Awaken E-Book

Rajendra Sisodia

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 434

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Awaken: A Journey to Purpose, Wholeness, Healing, and Impact Awaken delivers a contemporary and accessible guide to how each of us can experience a life of meaning, purpose, and fulfillment in a world that is rife with anxiety, depression, and addiction. Drawing on the distinguished author's lifetime of accumulated insights and experience, Awaken guides readers on a journey to achieve complete alignment between who they are, what they say, what they do, and how they relate to others. People are traumatized and polarized the world over. By healing our traumas, uniting the polarities in our lives, and connecting to our deepest purpose, we can attain personal power and amplify our positive impact on the world. Most people have chosen not to deal with their trauma; they conceal it, numb it, and relive it. Through the prism of the author's life journey, Awaken shows us how to mine the ups and downs of our lives to experience "post-traumatic growth." Written for anyone with even a passing interest in improving their inner life and making a difference in the world, Awaken provides proven tools and practical advice that allow readers to know themselves, love themselves, be themselves, and express themselves. Readers will learn how to grow their personal power by building self-trust, cultivating presence, drawing healthy boundaries, leaning into necessary conflict, and challenging orthodoxies. Awaken will help readers see their lives differently in order to transform their experience of living.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Foreword

Prologue

1 Roots

Life Without Papa

From Kesur to Canada

Papa Returns

Reflections

2 Changing of the Guard

A Whole New World

Bewildered in Barbados

Serene in Salinas

Confused in Canada

Reflections

3 Return of the Native

The Ratlam “Suar” System

Objects of Curiosity

Hard Landing

School of Horrors

Innocence Lost

Home Base Indore

Reflections

Note

4 Return to Kesur

The Darker Side of Kesur

Trickle‐Down Tyranny

Reflections

5 No Time to Dream

My Luck Runs Out

Grim Survivor

Political Awakening

Bombay Bound

Back to the Future

Reflections

Notes

6 New York, New York

Marketing Mecca – or Mayhem?

Ivy League Ivory Tower

An Accidental Academic

Dowry Drama

Dissertation Dilemma

Escape from New York

Reflections

Notes

7 Boston Blues

Out of Africa

An Unblessed Marriage

Nightmare on Commonwealth Avenue

Reflections

Note

8 A New Beginning

The “Prodigal” Son Returns

A Mentor at Last

Standing Up for Myself

A Growing Family

Awakening My Creative Side

Reflections

9 Back to Boston

New Millennium, New Challenges

My Winter of Discontent

Good Thing, Bad Thing – Who Knows?

Following My Heartbreak

The Shame of Marketing?

Reflections

10 Purpose in the Poconos

Tears of Joy

Metamorphosis

Becoming an Instrument of Evolution

Renegotiating a Relationship

Doubling Down

Sliding Doors

Birthing a Movement

Growing the Movement

Reflections

Notes

11 Searching for Inner Peace

Seeking Spiritual Solace

Could I Be Happy?

Growing … and Sinking

Reflections

Notes

12 Conscious Awakening

The Wise Women

Twin Bombshells

No More Denial

Reflections

Notes

13 Healing the Father Wound

The Father Wound

My Arc with My Father

Seeing the Whole Picture

Innocence Lost – and Reclaimed

Grief or Relief?

A Two‐Time Destroyer of Families?

Healing My Son's Father Wound

Last Words

Reflections

Notes

14 Honoring My Mother and Becoming Whole

Who Was Usha?

Portrait of a Marriage

Passages

Bringing My Mother to My Father

Reflections

15 Discoveries

Stay True to Yourself

Be Open to New Adventures

Be Your Own Best Friend and Coach

Challenge Orthodoxies

Choose Your Life

Embrace Seeming Opposites

Acknowledge and Heal Your Traumas

Be a Peaceful Warrior for Truth and Love

Stay Awake!

Notes

Epilogue: Healing the Patriarchy

The Need to Heal Kesur

My Duty and Destiny

A Healing Circle

The Path Ahead

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Index

End User License Agreement

List of Illustrations

Chapter 1

Figure 1.1 My parents in their twenties

Figure 1.2 The author at age one

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Foreword

Prologue

Begin Reading

Epilogue: Healing the Patriarchy

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Index

End User License Agreement

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Awaken

The Path to Purpose, Inner Peace, and Healing

Raj Sisodia

Copyright © 2023 by Rajendra Sisodia. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data:

Names: Sisodia, Rajendra, author.

Title: Awaken : the path to purpose, inner peace, and healing / Rajendra Sisodia.

Description: Hoboken, New Jersey : Wiley, [2023] | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022015278 (print) | LCCN 2022015279 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119789192 (cloth) | ISBN 9781119789215 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781119789208 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Peace of mind. | Self‐consciousness (Awareness) | Social perception.

