A TRAUMATIC INCIDENT FROM THE EARLY CHILDHOOD OF THE CMD

One night, when the chairman-cum-managing director was a two-and-a-half-year-old toddler, he had the most terrifying, most painful, articulation-resistant, beyond-management-level horrifying – with probably ten years of suffering compressed tight like a zip file into seven minutes – night of his life-till-then as well as the life-to-come.

Nobody (not even God) had bothered to check in advance if the toddler-CMD at that stage of his biological and psychological development had the capacity to withstand this level of pain and suffering, with repercussions that would be felt far away, in the distant future, by his partners, personal and professional, by his progeny, private and public, as well as by the employees, temporary and permanent, real and deemed, who would come to work under him at home and in the world in the company he would go on to helm as its most feared but also its most devastatingly successful, from the shareholders’ and industry’s point of view, CMD.

And so, years later, when the toddler-CMD was an adult, and having adult-type troubles like any other adult, suffering like any other adult, as well as being the cause of suffering for many other adults and adults-to-be, he would think back to that X-treme suffering of his toddler-self and wonder where in the scale of suffering (a scale on which his toddler self’s suffering represented one end of the scale) the current suffering (both what he was enduring as well as what he was inflicting) figured, and if he could survive, more or less unscathed, that epic episode of suffering as a toddler, why were those he was making suffer, which he had to do as part of his role as CMD, already whining so much in the face of what was obviously barely even eligible to qualify for that scale, and was a cakewalk-in-the-park compared to that cosmic-level misery that he had survived as a mere, all-round vulnerable, innocent-of-the-world toddler, and not only survived but gone on to become the CMD?

What had happened – and this was a story the CMD loved to narrate to his Leadership Team when they were winding down at The Club or The Lounge after one of their gruelling Review-cum-Strategy Meetings – was this.

It was a little past midnight in the toddler-CMD’s household. The toddler-CMD was asleep, having been put to bed in his toddler-sized bed in the toddler-sized room¹ by his female parent after much tantrum-throwing² (meal-related and sleep-related) from his side and much speech-heavy, attention-heavy, parenting labour from her side. Drained of energy, patience, poise, and throat-water after another exhausting day of full-time offspring management, the female parent had herself collapsed into the slumberous arms of the night only an hour or so before midnight.

Other members of the household – the toddler-CMD’s male parent and the male parent’s female parent³ – were also fast asleep. And then, as per the version his female parent would go on to narrate on numerous occasions to the toddler-CMD in the course of his childhood and adolescent years (both individually in one-on-one interactions as well as in group settings with friends/blood relations), and which version was the most exhaustive, if not authoritative, version of the incident extant,⁴ and also subscribed to by the adult-CMD,⁵ around twenty past midnight, everyone in the house, and subsequently several of the neighbours as well in adjacent flats, was woken up by fierce, night-piercing wails.

The wails, which rapidly took on the decibel quality of unrelenting full-throated screaming,⁶ originated, everyone in the house realized, in the room occupied by the toddler-CMD, and they further realized, at once, as a matter of fact, that the cries now emanating from the toddler-CMD’s room were qualitatively as well as quantitatively different from the typical interrupted-sleep cries they were used to hearing on most nights. This was big time. They all rushed, at their own age- and sex-determined pace, to the toddler-CMD’s room. The female parent got there first, and turned on the lights. What the illumination revealed was the toddler-CMD curled up in his bed in the foetal position, bawling his innards out, as it were. With a gasp the female parent bent down and picked up the toddler-CMD, and as she did so, and hugged his body to her own, her own being seemed to vibrate with the deafening cries of the toddler-CMD.

