Parenting skills, a skill learnt?

Mrs Chatterjee vs Norway (2023)
Director: Ashima Chibber

I remember another case involving a Malaysian couple working in Sweden on a diplomatic passport in 2014. They were charged with child abuse when they smacked their children with a bamboo stick (probably rotan) for not reciting the Quran. The parents were imprisoned for instituting corporal punishment on their children, something unheard of in that society. Even though a Malay proverb surmises that 'one should live by the law of the land' (di mana bumi dipijak, di situ langit dijunjung), this obviously, does not apply to Malaysians in a foreign land, furthermore when it involves propagating religion to the generation next. There was a barrage of condemnation by netizens upon the country that decided to persecute their guests. A columnist in Malaysia even called Sweden's long remand period "a travesty of universal justice". The parents, upon return, after completion of their incarceration, received a hero's welcome.

So the question is, what is good parenting, one which spares the rod or uses it judiciously? The one in which the elder sibling also takes cognisance of household responsibilities and caring for her younger ones or the one where parents bear all responsibility for nurturing kids? Even within similar environments, siblings turn out differently, so how can there be one mould that fits all kinds of formulas? Who decides what good parenting is?

Many Eastern parents believe in the old adage of 'spare the rod and spoil the child' and 'action speaks louder than words' to steer children into submission to traverse the moth-bitten path they and their parents had taken. All the talking and reasoning are only in civil situations. Behind closed doors, words and utensils would fly. 

Since 1979, many developed nations, led by Sweden, have banned spanking and all corporal punishment. The Scandinavian way of parenting would encompass spending as much time outdoors, dividing parental duties, accepting gender neutrality, having liberal views on nudity parents and no spanking. Spanking is confined only to the bedroom to the loved ones in the most passionate ways!

This Bollywood film puts Norway under scrutiny for its seemingly inhumane and invasive child protection policies. They went as far as to compare it to state-sponsored child abduction. In 2011, in the town of Stavanger, an oil-rich region of Norway, an Indian immigrant(expatriate) worked in the petroleum industry. As Norway's Child Protection service, Bernevernet investigated the family when the first child was thought to exhibit features of autism, the workers discovered that the parents were incompetent by Norwegian standards and subsequently recommended that the children needed to be placed under foster care till adulthood. The reasons mentioned were objections against their parenting habits, which are considered typical in Indian culture. Feeding by hand was construed as forced feeding; sleeping on the same bed was unhealthy; yelling at children was abuse, and parents arguing was a no-no.

'Mrs Chattarji vs Norway' is the recreation of Sagarika Chakraborty's and Anurup Bhattacharya's experiences, which created a mild hiccup in bilateral relations between countries. The top brass of the Indian leaders had to intervene to find an amicable solution. It seems that not everything is hunky dory in the land with the best indices for the happiest nation on Earth.

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Generational clash?

Hi Mom, Dad! What's Up? 

Greeja De Silva

The moment Elvis Presley went on stage gyrating his pelvis, belting his then-new number 'Hound Dog', the elders went white. To them, his suggestive moves were the mark of the beginning of the end, Armageddon. Nearly seventy years on, we are, however, still very much rocking.

Ironically, almost all toddlers make Superman out of their fathers. This admiration slowly dwindles as puberty hits when opinions about the perspective of life clash. They grow apart with the passing years only for the toddler, now a middle-aged father of an adult child himself, to realise the 'Superman-Ubermench' capabilities of his old man. 

All these are nothing new but generational gaps. The generation next looks at their predecessors as obsolete and the elders at their offspring as decadent and self-destructive. Even Socrates must have thought the same of the youngsters of his times that he thought his death by hemlock would awaken them. 

Of course, we can now point all these clashes to the relatively incomplete development of the frontal lobes on one side and the genuine desire to impart life lessons to the kids on the other. The kids are overwhelmed with unabated exposure to the outside world and the unfettered ability to verbalise their thoughts.

Technology is a double-edged sword. Cursed for causing divisiveness between generations, it has also found its uses to unite them. Like the Elvis moment, the elders viewed unrestricted access to information as dangerous. Detractors to this assert that the 'Superman' wisdom will prevail. It is envisaged that the cyber-savvy generation will realise that great powers come with big responsibilities. Hopefully, a steady state will prevail.  

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Oh Woke, wake up!