Classification: LCC BF637.P3 S54 2022 (print) | LCC BF637.P3 (ebook) | DDC 158.1—dc23/eng/20220407

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022015278

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022015279

Cover Design and Image: Wiley

Author photo: Jesús Alejandro Salazar Villa

To Neha Sangwan

With love, gratitude, and admiration – for her courage and integrity, her selfless service to others, her idealism, and her authenticity. Neha is strong, wise, purposeful, unwavering, generous, compassionate, playful, and brilliant. She is a loving and healing teacher and coach who has altered the trajectories of countless lives for the better‐ including mine. She has helped me awaken to what really matters and to become more fully myself.

May her message spread and her impact multiply throughout the world to benefit the countless millions who are in pain.

Foreword

This is a remarkable book. Anyone who intends to exercise leadership in today's complex and volatile business and social environment needs to read it.

Here, Raj Sisodia describes the personal journey we must all take in order to step into our personal power; gain full agency; and participate in healing the fragmentation in America and the world. This is a book full of wisdom – wisdom that Raj acknowledges came through him and not from him – the most profound gift we can receive – the gift from universal consciousness – the gift of Grace.

The journey Raj describes is distinctly his own painful and ultimately successful journey toward accessing the wisdom to make instant and informed choices. At the same time, it is an archetype for the necessary developmental path we must all take with commitment and fortitude to trust and cross the threshold. Once we do, we encounter the inevitable “road of trials” that the philosopher Joseph Campbell describes as the Hero's Journey. In trusting ourselves, if we don't turn back, we will meet our guides who will help us through the most difficult of these trials.

Like Raj, we will ultimately reach our destination – that level of development when our life becomes the one that was intended for us: a life of service infused with gratitude, joy, and fulfillment. Most importantly, this is the point at which we regain our inborn innocence – like that of the peaceful warrior – immune, inviolable, and resilient. This is the Call of our Time: to develop this quality of leadership; for, as Raj points out, only the truly innocent can be trusted with the power required to heal today's world.

This book will guide you to reflect on your own Life's journey, making it more whole, as you understand your past in order to reshape your present and future. You will discover how to embrace both the masculine and feminine sides of your personality. You will learn how to stay tuned to Life's opportunities and synchronicities, reframing challenges as opportunities for growth and discovery. You will gain the capacity to challenge orthodoxies and break free of cultural norms that harm and constrain all of us. And finally, you will be guided to become a peaceful warrior, living by what Raj refers to as the LIST: manifesting Love, Innocence, Simplicity, and Truth in your very being and in all your actions.

This book illuminates the deeper dimensions of transformational change and leadership in general. As we have observed before, the most important inquiry today is not about the “what” and “how” – it's not about what leaders do and how they do it – but the “who”: who we are and the inner place or source from which we operate, individually and collectively.

The lessons and principles contained in this book enabled Raj, among other high accomplishments, to cofound the Conscious Capitalism movement, one of the most compelling endeavors existing today, with the intention to transform free enterprise capitalism into a powerful system for social cooperation and human progress.

I am deeply privileged to have been invited to write this brief Foreword.

— Joseph Jaworski

January 14, 2022

Wimberley, Texas

Prologue

How did an idealistic, trusting, peace‐loving, harmony‐seeking scion of a ferociously feudal family in rural India come to cofound a global movement to bring love, compassion, and transcendent purpose to the rough‐and‐tumble world of business? How did a left‐brained, hyper‐analytical engineer from the warrior caste in India come to write books like Firms of Endearment, Conscious Capitalism, Everybody Matters, Shakti Leadership, and The Healing Organization? How did a self‐loathing marketing professor (who almost wrote a book called The Shame of Marketing) channel timeless wisdom and alchemize his own suffering to help corporate leaders learn how to use business to serve, uplift, and heal?

“What is most personal is most universal.” The truth of this phrase from Carl Rogers struck me in 2018, as I was working on The Healing Organization: Awakening the Conscience of Business to Help Save the World. I shared very little of my own life journey in the book, limiting it to a few reflections in the Prologue. In all my earlier books, I hadn't referred to my personal experiences at all. But I now realize that the books that had the most profound impact on me were those in which the author shared deeply from their own life journey. These included Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, Joseph Jaworski's Synchronicity, and Lynne Twist's The Soul of Money, among many others. I also realized that two of my own books that have had the greatest impact were built in part around the stories of two individuals: Conscious Capitalism wove in the journey of Whole Foods founder John Mackey, and Everybody Matters was in part about Bob Chapman's life story and the personal awakenings that led him to become a “truly human” leader.

