A Book of Memory

by Sudhir Kakar

  23/9/82

  The dream: We are making love, with all signs of evident satisfaction, when you laugh and say, ‘Did you know that you snort and smell like a sea horse?’ I give an embarrassed, forced grin but turn my face away so as not to breathe on you, aware of a stink in my mouth of which I am feeling ashamed.

  The dream to me was dramatizing a feeling of the last two times we met, of my being a ridiculous (not funny) kind of creature, who is in bad odour with you. Did you feel that too? I do hope that love has reasserted itself, submerging any anger you may have felt. I wonder, though, what the distance was all about, why your eyes got cold. It can’t only be my ridiculousness. Looked at in a certain way, everyone is ridiculous, including God in His underpants.

  In January 1983, I wrote, ‘Your turning away is opening up chasms again when reality suddenly loses its comfortable contours. Was the warmth I felt real, was your love hedged with all kinds of conditions which I did not heed? Should I have, like you, doubted what I would have most liked to believe in?’ In February, I wrote from Jaipur where I had gone to close our house that I had not found strength to enter since my father’s death.

  In the middle of all this, an empty house with a calendar page unturned from April of last year, newspapers in the bookshelves of an even earlier date. I hang on to the memory of your face the last time we met and the way you looked at me—often and intensely. There was no doubt in that look that I was dear to you; I am holding on to that look as I hope you will too when the guilts come again . . .

  Another letter, of May 1983, enclosed a fifth-century Sanskrit poem:

  By rising to greet him from afar

  she circumvents their sitting on one seat;

  by the pretext of fixing betel

  she prevents his quick embrace.

  She makes no conversation with him;

  instead, gives orders to the servants;

  her skill is such that by politeness

  she satisfies her wrath.6

  Mala had told me how her close friends, especially Leela, had been urging her to finally put an end to an affair that was having such a bad effect on her physical and mental state. I protested.

  The sakhis [female friends], describing Shakuntala: emaciated cheeks, breasts that have lost their firmness, thin waist, drooping shoulders, complexion drained of colour . . . A spring creeper visited by a breeze that withers its leaves. Sakhis in those days did their best to bring lovers together—not to keep them apart (but then the lovers were young and unmarried). Their concern was union of lovers not whether the union was right or wrong. But of course, Shakuntala’s state, unlike Mala’s, is from unconsummated and not conflicted love . . . (underlined in original)

  I flailed against the approaching end. I wince as I read the pleading letters I wrote from the US. Freud’s observation—that whoever loves becomes humble and that those who love have pawned a part of their narcissism—may be true but my humility had crossed into abasement. I wished I could accept the end with a degree of equanimity. I hankered after a resignation that I actually did not wish for and which was therefore painfully slow in coming. Mala did not respond to my letters. In desperation for news of her, I sought out the very sakhi who had opposed and sought to undermine our relationship from the outset.

  Leela said that in your letters to her you sounded happy and cheerful (as if, her expression conveyed, you had recovered well from a sickness which I presume was ‘us’). I cowered before her clarity. I squirmed as I heard about the realities of marriages and careers, feeling little and belittled, saddled with a sensibility that is so far away from reality and from that of the admired New Jerusalemers.

  In the following years, we occasionally met for lunch. We would talk of our lives like the dear friends we had become although each time I would also surreptitiously look for a sign in her eyes or words that might give me hope for a revival of our earlier intensity. None came. She went on to other lovers, as did I. I hid my jealousy except on one occasion when it erupted in a raging letter full of accusations: ‘I wish I could spoil it all for you, at least fill it all with guilt and make you acknowledge that your itchy soul may be much worse than my purported itchy loins.’

  Even these occasional meetings came to an end eight years after we had first locked eyes across a Delhi living room. In the 1990s, Mala, and later I, found partners in whom we could realize our singular needs for an intimacy we had searched for in each other. The search may have been in vain but I remain in debt to her for the varied colours of feeling I was given to glimpse on the way.

  Reading the two accounts, I become aware of the impossibility of ever capturing the full complexity of ‘unhappy love’. Perhaps it is in the nature of love that one can only truthfully describe the scars it leaves behind, but only incompletely capture what caused the wounds. To protect ourselves from the immediate pain, and later from the memory of old wounds, we invariably try to fit them into the two familiar narrative forms that govern tales of love and loss which the psychoanalyst Stephen Mitchell identifies as self-pity and guilt.7 There is a strain of self-pity, a state where one is both the pitier and the pitied, familiar from countless Urdu ghazals (as also the blues) that bemoan the faithlessness of the beloved, which runs through the first love story with Anita. Guilt—over my own faithlessness that drove Mala away, subverting the course of ‘true love’—seems to be the organizing principle of the second story. It is probable that for a long time I was loath to let go of the guilt since its presence ensured that I was a moral being; I must be a good person if I feel guilty.

  Decades later, I look back at both these loves with an acceptance of the fact that we hurt and are hurt by those we love, and that these damages of the past are irreversible yet necessary. They made me more mature, prepared the psychic stage for the reception of the ‘happy love’ of which I speak in the following chapter.

