I'm a big fan of the Harry Potter series. The plots are full of wonderful sub-plots that serve not only as entertainment, but also as important life lessons. I know that sounds a bit much. But, bear with me as I explain.
One of the most powerful scenes for me is the Boggart lesson by Professor Lupin. This is from the third book - Prisoner of Azkaban. The scene in the book is terrific but in order to not drive you away from this post, I'm going to settle to show you the scene from the movie which doesn't stand up to the one in the book - but let's make do with it.
What a wonderful way to describe overcoming your fears. Here's an imaginary creature called a Boggart. It's shapeless and will take the shape of what that frightens you most. As Hermoine says and Lupin completes it - "... that's what makes it terrifying". How can one overcome it? That comes in not one, but two parts - think of turning that you fear in to something hilarious, while uttering the spell - riddikulus which is euphemism for ridiculing the fear itself. I just love the part where Ron imagines the giant spider in roller skates. In a way his fear keeps coming at him, but slips away each time. What a wonderful thought!
I guess life as we know it is a closet full of these figurative Boggarts. When we open a door, we never know, or in some cases we know for certain what will unleash upon us. It definitely used to be like that for me - while I was growing up. I was a terrified child. The mildest change to the environment would make me uncomfortable to say the least. Something as simple as a dripping pipe, especially at night when everything else is silent.. just that klunk, klunk, klunk would send shivers up my spine. A dripping pipe can be very irritating - yes, but terrifying? I would end up waking my mom up in the middle of the night to try and get it to stop. The fear is basically about whether it would stop or not.
A daily object of terror used to be the ceiling fan - such a jitters maker. I'd stay awake at the thought of whether the fan would stop rotating when switched off. There were nights when I used to switch off and switch on the fan for a couple of cycles to ensure it will stop and only then I'll climb on to bed. It was my own version of monsters under the bed. Even as an adult, when not in the best frame of mind, it was a botheration. When I moved to the US, I loved that ceiling fans were not a common concept. In March 2015 I moved to an apartment that had a ceiling fan in the dining area. On the day I moved in, I pulled the chain that turned the fan off. I lived in that apartment until Feb 2017 - didn't turn it on once. When I go to India for vacations, it still takes me a couple of days to get used to it.
I hated crowds, loud noises and the darkness. So, imagine me in a movie theater. I have literally screamed my way through some movies in the theater throughout my childhood. And no, my mom never took me to a horror movie. If the protagonist is hanging by a rope, if there's any sort of nail biting ends to movies, my face would be buried in my mother's lap and I'd be weeping and screaming through it. Events that happened in the evenings with a large crowd was a no-no. I'd be super excited to get to a concert or a show that we went to, but within the hour, I'd be bugging my parents to take me home - either the noise or the crowd would have gotten to me.
If nights were the cherry, late evenings were the icing. Once it started to get dark outside, I'd begin to worry even if I was sitting inside the house with all the lights on. I needed distractions - like TV or something to do (except homework or studies). I hated the nights. There were too many occasions where I have jumped out of bed, ran to my parents' bedroom and crawled up next to them - my mom mostly. At that time, when I was 9 or 10, I wouldn't have imagined living alone in the future, let only moving outside the country and staying alone.
My mom was the key. She used to say the most 'ridiculous' things to keep me going. She was best known to distract me from that I feared either by having me run an errand or ask me a question that would keep me occupied for a bit. Once I was in the dentist's office, on the chair and the dentist was about to pluck a milk tooth that was stubbornly lodged in there. I was so terrified and pale - almost about to cry and the dentist looked at me and said - "Are you a strong boy?". I shamelessly nodded in the negative. He laughed and stuck the pointy end of whatever instrument in to my mouth anyways. My mother immediately said - "Of course he's a strong boy. He's going to watch this movie today. It's such a scary movie and he's brave enough to watch it". Without a doubt, I screamed through both the procedure and the movie!
I haven't enjoyed most of the things that children that age used to enjoy. Never sat on a swing or a merry-go-around in my school. If possible, I have avoided looking at others enjoying it as well. Sometimes when I saw my classmates play on those, I used to have mild anxiety attacks - never knew they were anxiety attacks until a few years ago when I read the description in an article and found they used to be oddly similar.
"Why am I so scared of everything, ma?", I used to ask. My mom would just smile at me and say - "Nothing like that. Everyone are scared - they're just not brave enough to accept it". Sometimes she would say "When I was pregnant with you we had construction going on in the house and you were inside listening to those sounds intently. So, you're just a lot alert than most people". She used to play the odd gimmick once in a while to see how I handled it - like having me go to a room in the other corner of the house to pick up something and when I did, she'd say - "..there you go, if you can do that you're not scared".
