefront of the Mutiny of 1857. With her toddler son strapped to her back, the queen fought off five British soldiers; she was mortally wounded when another soldier attacked her from the back and cut off her ear with his sword. It was against the rules of engagement in every way and even the English reluctantly acknowledged their own cowardliness much later. She bled to death but her dying words to her men was to fight to the death to defend the motherland. Her statues still stand in many cities across India. The poem went, ‘Khub ladi mardani, woh to Jhansi wali Rani thi...!’ She fought valiantly, better than any man, our great queen of Jhansi. The mental image of this young queen, clad in heavy armour, sword upraised, on horseback with her little son clinging to her came into my mind. Her eyes, across the shrouded mists of time and space, bid me push away my fear. I fought five swordsmen and died bravely, she seemed to say.  And you can’t fight one? I found new courage. If I had to die, so be it, but I would die fighting. I did not know when I fell asleep.

Baba used every tack he could to give me strength, from the images he had access to from the forgotten recesses of my mind to English songs. It was when I was at the lowest ebb, after a time of violence and abuse. Sometimes it was the strains of ‘Bridge over troubled water,’ by Simon and Garfunkel. Out of the blue, Morgan Freeman’s voice in my head, reciting from Invictus, ‘I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my ship.’ The final speech in Amistad, when former President John Quincy Adams describes Cinque's desperate attempt to free himself from slavery. What a man will do for freedom, he says. He will give up his very life. It made me think that I would always align myself to the divine who I knew as my compassionate Baba. He was the only one who could free me from this mental prison of sadness and suffering. The rest of the world was a slave to the drives of their minds. I had only to hold on to the thought of Baba. My life was in His hands and nobody could harm me when He had my back.

One time after a fight I suddenly remembered the time my tenth grade autograph book. They were all the rage at school at the time and I had bought myself one. The first autograph I took was my father's and the page popped up in my mind’s eye, in his tiny, beautifully fluid handwriting, ‘To thine own Self, be true.’ The Bard of Avon had always his favorite and the words echoed within, a message exhorting me to find the real me that had been so cruelly driven into the dirt. Sometimes it would be an unexpected word of encouragement from a complete stranger, an old Chinese man on a bus in Singapore who said I had kind eyes and that I should never let anyone make me feel small. He said, ‘You are my daughter,’ and then got off. It was a most unusual thing to say and I knew it was Baba who appeared in this form for his child because she needed Him. Baba used everything in my world to reassure me of His presence.

All my life I had felt a misfit. In my family, with a sister who was much older and a nightmare to live with, I was lonely. My parents did not fit into the middle-class mould of Maharashtrians because of their westernized outlook and their intellectual circle of friends. Nor did we fit in with the so-called intellectuals of the university in Gujarat whose snobbery and artifice was abhorrent to my father. The more materialistic Gujarati community was not even a consideration. Then I was put into a Convent. That education almost destroyed me. The gods of Hinduism confused me as my father was a desultory devotee and simply went through the motions of lighting incense in the morning. I hadn't the vocabulary to frame articulate questions or understand the answers if there had been any. My parents never did subscribe to the usual religious festivals of Maharashtra so I was cut off from all understanding of my roots.

By far my worst confusion though, was due to the imposed Catholicism at school. Every prayer we had was Christian. I found the image of the crucified Christ in the school chapel morbid and tragic. I hated the people who had done this to this gentle and divine man and I did not see any sense in God allowing this to happen to His son. I realized the nuns practised none of the mercy and compassion of Christ. Most of them were hard-bitten, frustrated spinsters who did not have the least sense of real Christianity. Their prayers were simply lip-service. I have just to take my mind back to how much we feared going into the principal’s office to know how loving and forgiving they were to children; how their sense of justice allowed teachers to stand us holding our ears for an hour in the sun as punishment; how much they soaked in the fawning and cringing of well-heeled parents because they got donations; the favoritism which would have disgusted Christ; and above all, their sorry guilt-ridden hymns. The emphasis on sin did not sit well with me at all. It was due to them that I grew up with a fierce defiance of organized religion and was always very leery of authority figures who wielded religion and uniform for power.

I was a misfit with my classmates because I could not bear flattery and disliked those who resorted to these in order to be chosen in everything. Being a girls school there was enough politics to run a small nation. Those who sweet-talked the teachers did well. Quite simply because the parents of my classmates were the well-heeled, lived in upmarket neighbourhoods, had cars and drivers they had the respect of the authorities and the ear of teachers. I felt inferior and it was silly, but I felt embarrassed about my simple home when my fancy friends showed up in their cars. I was out of my depth and though I was popular I sensed it had only to do with my intelligence. These so-called shallow friends would drop me like a hot potato if it suited them and they did. It was very late in life that I learned to judge people's worth only by their character and nothing else. It came after finding out the hard way that the people with the most poverty-stricken minds often live in the most palatial homes. I never forgot the lesson.

And then there was the family and culture I married into. The less said the better. No wonder that I was a misfit. Moronically I tried to appease them and spent most of my life desperately trying to gain validation from these worthless people and threw away the best years of my life trying to pretend that it was not a mistake. I thought I had no choice, now that the commitment was made. In hindsight, I should have run like an Olympic champion in the opposite direction. But then, why women endure abusive marriages is a whole different topic. It taught me that trust and love has to be earned, that respect has to be deserved and that anyone who belittles you does not deserve you. The best thing you can do for yourself is to belong only to God from the very beginning. You cannot go wrong and if you do, He turns you right side up again instead of you ending up flailing around helplessly on your own, like a beetle on its back.

Baba told people just to say the name of God with love; not go looking high and low for Gurus in a hurry. When the student is ready, the teacher appears. Just say the name of God with love and He will be with you, in your world, with your suffering, no matter where you are. Nobody in this world is denied if he calls out to God from the bottom of his heart. All He asked for was faith and patience. In my darkest hours, His name has been my solace and my strength. Not for a second did I ever doubt his assurance, 'I am always with you. Listen to your inner voice. It is the voice of God.'

And He did finally set me free. Thank You Baba. Misfit no more.