Book Excerpt: ‘Finding Home: From India to Berlin – our life story’

Author’s Note:

Nambirajan V and his wife Sathya wrote a book about their journey from India to Germany and the challenges in it. Nambirajan calls it “Our recent self expression project”. Here’s an excerpt.

Chapter 5 – Joyful recollections of trauma

Sathya: That’s a unique chapter title. How did you got this title?

Nambirajan: It’s not my idea. I recently heard about this book ‘Joyful recollections of Trauma’ by an American comedian, actor, film maker, and podcaster Paul Scheer. I liked the title – how you can approach a serious subject like trauma in a funny, light hearted way. So here we are joyfully recollecting our traumas.

Sathya: That’s nice. I have had quite a few small and big traumas in my life

Nambirajan: If you had to choose one, which incident would you pick?

Sathya: More than an incident, I would like to pick a theme which was there almost throughout my life from my childhood days. I have shared about it in detail in this chapter. What is the trauma that you want to share?

Nambirajan: I have a few stories which I can share. Some about natural disasters, another about man made traumas.

Sathya: that seems interesting

Nambirajan: yes Trauma when viewed from the future reflectively helps you identify what your values are especially if you had healed from it. But when they are happening…

Sathya: They are well… traumatic. Let me start my trauma story

Sathya: Alcoholic Father, Therapy, and Rehabilitation

My father, Balakrishnan, is a self-made man who seems to have lived a life without fear. A quick look back at his life reveals a man of resilience and determination. During his B.Sc. in Mathematics, he defied his family to marry my mother, Shanthi. Starting with just 1,000 Rupees, he ventured into business to support our family. Initially, he sold clothes from a bicycle, despite having a degree in Mathematics. His passion for business drove him forward, and as his business began to grow, so did his exposure to bad influences. Alcohol became a part of his life, a habit he struggled to control. At one point, he got addicted to alcohol. Though he tried various methods to get rid of the addiction, it continued. Despite periods of sobriety, including a two-year stint in yoga, he would invariably relapse.

Me (on the right) with my father and sister

While growing up with such an alcoholic father, the turbulence at home was constant. Frequent fights and physical abuse became a norm. My mother, despite her efforts, was unable to shield my sister Dhivya and me from the chaos. The tension turned many nights of peaceful sleep into a nightmare. I often bore visible bruises, which I would hide from friends and teachers by claiming they were accidental injuries. This environment fueled my determination to excel academically as a means to escape Madurai. After my mother’s death in the accident, my father’s guilt drove him further into alcoholism.

As I began earning from my first job, I supported Dhivya’s education, enabling her to pursue a Master’s in Petroleum Management at Dehradun. Being financially independent allowed me to assist her with an educational loan and personally enroll her in her program. My father supported us to the extent he could, though his struggles with alcohol were ongoing. Despite his flaws, he was a man of paradoxes. He prioritized our education, supported other financially struggling children, and occasionally treated us to vacations in southern India like Bangalore, Mysore, Ooty. When he was sober, he would take us to nice fine-dining experiences in Madurai. Also, he bought many books for us from the book exhibitions. I read some of the books by Iraianbu, ex-IAS officer in India who writes motivational books for students. He made sure to visit book exhibitions whenever they were displayed in Madurai. He himself read the book Rapidex English Speaking Course, a book that helps to improve spoken English. I believe my intention to do charity sometimes would have come from him. No person is totally good or totally evil. We see shades of all in a person. For me, that person was my father who had his own good and bad qualities.

In 2015, feelings of emptiness and anxiety about my future led me to explore therapy, thanks to a recommendation from my former team director, Saritha. I began attending Transactional Analysis (TA) sessions with therapist Lakshmi in Bangalore. After four or five sessions, I was profoundly grateful for the experience. TA, developed by Eric Berne, analyzes social interactions to understand the communicator’s ego state and address emotional issues. The therapy provided insights into unresolved grief over my mother’s death, the shame linked to my father’s alcoholism, and my fear of marriage stemming from witnessing my parents’ troubled relationship.

Lakshmi guided me in addressing these issues. She advised me to accept my father’s alcoholism as a disease beyond my control and to separate my own feelings from his condition. I learned that unresolved emotions can cause imbalances in our mental and physical health. By writing about my grief and embracing my emotions, I began to feel more balanced and authentic in social settings. Therapy also encouraged me to consider building a family, despite my earlier fears and hesitations about relationships. At 27, I took control of my own future, exploring options through matrimonial portals while remaining committed to finding a suitable partner.

