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.