My book Firms of Endearment – my on‐ramp to the world of more human‐centered business – reflected my evolving personal consciousness and beliefs about life, business, and leadership. But I studiously avoided using the “I” pronoun even in that book. I am an academic, after all, and am supposed to not inject my biases into works that are meant to illuminate objective truths. I also thought of myself as an intensely private person and believed that my life experiences were mine and mine alone, to learn from and transcend if I could.

I now feel ready and called on to share my personal story. While I have worked to help heal the world of business, this book is my journey home to myself. I have written it for my children and others who may struggle to understand themselves and decipher what their life is really about.

My family history on my father's side is dark; the feudal system I grew up in was profoundly abusive. It has not been easy to write about. But I have learned that what we fear confronting the most is what needs the deepest healing. As the estimable “Mister” Fred Rogers taught us, “Anything that is human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable.”

I have led what many would consider an unusual and what some now call a “psychologically rich” life: a diverse blend of geographies, cultural milieus, political contexts, religious influences, and familial backgrounds. The hard‐won wisdom and insights I've gained in life are not just for my benefit; I have learned lessons I believe it would be selfish not to share.

The year 2018 was my year of metamorphosis. I turned 60, coauthored The Healing Organization, and went through a variety of healing experiences at the insistent urging of wise friends. I was in a constant state of inquiry, seeking and gaining guidance from within as well as from the outside world. I experienced frequent awakenings and received wisdom so abundantly that I could barely keep up, filling up notebook after notebook. Unexpected teachers showed up in my life, and I was given many opportunities for further learning and growth.

Why did it take until I turned 60 for some basic truths to be revealed to me? I remained unconscious for so long because I was stuck in the past and was carrying many unhealed wounds. I did work that was meaningful in a joyless way. I was running on fumes, sourcing the fuel for my work from the praise and gratitude of strangers. I gave 70–80 talks a year, produced a new book every 18 months on average, and was away from home at least 60% of the time (I was scared to calculate exactly how much). I was always on the run. I had no idea what I was running away from, or toward.

In writing this book, I had the sobering realization that I had been unhappy for as long as I could remember. I had minimized or denied my wounds and traumas to myself. I did not have the courage or ability to face them; there was too much darkness there, and my sensitive soul just could not take it. All I aspired to was survival. If I could just make it through the next 15 to 20 years, I would be done with it. I found myself looking at obituaries, at how old people were when they died, wondering how much longer I had to endure. A line I read years ago from The God of Small Things kept resurfacing in my mind: “Not old. Not young. But a viable‐diable age.”

Remember the classic video game Pac‐Man? Pac‐Man is chased by ghosts, trying desperately to outrun them, until he eats a power pellet that temporarily changes the game. He then starts eating the ghosts and being fueled by them. For many of us, that seems to be the whole game: being chased by ghosts or being fueled by ghosts. Either way, the ghosts are running the game. Even when you're fueled by ghosts, using them as a catalyst for a different, more positive way of living/being, they're still running you! What we need to do is exit the game, get out of the maze we are trapped in, and free ourselves to navigate life without being chased or fueled by ghosts!

In 2019, I lost both my parents in quick succession. Through my grief, I saw that I had more work to do to heal myself than just writing The Healing Organization. I needed to continue to work on myself and share with the world the hard‐won wisdom that I had gained from my life experiences.

I have written this book to understand my life journey in a deeper way so I can live more consciously while helping others do the same. It is about looking back, not with anger, resentment, or regret, but with awe, wonder, and curiosity. It is about making more explicit what has so far been implicit. It is about being the driver of my life rather than being driven by it. It is about alchemizing the pain and suffering I have experienced into wisdom of lasting value to myself and to others. It is about recognizing the preciousness and finiteness of life and learning how to live in a way that is aligned with my inner being and the needs of the world. It is about waking up and staying awake. Most of all, it is about striving to live a more meaningful, impactful, and joyful life.

I hope this book will inspire you to ask deeper questions about life for yourself and apply some of what I have learned to your own journey. To aid in that, I have added Reflections at the end of each chapter to give you additional opportunities for self‐reflection.

1Roots

In December 1960, my father, a brilliant iconoclast who had overcome every obstacle to attaining a higher education, scraped together the enormous sum of Rs 5,000 rupees (about $700 then) for a one‐way passage from New Delhi to Winnipeg, Canada – leaving behind his fledgling family. Narayan Sisodia was 24. I was two, and my mother, Usha, was 23 and pregnant with my sister, Manjula.

Life Without Papa

Rising from a tiny village in central India, Narayan had flown across the seven seas to Canada, like a bird that miraculously migrates thousands of miles to better climes. He would be gone for four long years getting a doctorate in cytogenetics, or plant breeding, at the University of Manitoba. As the months and years passed, he slowly morphed into a mythical figure.