I never thought forward - of course I was just a child. But, I wasn't bothered much because I always found my spell and charm of solace with my mom. She understood.
And then came that day - a day I never imagined until then. When I was 15, my mom passed away from a sudden illness. It happened so fast and in a few hours that it was all a haze. It was a horrible day, needless to say. But, within this context, for me it was the first night after she passed that I remember so vividly. It was dark and the night was closing in. I was sitting there surrounded by my dad, sister, cousins and a bunch of relatives. I definitely was way better than a few years before, but the scariest thought was that only my mom knew most of these fears that I had. If the kitchen tap started dripping and that flipped me out, I couldn't think of where I would start to explain to anyone else what was going on. A 15 year old boy frightened of a dripping sink pipe? Everyone around me mostly knew me as a playful and super naughty kid. Yes, they have seen me scream my throats out when we went out for a movie together or at a family wedding or event where we had a performance and it was loud, but that was years ago.
I don't remember how, but I unintentionally hid the scary tears behind the 'I just lost my mom' tears for a few days or at least it was perceived so. I started taking one day at a time, mostly finding excuses to be around people as much as possible. I opened up a little (the most I have with anyone) to my sister who played a key role in helping me through those days. She is my superstar - imagine being 19, losing your mom, supporting the house financially and taking care of me. Some days were easy, some were super difficult. I didn't have a choice. It was the cruelest version of necessity becoming the 'mother' of invention. I started putting a lot of focus and time on my studies. I found a few friends who were around me for the next couple of years until I finished school. For someone who couldn't sleep easily with family at home, I surprised myself by spending some nights at my friends' house to study for an upcoming test or just to watch a movie. Progress was slow - but it was progress.
Cut it to two years further, my sister was off to another city for work and my dad decided to move with her for a year to take a break from work and take care of his health. For a semester in college, I stayed in my uncle's house where my room was in the attic and the rest of them stayed downstairs. For a whole semester after that, I was living alone in a hostel in the city where I had a small room for myself. There were nights where I'd just lay awake till dawn - one thought after the other, crossing and overtaking each other. I'd be out like a baby in the college bus next day amidst the secure feeling of people around me. Once my dad came back to the city, we lived in an apartment and I started living alone there for extended periods of time when he was outside the country for business. This is the phase where I gradually shed my fears and started living with myself in peace. This is also the time when I had a few college buddies to whom I owe a lot for putting up with me and staying around when needed. Of course I haven't mentioned a word of all this to them - some of them may find it out only through this post - if they read it of course.
I started discovering a lot of techniques against these pet peeves. Not that one standard way worked all the time. During my first year of college, I found a unique passion for Engineering Physics - especially when I found it difficult to sleep in the night, I'd switch on the light and start reading the course book. I'd be out in no time with the book on my face. During the course of my college, this was replaced by Digital Signal Processing and then Astrophysics, which was an elective that I picked. The only thing I took away from Astrophysics was the book, which I retained until the time I moved out of India. I'm a Computer science engineer and I have used my Astrophysics book more than any of the relevant courses to my work. I have never gone past page 1. Whenever I finished page 1, it meant reading the book didn't work, I'd try and listen to music on my Jukebox or phone - this is the 2006 version of watching endless YouTube videos (which is what I do now when I can't sleep).
Most of all, I used the phone-a-friend option all the time. I had a bunch of insomniac classmates who were always ready for a chat without any reason. Sometimes I'd call them at 10 PM and we'd talk until 3 AM or so without any subject. I don't know how many times they found me annoyingly unwilling to hang up, but until date they probably didn't know that I was distracting myself from pet peeves. I have no shame in accepting that I was just using them.
This was also the time that I was introduced to the Harry Potter books through my college classmate and good friend. I used to think the concepts of magic and Harry Potter were nothing but crap. But, he kept talking them up and finally dragged me with him to the 'Goblet of Fire' movie. When I told him I liked the movie, he silently handed me the second book - 'Chamber of Secrets'. He told me that it should be good enough and that I shouldn't read the first book until I finished all 6 books (the 7th book was yet to come out). The books had a great impact on me. I don't want to claim that it helped me outgrow a lot of my fears completely. But, it was a good distraction for a year or so when I locked up a few of them and threw away the key.
