Standing on My Brother's Shoulders

by Tara J Lal

  My sister ruled the roost between us siblings. She was like a child version of Mum, strong-willed, somewhat bossy and a little bit scary. Underneath it all, though, she was affectionate and caring, it was just that Adam and I didn’t see that side of her very often. We simply feared her and strove endlessly for her approval.

  The saliva game involved my sister pinning either me or my brother down with her knees, trapping us, enabling her to lean over the unfortunate younger sibling while she commenced the tortuous exercise of extending a long globule of saliva from her mouth. I would see it coming, squealing and squirming as the thread of spit grew ever more tenuous. Intense fear gripped me. God forbid that saliva should actually touch me or worse, enter my open mouth.

  Ad and I tended to stick together during these games, except for the times when it seemed more important for our own self-preservation that we remain on our sister’s side and generally champion all her actions. There was one occasion we were on holiday with our family friends who, unfortunately for Adam, had three daughters, so of course I sided with Jo and them when she suggested that Adam put out the fire we had going by peeing on it – as he was the only one who had the ‘reach’.

  On one particular family holiday the three of us dug a huge hole in the sand. Jo cajoled Adam into getting in it while she and I filled it up with sand. We were all having fun until the sand neared his neck and he realized he couldn’t move. I watched horrified as his infectious vibrant smile morphed into a look of intense panic. Jo didn’t seem to feel the urgency that I felt. She was amused by the sight of only my brother’s head popping out of the sand until, that is, Adam started shouting and we began digging frantically to extricate him. My heart was pounding. I loved Adam. That look on his face came to haunt me in later years.

  Even from an early age Adam and I looked out for each other. He wrote letters to me whenever I went away.

  Dear Fuzzy,

  How are you? We are all well. I haven’t noticed any letters from you in the post yet, but sure some are on the way, aren’t they? Hint hint! I bet you’ve spent all your money already, on sweets no doubt! Oh yes, how’s the riding going? I can almost imagine you carrying the pony instead of it carrying you! Do you realize I haven’t seen you for: let me see, eleven whole days – what bliss! No, not really I’m looking forward to seeing my little sister again. It’s been so quiet while you’ve been away. No pattering of feet in the morning and no little head popping out of the bed covers in the morning. Anyway, we’re all (not) missing you (only a joke) and are looking forward to seeing the curly-haired baby (in other words – you) again.

  Love from Ad xxx

  PS Please dance with someone at the disco.

  We used to play this game that involved one of us climbing onto the other’s shoulders so that we could reach and cling to a small bit of cornice that lined an archway between the living and dining area in our home. We only had the very ends of our fingertips to grip with so it was a precarious manoeuvre. If I was on my brother’s shoulders, I would be left to dangle from my fingertips while he ran up and down the room as many times as possible until I screamed to be picked up, whereupon Adam would stand underneath me, once more taking my weight on his shoulders. Adam and I trusted each other implicitly; not once did either of us allow the other one to fall.

  Generally, the three of us got along. We were happy, blissfully unaware of the mental illness that shrouded my father in a dark cloak, threatening to engulf him.

  CHAPTER 2

  My father was the first of three sons, born in 1931 in Burhpur, a small, bustling village in northern India. He always smiles when he recalls those first six years of his life in the family home. His eyes glaze over as he retreats into the haven of his childhood, gently nodding with a soft fondness for his treasured memories. His face is blurred by a hazy sadness; his idyllic home and family are long since a distant, faded reality.

  My father doesn’t recall his mother acting oddly.

  ‘That’s nonsense,’ he says when his brother mentions that their mother would talk to herself and often behave strangely. ‘She was just dealing with the normal stresses of motherhood,’ Dad says confidently.

  But when Dad was six his father decided to pack the family up on a boat bound for England, ostensibly to secure a good education for his sons, but also in the hope that the change would be good for his wife. He had been educated in the UK, the son of a wealthy and eminent Indian lawyer and advisor to the Congress Party. Legend has it that Nehru once stayed at the family property in India.