One of the most learned members of our clan, Uncle Shan RIP, was once working as the head of a reform school for juvenile delinquents. In his later years, long after his retirement, he used to reminisce about some of the exciting situations he encountered as a counsellor. I remember one such scenario.

By and large, the school inmates were of extremely high intelligence. The only problem was that their true potential was hijacked by negativity. A teenager was admitted after being caught breaking into a home with his friends and sent to reform school. Uncle Shan used to have pep talks with him. The message that stuck with him was what the young man had told him, "if only my father had smacked me on the head the first time I came back home late, I would not have spent how much time outside and got entangled into the wrong crowd!"

The children do not know what they want. Oh, what the heck? Even adults do not. That probably prompted Steve Jobs to say about mobile phones, "People do not know what they want, we will tell them," when one of the designers queried whether customers would buy into their groundbreaking designs on a device named iPhone.

Michael Jackson lamented that he never had a childhood because his father prepared a gruelling, back-breaking regime to make superstars out of the Jacksons. The fact of the matter is that Michael never grew out of childhood, having been caught in a Peter Pan syndrome trapped in Lala land. Michael would not have attained what he had if not for that early bone-bending manoeuvres. The world would probably not have known about Moonwalk either.

Now it seems that the woke culture has permeated every level of society. Of all professions, one would think that the predominantly conservative and cautious medical community, whose motto 'primum non nocere' (first, do no harm), would be guarded against joining the woke frenzy. Apparently not!

It is puzzling why over such a short period in our civilisation, there is a rush to squash what society has planned over millennia, gender separation. Gender is fluid and binary. Pigeon-holing individuals into gender stereotyping is discriminatory, they say. There is an urgent agenda not to assign gender but to allow children, as early as pre-schoolers, to explore, and discover their true gender, not the biological ones they were born into but with which they align psychologically. But at such a young age?

At lightning speed, the medical fraternity is prescribing hormonal therapy and even gender re-assigning surgery to correct the so-called 'Nature's error of gender designation. But guess what, with all the wisdom and breakthrough discoveries that scientists claim to have, early inventions have proved disastrous in many cases. Puberty springs in and offsets the whole arrangement. Then the person is really trapped.

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We don't choose our family!

Shoplifters (2018)
Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda

What is the meaning of being a parent? Is it merely a process of transferring genetic material or a legal process determined by a piece of certificate and the State? We all know that being a parent is beyond all these. There is love, cuddling, touching, nurturing and many more. But then we also see abuses and unconducive environments set by parents for the growing minds.

The low-key movie tells us in a very unusual way what it is to be family. A family, in their definition, does not involve Nature but rather tend to imply that it involves appropriate nurturing techniques that prepare children to adulthood and make their lives on Earth worth living. It does not conform to what we expect a typical family to be.

The film starts with a slightly older man with a young preteen boy pilfering something from a convenience store. Then we see that they live in a bare thread cramped living quarters with a mother figure, a grandmother figure and another young adult lady. A young girl is seen wandering outside in the cold, hungry. The 'family' take her to feed her and keep her warm. They see signs of physical abuse on her. Trying to return her to her home the next day, they overhear her parents yelling at each other on top of their voices. They decide to keep and care for the girl.

A family that shoplifts together stay together!

The father loses his construction job after injuring his ankle. The mother is retrenched from her job at the laundry. The household runs on the grandmother's pension money, and the family filled the rest of their needs via shoplifting. They justify their crime with their own moral codes. The family unit can be seen to be very intimate and happy.

Everything caved in when the boy got caught shoplifting, and police moved in. Only then, the whole truth comes to the fore. None of the kids is the couple's, and there is a secret of alleged murder and concealment of a dead body.

In a world where children are abused and neglected, does it mean anything to sire a child? There must be more criteria to be met for qualifying to be a parent. But then, we must also be aware that we cannot use our yardstick to gauge whether a parent meets the criteria of good parents. Everyone has their way of instilling discipline and imparting knowledge to their young.

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People kill people, not guns?

If anything happens I love you! (2020)
Animated Short Film

This 11-minutes short film won itself an Academy Award in the Best Short Animated film category. In a concise graphic representation, the storytellers managed to capture the essence of emotions surrounding the loss of a young child. This emotional turmoil can make or break a family unit. The gamut of blaming, what-ifs, guilt and fault finding missions would eventually lead to a brick wall among the living but definitely not bring back the dead.

