The Intergenerational Sandwich

From Adam Grant’s Twitter

As I understand, this inter-generational concept is making some waves in the present Indian societal context where people are constantly sandwiched between generational expectations. We are often made to live with an ingrained expectation to appease our ancestors – sometimes it may be passed on as a debt we can never repay, quite literally so, too. What a weight to press down on our children!

I have thought about this often – thinking if I would ever measure up to repaying all the sacrifices that my parents made for me – I realize I cannot. I used to wonder if I make my parents proud – I somehow believe I do. I also realise that essentially speaking, there is no debt, but a passing of understanding to live ethically & somewhere in that is the responsibility to do what is required – not as an injunction or expectation but as an act of civility perhaps?

As a self-sustaining adult, my hope is to build enough of resources & structural support to not be a liability on my children. As a parent, my hope is to provide them with the security of basic needs and sound education alongside a set of values that will give them the foundation to support themselves. My responsibility is to leave behind decent children who can be people of value to this world they live in.

So what do I, then, have to offer to the next generation? Perhaps I just want to live the example. I do not want them to repeat my mistakes, maybe learn from them and not repeat them? I may not even want to be an example, but I could attempt to live as closely to the words I preach – to live authentically and as REAL as I possibly can. And when I fumble, falter, fall flat on my face or even fail, maybe I can own up to that and course correct.

Where is the need to live up to meet possibly impossible expectations of a bygone past when there is every need and necessity to do good for the future of our planet and the generations to come? After the way our predecessors (and we) have pilfered this planet and her resources, the least we can do is leave a better place for our children – and our children’s children!

I also am aware from this post that there are those of us who are childless or choose to not have children & may feel excluded by the words used in the original tweet. I do not make excuses for the author – I speak as a parent – a woman who chose to have children. In that space, I may choose to metaphorically include all descendants as offspring / the next generation to whom we shall remain ancestors and predecessors. I do not speak for those who feel excluded but I hold space for your feelings with all due respect – many of you are my dear friends & I wholly believe you are doing your bit for the future.

May that be the debt we owe to the future!

May that be the ultimate repayment of debt to our ancestors to safeguard the future of those who come to blaze the trail in our wake – if we leave it for them, that is.

As always, open to thoughts… and freely sharing mine..

Special credit also goes to someone who teased some of these thoughts out of me a few days back in casual conversation.

Much love,

L

The Origin Of Me

In 2008, I had set out on a personal project. It was a passion project largely because of my maternal grandmother, my Atta, who raised me on stories of her childhood, of India, and my extended family who although, were mere faceless names, held deep connections to my sense of belonging. I set out chart my family tree.

It took me five whole months of near obsession to connect with family I barely knew existed. Somehow, information came pouring in. A cousin here connected me with an uncle there, who further got me in touch with a great aunt’s somewhere else. Slowly bits and pieces of my ancestry came together and I soon had a connection that backed me to 1710!! It was exciting & exhilarating to watch my name just a speck in this larger web of interconnected relationships.

About a year or so into the exercise, I forgot about it – only getting on to the website to update births & deaths…. nothing serious.

Then last night happened.

But before that, it is important to put into perspective the work I was involved in over the past many months. Work that involved understanding social structure, diversity, prejudice, racism, culture and our identity as a nation. The elections in India brought out another set of questions and uncertainties – almost all revolving around identity and belonging. My political voice was strong, but I couldn’t really examine where my stance was coming from. I was speaking of cultural appropriation and decolonization but at the same time couldn’t really understand why I was able to so easily understand a hybrid Indian culture coming from a Catholic family.

So back to last night…. For some unknown reason I woke up at 3 am and couldn’t go back to sleep. Just like that, a thought crept into my mind – you know the ones that are dragged in uninvited on the back of a previous thought? Yes, those ones… but I have no idea on which previous thought this one came in… because it took me to thinking back about my ancestors – who they were, where they came from and what the history was all about. I remember reading about it in passing – some years ago – and recognised the ethno-religious identity of being a Mangalorean Catholic, but I had not paid attention to the details of the community.

I decided to go back & dig up some history but what I wasn’t prepared for was the intensity of what was to come back at me. It was the same history, the same pages and words that I had skimmed years ago. Only this time, history came alive as I was sensitized from the deep work of the past many months. Sensitized enough to feel the pain, trauma and the displacement of my ancestors. I was able to be shaken enough to know that my existence today was because of the migration due to fear of the Goa Inquisition first and later as a result of a few who survived the torture at the hands of Tipu Sultan.

I was able to appreciate the suffering that went into keeping the faith as well as endure the hardship because of the decision to keep the faith, although from a new conversion, alongside the culture and norms of their ethnicity.

I’m still unearthing more facts & details but the dots are connecting. It is starting to make sense now – all those times when Atta kept telling me that we are Brahmins – and I couldn’t understand why and how Brahmins were a part of the Catholic community. I couldnt’ really understand why Mangaloreans and Goans both spoke Konkani (with slightly different dialect) but Mangaloreans wrote in the Kannada script and influenced with words from Kannada & Tulu. I couldn’t fully appreciate, although I tremendously enjoyed, the very deeply Indian customs to our celebrations especially around marriages and other festivities. I couldn’t really understand why I enjoyed music so much that I felt my heart skip a beat when we would sing the traditional folk songs that Atta had taught us and at the same time take a natural step to the more European folk rhythms.

I couldn’t then, but I do now.

It is in my culture. I have inherited it.

In my Indianness lie the ancestral families of the Prabhu, Naik, Nayak, Pai, Shenoy and many others Konkani family lines and at the same time we have come down from Aranhas, Albuquerque, D’souza, Coutinho, Rodrigues…. and somewhere from there my Rangel (originally Renjar) also fits in. My paternal grandmother, Granny, had once mentioned about the Goan migration when I was a child, but I didn’t ask for any details then… I wish I had…

And in all of this, there is much to unpack too – it is not just the wow factor of this revelation. It is also the sticky recognition of something I mentioned a few paragraphs above. The element of casteism in my community was not lost on me. As I sat digesting all this information, family conversations especially when Atta was still around slowly resurfaced as vague snippets picked from memory. Mentions of ‘they are of so-and-so caste‘, looking for alliances within ‘our caste‘, and other such instances. They didn’t matter then, but in hindsight, it was very much a part of everyday parlay of my childhood.

Privilege despite the adversity did matter. In fact, if nothing else, it was the privilege that my ancestors kept alive too along with the culture and traditions of a beautiful community. No one wants to lose out on privilege, especially if we have the opportunity to have our cake & eat it too.

It is not easy this ‘unearthing of identity‘ work… it takes courage because you never know what you’ll find out. For me, I’m touched deeply today and I wanted to debrief my raw emotions while it was still fresh. I know there is other stuff that I will have to process & publish later, but for today, I remain with humility and pride – conflicting thoughts, I know… but it is what it is.

I am humbled by the fact that I exist today because of the sacrifices of many of my ancestors and for the ravages of history and a deeply troubling colonized past. I am proud, also, because of that resilience to survive despite the odds. I feel strength just from knowing the people who came and went before me, for it is because of them that I can know that those qualities are within me too. I feel readier than ever before to show up in my ethnicity and heritage and a beautiful blend of diversity of my country and also in the face of everything today to stand as living proof that the country existed for centuries in a beautiful amalgamation of cultures and peoples and still carried their heritage with them.

I feel grounded in knowing that I am not as confused anymore… that I am one tiny step closer to know myself a little better than yesterday.

I am hurting from the harm my ancestors had to endure, but, history aside, I am at peace.