How on Earth did I get here?
Examining the roots of my genesis...
My name is Krish Surroy, and this is my origin story. I am a tale of two halves.
Every tale starts with some kind of complication so let me start with mine.
Given all the chaos of creation, the fact that we are here is nothing short of a miracle. We are stardust you know. The chances of all that random stuff coalescing into a single life form are astronomical.
In reality, the great unifying intelligence – the Life Force – works behind the scenes to bring all of those elements together. All of these seeming random events are somehow orchestrated to bring each and every one of us into being. For the Life Force, this is easy. This is why the Life Force exists.
Anyway, back to me. I wasn’t supposed to be here, it wasn’t my time. I had done my bit and was not looking to come back. I mean, why would I? Divine bliss – check. Manifestation of a thought – you got it. All my favourite people in creation – yup.
But Karma is a bitch. No one is every going to remind you or guilt you or force you to make amends. Yet, you sometimes can outrun that little nagging feeling. That was it for me…. those little mistakes that would calm down and leave me along if I went back to help out for a bit. Not amused….
Roy (actually Saroj Kanti, but if you ever met him, you would know that Lotus Blossom doesn’t fit) was born near the Hooghly - the Ganga to some. This is a tributary of the great river Ganges, the lifeblood and holy water of millions. Roy was bold, fierce, loyal. He yearned for adventure and the extraordinary life. Few 7-year-olds understood the nature of injustice. Roy did and his adventurous spirit got him into trouble more often than not because Roy was born out of his time.
For all the vibrance of India – the colours, the smells, the tastes – the India of this time was one of suffocating order. Ones cast dictate the possibilities and trajectories of one’s life. The British ruled Kolkata with an iron fist which even the wealthiest Indians were no beneficiaries of. Add in war, poverty and struggle and all Roy actually wanted was to fit in, to be loved and understood. But he was a singular soul born out of context. He longed for the freedom to express, to escape the stifling weight of expression and to be free.
The Hooghly River heard the cry of Roy’s soul and vowed to carry him away.
Halfway around the world, Heather was born close to the source of the Thames. Born to a family of simple folk, people who had been farm hands (or serfs or peasants in history, Heather was not typical either. She too was loyal, fierce and bold as well, though in a demurer way as was expected at the time.
But she was born to a mother who had endured Society’s scorn by being born out of wedlock. Gladys was a soul of firm wrapped in warmth. She was the iron fist tempered in the fire of social scandal who learned to wrap herself in velvet anyway. Despite the unkindness of the world, kindness, compassion and empathy were hallmarks of mother and daughter.
It wasn’t Heather’s cries that the River Thames heard. It was Gladys who longed for a life away from the expectations of “be appropriate. Don’t stand out. Know your place”. Heather was only 4 when it happened. The River Thames felt the yearning of her mother’s soul and vowed to carry her away.
And so it was that two great rivers do what they always do. They created and expanded life and two young people found themselves in unfamiliar lands. They had escaped the constriction of the past and faced a host of possibilities and the pressure of an almost blank page.
How do you create a new life in a seemingly foreign land?
Well, do you remember that Life Force that I mentioned earlier? It doesn’t just work to bring life into existence, it is always at work. Through a series of “fortunate” yet unlikely events (to the untrained eye at least), two great rivers worked together to unite seeming opposites into a new cohesive whole.
The two cultures could not be more different. The vibrance, chaos and soul of one, emerging from a legacy of royalty, of tradition, of greatness. The other steeped in social order, unremarkable, nothing of note. The little people stretching back into history. Oil and water?
Yet in the same way that two great rivers eventually blend into the sea, the coming together of two unlikely halves - forged and tempered by the racism, ignorance and expectations of the early 60s – created an opening. This was a possibility of something new, only incremental and evolutionary at this stage, but the Life Force knew what it was doing.
It wasn’t easy. It would take a long time.
Roy was traumatised from a childhood of abusive punishment for not fitting in and misbehaving. Oh, how his inner light shone, but his body and psyche stored the trauma away. It was so bad that he almost exited of TB and Peritonitis in 1968. Yet, it wasn’t quite his time.
Heather too was traumatised from the suicide of her father who was never right after the PoW camps in Burma. He took his own life in 1966, months before their wedding. Two years later she almost lost her husband. But Heather’s fierceness burned cooler than Roy’s and her empathy and patience were vast.
Time went by and the crucible of the 60s gave way to a new era and a whole new generation – X they called it. The Life Force determined that this was the right time to ride the helter-skelter back down to earth.
I arrived on 11 May 1972. An interesting date shared with such oddities as Salvador Dali, Irving Berlin and Martha Graham – others who did not exactly fit in.
And then there was how I arrived. You might think with the conspiracy of two great rivers that I would flow gently down the birth canal and arrive in comfort. That would be forgetting all that lovely forging and tempering stuff.
No, I was a C-section baby born from a pre-eclamptic mother. But that is another story for another chapter.
Very cleverly stitched together. A great read.
Your words flow so beautifully Krish - it sounds like love got you here.