I apologise. A lot. In real life, and even more in the chatterbox that is my mind. This surfeit of ‘sorrys’ would be alright except that, all too often, these apologies aren’t mine to make – but to take.
I apologise so much that I’ve had a much younger, much more ‘millennial’ co-worker once hold me by my only-metaphorically small midlife shoulders and command me to stop. I cannot say I have stopped, but it’s now more and more a thought. And as my midlife goes on, I try and ‘pay it forward’. And so I did recently. I gently but firmly held the slim shoulders of a young woman, gratefully for her over a Zoom call, and asked her to turn the apology dial down, with equal part affection, amusement, embarrassment, and frustration.
This sorry state of affairs has, of course, been widely researched, probably mostly by men, as one of the many issues women at home, at work, and everywhere in-between, power dressing aside, grapple with. In some measure, big or small, the ‘see what you made me do’ syndrome, that marks much of domestic violence, scars us all and is at the bottom of the bottomless pit of this epidemic of apology.
On that subject, because nothing is ever complete anymore without a reference to pandemic-induced pandemonium, and Rapunzel-like let-downs of lockdowns, the National Commission for Women, which registers complaints of domestic violence from across the country, has recorded more than a two-fold rise in gender-based violence in the national coronavirus lockdown period between March 25 and May 31. And for that, we must all be very sad, very angry, and very sorry. And, at the absolute least, before even the filing of an elaborate, evidenced charge sheet, we must demand from the perpetrators, a well-deserved, no ‘ifs’, no ‘buts’, grovelling public apology. But instead, we women will proffer the anticipatory bail of advance apologies that most men struggle with saying sorry, as much or maybe even more as they struggle with violence, and with women, women they ostensibly love.
I suspect that, for some of us, the germ of this disease lies in the various vitiated interpretations of one of the most memorable movie lines of all-time. From an iconic film of the 70s, one that we all took too much to heart in the 80s, Love Story. Based on Erich Segal’s slim, simply-named book by the same name, the line goes, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” Within the soppy storyline, the line may still be alright as a form of creative freedom, but we have stretched it too far and too wide and too high, and made the absence of apology, particularly from the leading lights and leaders in our lives, a way of life.
As usual, Bollywood has done an unapologetically lazy job in challenging one more lousy myth, by perpetuating it. In fact, not only do we make excuses for these excuses of ‘ghar main ghusenge bhi aur marenge bhi’ men, (loosely translated as ‘we will enter your home and we will beat you in your home’), we have allowed the highest and the mightiest of men in our mighty land to get away with derelictions of duty, and worse, without an apology. Instead, we have become a giant assembly line of noisy apologies for them, banging cutlery to utensils, for being epitomes of apologies themselves. Our WhatsApps are ample proof of the misuse of these ‘creative freedoms’, both from fact and from feeling—freedoms for national domestic violence. What, after all, was demonetisation but that, or what are the communal riots that regularly rock our communities, or the botched-up Lockdown 1.0, or this ‘unlock’ that is an invitation to inevitable infection without healthcare systems, but domestic violence?
A good apology must stand alone, unsupported by victimhood, and must expect nothing in return, not even acceptance. It is not a clarification in disguise. Oh, and to be sure, tears are disqualified. And it must be ‘Make In India’, the China-made ones don’t last, like a puppy that comes under a car. There are so many apologies overdue, we are spoiled for choice, and we must prioritise, backwards.
Speaking of which, twenty brave men, not some puppies, have died.