This is going to be a tricky post. There is a part of me that wants to bare its soul. And there is the other part that tells me that I have to be mindful of the privacy concerns of those people who are the subject of the topic.
That should not stop me from writing about it though. Write I must, even though I might end up writing something that does not say much.
For some time now I have felt this strange urge to leave a legacy or a lineage. A someone, an intellectual heir whose thinking, if not world-view or life will in some small way at least be influenced by me, by what I impart formally or informally.
Let me hasten to add that in using terms like an intellectual heir I do not mean to imply that I believe I have something profound to leave behind. Far from it. I am an ordinary fellow, almost basic. Nor do I suffer from any delusions of intellectual grandeur.
It all started at a time when it appeared that Lakshmi and I might not have children of our own. I began to treat my various nieces and nephews as our own children. The ulterior motive was to create this legacy.
That did not go very far. Pressures of a somewhat high profile corporate career and geographical remoteness did not help build those bridges. Mind you these were pre-whatsapp days. The most advanced mobile instrument was a feature phone that was as bulky as a brick. Mobile telephony was so expensive that it was meant only for the uber rich and the profligate. I was neither.
So even to-date Lakshmi and I are fortunate to enjoy a close bonding with our three nephews and two nieces. They are as fond of us as they are of their parents. Or at least nearly so. And we reciprocate. They admire many things that Lakshmi and I stand for.
But will anyone see me living through them when I am no longer around one day, as I inevitably will? I am not sure. I should have invested a lot more in their development for me to have justifiably hoped for that.
And then over time we were blessed with the twins. That should have meant the creation of a natural legacy. That might well be so. But it did not quite turn out that way.
One of our sons is a great fan of mine, although he has inherited Lakshmi's mild nature. The other has inherited all my not so nice traits and there is a large cache of that. But he is no fan of my world-views.
In an interestingly strange way Nature has distributed between my two sons the two ingredients that are needed for the evolution of a legacy - similarity of temperament and buying into the belief systems or philosophy of the source of the legacy.
I am not sure if it was this realisation or simply a mid life disposition that set me on the quest for a new set of targets as candidates for my legacy. Whatever the reason, it led me to people I got to interact with in my capacity as an academic.
Two of these are more prominent than the others and worth a mention. Out of respect for their privacy let me refer to them as Prospect 1 and Prospect 2 (P1 and P2, for short, respectively.) They passed through my life , one after the other.
They had many things in common. And it is possibly those qualities that drew me: Extremely bright, academically highly accomplished, hailing from decent middle class families, highly driven, individuals of solid substance, yet highly understated. They had everything that I valued as attributes and admired.
What is more they seemed to look up to me, not just as a teacher or academic supervisor, but as someone they would be prepared to look upon as a mentor or even father figure. Or so I seem to have imagined, I must say, going by the way events unfolded subsequently. And that appeared plausible given that they were both just old enough to be offsprings of Lakshmi and myself, a bit older than our sons.
And thus started my endeavour to influence them, if not mould. I invested heavily in the process, emotionally of course. I coopted Lakshmi, although she was a bit skeptical that I was getting carried away. I guess she played along because she was happy to see that my emotional need for a legacy might be fulfilled after all.
I was filled with excitement. I did not miss a single opportunity to interact with them, both academically as well as outside. I would invite them home with the hope of developing a bond that was not based on a narrow academic transaction.
I took great interest in their overall well-being, much the same way that I was interested in that of my sons. And I took great trouble to communicate to them that I saw them as being no different to Lakshmi and myself.
It is not as if the potential futility of this exercise was not completely lost on me all that while. One major source of anxiety was about what I could offer that was intellectually appealing to two young people who were decidedly superior to me in terms of raw intelligence and whose brains would let them pursue anything that they wished to while mine seemed to be in terminal decline.
The other source of worry was that I had never met any of their families. And no matter how genuine my motives how could I presume that their families would see it the way I was hoping they might. And the fact in both the instances, they would not expose me to their families, in spite of my repeated requests, was the first sign to me that we were not on the same page on the relationship, to use a contemporary cliche.
To cut a long story short and roll forward in cinematic style, both P1 and P2 dropped out of the candidature soon after my initial efforts. Each of them dropped out for different reasons. What appeared to be common to both was a serious discomfort about my endeavour to turn them into an heir to the legacy that I wanted to leave.
It does not take a lot of imagination to sense the pain and the disappointment that it caused me. As I write this post, as I still deal with the dropping out of P2, Lakshmi and I speak of where things may have gone wrong. Being the pragmatist that she is, analyses of this kind do not mean much to her.
To her there are just two takeaways. One, the experiments have failed miserably. Two they leave a cloud of pain and misery and so the experiment does not deserve a third attempt, which she dissuades me against, even though she dreads that I might not eventually give up.
My current state of the mind is reconciled to the possibility that I will eventually not find anyone who will be heir to the legacy that I wish to leave behind. I should now work on my sons, who are the best things that could have happened to Lakshmi and myself, hoping to leave as much of a legacy that I can through them.
But then I know I cannot trust myself. At this point in time I can only pray that I do not end up being like the profligate in many stories and movies, who returns to his foolish ways, once the chastening effect of his punishments have worn off with the passage of time.