  Retreat to the Forest

  2003

  Goa

  Memoirs, almost per definition, are a spotlight on the past that reveals its intricate patterns and subtle hues. The nearer memories approach the present, the more muted the palette becomes, colours losing their brilliance. Sages from all eras and cultures, from Buddha to Marcus Aurelius to Thoreau, have time and again told us that past and future are illusions, that they exist only in the present which is all there is. Spiritual teachers advise us to live only in the present moment: carpe diem—seize the day. They may well be right for those solely in search of happiness, or at least equanimity. I believe their advice is misplaced for some of us who want to explore the full range of our emotions; the feeling of regret, for instance, is only experienced when one is no longer absorbed in the present moment. Most people, and not only elderly memoirists, are aware that the present moment, though flush with sensations, rarely gives a sense of the richness of life that can equal the one evoked by memories or, in the young, by fantasies of the future. The pleasure in achieving a long-cherished goal is intense but momentary; joy that lasts much longer, even if subdued, lies in the anticipation of good fortune.

  By the early 1990s, our marriage was on its last legs. My son had left for university studies in the US and my daughter was entering college in Delhi, making a separation easier though it would never be easy. We divided our house, constructed eight years back with feelings of pride and hope, into two apartments so that Apeksha and I could lead our separate lives. Torn between an ‘upstairs’ and a ‘downstairs’, my daughter suffered under the arrangement, also because I was travelling out of India for extended periods of time. Unsighted by my own desperate urge to escape an intolerable situation, and given their stoic acceptance of the step I was taking, I chose to make light of the effect the open separation had on the children. Not that the effects of parental separation on children are ever predictable. Between the truisms that ‘Divorce always has a negative impact on a child’s emotional life’ and ‘It is better to end a loveless marriage since it is important for children—if they are to develop a capacity for intimacy�
�not only to be loved by their parents, but also for the parents to love each other,’ there is a whole range of outcomes. The age and emotional maturity of the child when the separation occurs, the child’s experience of parents while growing up, the personalities of the parents and how difficult the child finds to separate from a parent she or he feels has been abandoned, whether after the separation one or the other parent turns to a child for help as an ally, confidante or even surrogate spouse, the relationship between the parents after the separation, whether amicable or of open warfare, all combine in unknown ways to make the end of an unhappy marriage a unique event with unforeseen consequences for the lives of the children. ‘Love the child with all your heart and leave the rest to fate,’ was the advice I had always given an anxious parent; it now became my own consolation.

  Immediately after the separation, I threw myself into teaching and writing work that involved spending months away from Delhi. First, there was a visiting professorship, a joint appointment in Psychology and Religion at the University of Chicago for three months a year for four years. I loved the intellectual stimulation of the spring quarter spent in Chicago and the involvement in work—perennial compensations for a deficient private life available to some men but rarely to women. I made some good friends in Chicago, such as the Sanskritist and Indologist Wendy Doniger whose wit is not a whit less than her formidable learning. Many years later, we were to collaborate on a new translation of the Kamasutra for Oxford World Classics. Then there was A.K. Ramanujan, the poet and folklorist, who died tragically in 1993, a few months after I returned from Chicago. We had started writing a paper together, on sibling relationships in Kannada folk tales. I have never had the heart to look at this unfinished essay again, which lies in a folder with other abandoned writings.

  In 1995, I spent a full year at the Institute of Advanced Study in Berlin where I completed my book on Hindu–Muslim violence for which I had often travelled to Hyderabad to interview the victims and the killers. One of the latter, famed in the city for his expertise in wielding the knife, who I have called Akbar in the book, became quite fond of me. At the end of our meetings, in a gesture of friendship, Akbar offered to come to Delhi if I ever needed his services to get rid of an enemy. I thanked him politely, not daring to openly reject the generous offer.

  An enormously satisfying aspect of my frequent travels was the opportunity it gave me to spend time with my children. After taking her economics degree from St. Stephen’s College, Shveta was studying law at the London School of Economics and we met often when I was in Europe. Rahul had finished his economics degree at the University of Chicago and was working with an investment bank in New York. I could be with him during his final year at Chicago when I was teaching at the university for the spring quarter and then stay with him for a few days whenever I passed through New York. I always hesitated to broach the topic of my separation from their mother, a combination of my tendency to avoid unpleasant issues and a desire to protect their bond with Apeksha by not making comments that portrayed her in an unflattering light.

  I added to my travel and the time I spent away from home by accepting an invitation from my old friend Manfred Kets de Vries to teach with him in a seminar on leadership at INSEAD. This involved being in Fontainebleau in France for one week in every six weeks, in January, March and May, and, some years later, another week in December at the INSEAD campus in Singapore. I have now been teaching in this leadership seminar for seventeen years, working closely with the twenty or so very senior executives and a few high-ranking civil servants from all over the world who take the course each year. The whole premise of the course is that leaders pay too little attention to the non-rational processes that motivate individual human behaviour, and lack an adequate understanding of their personal leadership styles and the emotional side of decision-making. With the presentation of his or her (there continue to be very few women in top leadership positions) own life history as the centrepiece of the process, the participant in the seminar is helped to understand his actions, behaviours, feelings, emotions and drives, which also helps him to better understand these processes in others.