  My grandfather secured a job in England and then sent for his wife and sons to join him. So, in 1937, my father, his mother and his younger brother were herded onto a rickety old train bound for the port of Bombay, where they began their six-week journey. Despite being only six years old at the time, certain images from the trip remain imprinted in my father’s memory: the incredibly blue water as they sailed into Malta, a random lifeboat exercise in the Bay of Biscay and the brightly coloured bunting that greeted them as they sailed into England.

  ‘Look, Maataaji! Look what they did for us!’ he squealed excitedly in Hindi, pointing at the bunting, completely unaware of the coronation of George VI, or indeed who George VI was.

  The family lived in Catford in South London, where my grandfather had a medical practice. Soon after arriving, my father came running down the stairs and bumped into a young English lady whom his father had employed to tutor his sons. He started talking in Hindi. Why didn’t she answer his questions? She was speaking in a strange way. It didn’t make sense. He wandered into the bathroom, peering puzzledly at the toilet, taken aback by the rushing water when he pulled the chain. Funny how everything just disappeared, he mused.

  It wasn’t long after the family arrived in England that the war broke out. My grandfather was called up to serve in the medical corps in the Indian army. Convinced his family would be safer out of London, he moved them to Basingstoke, but they were isolated there and Dad’s mother began to crumble under the stress. Then a bomb exploded in a church right next to their house and she panicked, screaming at her kids to put on their ill-fitting gas masks. When my father recalls that day he closes his eyes and scrunches up his face as if by doing so he might halt the memory in its tracks. Even now he will exit the room when a bottle of champagne is opened. He wears earplugs during storms, and a balloon bursting leaves him cowering in his chair like a frightened child. As kids we thought it hilarious that Dad was frightened of balloons, teasing him endlessly.

  Perhaps it was the bomb incident that tipped my grandmother over the edge, for one Sunday morning in 1943 my father awoke to find his mother in an agitated frenzy, howling, incoherent words streaming endlessly from her mouth, eyes wild. Frightened, he ran up the road to find a local dentist the family knew. Various doctors and seemingly important people arrived at the house: the general consensus was that Dad’s mother was suffering from a nervous breakdown.

  My father and his two brothers watched helplessly as their mother was whisked away to a psychiatric hospital, labelled as crazy and later diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Welfare services were called in, taking the three young boys to the nearest orphanage. Dad recalls with terrifying clarity his first night of what he describes bitterly as a living hell. He lay awake, twelve years old, staring at the dark ceiling of the dormitory, trying to block out the stifled sobs of others, haunted by the look in his mother’s eyes, the sound of her howls. He felt he was drowning, cast out to sea without a life raft, nothing solid to reach out for, engulfed by a sea of uncertainty. What would happen to him and his brothers? Would he ever see his mother again? What was wrong with her? Why was she acting so strangely?

  Then one day he found some old leather-bound books hidden in a cupboard in the orphanage. As he began to read, the words took him to another world, far away from his shattered reality. He read and re-read those books over and over, a haven from the hell. When ensconced in his books he was safe.

  Mrs Harding lived up the
road from the Lal family. Her husband was working overseas so she was at home alone with her young daughter. She used to see the Indian family that lived in the neighbourhood on occasion. News spread that the boys were in the orphanage, so she set about arranging a visit. She stepped into the grounds of the overcrowded building, immediately shocked by the scene that greeted her eyes as she scanned the sea of white faces in search of dark skin. Her eyes came to rest on my father, sitting quietly cross-legged in a corner, clutching a book, his brothers huddled nearby. Her heart melted the moment she set eyes on the boys with their huge, endearing brown eyes. In that moment she vowed to take them home with her, shower them with love and save them from a life of institutionalized hell. She fostered all three of the boys during the war.

  Increasingly, Dad immersed himself in books. Reading provided an escape from the confusion of his short childhood; reading became his passion. The books helped him cope.

