Reading: Kumbalangi Nights

Children - on their own

There are different versions of how this came to happen.

I was a little over 3 years old when I found myself at my aunt's house in Bangalore - about 200 km away from my parents' home in our village. I was soon enrolled into the neighbourhood school and brought up by my aunt and uncle as one of their own children. 

I was told that I was here in Bangalore because our village did not have a good school. I was made to feel privileged for getting this upbringing that my cousins in the village did not get.

I would go back to the village for school vacations and be with my parents. Rather than doing well in my exams, I was more keen on getting done with them and going home. On the last day of vacations, everyone at home would be holding back their tears as we would say our goodbyes. It would then be a long bus ride and a very long first week of school.¹

Sometimes, my parents would also come visiting. But my aunt would keep this news from me because that would get me all excited and stop me from attending to my schoolwork. And if, for some reason, my parents had to cancel their trip, it would take a long while for me to get over that disappointment. To save me from such heartaches, she would tell me at the last moment and get me ready for an outing with my parents.

Even otherwise, I had the habit of sitting by the window that looking at the street outside. What if there is a surprise coming? Sometimes, I would get that feeling while stepping out of school. What if they are here to pick me up? The week before my birthday was always ridden with anticipation. Will they? Won’t they?

In 7^th grade, I told my aunt that I didn’t wish to celebrate my birthday anymore – I didn’t wear colour dress to school and we didn’t get a cake for a party at home. For the first time, my aunt gave me an allowance to take my friends out for a treat.

That day, I felt like a grown up. 

*

In the film 'Kumbalangi Nights', Franky has a dream of himself as a young boy struggling to stay afloat and calling out to his mother who is at the riverbank washing clothes. But she does not hear him. She finishes washing the clothes and walks away.  

Everyone at boarding school knew what this felt like – this sinking feeling.

I left my aunt’s home and joined boarding school for 8th grade. It was common there for the boys to ask each other, 'Why did your parents put you here?' Some boys shared that they were not doing studying well, and some other boys confessed that they were troublemakers.

During a poignant scene in the movie, all four brothers go to meet their mother who is now living in a monastery. The brothers - aged between 15-35 – make a desperate plea to their mother to come home as one of them (Bobby) is getting married. Having found her calling in the spiritual path, she flatly refuses to return even for a few days. 

Once again, as grown men, they struggle to make sense of their abandonment. 

Over time, children like us end up becoming extremely self-reliant and learn to take care of everything by ourselves. But then, this is not a useful quality for building relationships in our adult lives.

To form deep bonds with other people, we have to trust them and become vulnerable. Having fortified ourselves from potential heartaches, we struggle to break free and return the embrace.

*

The detached leading man with a backstory from their childhood comes up often in movies and it rarely ends well for them. It was distressing that the lead characters in ‘Bombay Velvet’ and ‘Omkara’ burn everything down and perish in those very flames. But I felt that the greater tragedy for both these characters was that they had found faithful partners and loyal comrades who completely believed in them, but they just could not trust them back. They were unable to become vulnerable, unable to reach out for help and unable to even hope.

If any followers of the TV show ‘The Bear’ wondered what just happened in the closing moments of season 2 when Carmen got stuck inside the walk-in freezer - that was classic self-sabotage. Richie recognizes that trait all too well and screams at him from the outside, ‘I don’t understand why you can’t just let something good happen for once in your fuckin’ life?’

*

In the film, Kumbalangi is a small island village on the outskirts of Ernakulam where people would abandon cats and dogs they no longer wanted. Franky is shown pulling them out of carton boxes and caring for them. He has been given scholarship at his boarding school and dreads coming back home for vacation because he will have to stay with his alcoholic brothers going at each other’s throats all the time. Despite being the youngest of the four brothers, teenaged Franky is the one who shows them the way by taking care of things – he prepares meals, puts the house in order, gets the well repaired with his scholarship money and even takes his eldest brother Saji to see a psychologist.

It is entirely circumstantial that Bobby finds a girl who is insistent on marrying him, and Saji brings home a new mother with her baby, and Bonny has a new girlfriend who has nowhere else to stay.

And suddenly, their home turns into a sanctuary and these boys become caregivers – cooking, cleaning and providing.

*

When I hit rock bottom, I found myself in a therapist’s office and it took countless silent minutes before I learnt to open up.

Everyone who has taken therapy knows that while it all makes sense within the four walls of the therapist’s office, the challenge lies in going out and living our lives. Thankfully, my therapists encouraged me to seek answers outside those four walls. I don’t think there was anything specific that I was looking for. I just knew that I was getting one more chance and I wanted to do it right.

‘Go out and help. That’s what I did’, someone told me, and this instantly drove me to action.

Those words filled some vital gaps and held the crumbling parts of me together.

Back then, I had no clue that caregiving has been a well-trodden path towards healing.

Over time, I can see that the practice of putting others ahead of ourselves can change us in profound ways. I now understand what parents mean when they say that raising children has been a transformational experience for them.

I believe this is how Carmen is healing too.

In S3 E10 of ‘The Bear’, there is a flashback to a younger Carmen training under Chef Thomas Keller, who shares his wisdom -

I went to work for a French chef named Roland Henin, and, uh, I was the staff cook, so what you’re doing here today is kind of the same thing.

And he came to me one day and he asked me, he said, ‘Thomas, do you know why cooks cook?’

And I’m like okay, I’m trying to think.

He said, ‘We cook to nurture people.’

I know people call me a chef, but our trade is cooking, and that, to me, is such a profound profession because we get to really be part of people’s lives in significant ways.

So never forget that, right?

We are here today because of those who came before us.

And so this is your first day. You’ll have a legacy here in this restaurant, you know, and after you leave.

So always remember, right, come in every single day and just try to do a little better than the day before. Just a little better. Modicum of effort.

And that’ll compound over the years that you’re here, and you’ll leave this restaurant with education, training, skills and a path forward.

You’re nurturing yourself.

You’re nurturing the team you’re cooking for.

You’re gonna be nurturing our guests.

We’re even nurturing our farmers, our fishermen, our foragers,

our gardeners, who are bringing us all these wonderful ingredients.

And so, just remember, right?

It’s all about nurturing.

After seven harrowing seasons of 'Mad Men', it takes one compassionate act from Don Draper - when he embraces to console an absolute stranger - that finally sets him on the path towards healing. 

1. Here is an older essay on the last day (?) of my school vacations: https://readingthisworld.substack.com/p/last-plus-one-day