Normalize

My parents always tried to normalize failures and mistakes so that we never felt low. In most middle-class Indian households board examination for the kids was a mammoth event, but in my family they tried to normalize the examination and tried to make us feel that it was just another examination for which they did some crazy stuff.

My sister was facing her board exams and we had to move to a new house, we moved farther away from our school, town and any sign of humanity, it was one of the remotest parts of the country. Unlike most households where cable TV gets disconnected during examination, my dad was determined to get cable TV for the new house as he felt that a home without cable TV would be abnormal- that plus World Cup cricket was on and my sister was a fan.

But he realized it is going to take at least 2 months to be installed, even after heated argument with the cable TV operator there was no options, so he improvised and decided we watch the match in our neighbour’s home. Every other day like a ritual my sister after her exams would get home change clothes and join us to watch match at our neighbour’s house late into night, sleep and leave to school next day for exams. Yeah! so the part called study wasn’t part of her exam schedule.

My parents made sure nothing disrupted this pattern, the day before math exam (which she dreaded) even she was sane enough to think it’s better for her to study than watch cricket. But my parents thought she is putting so much pressure on herself and one day isn’t going to make a difference, they reasoned that she has anyways been learning the same thing for the past one year. I told to myself “Yeah right! poor soul is into so much pressure that she felt she’d have to skip “watching” a match!” and I still wonder if my parents believed that she had been regularly learning at school. I tried to talk some sense into them but they used ageism against me. But to my surprise my sister not only passed her examination but also secured second place at our school, I never really understood how she pulled it off.

Years later I was facing my board exams; as usual my parents were trying to keep everything normal and make me feel comfortable. The efforts that they were making to make sure I’m comfortable is what actually made me uncomfortable. But they didn’t know no matter how much they tried I was stupid enough to mess it up for myself. On the first Physics exam while filling in the form (the one with roll number, DOB, and practically your entire life history) I noticed that the answer booklet was missing a seal and I showed to the invigilator and she took it away to get it fixed, she returned the booklet with the question paper. The questions were simple & interesting so I jumped to writing the answers. Only after dinner did I realize, neither did I complete the form nor did I fill the OMR sheet, the memory came back like incomplete task I had to finish and then it dawned on me that I’m never going to be able to finish. Without the OMR sheet my answer sheet would never get enrolled into the system.

I had a reputation for not writing name/roll number in the answer sheets it mostly had nothing other than answers, but even I didn’t think I would be stupid enough to miss something so obvious in board exams. I told my parents about it and tears started trickling through my cheeks. My father gave me a gentle hug and soft smile said “ithukku ethukku alara, onnum prechanai illa” (why do you cry, it’s not a problem). His immediate answer was you can repeat the exam relax. My parents later spoke to the Vice Principal about it and everyone thought worst case I’ll have to repeat and unfortunately that was the only case. My dad said it’s ok to fail, it’s not like you don’t have other options, you can repeat it in June he said.

That gave me a lot of confidence, I definitely flunked one exam and during every other exam I told myself if something went wrong I could repeat that too along with Physics. I focused only on how well I understood even if I learnt only portions of the subject. When the results came out to everyone’s surprise, I got my Physics exam score and my total scores were good too. We literally celebrated it at home, but I’d never know how my paper was evaluated.

I wasn’t sure about what my parent’s parenting style was, I was doubtful if it was some type of reverse psychology of tricking us to perform better than what we could do, by just saying do your best and we’re ok with any results.

I finally had my “I knew it! your techniques aren’t always going to work” moment when my sister had 3 backlogs of the total 10 subjects in her first year exams. I was expecting at least a conversation from my parents with my sister asking her, why she failed to score but what my dad did was buy pack of 5Star chocolates.

Because we just celebrated my exam results he probably didn’t want her to feel left out and wanted her to feel celebrated as well. I sometimes do wish my parents at some point at least stayed normal and behaved like normal people, ignoring a failure seemed normal-ish, celebrating it saying you cracked 7 subjects was way too much for me to digest. Besides that my dad wouldn’t even know what my favorite sweet was but he picked her favorite chocolate that too a family pack so big I’ve not seen a similar one ever after.

I never understood what he was trying to do, but he made us feel both success and failure seem normal. He made us enjoy the journey and forget about the end result.

There was a dance contest at school were I choked and lost pathetically, my sister lost a tournament but we were never critiqued for losing, both of us shared a lots of failures as well as successes but never felt the pressured to succeed.

He gave us the confidence to try a lot of things without worrying about the result but just perform to the best of our abilities. Took away the fear of losing, and gave us confidence to explore and experiment.

Important Note : Even if you ever happen to meet my sister do not ever mention about the part where I spoke about her backlog, if you do you’re inciting a violence against me.