When the 7th book 'Deathly Hallows' came out, my dad was in the middle east for a business trip and I was staying alone at home. I woke up on the saturday morning (July 21st) went to bookstore to collect my pre-order copy, came back home with some essentials for the next two days and went in to a lock down by myself to read it in peace. Other than the fact that the next day's Hindu paper put in the headline that read 'The Boy survives' and ruined the suspense for me, I spent the two days with myself and the world of Harry Potter to soak it all in. Yes, I was 20 and many of you may not think of it as an impressive feat. But, for me who was trembling at the thought of a dripping kitchen sink and a ceiling fan on it's way to rest, it was a big deal.
It's been 13 years since then and I have traveled across the world by myself for a considerable amount of time powering through, laughing and smiling when it was most difficult and scary, finding new company when needed, retaining good company with me always, shedding negative company when it got too much, dealing with success, failures and heart breaks and met the love of my life on the way. Remember the kid that buried himself in his mother's lap and screamed through movies. Now, his major source of time pass is to watch movies in the theater. I can't keep count of the number of movies I watched in the theater year after year and that's the topmost thing I miss most in this lock down.
Even now there are rare and occasional moments and changes in the surroundings that render me a little jittery for a few minutes. Yes, the frequency has gone down a lot. I have reused all the techniques and added a bunch of them to the kitty as well. I'm not sure if they will ever completely go away or if it will get worse as I grow old. But, I know I can live through it. I know I can look at the face of my fears and ridicule it, and I can do it without a wand and a spell.
PS: This was not intended as a Mother's day post. Started writing this a while back and it was just coincidence that I finished it today. Hence, this last paragraph.
I'm at the cusp of turning 33 and when I look back, I have grown up to be an entire adult without the one and only person who knew and will knew everything about me and my fears. Sometimes when I float away in thoughts about the day she passed, I can't wonder what would have been going on in her mind right at those moments when she knew this was it. I know one thing for sure - she would have worried about how I was going to manage without her. I don't know if I have managed well or not, but I know she would be proud that I tried and am still trying!
Happy Mother's day everyone!
One of the most powerful scenes for me is the Boggart lesson by Professor Lupin. This is from the third book - Prisoner of Azkaban. The scene in the book is terrific but in order to not drive you away from this post, I'm going to settle to show you the scene from the movie which doesn't stand up to the one in the book - but let's make do with it.
What a wonderful way to describe overcoming your fears. Here's an imaginary creature called a Boggart. It's shapeless and will take the shape of what that frightens you most. As Hermoine says and Lupin completes it - "... that's what makes it terrifying". How can one overcome it? That comes in not one, but two parts - think of turning that you fear in to something hilarious, while uttering the spell - riddikulus which is euphemism for ridiculing the fear itself. I just love the part where Ron imagines the giant spider in roller skates. In a way his fear keeps coming at him, but slips away each time. What a wonderful thought!
I guess life as we know it is a closet full of these figurative Boggarts. When we open a door, we never know, or in some cases we know for certain what will unleash upon us. It definitely used to be like that for me - while I was growing up. I was a terrified child. The mildest change to the environment would make me uncomfortable to say the least. Something as simple as a dripping pipe, especially at night when everything else is silent.. just that klunk, klunk, klunk would send shivers up my spine. A dripping pipe can be very irritating - yes, but terrifying? I would end up waking my mom up in the middle of the night to try and get it to stop. The fear is basically about whether it would stop or not.
A daily object of terror used to be the ceiling fan - such a jitters maker. I'd stay awake at the thought of whether the fan would stop rotating when switched off. There were nights when I used to switch off and switch on the fan for a couple of cycles to ensure it will stop and only then I'll climb on to bed. It was my own version of monsters under the bed. Even as an adult, when not in the best frame of mind, it was a botheration. When I moved to the US, I loved that ceiling fans were not a common concept. In March 2015 I moved to an apartment that had a ceiling fan in the dining area. On the day I moved in, I pulled the chain that turned the fan off. I lived in that apartment until Feb 2017 - didn't turn it on once. When I go to India for vacations, it still takes me a couple of days to get used to it.
I hated crowds, loud noises and the darkness. So, imagine me in a movie theater. I have literally screamed my way through some movies in the theater throughout my childhood. And no, my mom never took me to a horror movie. If the protagonist is hanging by a rope, if there's any sort of nail biting ends to movies, my face would be buried in my mother's lap and I'd be weeping and screaming through it. Events that happened in the evenings with a large crowd was a no-no. I'd be super excited to get to a concert or a show that we went to, but within the hour, I'd be bugging my parents to take me home - either the noise or the crowd would have gotten to me.
