Frankly, my dear, I (no longer) give a damn!

After a lifetime of people-pleasing, it is incredibly liberating to not care what anyone else thinks

I spent most of my life as a people pleaser. As a child, I was that annoying, prissy little one who actually volunteered to sit in the front row; who raised her hand to answer a question even before the teacher had finished asking it; who actually asked for homework; who swotted through the night before exams. All because I desperately wanted to please my parents/my teachers/any other significant adult in the hope that this would make them love me.

Nothing much changed when I turned into a young adult. When my friends were cutting classes in college and getting up to no good at college festivals and late-night parties, I was too busy playing the cleverest girl in class.

I devoured my entire reading list in a week; I handed in every essay on time; and when it came to classroom discussions on Chaucer or Shakespeare or Marvel or Yeats, you simply could not shut me up. Needless to say, my teachers loved me (you cannot imagine my happiness when one of them referred to me as "a ray of joy"). But, for some unfathomable reason, it did not make me very popular with my peers; and I stayed up many nights worrying about that.

When I started my first job in journalism, my people-pleasing instincts were entirely intact. I went out of my way to become best friends with the page-makers in the art room (ah, those primitive times before computers; how I miss them!) and the boffins in the office library. I volunteered to stay late so that my bosses would be impressed by my work ethic.

Even my interviewing technique was based on endearing myself to my subject -- and thankfully, it worked a charm. One of the highlights of my early reporting life was when Uma Bharti dragged me in front of a mirror and marveled at how alike we looked. (Ah, good times!) Apparently, you do catch more flies with honey than with vinegar!

My personal life mirrored my professional life as well. Rare was the occasion on which I stood my ground during disagreements with friends. It was just simpler to go along with what other people wanted; or so I believed, in my anxiety to make and keep friends.

On social occasions, I was always the one doing all the running. There was never a silence that I did not rush in to fill. There was never a conversation that I allowed to flag. There was never a lame witticism I failed to laugh at. And there was never a moment when I truly relaxed and enjoyed myself, so anxious was I to get it right.

I can still remember the moment when it finally dawned on me that I was playing it all wrong. Then in my early 30s, I had been invited to a black tie dinner hosted by a great champagne house. And as a mark of great favour, I was seated next to one of the wine makers. Unfortunately, though he was undoubtedly a dab hand at blending grapes, he didn't have much by way of conversation. And it didn't help that his English, rudimentary as it was, was almost incomprehensible because of his French accent.

Nonetheless, I persevered in my usual way to keep the conversational ball rolling. But 10 minutes into the dinner, having met with monosyllabic responses, I asked myself: Why are you bothering to do this? You will never meet this man again in your life. He is plainly uninterested or unable to keep a dialogue going. So why are you trying so hard?

I thought about these questions in one of those conversational lulls I had always felt obliged to fill. And then, I gave myself permission not to try so hard. I stopped talking. I ate my food, I drank the excellent champagne, and I told myself that I didn't care if this famous winemaker thought I was rude. And you know what, after a moment, I truly didn't.

You cannot begin to imagine just how liberating that was. From that moment on, I retired my people-pleasing self and decided that the only people I would ever care about are my family (well, at least, those members who I could still bear to be in a room with) and my friends (you know who you are). Other than this small group, I could not be bothered to be charming or endearing. Of course I would be polite, so long as it was possible. But that was all I was prepared to offer, in addition to unflinching honesty.

Thus it was that when a friend invited me to one of the events her guru, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, was presiding over, I didn't say yes just to please her. Instead I offered her the truth. Thanks so much, I said, but I'm really not into all this spiritual stuff. She was startled for a moment. But then she laughed good-naturedly and said, "Ah, well, at least you are honest about your feelings!" And strangely enough, there was no threatening clap of thunder, the heavens didn't fall down, and we continue to be friends to this day.

As the old saying goes, we would all stop worrying about what people thought about us if we realized how seldom they do. I am only sorry that it took me half my life to learn that lesson.