After he left, my mother, in Indian tradition, retreated to her parents’ house for the birth of my sister. A few months later, she returned to my father's village, Kesur, where she was embedded in a deeply conservative joint family, surrounded by her husband's parents, his brothers and sisters, her sister‐in‐law, and their young children. It was an unhappy and lonely time for her. The women did little to comfort her. Instead, there was much malicious talk of how most men failed to return after leaving for America (which was indistinguishable from Canada in their minds). My aunt would say, “He's not coming back. He's going to find and marry a Mem there [white women were called Memsahibs in colonial days].” Every photograph sent by my father, every line in every letter he wrote was scrutinized for evidence to support this theory. My mother cried herself to sleep many nights – a young bride forced to live like a widow.

As time passed, my memory of my father faded. I came to know him only from photographs, as a glamorous figure dressed in dark suits, knit T‐shirts, turtlenecks, dashing Aviator sunglasses, occasionally sporting a beard. He seemed like a character from a movie, not my flesh‐and‐blood father.

When I turned five, my mother sent me to Ratlam, a small city 50 miles from Kesur, to acquire a proper education at St. Joseph's, an English‐language convent school run by missionaries. This led to snide commentary from my aunts in Kesur, who had been perfectly content to send their children to the Hindi‐language village school. My grandfather joined in the taunts. He routinely mocked Usha: “With this aristocrat's spoiled daughter living with us, we will all be bankrupt and begging in the streets soon.”

My mother's five half‐siblings were all enrolled in the same school. Her father had rented a large house for the brood in Retired Colony, where railway pensioners lived. I lived there for two years with my eight‐year‐old aunt and four young uncles, with a live‐in housekeeper to feed and hover over us.

Periodically, my mother came to visit and complained to the housekeeper that I had gotten thinner and darker. The housekeeper grumbled about my raids on the sugar tin. Fortunately, my report cards reassured my mother that I was reasonably happy and doing all right.

I spent summers and other vacations back in Kesur. My cousin Gajendra (18 months older) and I were inseparable. We ate every meal out of the same plate, insisting on feeding each other instead of ourselves. We were passengers on every trip taken by the tractors, returning muddy and disheveled, to our mothers’ exasperation. Mimicking the adults, we gathered up beedi butts (thin Indian mini‐cigars) and attempted to smoke them. If that didn't work, we tried to smoke reeds of straw. We were carefree little desperadoes.

From Kesur to Canada

Reports of my father's academic achievements in the doctoral program were met with little surprise, as most people had come to define him almost solely in terms of his relentless success in education. Narayan had defied great odds in coming this far.

Kesur was a large village, by Indian standards, with about 3,000 people. Situated in the middle of India, it was unusual in that it had a roughly equal blend of Hindus and Muslims. Our house resembled a small fort complete with ramparts and turrets, and was called the Rowla (“the landlord's house”). It separated the saffron‐flagged Hindu homes of the village on our right from the green‐flagged Muslim homes to our left. Like most Rowlas, it was situated at the highest point in the village. Across from the house and down a steep incline flowed a river.

Our family were of the warrior (or Kshatriya) caste, just below Brahmins in social standing in India's rigid caste system. Within that, we were part of the Rajput subculture (see sidebar), descended from rulers who held dominion over much of northern India for many centuries.

As a child, Narayan was often sternly reminded that his first responsibility was to his assigned duties on the farm; school was not to interfere with the serious business of working. At peak times such as planting and harvesting, my grandfather deployed all the Rowla boys to various tasks. The older sons drove the tractors and supervised the workers, while the younger ones patrolled the fields with slingshots, waving and shouting to shoo the swarms of bright green parrots from the crops. My grandfather sent a messenger to the school informing the teachers that the Rowla children would not be coming in until the crop was in storage or the seed was in the ground.

Narayan's early education at the village middle school was mediocre, but that did not hold him back. His father – Thakur Girwar Singh, a hard‐driving, self‐made man with a fourth‐grade education – dismissed Narayan's educational ambitions. In his view, too much education simply created impractical lakir ke fakir, a popular expression among the wise old nodding heads of the village that meant “worshipper of words.” Education beyond the basics of reading, writing, and simple addition and subtraction was for those unfortunates who were forced to take salaried jobs – not for someone with the abundance of property and prestige that Girwar had worked maniacally all his life to accumulate for himself and his four sons.

My father was brilliant and had vast energy. Unlike his siblings, he was determined not to let the circumstances of his birth determine the course of his life. For virtually everyone around him, the blueprints of their lives were handed to them at birth. Rather than chafe at his father's strictures, Narayan simply worked harder than anyone else to please his father as well as himself. He did his schoolwork late into the night under the light of a sooty kerosene lamp (it would be decades before electricity came to the village) and completed many of his chores before sunrise.