If nights were the cherry, late evenings were the icing. Once it started to get dark outside, I'd begin to worry even if I was sitting inside the house with all the lights on. I needed distractions - like TV or something to do (except homework or studies). I hated the nights. There were too many occasions where I have jumped out of bed, ran to my parents' bedroom and crawled up next to them - my mom mostly. At that time, when I was 9 or 10, I wouldn't have imagined living alone in the future, let only moving outside the country and staying alone.
My mom was the key. She used to say the most 'ridiculous' things to keep me going. She was best known to distract me from that I feared either by having me run an errand or ask me a question that would keep me occupied for a bit. Once I was in the dentist's office, on the chair and the dentist was about to pluck a milk tooth that was stubbornly lodged in there. I was so terrified and pale - almost about to cry and the dentist looked at me and said - "Are you a strong boy?". I shamelessly nodded in the negative. He laughed and stuck the pointy end of whatever instrument in to my mouth anyways. My mother immediately said - "Of course he's a strong boy. He's going to watch this movie today. It's such a scary movie and he's brave enough to watch it". Without a doubt, I screamed through both the procedure and the movie!
I haven't enjoyed most of the things that children that age used to enjoy. Never sat on a swing or a merry-go-around in my school. If possible, I have avoided looking at others enjoying it as well. Sometimes when I saw my classmates play on those, I used to have mild anxiety attacks - never knew they were anxiety attacks until a few years ago when I read the description in an article and found they used to be oddly similar.
"Why am I so scared of everything, ma?", I used to ask. My mom would just smile at me and say - "Nothing like that. Everyone are scared - they're just not brave enough to accept it". Sometimes she would say "When I was pregnant with you we had construction going on in the house and you were inside listening to those sounds intently. So, you're just a lot alert than most people". She used to play the odd gimmick once in a while to see how I handled it - like having me go to a room in the other corner of the house to pick up something and when I did, she'd say - "..there you go, if you can do that you're not scared".
I never thought forward - of course I was just a child. But, I wasn't bothered much because I always found my spell and charm of solace with my mom. She understood.
And then came that day - a day I never imagined until then. When I was 15, my mom passed away from a sudden illness. It happened so fast and in a few hours that it was all a haze. It was a horrible day, needless to say. But, within this context, for me it was the first night after she passed that I remember so vividly. It was dark and the night was closing in. I was sitting there surrounded by my dad, sister, cousins and a bunch of relatives. I definitely was way better than a few years before, but the scariest thought was that only my mom knew most of these fears that I had. If the kitchen tap started dripping and that flipped me out, I couldn't think of where I would start to explain to anyone else what was going on. A 15 year old boy frightened of a dripping sink pipe? Everyone around me mostly knew me as a playful and super naughty kid. Yes, they have seen me scream my throats out when we went out for a movie together or at a family wedding or event where we had a performance and it was loud, but that was years ago.
I don't remember how, but I unintentionally hid the scary tears behind the 'I just lost my mom' tears for a few days or at least it was perceived so. I started taking one day at a time, mostly finding excuses to be around people as much as possible. I opened up a little (the most I have with anyone) to my sister who played a key role in helping me through those days. She is my superstar - imagine being 19, losing your mom, supporting the house financially and taking care of me. Some days were easy, some were super difficult. I didn't have a choice. It was the cruelest version of necessity becoming the 'mother' of invention. I started putting a lot of focus and time on my studies. I found a few friends who were around me for the next couple of years until I finished school. For someone who couldn't sleep easily with family at home, I surprised myself by spending some nights at my friends' house to study for an upcoming test or just to watch a movie. Progress was slow - but it was progress.
Cut it to two years further, my sister was off to another city for work and my dad decided to move with her for a year to take a break from work and take care of his health. For a semester in college, I stayed in my uncle's house where my room was in the attic and the rest of them stayed downstairs. For a whole semester after that, I was living alone in a hostel in the city where I had a small room for myself. There were nights where I'd just lay awake till dawn - one thought after the other, crossing and overtaking each other. I'd be out like a baby in the college bus next day amidst the secure feeling of people around me. Once my dad came back to the city, we lived in an apartment and I started living alone there for extended periods of time when he was outside the country for business. This is the phase where I gradually shed my fears and started living with myself in peace. This is also the time when I had a few college buddies to whom I owe a lot for putting up with me and staying around when needed. Of course I haven't mentioned a word of all this to them - some of them may find it out only through this post - if they read it of course.