The madness is the method

You don’t have to be ‘crazy’ to succeed in Indian politics; but if you are a woman, it sure helps

By now you must have had your fill of all those jokes doing the rounds after India elected two new women chief ministers. ‘The three most important states in India are now ruled by mad women’. ‘It is no coincidence that Behenji, Amma and Didi add up to BAD’. And so on and on and on.

But while the sexist undercurrents of these remarks are only too evident, there is no denying that there is a nugget of truth in all these witticisms floating around. Sadly, with the exception of Sheila Dixit, chief minister of Delhi thrice over now, our women CMs haven’t exactly been ringing endorsements for girl power.

Take Mayawati, for instance, chief minister of India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh. She rules by statue rather than statute, spending obscene amounts of money erecting vast edifices to herself all over the state without the slightest trace of embarrassment. And her net worth has increased a thousand-fold in that period, by way of what she coyly describes as ‘contributions’ from her loyal party base.

Even if you put allegations of graft and corruption aside, Behenji’s imperial style of functioning is truly shaming. Farmers agitating for their land rights are subjected to abuse and torture. Bureaucrats live in mortal fear of being shunted out if they displease Mayawati in any way. And sycophants rule the roost, as the CM’s megalomania gets increasingly out of control.

We tend to forget this now – given our pre-occupation with the astonishing level of corruption in the DMK – but Jayalalithaa wasn’t much better during her own stint as Tamil Nadu chief minister. Despite her ladylike demeanour and impeccable manners, she was hardly a shining beacon of rectitude in public life.

Nor is there any missing the hint of hysteria beneath the cultured, convent-school voice, which threatens to bubble forth to the surface at the slightest hint of reversal. And, as the BJP learnt the hard way, Jayalalithaa is also the princess of unpredictability, capable of blowing hot and then turning cold with surprising speed and startling regularity.

That same mercurial temperament was also evident in that other stormy petrel of Indian politics, Uma Bharti, once the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh. Bharti was never afraid of speaking her mind, whatever the consequences. She took on the tallest leaders of her party without worrying about how it would affect her political prospects. She raged, she laughed, she cried, she shouted; and she never gave a damn about just how crazy she was coming off.

Uma Bharti was going to be true to herself; no matter how damaged that self may become in the process. And you have to admit that there was something terribly brave about that terrifying lack of self-censorship.

And now we have the same devil-may-care attitude in another state chief minister: Mamata Banerjee. And sure enough, she is also dismissed by the commentariat as a hysterical harridan, who has no control over her emotions, who lives by her heart rather than her head. After all, how else do you account for the insanity of her position on Singur, her sheer bloody-mindedness when it came to Nandigram?

But you know what? It is just this stroke of madness, that touch of insanity, which allows these women to succeed in Indian politics. It is their special brand of ‘crazy’ that allows them to deal with the slings and arrows of a world that is ranged against them.

Jayalalithaa wouldn’t have made it in Tamil Nadu politics after the death of her mentor, MGR, without a healthy dose of insanity to shore up her spirits. After all, which sane woman could endure all the calumnies directed at her, not to mention the physical attacks on her as she stood beside MGR’s dead body at his funeral, laying claim to his political legacy.

As she said in an interview afterwards to Sunday magazine, where I then worked, “I am a lady so I cannot show you all the places where I have been pinched and hurt.” And yet, she stood her ground. It was a kind of madness. But a remarkable madness for all that.

Think of a young Mayawati, growing up as a Dalit girl in the feudal, upper-class dominated world of Uttar Pradesh. It took a crazy leap of the imagination to even think that she could become the leader of her people and chief minister one day. And it is that ‘mad’ self-belief that helped her get there in the end.

The same is true of Mamata. Consider all that she has had to endure at the hands of Left Front regime in West Bengal. Her workers have been attacked physically, shot at, and at times, even killed. She herself has been lathi-charged so brutally that she ended up in hospital with a brain injury.

Which woman in her right mind would have continued to battle on after all that? Yes, it took a special sort of ‘madness’ to go on with the fight, and to believe that in the end she would triumph – as, indeed, she did.

So, yes, maybe all those jokesters are right when they say that India’s most important states are now ruled by ‘mad’ women. But let’s also admit that there is method in that madness – and that there is much to admire in that.