  After the war, in 1945, my grandfather decided to take his wife and two youngest sons back to India to look after the family property. Having everything worked out, he left Dad with Mrs Harding in England so he could finish school, follow in his footsteps and become a doctor. His youngest son would also be a doctor, but Shambhuji, the middle son, would remain in India and enter the Indian army. And so it was: the three sons diligently followed the paths that had been laid out for them. Three years later, my grandfather returned to England with his wife and youngest son and set up a medical practice in the Old Kent Road in London, while his wife ricocheted in and out of psychiatric hospitals. My father was twenty-two when his mother finally died after succumbing to tuberculosis. No one told him she had passed away, for he too was in hospital suffering from the very same disease. Only a year later did he learn of her death upon his own release from hospital.

  My father first suffered some form of mental illness as a teenager, although what his symptoms were I don’t know. He was later variously diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder and depression. Driven by his mother’s illness, the youngest son, my uncle Samarthji, went on to become a highly respected professor of psychiatry in Canada, focusing much of his research on schizophrenia. Recent research from his institute in the field of epigenetics has revealed how genes can be ‘painted’ or ‘coloured’ by environmental exposure. Emotional and physical triggers are superimposed on our unique genetic imprint to determine the expression of those genes in any individual.

  I have often asked myself whether my father’s psychological struggles were the result of a genetic trait passed on to him from his mother or a product of the trauma he endured during his childhood. I could ask the same about my brother.

  My father completed his medical training and became a doctor. We kids found this hilarious as my father’s answer to all ailments was invariably ‘take an aspirin and go to bed’.

  Thankfully, for the welfare of all, following his intern year, my father went against Indian tradition by ignoring his father’s wishes and abandoned his medical career to study for a PhD in neurophysiology.

  When Dad spoke about his research his whole body became animated, eyes shining as he described one neuron passing a unique message to another, encoding some meaningful piece of information in a single nerve impulse, a beautiful, seamless flow of information from one medium to another. In those moments of heartfelt engagement Dad was stripped of his sadness and regret, affording us a rare glimpse of the enigmatic, passionate, real Dr Lal.

  When Dad was engaged with a subject, he could be very funny. He cracked himself up every time he told us his favourite joke. It always began the same way: ‘Have you heard the one about the absent-minded professor?’

  ‘Yes, Dad!’ we all chorused in mock boredom. At which point my father would continue regardless.

  ‘Well, the professor was walking down the road, thinking of his work, when he realized he couldn’t remember the way home. So he stopped to ask a little girl who was playing in the street for directions.

  ‘“Excuse me, little girl.”’ My dad would put on his absent-minded professor voice. ‘“Do you know the way to 115 Constantine Road?”’

  ‘And the little girl replied, “You’re funny, Daddy!”’

  At which point my father began hiccupping with laughter, which in turn made us all fall about in hysterics. Our house was filled with Dad’s books. Every conceivable nook or cranny had a book in it. Books were lined up horizontally and when that became unfeasible they were piled vertically. It drove Mum crazy. When we went on a two-week holiday, Dad took twenty books with him and read them all. I never could understand how he did that or how, even more impressively, he could recall every detail of each book he’d read.

  I could always tell when Dad was depressed. He would sit in his comfortable brown armchair that had become moulded to his body over the years, but he wouldn’t have a book on his knee. Instead he would sit motionless with his eyes closed. As I said, I cannot recollect his first nervous breakdown, but as an adult I look back and wonder how it affected us all. I have often felt that there is something that blocks me, a memory perhaps that I can’t quite reach. When, in my thirties, I retraced my childhood, images came to me of myself as a toddler. There was one scene in particular, where I peered round a door to see my father sitting in the corner of a bare hospital room, rocking back and forth, eyes clenched shut. I wanted to go to him, put my arms around him, but I was whisked away. Was this a real memory? I wonder.