The death of a member of a family who has not lived his full potential, however, may invoke a myriad of responses. They say an addition to the family, especially the first-born, unites families. The sight of a newborn will make everyone all jello but strong enough to cement whatever minor frictions that may have been present in day-to-day dealings. It may make or break the bonds between the close relatives, especially parents, in the case of a young child.

This short film with no dialogue but a single song, 1950 by King Princess, tells the pain that a couple of parents endure when their pre-teen is killed in a random school shooting. The couple gradually grows apart with overpowering grief. All the while, their genuine emotions, feeling for each other and worries about each other are depicted by their shadows. When the door of their daughter's room, which they refuse to open all this while, suddenly opens, both parents enter the room to the sound of their daughter's favourite song. They reminisce about all the joyful times that they had together through a series of flashbacks. Finally, they shed their tears and reached a resolution.

The film highlights the problem of random shootings in the American public space, especially schools. Over the years, the interval between these types of shooting is getting shorter, and the types of weapons used are getting complex. It is no more pistols or hunting rifles. Instead, we are talking about assault rifles and semi-automatics. Pretty soon, the general public may be walking around with bazookas as it is their right to bear arms to protect themselves as permitted by the second amendment of the American Constitution. 

So many Presidents have come and gone promising to put a stop to all this gun violence. Even though many countries, the UK and Australia included, are testimony that this is indeed possible with very tight regulation of weapons ownership, such a situation will never happen in the US. The gun lobbying groups hold the purse string to the political parties. Being the central capital of weapon provider for the whole world to fight each other to maintain American interest and sustain despotic regimes worldwide, it will bad for business to put an all right ban on guns. 

Anti guns will continue doing their thing.  Aggrieved parties will pour their heartfelt disappointments, and the world will light an occasional candle at shooting sights, but the stock owners of Smith & Wesson and Colt's Defence will continue run laughing all the way to the bank. And they justify their rights by saying, "People kill people, not guns!" But, what they do not understand is that people just get a bruised face, dented ego or at most a broken rib with physical might. A gun has only one mission, to cause severe damage to the victim with minimal effort of its user.

All the loving feelings wither over the years. A child may make or break, not only by what turns out of them but in wanting to give the best for them. Differing parenting approaches and domineering-type of parenting accentuates drift. You ask yourself, "Is this the same woman that I married? "You coax yourself telling, "No, these are just battle wounds traversing the journey of life!"

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Any which way but loose.

The Mule (2018)
Director: Clint Eastwood

It may not score high in the dramatic storytelling department. Neither would it be of high octane action nor of unpredictability tally. Nevertheless, the viewers are left pondering on the subtle message that it questions.

Clint Eastwood, now at almost 90 years young, after donning his rugged cowboy persona and uncompromising cop images at the height of his acting career, understandably assumes a more sedate role here. 'The Mule' is a straightforward tale of a Korean War Veteran, Earl Stone, who, after having put his work way ahead of his family all his life, to go back to his family upon foreclosure of his horticulture farm. In his heydays, he had won many awards in flower shows. 

Toughie of spaghetti westerns

His business went out of flavour after the internet business became popular. He is scorned by his family members, including his ex-wife and daughter. His granddaughter, with whom Earl is close, is getting married, and Earl has to help out. A chance meeting of her granddaughter's guest draws Earl to smuggle drugs across states. Somehow the pull to perform more trips just keeping on mounting as every turn of events becomes a reason to get more money - his dilapidated truck needed changing, the War Veteran Centre needed repair and so forth. His luck finally ran out, and Earl is apprehended. What does he have to do in prison - do his favourite pastime, gardening!

It makes one wonder what is actually the role of the father here. If he spends too much time outside the family circle working, i.e. to provide for the family, can he be blamed for missing all the so-called family time and skipping 'memorable events'? Conversely, if the parent decides that spending quality time with family rather than raking moolah for their wellbeing is more important, will the rest be happy? Can strengthening familial bonding be a substitute for wealth to prosper in life? 

@ 90 years old.

Either way, the father is going to be at the receiving end of it all. He may be accused of being an absent parent if he is not around and be taken for granted if he is seen everywhere in the household while not providing the bacon. Amidst all these, one wonders where the needs of the father go to? Is he supposed to quash all his happiness, immerse himself in providing for the family and find joy within the ambit of his familial achievements? Is his fate sealed once he utters 'I do'?

