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August 20, 2020

 

Yesterday something finally shifted in one of my tussles with the bank. I sent a stinker of an email to the bank manager. My spouse wrote it after he saw me reduced to a trembling mess staring at the blank screen unable to craft the words to convey my experiences. I put aside the lap-top and pulled out my sketch book and drew. Next morning, I looked at his email and added, deleted and edited before sending. I considered removing the line with the word atrocious in it, but I left it in. The word sounded right there.  

 

Over the course of the weeks – ten to be exact – of struggling with this issue long distance, of feeling dismissed by the account manager who was supposed to be helping me, of phone calls to customer care which went in circles that seemed to try to help but did nothing but give me the same useless advise (only providing me with the email id of the branch manager on the fourth call), of appealing to the account manager’s boss, I had lost my ability to express my needs. I had been silenced and buried deep like a crumpled page  at the bottom of a full garbage bin. 

 

After what I had been facing, I had stopped expecting any response from anyone, but I sent it nevertheless to record my experience. Within minutes my sister in Bombay called me saying the boss of the relationship manager, a very brazen, young woman who I had complained about three years ago, had called her. The young boss was annoyed by my compliant and defended her mentee. She said I was supposed to send physical papers as a scan wouldn’t do. That was the first I had heard that a scan wouldn’t do but knowing this young woman I knew she would spin the story so it would seem like I was resisting sending them what they needed. I wrote off another email to put on record that this was the first I had heard of this and ask why I hadn't been told it in June itself when I initiated the process. 

 

Things moved for me after that. In the evening as I sat watching the sunset I began reflecting on the entire process and how slowly I had begun losing my voice and agency, and more importantly faith that anything could change. In fact, my sister was urging me to not lose my sanity and just let this go and only deal with it when I went back to Bombay. My sister is very different from me – she prefers peace to confrontation – and together most times we are a good team. I thought of the manager of my account who had for weeks refused my calls, not replied to emails, and rarely acknowledged texts. My reading of him said he was a decent person. I wondered what had made him behave the way he had. I hope he reflects on his handling of this and doesn't put another person through the same. 

 

In a very small way, I had fully experienced the boiling frog syndrome. Something millions of people experience every day when their causes and their very lives are dismissed, when justice is perverted, when their appeals for dignity are torn up as unimportant. I am unable to really convey in words the feelings and the people I am thinking of. In fact, a part of me feels like I should delete this and do something else, but another part wants to struggle with finishing the post. I see images – of masses in poverty who deserve a life better than the atrocious ones they are living but whose very daily struggles reduces them to stop hoping for anything better -- the man waiting weeks or months outside the airconditioned room of someone who has promised to pay his back wages for many months but each evening says tomorrow, or a little girl staring longingly at other little girls in school uniforms. Crumpled sheets in overflowing garbage bins. So many images of despair pass through my mind. Everything I do I feel the presence of this impersonal, existential despair – of the things I long to know how to change but don’t. If only…

 

Don’t many of us feel this? But do our elected leaders feel this? Why do they want to be in public office? Personal agendas and power or to serve the people?

 

Today the urge to delete, the belief that my words don’t matter, that I don’t matter is stronger than ever. But unfinished and imperfect as this post is, I will share it. 

 

In a week I will be sixty.