My grandfather said to his kids, “Eighth grade is more than enough. You know how to read and write; now get to work on the farm.” But Narayan insisted on continuing his education beyond that. He moved to Dhar, 12 miles away, to get his high school diploma. His grandfather, the unusually mild‐mannered Thakur Hari Singh, moved there to look after him in a rented house.

Upon graduating from high school, Narayan dreamed about becoming a doctor and secretly went to Indore (a large city about 30 miles from Kesur) to take the highly competitive PMT (Pre‐Medical Test), which he aced. When my grandfather found out, he wouldn't hear of it. After a great deal of arguing and pleading, he agreed that Narayan could go to college, but only if he got a degree in agriculture science, which would at least have some practical value back on the farm. In 1955, 19‐year‐old Narayan set off to Gwalior, a city about 300 miles away. There, he enjoyed a stellar academic career, becoming president of the student body and earning a gold medal for topping his class academically. He came home to Kesur for every break, however brief, and threw himself into farm work.

Rumor has it that Narayan had fallen in love with a girl while he was at college – a blasphemous offense in his hidebound feudal culture. Compounding his folly, the girl was not from a Rajput family. Narayan was not free to choose his own bride; that duty and privilege were irrevocably his father's. As soon as Girwar found out, he set the gears in motion to arrange Narayan's marriage. Narayan quickly gave in; he understood the culture he was part of. He knew that a Rajput father's love was completely conditional; anyone who strayed from the fold and refused to obey paternal dictates would be summarily expelled from the family. I would learn that harsh lesson.

This was the second time Narayan had given in to his father's wishes; he had abandoned his dream of becoming a doctor, and he now submitted to his father on the question of a life partner. It would not be the last time. These and future capitulations would eventually calcify into deep resentments as Narayan struggled to shape a life between the competing poles of self‐determination and duty to family.

The Rajputs

The word Rajput derives from the Sanskrit Raja Petra, or son of Kings. Rajputs are a prominent branch of the Kshatriya caste, who were warriors traditionally charged with maintaining law and order and defending against attacks from outside forces.

Rajputs emerged in the ninth and tenth centuries in the northwestern part of India. They were the rulers of many fiercely independent kingdoms that frequently warred with each other until they faced a common threat from Muslim invaders. Rajputs resisted the conquerors until finally acceding to Mughal control in the sixteenth century. The last of the holdouts was Maharana Pratap (to whom we Sisodias trace our ancestry).

Rajputs are socially conservative and fiercely protective of their many customs. Traditionally, they were celebrated for being brave and self‐sacrificing. They had a strict code of honor. Many had shown genuine nobility and extraordinary courage in the face of insurmountable odds.

The strict code of honor extended to women and children, who were expected and often coerced to commit mass self‐immolation in a ritual called jauhar to avoid humiliation and abuse at the hands of conquerors. This tradition derived from the practice of sati, in which widows were pushed onto funeral pyres. The men would subsequently head off to their certain death – a practice known as saka. The practice of sati is venerated and celebrated by Rajputs to this day, though no longer legal.

Over time, many Rajputs came to be defined by their indulgent, often decadent lifestyles: rich food, alcohol, opium, hunting, concubines. They developed a reputation for being cruel and violent to peasant farmers. Many still live in mini‐palaces and fortress‐like homes surrounded by walls with rifle sights.

The Rajput culture remains harshly patriarchal and misogynistic. Until recently, women couldn't own land or make decisions about financial matters. Working outside the home was almost unthinkable, even in educated families. Most women keep their faces covered in the company of older men. To this day, most Rajput women do not call their husbands by their given name. As one told the New York Times, “For a wife, your husband is God. And you don't call God by his first name.”

Both my grandfathers were Thakurs, a privileged landowning category of Rajputs just below the kings. They each had about 500 acres, a vast holding by Indian standards (most farmers have less than five acres). Many Thakurs controlled their little fiefdoms with an iron hand, while some were more paternalistic. Old Bollywood movies often depicted Thakurs as villains: hard‐drinking, murderous rapists with colorful turbans and ostentatious moustaches.

Narayan's hopes for a college‐educated wife proved impossible to fulfill. Rajput girls were not highly educated in those days; most did not complete high school. My grandfather found a good match for my father: the oldest daughter of Thakur Jaswant Singh Pawar of Berchha, an educated man of refined, Westernized tastes and leisurely ways. Usha had studied up to eighth grade, and from all accounts had the makings of a suitable bride.

Figure 1.1My parents in their twenties

The families of the bride and bridegroom were quite different, and there was no way for anybody to judge the compatibility between Narayan and Usha. However, their astrological charts suggested an excellent match. After the fathers had agreed to the marriage, Narayan sneaked a peek at a tiny black‐and‐white photograph of a beautiful and demure Usha. Usha did not even see a picture of my father; she was told that she was to get a highly educated man for her husband and to trust in fate for the rest.