  My memories of being older, about ten or eleven, are much clearer. I remember Mum taking me to visit Dad in the psychiatric hospital. I was nervous. I didn’t want to tell anyone that my dad was in a ‘mental’ hospital. To my surprise and relief it seemed quite a nice place, not cold and sterile as I had imagined. But still it felt weird. I looked around thinking, Everyone must be nuts in here … but my dad isn’t nuts.

  They took all his razor blades away from him. I had no idea what this meant at the time. Only that Dad found it annoying as he didn’t like electric shavers. All I knew was that when Dad was in hospital we went to visit him, and that was just part of life.

  I scribbled in my diary:

  Dad’s depressed. I hate it when Dad’s depressed because he’s so quiet and I always think it’s my fault.*

  * It’s incredibly important to explain to children who have a parent or family member suffering from mental ill health, what the illness is in a developmentally appropriate way. When I speak about my experiences, I often say that what I needed was someone to explain to me that ‘Daddy has an illness and the illness is in his head and it means he finds it hard to show his love, but he does love you and above all it’s not your fault.’ I strongly recommend anybody in this position seek advice from one of the resources mentioned at the end of this book to help guide you in how to talk with your children about mental illness.

  CHAPTER 3

  Mum was tough. She did what she had to do. She cooked and cleaned, drove and shopped, did all our washing by hand. She was tall and strong with broad shoulders and slim hips. I’m built just like her. She worked hard in her new career as a social worker; she ran the family budget and somehow found time to love and cuddle us. In short, she did everything in her power to keep our family together throughout my father’s illness and his subsequent inability to cope.

  I was completely unaware of the load she was carrying. I remember seeing her cry only once. It was the day that Jo and Adam broke Mum’s sculpture, a figure of a girl with blonde hair, standing on some rocks by the ocean. It was called Sea Breezes, and Mum’s father had given it to her, saying that it reminded him of her. We knew it was her favourite thing; she’d told us to be careful of it often enough. My sister and brother were always fighting. Snooker balls were a favourite, and on this occasion the black ball missed its target. We watched, horrified, as the sculpture toppled from the mantlepiece and smashed into a million pieces on the floor. We stared at each other in silence, before the fighting started again: Jo and Adam arguing over whose fault it was and who was g
oing to tell Mum. I felt an intense relief that I hadn’t been the one to throw the offending ball. We knew that the culprit would be in for a hiding. But, as it turned out, we got worse than that. Mum didn’t hit us; she cried.

  Dad and I lived in fear of Mum. On one particular Saturday morning my father had been coerced to come to do the weekly food shop at Sainsbury’s with Mum and me. We queued in the usual mayhem of Saturday morning shoppers with our trolley full of food. The young checkout girl announced, ‘That’s fifty-five pounds and twenty-five pence, please.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Mum exclaimed, with some force, staring at the girl. ‘You’ve overcharged me.’

  Dad and I stared down at our feet.

  ‘Bridget, just leave it, I’m sure it’s fine,’ Dad pointed out meekly.

  ‘You’ll have to run it all through again,’ Mum pronounced, completely ignoring Dad’s comment. The check-out girl rolled her eyes but proceeded to run the entire shop through the till once more as the queue of tutting, harassed mothers behind us grew ever longer. Twenty sets of eyes glared at us. Dad and I stood still in mortified silence. At the end of it all, we’d been overcharged by the grand total of one pound twenty.

  ‘See!’ my mother exclaimed triumphantly. Of course, my father and I would have happily paid the extra and saved the embarrassment.

  Only once did I witness my father retaliate in an argument with my mother. It happened in the car, when my parents were going through their usual pattern of car-guments. This time, though, when Mum unleashed her routine verbal tirade on Dad, something snapped in him.

  ‘Stop … Stop the car!’

  My mother, shocked by the uncharacteristic force in his voice, put her foot on the brakes. Almost before the car had come to a halt, my father opened the passenger door and stepped out, clutching his book. ‘That’s it, Bridget. I’ve had enough.’