My Realization
This semester my goal in school was to stay on top of things. Every semester, I manage to stay caught up for the first week or two but then I end up falling behind. Thus far, I’ve managed to keep up with my homework, hand in my assignments on time and keep up with all my readings, not only in my accounting classes, but this class as well. I had from Thursday to Sunday off this week dedicated to writing my essay for this class. So I sat down Thursday with a hot cup of tea and flipped through the notes that I had made in Freedom from the Known. They weren’t in-depth notes, but just smaller sentences and keywords that came to my mind while reading the book for the past three weeks. Thursday, Friday and Saturday rolled out and I found myself struggling hard to write this essay – I hadn’t even written a paragraph. I just didn’t know where to begin. I felt like the pages I had made notes on were a foreign language and all of a sudden nothing made sense. I left my printed out version of Freedom from the Known and thought I’d tackle it later, that maybe something miracle would send me into some writing spree. For the next hour, I kept passing by the book and something just didn’t feel write. Why couldn’t I think of anything to write? Did I just spend hours for the past few weeks reading a book that didn’t even make any sense? What was the point on the notes? i took a deep breath of air and slowly just flipped through the first few pages of the book and saw a highlighted line on page 5 (of the PDF version) that said “immaturity lies only in total ignorance of self” and next to it was written Dad.
This summer the “smart, goody-two shoes, obeying” Neetu finally rebelled and by that I mean I got a tattoo. It seems pretty standard to either get a tattoo or “whore-out” when you’re trying to rebel. I knew what I wanted, I knew where I wanted it and I know how I wanted it, so the last thing remaining was booking an appointment. I made sure to do my research of course. The last thing I wanted was to get an infected tattoo during my attempt to give my parents the middle finger haha I’m kidding! My tattoo is on my shoulder and says “if you could only see the beast you’ve made of me” and it refers to everything and anything that has made me the person I am today. The tattoo is a mirrored image, which means that it can only be read when looking into a mirror. I felt that this is made it personal and intimate, and not something that could be read easily in passing. I know that nothing should ever make you feel complete, but this tattoo truly did. For the first time ever in my life, I FELT FREE!
When I first ran the idea of getting a tattoo by my parents they were like “yeah you can get one, if you want to get kicked out of the house” and do know that by “kicked out” they really mean “married off”. My initial mindset was to keep this tattoo a secret until I was married off because it felt like that’s what a lot of people had done – the countless number of people I had spoken to about their tattoos. Women that had been married and had kids said “my parents still don’t know about my tattoo!” Even some of the girls I know that are allowed to do whatever they want, had not told their parents about their tattoos. So when I came home that day after getting my tattoo I made sure that my parents could not se the massive black bandaid covering the tattoo. As soon as I entered my room I thought to myself “why?!” If I was so proud, felt whole and free because of my decision why should I keep it a secret? And how angry could my parents get? After all, my dad does have two tattoos. As soon as I walked into the kitchen and told my parents, they flipped SHIT. If you had walked in to the middle of that conversation, you would have thought that I had told my parents that I was a part of a gangbang by the way they were reacting. My dad was saying things like “how could you let another man even touch you?!” “I can’t believe you are even my daughter” and other horrible things. But for the first time, I didn’t feel bad or guilty. I thought my dad was being so immature, so ignorant? He has two tattoos! So how can he tell me that no man will want to marry me because I have a tattoo? For whatever reason, every bullet my parents were throwing at me went into one ear and out the other. I realized that they would probably never understand and that it wasn’t my problem. So when Krishnamurti said ‘if you reject all authority it means you are no longer afraid,’ I knew exactly what it meant. At 23 years old, I finally understood what it meant to no longer be afraid. It’s absolutely INSANE how much freedom you get when you don’t live bound by rules. Every time Krishnamurti talks about how ‘discipline must be without control’ and ‘control and outward discipline are not the way’ register so deeply with me.
For over two months now, my dad and I haven’t spoken because I dared to taste freedom and make my OWN decision. A decision in which no one’s opinion or permission was warranted. For a man who has tattoos and left his parents and siblings to go make something of himself at a very, very young age has killed all contact with me because I ‘stepped out of line’ just once. Many of my friends commend me for being so brave and not be an emotional wreck which is in part true and not. I wouldn’t have started crying writing this if it didn’t affect me at all. I’m not upset because I made the decision that I did, but because I know that even if my father and I begin talking, he’ll eventually die never understanding why I did what I did. To him, these talks and books written like the one by Krishnamurti is non-sense.
