Sometimes someone suffers but nobody is responsible. Take for example a tsunami that kills lakhs of people, puts millions of lives in misery but nobody is responsible. Similarly for a four-year-old who has not evolved mentally to truly discern fairness or wrong and other subtle causality, things happened without proper cause so did not leave him perplexed.
Little Babu was terrified of darkness and closed spaces, he was only four years old and his world consisted of talking to himself, running around naked or in shorts and shirt, eating, tasting mud twigs. leaves; generally, live by the moment. The age was at a critical point of transition, to run around naked or learn to be ashamed of nudity, to eat by himself or helped by mother in eating, learn and be thrilled at succeeding in wearing clothes all by himself and other processes of learning. The transition included overcoming claustrophobia and go to a dark constricted lavatory away from the house across the street or succumb to temptation of defecating in open on the small nalla passing by behind it. He knew the rules but those rules were so far malleable. As already explained little Babu lived in a fantasy world, if he got thrashing, he wouldn’t know if it was justified or deserved, for him things just happened for breaking rules which were not clearly defined.
His father used to be a socially well-respected person and in his own estimation an upright fellow who adhered to all the accepted social norms and took pride in his dealings with society in a civilized manner. And there was this commandant who also believed in keeping his command in order, in neat and orderly way. The commandant, probably a Sikh, had this habit of riding horseback to inspect his domain, to see that his subjects adhered to neatness and accepted social behavior. One day while on his usual horseback round he saw a queer spectacle, a little boy was shitting on the drain behind the assigned lavatory in the broad afternoon. Incensed, he enquired, whose child was at fault. His angst probably was, when the Army has provided descent accommodation and other amenities why should anyone allow this to happen?
Word quickly reached his father, who was in his office. This was unforgivable act by his child, a blot on his reputation and a huge setback to his image in the society. He carried a cane with a brass tip and brass blob on the handle, in double quick time he reached home with the cane. Meanwhile little Babu unawares of the upheaval, that he had shattered the balance of the afternoon, still naked below waist, in his fantasy world, talking to himself and generally busy in his own world, heard a volley of invectives and then his conscious world became numb as his father’s cane rained down on his body with the ferocity of a man in extreme anger. Every rasping strike left mark on his tender skin and a scar on his subconscious mind. His mind in an emergency maneuver hurriedly allocated space for long term memory and lodged the incident for permanent recall. In the amygdala the emotion that rose was not hurt, not anger but terror.
So, little Babu hated his father? No, his father remained his role model for a long time until he himself became old. He was terrified of his father and all the older people for a long time.
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