I started discovering a lot of techniques against these pet peeves. Not that one standard way worked all the time. During my first year of college, I found a unique passion for Engineering Physics - especially when I found it difficult to sleep in the night, I'd switch on the light and start reading the course book. I'd be out in no time with the book on my face. During the course of my college, this was replaced by Digital Signal Processing and then Astrophysics, which was an elective that I picked. The only thing I took away from Astrophysics was the book, which I retained until the time I moved out of India. I'm a Computer science engineer and I have used my Astrophysics book more than any of the relevant courses to my work. I have never gone past page 1. Whenever I finished page 1, it meant reading the book didn't work, I'd try and listen to music on my Jukebox or phone - this is the 2006 version of watching endless YouTube videos (which is what I do now when I can't sleep).
Most of all, I used the phone-a-friend option all the time. I had a bunch of insomniac classmates who were always ready for a chat without any reason. Sometimes I'd call them at 10 PM and we'd talk until 3 AM or so without any subject. I don't know how many times they found me annoyingly unwilling to hang up, but until date they probably didn't know that I was distracting myself from pet peeves. I have no shame in accepting that I was just using them.
This was also the time that I was introduced to the Harry Potter books through my college classmate and good friend. I used to think the concepts of magic and Harry Potter were nothing but crap. But, he kept talking them up and finally dragged me with him to the 'Goblet of Fire' movie. When I told him I liked the movie, he silently handed me the second book - 'Chamber of Secrets'. He told me that it should be good enough and that I shouldn't read the first book until I finished all 6 books (the 7th book was yet to come out). The books had a great impact on me. I don't want to claim that it helped me outgrow a lot of my fears completely. But, it was a good distraction for a year or so when I locked up a few of them and threw away the key.
When the 7th book 'Deathly Hallows' came out, my dad was in the middle east for a business trip and I was staying alone at home. I woke up on the saturday morning (July 21st) went to bookstore to collect my pre-order copy, came back home with some essentials for the next two days and went in to a lock down by myself to read it in peace. Other than the fact that the next day's Hindu paper put in the headline that read 'The Boy survives' and ruined the suspense for me, I spent the two days with myself and the world of Harry Potter to soak it all in. Yes, I was 20 and many of you may not think of it as an impressive feat. But, for me who was trembling at the thought of a dripping kitchen sink and a ceiling fan on it's way to rest, it was a big deal.
It's been 13 years since then and I have traveled across the world by myself for a considerable amount of time powering through, laughing and smiling when it was most difficult and scary, finding new company when needed, retaining good company with me always, shedding negative company when it got too much, dealing with success, failures and heart breaks and met the love of my life on the way. Remember the kid that buried himself in his mother's lap and screamed through movies. Now, his major source of time pass is to watch movies in the theater. I can't keep count of the number of movies I watched in the theater year after year and that's the topmost thing I miss most in this lock down.
Even now there are rare and occasional moments and changes in the surroundings that render me a little jittery for a few minutes. Yes, the frequency has gone down a lot. I have reused all the techniques and added a bunch of them to the kitty as well. I'm not sure if they will ever completely go away or if it will get worse as I grow old. But, I know I can live through it. I know I can look at the face of my fears and ridicule it, and I can do it without a wand and a spell.
PS: This was not intended as a Mother's day post. Started writing this a while back and it was just coincidence that I finished it today. Hence, this last paragraph.
I'm at the cusp of turning 33 and when I look back, I have grown up to be an entire adult without the one and only person who knew and will knew everything about me and my fears. Sometimes when I float away in thoughts about the day she passed, I can't wonder what would have been going on in her mind right at those moments when she knew this was it. I know one thing for sure - she would have worried about how I was going to manage without her. I don't know if I have managed well or not, but I know she would be proud that I tried and am still trying!
Happy Mother's day everyone!
 |
| With my mom when I was 14 - July 2001 |
6 Expressions:
Very nice post.
Had I known you fear of fans, atleast I would have tried switching on that dining room fan in Dec 2015.
I started reading for a nostalgic effect, but some parts of the post got me tears rolling instantaneously.
Absolutely true that every one has fear for something or the other. I fear for handling people, which till date am trying hard to overcome, and she knew it well. She did the talking most of the time for me.
BTW, You forgot the ever running TV, which became part of our bedroom. It would switch off itself when we dozed off in the middle of the night or wee hours of the morning.
I started writing this as a quirky take on how to manage fears and I guess reality took precedence as I went about it. And yeah, that TV has served us better than anything else. :)
I guess I already responded in FB. Too late buddy! :) Too late.
That was a lovely post..
Thanks Divya!
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