Parenting’s Worst Nightmare is Suicide

This Too Shall Pass?

My father-in-law employs a 62-year old driver. This driver was used to driving Tata Motors’ tinplate out of the factory. He has been slumming it with us, driving a vehicle with only four wheels.

You had to see the condescension is his eyes when he saw my pop-in-law’s car, a Maruti Suzuki Celerio, for the first time. Here are some photos of his earlier ride.

That’s the kind of truck he used to drive, but now he works for us at half his earlier salary.

He’s not mad at us, he chose us. This story is about his nephew.

His nephew was 23. The nephew had a cycle agency, one which buys bicycles and resells them. Cycle agencies do well. During the pandemic they ran out of bicycles to sell. That is good for business, isn’t it? To have sold all your inventory and be clamoring for more, with a list of customers waiting for new stock.

Unfortunately the nephew was a drunkard who sold the cycles only to drink away any profits, and he ran into debt. His mother, who had bought him the agency after he flunked his school-leaving exams, had hoped to have him settled in a business.

The pandemic benefited the cycle agencies, but it also made alcohol scarce in India. India has shops with bars on the front, which sell alcohol from behind bars. The customers sheepishly line up for their daily fix and the shopkeeper stays safe behind his counter, as do the glass bottles full of amber liquid he peddles.

Regular drinkers needed to pay a premium for their daily drinks, because of the lockdown.

I think the increased price of alcohol ate into any surplus funds the cycle agency might have had. Most shops have grilles, but they are opened for customers during working hours.

His mother isn’t flush with funds, but as a government employee, she had a regular salary and pragmatically invested the money she would have paid for his college education into setting him up in a business.

Besides, she got him married. The nephew had three children, all of who currently are below age five. His mom not only bought him the cycle agency to give him a livelihood, she also got him married so he would settle down.

It didn’t work. Last Saturday, the nephew set himself on fire and died.

The body had to go for post-mortem. The Tata Main Hospital charges ₹84,000 for a post-mortem.

We pay my father-in-law’s driver ₹9000 a month, down from his earlier salary of ₹20,000 when he used to work for the Tatas driving those bigger trucks all day. We use him for about 3 hours a day and ₹9000 is generous in India for that kind of light work. The post mortem was 84,000

The post mortem was done. I don’t know who paid for it. Maybe the deceased guy’s mom, the government employee who paid for the cycle agency, and then again to get him married? Well if she was really rich, why would her brother be working as a driver at our place? She was probably a lower-level employee, which means she has a regular, but low salary. It does not mean that she found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

In this context, I wonder. Where do we go wrong as parents? Is there a time, when we give up, and we keep losing ground and we don’t know it? Today, if we let go, will our child take to drink, or drugs, and burn through money, hard-bought gold jewelry, sell our treasures for a pittance and scream at their spouse and kids for money and drugs?

Is parenting like gymming? If you give up, you keep losing muscle tone. Then you get depressed and stop your leisurely early morning strolls. Then you get diabetes, then you slouch, and sit, and sit, and sit! Then you get arthritis, get fatter, move less — and then suddenly one day — you get a heart attack. Poof! The world is rid of your slovenly body.

Is parenting like that? Today you don’t get after them to practice the piano, or do their homework, and pass their exams. You neglect getting them to bed on time.

Next you find they’re dragging their heels with housework, not getting projects done in time, or turning in shoddy work. They no longer eat any vegetables, and spend your money casually on online orders on food delivery apps.

Does it get worse, or does the curve bottom out and start to rise? Is there a rock bottom? How deep is rock bottom? Laziness? An unmade bed? A C- on an exam? No writing or problem solving on paper for an entire week? A temper tantrum when you say no to something?

Or is it truly worse? Drugs, alcohol, drunk driving with hit-and-runs, a police record, a battered wife?

The suicide by fire man has a mom — the government employee who tried so hard and did all the conventional things an Indian mother does when she has a wayward son. She has tried. Today, three days after the boy set himself afire, three whole days! She still hasn’t received the body. The doctors need to make sure he wan’t murdered.

He wasn’t. The boy had kept the windows open so the fire wouldn’t go out for lack of oxygen. They all heard him screaming towards the end. Probably his kids, too. He must have used his own alcohol to set himself aflame, or maybe he burnt better because he used petrol or kerosene… didn’t he worry about whether his mother’s house would have a room which might catch fire, that he might literally burn the house down during his suicide?

Good God! What about his children? his widow? Three children, below the age of five, live with their grandma, and the girl who agreed to marry a drunkard who owned a cycle shop, that is their mother. Some “well-meaning” person is sure to casually let slip the circumstances of their father’s death, and then we’ll be in a pretty pickle. Suicides often run in the family….

The children will think they are mistakes. They will feel slighted, they will be ridiculed by their peers and laughed at by their classmates. Pitying glances and sympathetic looks, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree… they’re in for it and I dare you to tell me otherwise.

Is there anything I can do? What does your Book say? If you met a child whose parent was a drunk, a drug-addict, or a total washout and blot on the escutcheon, (shield or livery)not eustecheon, what would you tell them?

They aren’t the only ones. You, reading this, might be reading this in a country where there is “therapy”. We never heard of therapy, unless it is physiotherapy.

Lisa Martens wrote a humour article about how one always needed a therapist, not just during COVID. Her article sounded like the truth to me, not like humour. It is a seriously funny article, but it made me think: how many people out there need therapy, and doesn’t Lisa’s sentence:

It started before I was born..

laughingly bring forth the truth?

If you meet a kid whose parents are the pits, what do you tell them?

“You are not a mistake. You are intentional. God has a plan to make you prosper” is great, it came from the Bible.

What next? What do I say after that?

Why do I have to meet the broken ones? Why does a dentist want to know? I don’t know. I just felt I should know, it might come in handy.

Chelsea London has a story of speaking in tongues, which is about her experiences in which she speaks a language she does not know, after an immersive English language camp where she spoke no Italian. She says she experienced a vision of calm, of light and for a day or two after, felt a sense of peace.

I need to know more. I want to radiate strength, because people are broken all around me.

The question is: What single message would they listen to? What version of This Too Shall Pass do kids need to hear?