If you’re wondering where my mom is in all of this, she came around the next day. When my dad asked her why she wasn’t angry about the tattoo, she responded that everyone who is anyone has a tattoo and that it wasn’t a big deal. If one thing is true about my dad, it’s that he is very stubborn man. But after all, I am his daughter which means that I’m twice as stubborn. I think us not talking has affected my father more than me because you can smell it off him. I may not share my darkest secrets with my dad or share gossip, but he and I were extremely close. We’d pick on my brother and mom together, we’d grocery shop together, eat the free samples from Costco together, we’d drink chai and watch the news, and our biggest ritual was ‘fist bumping’ like we were ‘homies’. The fist bumping thing may sound lame, but it was what defined my relationship with my father, it was a small little gesture that I held near and dear to my heart. It was OUR thing and it’s a piece of joy I’ll take with me. And this is why it stung me so much when he told me never to hug or fist bump him ever again during that argument when I told them about my tattoo. I bawled my eyes out that night, repeatedly torturing myself with the phrase “don’t ever hug or fist bump me”. How could he say that? Did it not mean anything to him? Was our relationship such a quick write off?
It took me weeks to distinguish what I was really feeling. I didn’t regret my decision of getting a tattoo but I felt like I had lost a friend. You have to understand that for someone who’s always played by the rules and obeyed instructions, something like this was a very big shock to me. It was something many of my peers had already gone through. I don’t know if it’s because I took your Race and Ethnicity class before or what it was that helped me understand and process this. I had to understand that his attitude is one that has been shaped by his father, his forefathers, his country and his culture. My dad’s just a small fraction of the large, whole truth.
During our last class we talked about the Sikh men and what their struggles were and I realized that these struggles were my dad’s too, as well as mine. I couldn’t be angry at my dad, he wasn’t the issue. The issue is this disgusting, pitiful mindset that men and the whole Sikh community. It’s not just Sikh men, but many Sikh women – especially in India would agree with my father’s outrage. What he had said out of anger wasn’t his voice; it was the voices of other millions of Indian men who would have recited the exact same thing to their daughters. As odd as this may sound, when I came home that night I actually acknowledged my dad and said ‘hello’. It may not seem like a big deal, but when I look at all the generic advice my friends had given me about being the ‘bigger person’ and reaching out to my dad I never did. It took that one class on Monday to help me realize the truth. That my anger would only set me back and make me no different from my father. I felt like the quote ‘one of the most curious things in the structure of our psyche is that we all want to be told because we are the result of the propaganda of ten thousand years’ in the book should have neon lights around it saying “Sikh men”, “All men”, and “the women who enable it”.
Going back to what my peers had said earlier about commending me for my bravery, I think to myself that was just a face I put on. In all honesty, it was just a face. If I really was unaffected by it, I would not have let it phase me. It would have just been a segment of my past. If I had let it go, I would not have been able to learn and see not the wrong, but the fear that my father had. It seems so contradicting that a man who wants me to be able to stand on my own two feet still raises his daughter to have a ‘dull mind’ in the words of Krishnamurti. It’s strange how this new religion of freedom and everyone is equal acts in a way that is the total opposite. It feels as though the views and feelings of Indian daughters should not be expressed, only oppressed and repressed. Will fathers ever learn the fine line between behave and be brave? At what point do I let my inner Sikh take a backseat to my inner Canadian. I have always struggled to find my path, to balance the two worlds that I live in. How can I lead an extremely traditional Sikh life when I’m pretty much only coming into contact with non-Sikhs? Fear is clearly a very primal emotion for us humans. What once used to protect us from our predators is now being used to paralyze even the best of us, it is now a weapon. Krishnamurti discusses fear numerous times in his book. Society has turned fear into a fire that has been burnt into our minds and our memories. Until we are able to separate ourselves from it, it borrows into ones soul. A mutual fear that humanity share is the fear of the unknown. And it is apparent as to why. Growing up as children we look to our parents, teachers, god or any form of authority to TELL, not GUIDE, us whether we are safe or in danger, right or wrong, righteous or sinful, etc. We become so used to the idea of being TOLD that we forget that we have been given this life to find our own path or maybe not even choose any path at all.