My feed this week has been filled with #suicideprevention propaganda about checking on friends, seeking mental health, self care and so on.
Each post is a pinprick. Each a reminder of my brother’s untimely passing.
In the months following his death, I got hundreds of condolence emails, texts, DMs. Hundreds of “he’s in peace”. I was invited to join grief support groups.
What was rarely discussed is the toxicity of desi culture — the ‘log kya kahenge’ (what will people say), the hiding of so-called dirty laundry, ignoring early signs, being complicit in causing harm. The ways in which fathers shame and bully their boys for being ‘not enough’. Not athletic enough, not entrepreneurial enough, never ‘man’ enough. The ways in which our mothers are gaslit and kept from seeking help. The culture of verbal, physical, psychological violence — all of it rationalized by “someone else has it worse”. All of it being exacerbated by being third-culture kids, navigating the world of our parents and the white supremacy of life in America.
Our childhood was marked by incessant shaming and the kind of physical violence for which social services might be called, had we lived in the Western world.
By the time we immigrated to the United States, my 10 year old brother had already lived in 3 countries and a half a dozen homes. There were years of being raised by a single mom, and years where we fearfully co-existed as a family of 4.
Our childhood was marked by incessant shaming and the kind of physical violence for which social services might be called, had we lived in the Western world.
There were few, if any, interventions from family who were aware of what was happening in our houses. In fact, despite the knowledge of violence, as children we were mocked, judged, and treated like second-class citizens by our aunts.
Any desire for changed parental behavior was met with “you’re better off than so many”, and a“we had at it worse”…