  Over the years, the course has been signally successful and Manfred has written more than one book on the learnings about leadership gleaned from the programme. Close observation of more than three hundred senior executives, mostly from Europe and the US but some also from Asia and Latin America, has led me to reflect on leadership in Indian institutions.

  More than twenty-five years ago, I attended a small meeting called by Rajiv Gandhi at the residence of his mother, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, where two senior cabinet ministers were also present. Rajiv was the general secretary of the Congress Party at the time, without an official position in the government, but it was clear that the people around the table saw in him the ‘crown prince’ and future prime minister of the country. The ministers, who I had otherwise seen strut in front of television cameras at various inaugural events or be patronizing to journalists in newspaper and television interviews, stood up like servitors when he entered the room. Their heads were bowed, necks inclined forward and palms folded in front of the chests. Broad servile grins appeared on their faces when he greeted them with folded hands. Rajiv was new in politics then, polite, informal and respectful of the ministers’ seniority and age even when it was clear that he did not think much of their contributions to the discussion.

  I remember wondering what would happen to him over the years when as the most powerful person in the country he would, day in and day out, only inhale the smoke of flattery. What would be the psychic consequences of subconsciously registering people involuntarily nodding their heads in agreement even when they disagreed with what he said, the hilarity greeting his witticisms, even the ones that were undeserving. For although it may be universally true that a leader is always surrounded by liars, the danger is especially acute in the Indian setting. Not because Indian leaders are graduates of the legendary head of MGM, Samuel Goldwyn’s school of leadership: ‘I don’t want any yes-men around me. I want everybody to tell me the truth even if it costs them their jobs,’ or ‘if I want your opinion, I’ll give it to you.’ On the contrary, leaders in Indian institutions are more likely to fulfil the ‘teddy bear’ requirement of the leadership role while tending to keep the realization at bay that at times a leader must also cause pain and play the ‘dentist’.

  The major problem of Indian leadership—from university departments to corporate business life, from hospitals to political parties, from traditional guru–disciple relationship to the institutions of state bureaucracy—is that leaders are often deprived of that critical feedback from the senior people of their institutions which would help them eliminate their own dysfunctional behaviours while aiding in the development of more effective leadership practices. I will not go into the various reasons for this state of affairs here but will only emphasize the extra effort Indian leaders may need to make to maintain their sense of reality about the world, and especially themselves.

  The problem becomes worse with leaders who are loved and idealized by their people. Negative images projected on to leaders by followers are easier to handle since they cause discomfort, even in the most thick-skinned leaders, compelling them to reject the images by discriminating between what is true and what is false in the malignant projections—between what actually ‘belongs’ to them and what are the projected attributes that are alien. This painful motivation for repelling the invasion of the self by others does not exist when such projections are narcissistically gratifying, as they invariably are in the case of adoring followers. It is hard not to start believing in your ‘greatness’ when those who surround you are constantly testifying to your perspicacity and wisdom. The Romans had the right idea when at the back of the chariot in which Caesar rode through Rome after his triumphs in foreign lands, acclaimed by cheering throngs, there stood a man repeating, ‘Remember, Caesar, you are human. You are human, Caesar.’ Today, in absence of the man at th
e back of the chariot or a court jester licensed to deflate the king’s self-importance, friends or spouses must spring in to fill the gap. Even Gandhi, who was more grateful for criticism than praise, who was more attracted to people who resisted or criticized him than to those who readily concurred with him, needed his wife Kasturba to keep the allure of Narcissus at bay. As his biographer Pyarelal reports, she could make him feel absurd by just one simple home truth for which she had a genius. I have always felt that one of the more important abilities leaders need to cultivate is to shut their ears to the first part of all sentences that begin with ‘I agree’ or ‘You are quite right’ and so on, and listen only to all the words that follow the inevitable ‘but’. Everything before the ‘but’ is incense smoke which can become dangerously intoxicating and affect the leader’s judgement.

  To resist the embrace of Narcissus is indeed difficult for any leader. For many, its pleasure is equal to or greater than what is promised by the combined efforts of Eros and the god Kama. One of the participants in our leadership seminar I remember with admiration was the head of the South African railway system that employed over 60,000 people. John was in his early sixties, a quiet, reflective man who when talking about his personal leadership style said something like the following: ‘If I have an idea I would like to be implemented, I cannot directly ask my team to do so. There would be resistance. I have to make sure that they feel the idea comes from them. If the idea is successful, I cannot take credit for it since that would demotivate the team, So when one of my ideas leads to tangible success, I come home in the evening, sit in front of the mirror and pour myself a glass of whisky. “Well done, John,” I say, as I raise the glass to toast myself.’