Nursing a dying tiger back to health is no guarantee that it would not pounce on you at the height of its hunger pangs. With the empowerment and wisdom imbibed upon the downlines, they use the very same new-found knowledge to attack the hand that fed them. They blame all their misgivings and failures in their lives on their perceived sub-optimal parenting. 

(P.S. 'Any which way but loose' is the title of Eastwood's 1978 movie. The title soundtrack was sung by Eddie Rabbitt. The title is an abstraction from the phrase 'you turn on any which way but loose'. The girl turns him on but cannot turn (cut) him loose, i.e., release him or give him back his freedom.)

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In the spring of youth...

Days of Being Wild (1990)
Director: Wong Kar-Wai

What is the thing that keeps a person plunge deep into a relationship so toxic and still longs to be embroiled in a never-ending imbroglio of heartaches and melancholy? Is it just physical attraction or a sense of achievement, a kind of trophy? Is it some kind of masochism or playing victim to gain attention?

Is this the same power of love that made King Edward VII abdicate his crown for a divorcee with two living ex-husbands? Is it merely a hormonal surge at the spring of one's youth or a debt that needed to be settled if relationships bring in baggage and its encumbrances?

Something that springs up quite so suddenly may fizzle out just as quick when the fluff disappears. Then what? Do it all again? But then, by then, there would come too many webs of entanglement and spoils of love that are just too difficult to detach. It appears that it is a play of time. Invariably, with the passage of time, the ludicrousness of all these may appear all so plain.

This film brings me to the time in my childhood when I used to watch those intense black-and-white Cantonese movies over the local telly. The only thing here is that this film is in colour. The same tight-knitted rooms and the narrow roads on hilly terrains were there.

In summary, the story, set in the 1960s, is about a philandering young man, York, with his upbringing issues. His adopted mother refuses to divulge the whereabouts of his biological mother for fear of abandonment. The adopted mother has her own problems, with the bottle and her frequent affairs with numerous young men. York's first dejected lover finds solace in the company of a foot policeman. York's second beau is an obsessive cabaret dancer. Their relationship is best described as predatory - each preying on the other for personal gratification. As York's adopted mother is about to leave for the USA with a new lover, she reveals York's parentage. He was born from a union of a prostitute and a Philippine aristocrat. York leaves for Philippines only to be ignored by his biological mother.

We become what we do not want

Shakuntala Devi (Hindi; 2020)

A joke that my friend once told me comes to mind. A child, aged 5, will think that his father is some kind of a superman. He is strong and invincible. At 10, he is still looked up upon. In the teenage years, the relationship sours. By 20, son and father do not see eye-to-eye. Father tries to pave the path with his wisdom, but the son thinks his ways are passé. He soon refers to his father as 'your husband' when talking to his mother about him. He only communicates with his mother and does not engage in any form of conversation with his father. Things just happen in a ritualistic manner. Son gets married, has a child, slowly enjoys parenthood. He soon realises the intricacies of parenting. By 45, he is impressed by his father's ability to juggle work, family life and skill to educate his siblings with his meagre income. By 50 or 55, the son tries to make up for lost times. When the son is 60, the father has passed on, and the son starts praising his father again, putting him up on a pedestal. He would say, "my father was a great man. No one can do all the things he did." He once again becomes a Superman, an Ubermensch.

At the spring of youth, wanting to explore newer frontiers, learning new things, looking at things from a different, with the possession of new knowledge, we see our parents as fossilised dinosaurs. We think they are not in sync with reality and are not keeping up with the demands of the changing times. We abhor our parents, are embarrassed and vow never to be like them. After all, with the benefit of education and modern knowledge, we think we can do much better. At the end of the day, we realise how wrong we were!

We go through the mill, traversing the joys and aches that life has to offer and soon realise that at the end of the day, we become the very person(s) that we despise.

Anupama Banerjee, daughter of Shakuntala Devi.

If one were to think that this movie all about the achievements of Ms Shakuntala Devi, a simple girl from Karnataka, who later came to be known as the human-computer, an astrologist, a writer, an activist for the gay community and even as the politician who stood against Mrs Indira Gandhi, one will be disappointed. There are many facets of this interesting lady. The storytellers decide to concentrate on her dilemmas being a woman, a wife and a mother in a world that is not really ready for her outlook of the world.