The toddler-CMD’s body was in the throes of something that evidently nobody would ever want to be in the throes of, and it rolled this way and that, turning its head this way and that in the female parent’s unsteady arms, threatening to pop out of her grasp. The female parent performed a quick all-body check for any insect-bites or allergies or rashes or untimely emissions of waste matter⁷ or any other anomaly of any kind while making tender, reassuring noises, and at the same time requesting the toddler-CMD to communicate calmly to his mama what was troubling her darling, etc., for the toddler-CMD was old enough now to engage in adult-compatible human speech. But the female parent could not access her offspring’s attention – its agony being too thick, too hard, too all-encompassing a barrier for her to be able to tunnel through. And while it was clear to her that her darling offspring too was trying to communicate something to its adult caregivers, and trying probably extremely hard, tugging at its tiny ears, twisting its neck, writhing this way and that, it too could not overcome the hurtling landslide of pain that seemed to have buried its brand-new consciousness under.

The female parent’s attempts to pacify the toddler-CMD – without having first addressed the root cause of the agitation that she was attempting to pacify him out of – only seemed to send his agonized cries into higher and higher circuits of pitch and decibel. As the male parent and his slow-moving, aged female parent watched half-dazed and full-confused, both of them addressing rapid vocalizations in the direction of the female parent and the toddler-CMD, without much effect, it seemed, on either, it occurred to the female parent and the male parent (independent of each other) that none of them seemed to know what was wrong or what had to be done with this organism – this loud, steaming, raging entity that was literally bringing the building down, and would probably get the planet to stop rotating on its axis if it could, until its soul-wrenching pain was assuaged with immediate effect. Had it been the case that someone had chopped a body part (of the toddler-CMD) off, the screaming-bawling intensity or decibel level could not have been higher. The female parent, increasingly panicky at being unable to figure out what it was that was causing her beloved offspring such unconscionable, breath-stopping, lung-splitting pain and terrified that something life-threatening or permanently debilitating might be happening to it began getting him out of his night clothes so as to examine him better. This was the scenario the female parent had always dreaded, from the time before she became, or even seriously considered becoming, a female parent, a scenario she knew she was incompetent to handle and therefore helpless around, unless it was somehow managed for her.⁸

Just when it seemed like they would spend the rest of their lives living this moment, and this moment only, this wailing-screaming-raging aural hell they just did not seem to be able to get to the exit of, the doorbell rang. The male parent got it. It was their across-the-floor neighbour, a tired-looking matron-mother of two teenage offspring, both male, and occasional evening walk-cum-crib session companion of the female parent.⁹ This woman, dressed only in a loose, shapeless, suitcase cover-material nightie, without so much as a what’s going on or is everything okay marched straight to the bedroom where the toddler-CMD was being disrobed by his now full-blown hysterically sobbing female parent. The matronly neighbour nodded at the female parent, put her hand on her shoulder, articulated the exact right combination of words the female parent needed to hear at this point and with an authority that struck everyone around as both natural as well as irresistible relieved the female parent of the still wailing toddler-CMD and, after what seemed to the female parent like a ten-second 360-degree scan of the bawling-suffering entity, instructed the female parent to quickly boil some water, not very hot just lukewarm, add two spoons of salt to it and bring it in a tumbler quick quick.

While the male parent stood around looking this way and that in confusion, and his speculations, regarding which paediatrician he could afford to disturb at this time of the night, or which hospital was appropriate to take his offspring to right now, making little headway, the female parent, who was probably grateful to have something concrete to do, and relieved to have someone come in who seemed to know what to do in the current situation, had the presence of mind not to waste time interrogating the neighbour about the whys or wherefores of her course of action. She went straight to the kitchen and put a vessel on the gas.

But the male parent, who, even when posted at the corporate office, never took on a project or gave his approval for any new, even minor, initiative, either business-related or cultural, not even those with zero or negligible budgetary implications, unless the rationale behind the initiative/project was thoroughly explained to him, along with the intra- and inter-departmental repercussions, if any, along with impact on current distribution of team responsibilities and time demands and workflows, and unless he was convinced from bottom-up that the decision was in alignment with departmental and organizational objectives – and even otherwise did not take nonsense from anyone – was not convinced. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked the neighbour. ‘What’s the salt water for? What will it do?’