On May 20, 1957, when Usha had just turned 20 and Narayan was a few weeks shy of 21, the wedding party (comprising 60 men and one female servant who would attend to the new bride on the return journey) left Kesur for the dusty, bouncy six‐hour bus ride to Berchha, a tiny hamlet of a few hundred people. Five days later, the bus returned, bearing the wedding party and a flower‐bedecked Narayan and Usha, cordoned off with an improvised curtain near the front. She was resplendent in a red Rajasthani saree and glittering gold jewelry, her face completely covered by the pallu of her saree. The bus was weighed down with her dowry – wooden furniture, trunks of clothing, a Singer sewing machine, new pots and pans, and stainless‐steel glasses, and round steel trays that her family had given her to help set up her household. That was in addition to the money her father had paid to Girwar as part of her dowry.

Narayan soon headed back to Gwalior for his senior year of college. Usha set up her lonely marital home in a single room with mud‐covered walls inside the sprawling Rowla. Three months later, Narayan returned to Kesur on school break, and soon after, Usha left once again for Berchha, this time to be looked after by her stepmother through her newly discovered pregnancy.

When Narayan graduated in 1958, there was a repeat of the scene with his father from three years earlier. The prestigious Indian Agriculture Research Institute in New Delhi had offered Narayan a full scholarship to its master's program. My grandfather eventually relented, this time without conditions, realizing that Narayan was not to be deterred.

Figure 1.2The author at age one

I was born on June 28, 1958, in Ratlam, which was midway between my parents’ villages. My mom had a name picked out. I would be Rajendra, which means “lord of kings” or the “king of the Gods”; she had high hopes for this chubby, scowling baby. It also was the name of Usha's favorite movie star, the impossibly handsome Rajendra Kumar. To ease the pressure, she gave me the nickname Pappu, which connotes gentleness and innocence – qualities she herself embodied like no other. My father spent a few days with us and then headed to his new life in New Delhi.

The next two years were a repeat of Usha's first year of marriage – struggling to maintain her sense of self in a suffocating joint family in which she had no freedom or power, but plenty of responsibility – interspersed with brief, hectic visits from Narayan.

Usha's sister‐in‐law wanted her to do most of the kitchen work. Because Usha now had a baby that demanded her time, my aunt slipped a kernel of opium in my mouth every time I woke up and started fussing, knocking me out for hours and freeing my mom to keep working.

Usha was anguished about it but felt powerless to object. Under normal circumstances, her husband would have stood up for her. But he was not around. In desperation, she wrote a tear‐stained letter to her father. As soon as he read it, Jaswant Singh boarded the next bus to Kesur. Upon arrival, he didn't mince words. With a rare flash of anger, he demanded, “What the hell are you doing to my grandson? Stop this nonsense at once.”

In 1960, Narayan returned from New Delhi with his master's degree and another gold medal. He had just turned 24, and his education had gone as far as it could in India. His master's degree had elevated his academic status, but also sparked in him a desire to help transform Indian agriculture. Many of his professors in Delhi had been educated in the United States and Canada; they had infected him with the palpable sense of excitement that came from working at the frontiers of science. They thought highly of him and begged him not to leave the field. The Indian “Green Revolution” in agriculture was just beginning, kindling hope that India could become self‐sufficient in food, and make its frequent famines a thing of the past.

Filled with idealism, Narayan wanted more than anything to contribute to advancing scientific agriculture by creating new hybrid species. The genetics of plant breeding could deliver miraculous benefits to people everywhere. However, those research opportunities were open only to those with a doctorate.

He felt trapped in tiny, remote, still unelectrified Kesur, burdened with a young wife and infant son. His gold medals and diplomas provided no solace. He had no intellectual stimulation or companionship. His father had expected him to come home and miraculously elevate productivity on the farm. He tried to explain to people in the village that his interest in agriculture was on another plane. He certainly did not possess any magic formulas for turning the farm around. Besides, the farm was doing well enough; his father was knowledgeable about crop rotation, irrigation, fertilizing, and disease prevention. Soon, the inevitable cynicism set in; Narayan had wasted everybody's time, including his own. What could one expect of a lakir ke fakir?

Finding no understanding or pride from his father, Narayan now turned to his former professors in New Delhi. Among them was the legendary M. S. Swaminathan, considered the father of India's Green Revolution, who enthusiastically recommended Narayan to several PhD programs in the United States and Canada. Of these, the University of Manitoba in the frozen flatlands of Winnipeg boasted an outstanding faculty and offered him financial support – enough for him to live on, but not enough to bring and support a family.

