The Absence of Naz...

I got introduced to Billy Bob Thornton’s acting prowess through Landman. Next, I binged through Goliath, then Fargo, and now am back to season two of Landman. From what I’ve read, he lived a hard, working man’s life before his screen breakthrough. And it shows. His onscreen presence, is not something any acting school can teach. He is essentially always himself, a ronin, a rogue inside the system, playing by his own rules, alone, and never hesitant about speaking his mind. Plus, in real life, he is dyslexic and struggled in his education - things I can strongly relate to.

It is in episode two of Landman season two where his character tells his son about his own frustrated, physically abusive father and says: “Just know this: however you raise your son is how he’s gonna raise his son.”

That line resonated.
Not that I was physically abused growing up, but a binary system of narcissistic parentage drilled it into us early on that we were a liability, a shame, that they were always light-years superior to us. Later, an equally bullying and narcissistic brother-in-law entered the picture, and the whole thing turned into a three-body problem - a relationship so toxic that even as a teenager I consciously decided I should never have children of my own. Even at the cost of remaining single. I just didn’t want to perpetuate the cycle.

My grandfather was a judge with fourteen children. While others of his stature sent their kids to boarding schools, he sent his to local vernacular schools, barefoot at times, at least the elder aunts. All the while, he had his suits stitched by English tailors in Calcutta. Possibly to compensate, my father and his siblings excelled academically, though my father also preferred cultivating the reputation of an intellectual and a goon. That was until one day, fed up with his bravado, I told him that every hawaldar’s son is a bully in his mohalla; it’s not exactly difficult for a judge’s son to be one. He went quiet and shut himself in his room.

Another aspect of our upbringing that took me years to understand was our penury. He was a university professor, we lived in a huge house, but in ridiculous austerity. Any small request from my sister or me was invariably met with a firm no, and eventually we stopped asking, just to preserve the last scraps of self-respect. In his mental ledger, since we didn’t walk barefoot to school wearing pyjamas, it was already a massive improvement over his own childhood. Anything beyond that was Oliver Twist asking for more.

Much later, as an adult, long after my short marriage ended, I still had out-of-touch friends and acquaintances cautiously ask me about a rumour they’d heard: “Is it true you got married?”

I never realised how brazenly “singleton” had been stamped on my forehead for all but myself to see. The absence of  "Naz" in my life,  like for many others was not deliberate,  just an inherited trend.  

 
Naz- the Farsi word for the confidence of being loved.