The neighbour was trying to peer into the child’s ear. And every time she touched the bawling toddler-CMD’s ear, the bawling toddler-CMD bawled louder. The toddler-CMD’s female grandparent, who was very old and very observant and had been observing the goings-on very observantly, understood. ‘Something has gone into his ear,’ she said. ‘Lukewarm saltwater is best solution¹⁰ to make it come out.’

‘You are going to make him drink salt water, in this state?’ asked the male parent, incredulous, wondering what quackery or bizarre home remedy this was.

‘WHERE IS THE SALT?’ shrieked the female parent from the kitchen. ‘I CANNOT FIND THE SALT!’

‘Check in its usual place,’ yelled her female-parent-in-law, hurrying toward the kitchen. But the all-important salt wasn’t there in its designated place on the second shelf at eye level. The female parent, trembling and quaking as if an engine of some sort was idling inside her body, began following her fingers around the kitchen as they whizzed about like flies or drones opening all the drawers and all the cabinets and all the jars in all the drawers and cabinets in ever-rising hysteria that, with every passing moment, was threatening to take over her senses completely.

‘CAN’T FIND IT,’ screamed the female parent again, her tear-soaked voice hoarse and guttural and yet somehow louder than the toddler-CMD’s screams, and as she stood there, helpless, waiting for some response, some clue regarding the whereabouts of the urgently needed life-or-death material from her female-parent-in-law or spouse, but not knowing whether she ought to be waiting at all in the first place, not knowing whether she was making the biggest mistake of her life right then, not knowing, as she stood near the kitchen door – a useless door that was never shut or opened but just stood there all the time with nothing to do ever, the most pointless door ever invented – with her baby screaming, and surrounded by the open mouths of cabinets and drawers and jars and bowls and bottles of all shapes and sizes lying lidless and open-mouthed and yet somehow miraculously silent, she seemed, to the male parent who had appeared by then in the kitchen to help look for the missing salt, less a mother and wife and more a personification of offspring-servicing madness that he barely recognized as his wife. As he stood facing her, his bare feet sticky on the untiled floor of that tiny kitchen that was like a foreign country to him, this inside-out oven with the exhaust fan decorated in soot which his spouse never turned on because it only re-circulated the smoke and assorted spice vapours within the home, making everyone (and in particular, the male parent) choke and gag and cough and sneeze, as he stood staring at her blankly, with the matron trying to calm the baby, his female parent repeating a question to him which, he now registered, was whether it was salt by any chance that he had been searching for during his dinner, only then did it hit him, and when it hit him, he slapped his forehead because he now knew where the salt was.

The male parent had taken it (the salt jar) from its appointed place in the kitchen to the table by his bed, where he had been having his meal with the newspaper, away from the TV of the living room, to add some salt to the drumstick sambar he so loved but which, exasperatingly, was off today owing to salinity issues. Normally he would have commented on the salt deficiency in the sambar, and had he done so, the matter may have been picked up by his female parent, who might then have utilized the opening this afforded (the sambar having been cooked by the toddler-CMD’s female parent) to slam an easy winner over her offspring-in-law, or alternatively, induce an unforced error from her offspring-in-law vis-à-vis the toddler-CMD’s male parent. But the toddler-CMD’s male parent, who had become wiser after five years of playing referee between his female parent and his spouse, had decided, on this particular night, and on this particular occasion of a less-than-perfectly-salted sambar, that he would not comment, not utter a word, nor make a gesture or nonverbal sign by way of facial expression, or even verbally ask anyone to get him some salt – which was a pretty normal and typical and reasonable thing for someone in his position in the household to do – but which, nevertheless, may still have sparked another ‘incident’ between his spouse and his female parent. Instead, he set his plate with the spoon in it on the table by the bedside and himself proceeded to the kitchen, and without asking anyone where the salt jar was, looked for it, located it, and then physically transported it himself back to his table without a word.

