The trauma of responsibility

SOCIETY

For all of us who go through life aspiring to be "grown up" enough, with more responsibility and authority, watershed moments when, indeed, we begin to make that crossover, can be ironically traumatic.

At work, we may begin to crave for the carefree ways of our early years when the stakes were lower and we could waltz in and out of jobs, stopping occasionally to play darts at (and not with) bosses! Bonding at work and outside would be more uninhibited, non-competitive in ways that seem to get more elusive as the climb gets steeper.

Besides, there is a good reason why so much management advice has been dished out to people who suddenly find themselves in the boss's shoes "" trying to manage those who had, till yesterday, been merely "friends". But while such adjustments are difficult, it is really in personal life where bigger challenges lie.

Most crucially, what happens when the parent-child relationship, that most of us at least in India take so much for granted, gets inverted? In our early thirties, this is the stage of life that most of my friends and I find ourselves at, and it can be very unsettling.

For instance, sitting with my father, over evening cups of tea, I've begun to realise that he's no longer the towering figure of authority of my childhood.

The lines are deeper, the battery of "path lab" test reports (his hobby, almost for ever) more frequent and even though I still lean on him to make sense of tax-related paperwork, I find, he's the one leaning more frequently.

From organising catering for his parties to advising him on how-to deal-with-employees threatening to quit company, resulting in financial loss, I'm suddenly in a position of more influence than I'd ever imagined possible. While it is certainly confidence-boosting, it is also a little surreal.

There are friends in even more challenging spots. At least two are now having to cope with serious parental illnesses, keeping up brave fronts not just emotionally but also tackling hard issues of finance and treatment options. The parents, in both cases, have been kept partially in the dark.

Then, there's another who, after a lifetime of reacting to a difficult parent, has now been told that she's mentally ill and the only way out is to take charge of the relationship: control it, set the rules.

It is not easy. So when my own three-year-old says, in an uncanny way, that when she grows up, I will "become small", I can only hope that the watershed years are kind to her.