Tags

, , , ,

As a child, I read to escape. I distinctly remember more than a handful of instances when I would emerge from a book and feel disappointed at the drab reality that confronted me. But I rarely abandoned a book, even when a book bored me. I remember reading through the whole of ‘A Painted House’ by John Grisham waiting for the story to ‘begin’. But I still read it. That was about 15 years ago!

In 2019, I first started reading ‘Educated’ by Tara Westover. The pages were quite tough to get through because my mind simply refused to cooperate. It rebuffed any attempt I made to conjure up the scenes and the life that Tara Westover described. I mean, how could it possibly be true that someone was raised by parents who came up with weird notions about what God wants and so ardently believed in preparing for the end of days. That was until I was seated in a café in Bilbao and was describing the premise of the book to two of my friends, only to have my American friend respond to it by saying, “Yeah, that sounds like my family!”

Perhaps that incident made me question my own objections to the plausibility of such a scenario. After all, this form of large-scale indoctrination with no room for questioning wasn’t anathema to the right-wing extremists in my own country that seemed to fascinate members of the majority religion. And as someone who was born into a Christian family, I am familiar with the Christian faith’s general belief that there is only one way to get to Heaven. So, was it really a stretch when Tara’s family took it a little further by actively preparing for the Days of Abomination with little faith in the government or modern medicine.

So, recently I picked up the book and started at the beginning for the fifth time. I struggled through the first part of the book again. Perhaps the fact that I could anticipate what was going to happen helped a little in getting through those 175 pages. However, the next 200 pages took me less than a day!

Thinking back, I found it difficult to accept that Tara and her siblings grew up in such a situation where her father had this incredibly warped idea of reality and shoved it into his kids’ brains when they were little. And any questions raised would inevitably be construed as them being disloyal. And there was an educated mother in the picture who seemed to know better but was deferring to the decisions made by a bipolar husband. As if things were not bad enough, add in a brother to this equation, who is prone to fits of violence against Tara that is condoned by the mother, followed by collective amnesia of these instances which has Tara refusing to see herself as a victim. Amidst all this, you still see hope when one of her siblings, Tyler, manages to leave and get into university. And against all odds, Tara manages to get out of the situation too and go on to win the Gates Scholarship to complete her Master’s and PhD at Cambridge. While two of her brothers finally step up and support her, I was left a little curious about her relationship with her oldest sibling.

But as you read on, you get a glimpse into the extent to which Tara had to readjust her perception of reality and all the confusion that this must have unleashed on her. However, there is still the battle to accept the ridiculousness of the whole situation. Personally, I think it happened at a later point when Tara visits Buck’s Peak and witnesses the success of her parents’ herbal oils, and she observes, “Dad was on track to become the best-funded lunatic in the Mountain West.”

However, not everything discussed in the book seemed completely alien. Her concept of the word ‘whore’ being tied so closely to wearing modest clothing was something I could relate to. It reminded me of growing up wearing a lot of collared Tee-shirts and dresses after a growth spurt during my pre-teens when my collar bones had begun to jut out and were looked at as something that needed to be hidden by my parents. And at some point, half the battles around getting ready to go out with my parents involved getting dressed in something that was acceptable to them. Later, at a point when I was working as a trial court lawyer, representing survivors in child sexual abuse cases, I was told by a parent that it was because men saw women like me wearing sleeveless tops in the streets that they went and raped children. To be accused of causing the trauma I was constantly interacting with in my work life seemed ridiculous. But how do you tell the part of your brain that refused to totally disregard your parents’ thoughts on the matter? And the truth is, I am still learning what is acceptable clothing without looking at it through the lens of my parents’ acceptability.

But most of all, the question that the book has left me with is, what is the point when your disagreements with your parents would justify cutting ties with them? How ridiculous should their positioning be for your unacceptability of it to be acceptable? Can it exist independently? Despite her claim that she shed her guilt when she accepted her guilt for her own sake. Because, while I believe that my parents love me, I also believe that what they think is in my best interest diverged from what was actually in my best interest when I first moved to another country at the age of 14. Does it mean, that I should vocalise my dissent at each instance, or pick my battles?