In fact, on this occasion, too, spotting him in transit between the bedroom and the kitchen, both his spouse and his female parent, who were in the living room watching a popular TV soap, had asked him what he wanted, and his mother had even made to get up and come to the kitchen to see what her son wanted but just then a very important emotional breakthrough occurred in the TV soap they were watching and she, though a devoted mother, still happened to linger a few seconds to catch the exchange between the two female characters between whom the emotional breakthrough was happening, and in the space of that delay, her son had located the salt jar and announced his discovery (without going into the specifics) loudly enough for both the parties to hear even through the din of the searing background score of the emotional breakthrough that was being enacted in the soap that his spouse and female parent were together engrossed in, and now that there was no immediate requirement for them to temporarily abandon their entertainment to service the toddler-CMD’s male parent, both of them stayed put in front of the television screen in the living room.

In other words, had the toddler-CMD’s male parent not chosen this particular evening to loosen the bonds of patriarchy a little, not chosen this particular evening to exercise unprecedented self-reliance on a matter concerning his evening meal, as well as demonstrating tremendous strategic foresight with regard to the fraught interpersonal dynamic between his spouse and his female parent, the toddler-CMD’s hyper-extreme, off-the-age-category-charts suffering, whose every nanosecond was like a light year for the bawling-screaming toddler which seemed not so much to be in agony as an incarnation of agony itself, would probably have ended without there being any added time, in fact, ended at least 120-140 seconds sooner than it did, for the salt jar would then have been resting in its usual place, and the female parent would have located it the very instant its necessity became operational, added the salt to the water, and taken the potion to the matron-neighbour in a matter of seconds. But the male parent, who had displayed admirable éclat – for reasons outlined above – in electing to help himself, had unfortunately, and crucially, failed to carry his vision of self-reliance and strategic pre-emption through to its logical end. So pleased had he been with himself for having gone out of his way, without disturbing either of his female ministering angels, to do by himself what ought, in the normal course, to have been done for him by either of them, that it had completely escaped him that he needed to follow, in this instance too, the principle, whose vital significance he had oft expounded upon to his captive female domestic audience (as well as to his somewhat less captive mixed-gender audience at work) every time a utility household item dear to him such as a nail-cutter or scissor or stapler had gone missing, namely, the importance of replacing every utility item back in its one and only appointed place – the same locus where it had been at rest prior to being displaced by humans for their use – after its use, and how the diligent practice of this principle would yield immense benefits in terms of time saved, opportunity costs saved (you could be using the time you would have spent searching for the utility item you were unable to locate doing something productive), and mental agony saved, the mental agony in this instance being the one caused by the time and opportunity costs incurred on account of not being able to access the missing item immediately upon becoming conscious of its necessity for a task at hand.

And yet he had failed, unforgivably, from the point of view of his bawling-screaming offspring, to follow his own sacred principle of replacing the salt jar in its place in the kitchen, leaving it instead on the table under the newspaper he had been reading with his dinner, which fact (of it being under the newspaper) both kept it out of the swift visual scan performed by his canny female parent some ninety seconds earlier, and also added a few more seconds to the process of its (salt jar’s) discovery when he came rushing back from the kitchen, as even he, despite being cognizant of its physical coordinates, could not spot it right away either and had had to expend valuable seconds moving books and keys and watches and earphones around before finally picking the half-folded newspaper up unthinkingly and discovering, with crushing relief, the salt jar beneath.

His spouse snatched the salt jar from him before he could give it to her. Ignoring the dwarfish, square-bottomed plastic spoon inside, she scooped out a pinch, mixed it in the bowl and hurried to the bedroom where the matron-neighbour was seated cross-legged on the floor with the toddler-CMD’s head on her lap, his nose pressed against the soft cotton material of the nightie wrapped in tight creases over her fatly folded right thigh. The female parent squatted right behind the toddler-CMD’s head, on the other side of the flailing body from the side where the toddler-CMD’s male parent kneeled, gripping his offspring’s head firmly.

The toddler-CMD’s screams hit new highs in terms of volume and pitch as the neighbour poured the salt water into his right ear, gently, gripping the restless, struggling, twisting head with the bawling mouth with her left hand, pouring with her right, and as the liquid trickled in, and the toddler squirmed even more violently, some additional muscular aid from the male parent was requisitioned to hold the head still for the procedure to be carried out without all the water spilling out of his ear hole and down his face and neck.