Painfully, with nanni and namaskaaram....
That should not stop me from writing about it though. Write I must, even though I might end up writing something that does not say much.
For some time now I have felt this strange urge to leave a legacy or a lineage. A someone, an intellectual heir whose thinking, if not world-view or life will in some small way at least be influenced by me, by what I impart formally or informally.
Let me hasten to add that in using terms like an intellectual heir I do not mean to imply that I believe I have something profound to leave behind. Far from it. I am an ordinary fellow, almost basic. Nor do I suffer from any delusions of intellectual grandeur.
It all started at a time when it appeared that Lakshmi and I might not have children of our own. I began to treat my various nieces and nephews as our own children. The ulterior motive was to create this legacy.
That did not go very far. Pressures of a somewhat high profile corporate career and geographical remoteness did not help build those bridges. Mind you these were pre-whatsapp days. The most advanced mobile instrument was a feature phone that was as bulky as a brick. Mobile telephony was so expensive that it was meant only for the uber rich and the profligate. I was neither.
So even to-date Lakshmi and I are fortunate to enjoy a close bonding with our three nephews and two nieces. They are as fond of us as they are of their parents. Or at least nearly so. And we reciprocate. They admire many things that Lakshmi and I stand for.
But will anyone see me living through them when I am no longer around one day, as I inevitably will? I am not sure. I should have invested a lot more in their development for me to have justifiably hoped for that.
And then over time we were blessed with the twins. That should have meant the creation of a natural legacy. That might well be so. But it did not quite turn out that way.
One of our sons is a great fan of mine, although he has inherited Lakshmi's mild nature. The other has inherited all my not so nice traits and there is a large cache of that. But he is no fan of my world-views.
In an interestingly strange way Nature has distributed between my two sons the two ingredients that are needed for the evolution of a legacy - similarity of temperament and buying into the belief systems or philosophy of the source of the legacy.
I am not sure if it was this realisation or simply a mid life disposition that set me on the quest for a new set of targets as candidates for my legacy. Whatever the reason, it led me to people I got to interact with in my capacity as an academic.
Two of these are more prominent than the others and worth a mention. Out of respect for their privacy let me refer to them as Prospect 1 and Prospect 2 (P1 and P2, for short, respectively.) They passed through my life , one after the other.
They had many things in common. And it is possibly those qualities that drew me: Extremely bright, academically highly accomplished, hailing from decent middle class families, highly driven, individuals of solid substance, yet highly understated. They had everything that I valued as attributes and admired.
What is more they seemed to look up to me, not just as a teacher or academic supervisor, but as someone they would be prepared to look upon as a mentor or even father figure. Or so I seem to have imagined, I must say, going by the way events unfolded subsequently. And that appeared plausible given that they were both just old enough to be offsprings of Lakshmi and myself, a bit older than our sons.
And thus started my endeavour to influence them, if not mould. I invested heavily in the process, emotionally of course. I coopted Lakshmi, although she was a bit skeptical that I was getting carried away. I guess she played along because she was happy to see that my emotional need for a legacy might be fulfilled after all.
I was filled with excitement. I did not miss a single opportunity to interact with them, both academically as well as outside. I would invite them home with the hope of developing a bond that was not based on a narrow academic transaction.
I took great interest in their overall well-being, much the same way that I was interested in that of my sons. And I took great trouble to communicate to them that I saw them as being no different to Lakshmi and myself.
It is not as if the potential futility of this exercise was not completely lost on me all that while. One major source of anxiety was about what I could offer that was intellectually appealing to two young people who were decidedly superior to me in terms of raw intelligence and whose brains would let them pursue anything that they wished to while mine seemed to be in terminal decline.
The other source of worry was that I had never met any of their families. And no matter how genuine my motives how could I presume that their families would see it the way I was hoping they might. And the fact in both the instances, they would not expose me to their families, in spite of my repeated requests, was the first sign to me that we were not on the same page on the relationship, to use a contemporary cliche.
To cut a long story short and roll forward in cinematic style, both P1 and P2 dropped out of the candidature soon after my initial efforts. Each of them dropped out for different reasons. What appeared to be common to both was a serious discomfort about my endeavour to turn them into an heir to the legacy that I wanted to leave.
It does not take a lot of imagination to sense the pain and the disappointment that it caused me. As I write this post, as I still deal with the dropping out of P2, Lakshmi and I speak of where things may have gone wrong. Being the pragmatist that she is, analyses of this kind do not mean much to her.
To her there are just two takeaways. One, the experiments have failed miserably. Two they leave a cloud of pain and misery and so the experiment does not deserve a third attempt, which she dissuades me against, even though she dreads that I might not eventually give up.
My current state of the mind is reconciled to the possibility that I will eventually not find anyone who will be heir to the legacy that I wish to leave behind. I should now work on my sons, who are the best things that could have happened to Lakshmi and myself, hoping to leave as much of a legacy that I can through them.
But then I know I cannot trust myself. At this point in time I can only pray that I do not end up being like the profligate in many stories and movies, who returns to his foolish ways, once the chastening effect of his punishments have worn off with the passage of time.
Painfully, with nanni and namaskaaram....
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