In the summer of 1960, Narayan asked his father‐in‐law to help raise the princely sum of 5,000 rupees for his ticket. That was over six times the annual per capita income in India then. His own father had refused to have anything to do with this latest in a seemingly never‐ending series of foolhardy notions; he had stopped speaking with him entirely. In December, Narayan left New Delhi bound for Winnipeg and a doctorate in cytogenetics. He left behind a worried, newly pregnant wife and an uncomprehending son; he carried with him the weight of enormous expectations and hopes.

Papa Returns

Confounding the doomsday predictors, my father returned to India in early 1965. He was met with a tumultuous, almost euphoric welcome. He had gone to the furthest reaches of the world and triumphantly returned, back to his family, his people, and his roots. My grandfather, who had strongly opposed his leaving, had orchestrated a series of welcoming parties along the 50‐mile single‐lane road between Ratlam and Kesur.

My first glimpse of my father was an intimidating one; he cut a resplendent figure in his brown knit polo shirt, his gold‐rimmed RayBan sunglasses, his big shiny golden watch, his neck festooned with marigold garlands. I was filled with awe – and shame. Suddenly, I became acutely conscious of my own sloppy appearance and frayed clothes. I thought, “Oh God, how could I be his son?”

A lengthy motorcade wound its way toward Kesur. At several small towns and villages along the way, local Thakurs had set up elaborate welcoming arches over the main squares, emblazoned with “Welcome Back, Dr. Sisodia” (in Hindi). At each stop, as the motorcade discharged its passengers, the town elders came forward to greet and embrace my father, and a local band jauntily struck up a suitable melody, such as Ghar aaya mera pardesi (“my wanderer has returned home”). I snuck into the edges of a few of the hundreds of photos taken of the occasion, a disheveled figure on the margins of all this pomp and ceremony, ignored in the excitement.

We reached Kesur as dusk approached. The 50‐mile journey had taken over seven hours. The entire village had turned out. Thousands of people lined the narrow main street, thrusting garlands toward my father. Others showered rose petals from balconies. Bands blared from every direction. Fireworks lit up the evening sky.

My father's Masterjis (teachers) were all there, dressed in their whitest kurtas and dhotis. Narayan, in the traditional gesture of a student toward his teachers, bent down to touch their feet, at which show of humility and grace the teachers sprang back, barely able to contain their pleasure and awe. The village's contingent of seths (traders and shopkeepers) had put on their ill‐fitting Nehru jackets and sweat‐stained conical Congress caps to greet him, palms joined at heart level in the traditional namaste greeting.

Like the Wizard of Oz, my grandfather had choreographed all of this, but befitting his status as the patriarch, had remained in the Rowla. When the procession finally made its way up the steep incline leading to the house, my father went up to my waiting grandfather and touched both his feet. My grandfather wore a long gray coat and a bright red saffa (turban). He blessed my father by putting both hands on Narayan's bowed head, saying jeete raho (live long). They then embraced and walked through the large main gate to the Rowla's expansive main courtyard.

Several hundred people gathered at the Rowla that night, and the celebration lasted until dawn broke. My favorite picture of the day is one in which my mother sat next to my father, gazing at him as he animatedly spoke to someone else. After four long years of being brave, strong, and alone, she was finally a married woman again. All the doubts and insecurities, the slights and the cutting remarks, all her suffering had melted into the past. She looked carefree, suddenly seeming even younger than her 27 years.

Meanwhile, my sister (then four) was entirely unimpressed. It took several days before she allowed my father to hold her and much longer before she deigned to call him Papa.

At seven years old, I was neither confident nor self‐assured. Around this otherworldly Papa, I felt like a stumbling, mumbling fool. My appearance, while better than that of a street urchin, certainly reflected my rough surroundings. I was missing a couple of front teeth, my hair looked like a porcupine's, and my meager wardrobe consisted mostly of thin shirts with loud geometric prints and baggy shorts. My father looked like a young Indian John F. Kennedy. He seemed as unimpressed with me as I was awed by him. I am sure he sensed my discomfort, but did nothing to make me feel at ease. We were virtual strangers to each other. As he wasn't physically affectionate, little could penetrate the invisible wall that separated us. That would become a lifelong condition; I would spend decades trying to earn his approval and affection.

Three months later, Papa broke the news to my grandfather: once again, he would be leaving home. He had interviewed with a firm in London on his way back from Canada and had accepted a job as chief scientist for the British West Indies Sugar Corporation in Barbados to do research on sugarcane. This bombshell led to an extended, expletive‐filled blowup with my grandfather, who had taken it for granted that my father was back for good and would now settle down in Kesur or nearby. Once again, my father was “dead” to his father. Narayan made plans for my mother, my sister, and me to leave India and be a part of his next adventure.

For Mummy and me, it would soon be a case of “Innocents Abroad.”