As the water went in, and began doing what it was mandated to do, the toddler-CMD’s cries began to soften. Abruptly, the matron-neighbour, whose face was bent close to the toddler-CMD’s ear, jerked her body back with a muffled cry, startling both the parents and causing them to accidentally head butt each other. And as they recovered, what the two parents saw they would never forget, and neither would the toddler-CMD, even though he could only ever see it with his mind’s eye, not having been in a position to do so when the sight presented itself in real time for spectation.

And this is what the matron-neighbour and the toddler-CMD’s parents saw: as the salt water trickled out of the baby’s ear, out came crawling, in all its full-bodied glory, a wood-coloured, tiger-striped, medium-sized wasp, stinger and all, looking menacing even when wet. The female parent shrieked, the male parent, who feared any organism that wielded a stinger, and also had BP issues even at his pre-middle age, suffered a near-cardiac incident, while the wasp buzzed and whizzed and, without having been made to atone for its massive misdemeanour, took to the air, weaving its leisurely way to the kitchen, and thence exiting through the open window.

Comments were duly exchanged between the four adults regarding the size and temerity of the said invertebrate. The toddler-CMD’s outraged cries, by now, had subsided substantially, to a more sedate wounded whimper of the how-could-you-let-this-happen-to-me kind. The matron-neighbour was profusely thanked by all present, with the female parent resolving to retire, once and for all, all question marks pertaining to the former’s status appropriateness for socialization purposes vis-à-vis the latter. A visit to an ENT specialist the next day, or rather, the same day, given that it was 12.45 a.m. when the closing ceremony, so to speak, of the incident was taking place, confirmed – much to the relief of the male parent who by then had had to endure non-stop bombardment of guilt-inducing closing remarks on the incident from his still semi-hysterical spouse on how he had single-handedly extended their offspring’s agony and possibly also endangered his future well-being by irresponsibly choosing this particular night to misplace the salt jar (‘As if I knew in advance!’ protested the male parent, to no effect) – that there was only mild inflammation and minor tissue injury but no permanent damage done by the wasp, which the ENT specialist found miraculous considering the amount of time the wasp had spent exploring the insides of the toddler-CMD’s auditory apparatus, and what was even more miraculous, the wasp’s stinger had not punctured the toddler-CMD’s tympanic membrane. The male parent then conjectured that since the wasp entered the toddler-CMD’s auditory apparatus head first, and since the stinger was on its ass, unless it was able to turn around 180 degrees within the extremely confined, and presumably claustrophobic (even for a wasp) space of the toddler-CMD’s outer ear canal, its stinger would not have been anywhere close to within stinging distance of the toddler-CMD’s tympanic membrane, with which the ENT specialist concurred, admitting that even he had never seen a wasp locomote into an opening in reverse gear.

Though it would be difficult to pin down the impact on the toddler-CMD’s psyche of this whole incident, which the toddler-CMD says he has no organic memory of, but only internalized and memory-like solidified images based on his female parent’s narrative iterations, after hearing the whole story, nearly every member of the CMD’s Leadership Team was inclined to believe, given the toddler-CMD’s tender age, the extreme suffering he had had to endure at that age, and the central role played by this narrative during his formative years, that it must have had a definitive impact on his psyche and personality and perhaps, even life goals and political ideology. The only dissenting note was struck by the Senior Vice President (Leadership Development & Talent Management), who held that the real question that needed to be asked was the obverse of this one, viz., what impact did the specified incident of the wasp have on the temperament, personality and life cycle of the other players who had played key roles in the selfsame incident – namely, the toddler-CMD’s male parent, his female parent (and the all-important interpersonal dynamic between the two with attendant impacts on short-term, medium-term and long-term parenting outcomes vis-à-vis their offspring), the matron-neighbour, the female grandparent, and last but not the least, the wasp that caused the toddler-CMD so much trouble¹¹ and still got away, with no accountability, and no punitive measures being taken against it by the concerned responsible adults vested with HR functions.