The story is told from the point of view of her daughter Anupama Banerjee. Many, even those in India are not aware of Shakuntala Devi, the mathematics genius. She has the incredible ability to do swift mental calculations. With ease, she would rattle off roots, square roots of multiple orders in record times, faster than the early late 70s' calculators and computers. She also has the ability to tell the days in a calendar. Give her a particular date any year, and she could tell the day it was. She did all these without any formal education. Her father, a circus man, upon discovering her talent at a young age, decided to bring her around showcasing her abilities like a freakshow for money. He brought her to the UK, and she started her shows there, even in Imperial College. Her fame soon brought to all the four corners of the world. Her skills even find a mention in the Guinness Book of World Records.

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You gave me breath, now let me breathe!

Why should I be subservient to you? Why should I bend over backwards to support you? I never asked to be born. I never had the choice of choosing you as my parents. If you two did not get frisky, I would probably be floating around in ethereal world gliding around as an angel or even a bumblebee.

Because of you, I am here. Because of that, you think you own me. Loaning me your DNA to use during my worldly sojourn, you think I should be forever indebted. True, you did not need to make all those sacrifices of time, energy and resources to sustain my wellbeing. But you did. Was it really out of selflessness at work or your selfish plan to forever entrap me? Or is the protective maternal hormones?

But then, you did not have to do all the things that you did to keep me alive and kicking. There is something called free will. For all the early hour awakenings and the regular sponging of my body when the fever hit the ceiling, I am eternally grateful. To make me forever trapped in your petticoat, it is blackmail.

You say my colour is no right that I look disspirited. You make me feel and convince me to be sick even though I am just tired. Also dispirited of your constant ranting. You tell to take this, do that and to eat those. Are these all not your attempt to make me inadequate to manage my own faculties? You are trying to clip my wings. 

What you do you not know is that I am nurturing my own little levitators that would lift me up far away from all these clutches of tentacles of smothering emotions of yours. Do it, Scott, beam me up!

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We can't go blaming our parents forever?

Rocket Man (2019)

No, this is not the story of the one that Donald Trump is telling to tone down. This 'Rocket Man' is from nowhere near the East or has to do with space travel. It is a musical presentation of the lives and times of Reginald Herbert Dwight a.k.a. Elton John.

It is an original musical in the sense that it uses all his songs, with altered lyrics and tempo, with the liberty of anachronism, as the sequence of songs does not follow the order it was released, to narrate the story of an English musical prodigy.

Just for how long are we going to blame all our unhappiness and failures in life to our parents and how we were brought up? The movie is made on the premise that Elton John lived a miserable life. The root of his disharmony is put squarely on his childhood, that he hardly spent quality time with his father, that his mother was a cynical two-timing vixen, that his parents separated when he was only a young boy. Nobody talks about him, being left with his own devices, delved and created a personal new world of music and creativity. Didn't the ancient forefathers tell us that tragedy is essential for us to appreciate life?

If Michael Jackson were not drilled as hard and as heartless as he was, (as MJ later in his life lamented), the world would not have seen the first moonwalk on Earth. The kid in Outer Mongolia would not be dancing to Billie Jean and Bollywood not have ventured into set dances. If Adele had not had romantic breakups, her hit songs would not have hit the charts.

If not for the sadness that hung throughout her life, the world would have missed understanding the pains and tortures that were beautifully crafted by Sylvia Plath through her short stories and poems. Her works exposed to the downtrodden that they were not alone in experiencing despair and melancholy.

The Other Rocket Man

At one time, the medical fraternity also attributed to homosexuality to an over-domineering mother. Children exposed to contradictory views from both parents contributed to schizophrenia, it seems.

Rather than blaming all our maladies on our parents, who did what they thought was best at that time, given their mental and economic abilities, we should embrace our misfired start and get the best of our setbacks. Like Sisyphus, life is reaping much that is proffered to us.

A scene from this movie struck a note with me. It was a scene when Elton John's father, who spent very little time in his childhood, was seen lovey-dovey with EJ's step-brothers.  An uncle that I know had a similar predicament. "Why wasn't he so nice to me when I was young?" the uncle asked himself. Quickly, he shrugged off the negative thoughts and went on to achieve greater things in life. 

Sometimes, we have to have to be unkind and unsentimental. We should not be chained and embroiled in chains and bonds that in relationships that bring us down. Look ahead in life, we set our standards and not be apologetic to the sins of our fathers.

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