Reflections

I grew up in the shadow of generations of patriarchs, embedded in the customs and traditions of a land I would not fully understand for decades. Those early years were a foreshadowing of the struggles that would come later in my life: the differences between my grandfather and my father would parallel the gulf between me and my father.

Every memory that stands out is there for a reason: it has something important to teach you. What are the memories that stand out to you from your early years? Reexamine them with curiosity. Why do you think they are significant in your life?

More than half a century later, I can see how the experiences of my early life impacted the trajectory of the rest of my life. The most significant is that I didn't know my father until I was seven. His absence allowed me to be rooted in my mother's unconditional love, but he and I never became close.

Were both of your parents present in your early years? How did their presence or absence affect you?

My true nature was evident when I was very young. My mother named me Pappu, the innocent one. I was trusting, idealistic, and peace‐loving. That was my essence; it was what defined me as. However, I had been planted in soil that was not hospitable to those qualities.

Your true nature combined with the environment in which you were nurtured either allows you to become more of yourself or causes you to develop masks and shields in order to survive. What kind of “seed” were you as a young child? What were your essential qualities? What kind of environment, what kind of soil, did you find yourself in for your early years? How well did that environment nurture you? What coping strategies did you have to develop to survive in your environment? If it was not the “right” environment, were you eventually able to find or create an environment that was more hospitable to your nature? Do you understand what kind of environment you thrive in?

2Changing of the Guard

A Whole New World

Proud, somewhat stunned owners of brand‐new passports, my mother, my sister, and I packed up our belongings to leave India in the summer of 1965. I had just turned seven. We made our way to Palam International Airport in New Delhi for our flight to Aden and then to London. We were beside ourselves with excitement as we boarded the plane. We gripped the armrests tightly as the plane rumbled down the runway and ascended into the dark night.

In those days, international flights were luxurious experiences. My parents dressed formally, and Mummy had cleaned us kids up as much as she could. Soon, the glamorous flight attendants arrived with an array of exotic drinks and foods. Everything I put into my mouth was a brand‐new sensation.

It was cold and rainy when we landed in London, so our first stop was at Harrods department store. I emerged transformed, in a stylish trench coat, baggy trousers, and shiny black shoes. We then went to see one of the iconic sights of London: the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. This was an apt metaphor for what was happening in my family: a new regime, my father replacing my mother as the dominant influence in my life.

Bewildered in Barbados

After a few magical days in London, we boarded a flight to Bridgetown, Barbados. We spent the first couple of weeks at the Hilton Hotel on the beach – the first time I saw the ocean. My mother and I sat on chaise lounges on the sand, being served drinks with little umbrellas in them and fried flying fish, a uniquely Barbadian delicacy.

Barbados is a tiny speck of an island in the South Caribbean, just 21 miles north to south and 11 miles east to west. With just over 235,000 people, it was a far cry from colorful, chaotic, crowded India.

We moved into a big colonial‐style house, acquired a black Labrador we named Bello, and slowly adjusted to our drastically different new lives. Mummy and I were “innocents abroad” in this unfamiliar environment. We had always been extremely close, but now we were joined in this adventure together. Manju was too young to experience much culture shock, and my father was deeply engrossed in his work. I helped my mother cook, and we figured things out together as best we could.

One day, an old man stopped by the house and offered to transform our garden for a small amount of money. The trusting souls we were, my mother and I hired him. He took our money, and we never saw him again. When we sheepishly confessed to my father, he shook his head. “You two are the same – too bhola” (meaning innocent or gullible).

My school was called Holy Family, and I found it utterly delightful. I had never been in a school with girls. I soon had a crush on a little girl with curly blonde hair. This was a Catholic school and Bible study was required. I won a prize for being the best student in Bible class, having virtually memorized the children's version we were using! My glowing report card was filled with As and included the comment “Raj is an ambitious young student.” I wonder what the teacher saw in me at age eight to come to that conclusion.

I thought my father would be proud, but he seemed unimpressed by my grades and the teacher's comment. He remained a distant, intimidating figure to me. It did not help that soon after arriving in Barbados, he grew a beard. It came in thick and bushy, making him appear even more formidable than he already did.

Papa had been diagnosed with asthma some years earlier and used an inhaler to treat it when an attack came on. One Sunday afternoon, he and I were in our large living room at opposite ends. An asthma attack came on, and he needed his inhaler, which was lying on a table close to where I was playing. Struggling to breathe, he gestured to me to bring him the inhaler. Not understanding what he wanted, I picked up the inhaler and started mimicking the way he used it. To get my attention, my father took off his slipper and threw it across the room. I was not looking his way, and the slipper hit me squarely on the side of my head. I was stunned. Being struck by a shoe is considered a grave insult in our culture. I already didn't feel worthy of being his son. Now the thought arose in me, “Oh God, he hates me.”