During my therapy, I met Nambi at the Landmark Forum. Known from the book club days, his honesty and simplicity appealed to me. We dated for six months, navigating our own challenges together.

By the fourth therapy session, I recognized my father’s condition as a chronic issue. We tried to bring him to live with me in Bangalore, but the attempt was unsuccessful. My sister and I came to accept him as he was. A relative enrolled him in a rehabilitation center in Madurai, where he began to receive the help he needed. Rehabilitation centers play a crucial role in assisting alcoholics and drug addicts to regain normalcy. From 2014 to 2024, he cycled through rehab centers, undergoing various treatments and counseling. In 2023, he managed to live independently in Madurai for a full year without alcohol. He recently celebrated his 60th birthday. But soon after that, he again relapsed into a fit of drinking.

Drinking not only spoiled my dad’s health, it also led him to lose control and get into fights with people on the street. It also created issues with his relatives. His social life in Madurai got impacted because of his alcoholism. Many of my relatives are not on speaking terms with him. The cycle of being sober, not drinking alcohol for some time, then relapsing and spoiling his physical and social health seems never-ending. It’s also a very prevalent issue in Tamil Nadu because of TASMAC shops, which are run by the government.

In such an environment, institutions and organizations that provide support for alcoholic people to recover are very few. One of them is AA – Alcoholics Anonymous – a chapter of which exists in Madurai. Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) provided significant support for him since circa 2022. It helped him refrain from drinking through community sharing sessions. AA is a fellowship that assists individuals in overcoming alcohol dependence through free meetings focused on sobriety. However, despite his progress, he relapsed and returned to rehab for another six months in 2024.

This journey deepened my interest in psychology. I began reading books like ‘I’m OK, You’re OK’, ‘The Body Keeps the Score’ and recently attended a TA01 session. TA explores the impact of childhood experiences on adult behavior. I learned that many psychological issues stem from unmet emotional needs in childhood. My father’s lack of parental care and unclear boundaries during his upbringing likely contributed to his alcoholism. Nonetheless, we hold on to hope, recognizing that it took a decade for him to accept his addiction as a disease and begin participating in AA sessions. We continue to support him and remain hopeful for his full recovery.

As a society, the Government and other non-government organizations and institutions have to think about creating and setting up as many rehabilitation centers at subsidized prices to take care of the hordes of people suffering from addiction. We have a lot of TASMAC shops selling alcohol, but I have seen only two or three rehabilitation centers in Madurai. Personally, in my family, we would have spent 15 lakhs in this period of 12 years. I can imagine the plight of people who don’t make enough money even for their survival but also have to take care of their alcoholism issue. The awareness of rehabilitation centers and ‘Alcoholics Anonymous’ community is diminishing. A healthy society can be created only if we take the necessary steps to correct societal issues and prevent them with therapy centers. As my dad has a small business and a home, his business assistants keep track of his health by visiting him once in a while. This might not be an option for many others who work in manual labor for whom every day not spent working is a day without any income. In such a scenario, the financial health of such families is also impacted. Hence, the government has to make more measures to support them in their journeys to get cured of this addiction.

Alcoholism is not just my personal trauma but a trauma that impacts millions of people in India and around the world. My hope and prayer is that individuals who suffer from alcoholic addiction find the necessary support and remedy that will enable them to come out of their addiction and lead healthy lives.

Nambirajan: Improvement, Flood and the tenant trauma

Trauma 1: The year long trauma – My year of improving! 

I had shared about how I bungled my 12th exams by scoring only 93 percent and missing the qualification for prestigious medical college. After this happened, my father started to slowly push me to the option of ‘improvement’—a fancy term for redoing your 12th grade and reappearing for both theory and entrance exams. Repeating a year of academics might seem simple, but it came with its own challenges and struggles, both physical and mental. Let me share more about that.

It was 2003, and the system then was a two-part ordeal: first, we took all our theory exams, then we gave our multiple-choice type questions in entrance exams. The two scores from theory and entrance were combined to get a cutoff out of 300. My goal was clear: I needed to score 296 or above out of 300. But here’s the thing—when you’re already in the 90th percentile, every single mark becomes a Herculean task. Moving from 60 to 80 is a breeze compared to clawing your way from 94 to 96, and inching up from 96 to 99 is like climbing Everest’s last leg.

There were a few ‘centers’ in Tamil Nadu where such improvement students flocked. One of the most popular was SRVnear Rasipuram in the Namakkal district of Tamil Nadu. In these improvement centers, private coaching and tests would happen through the next one year, and the students would again appear for exams. Exams were themselves pressure, and since we were doing it all over again, the pressure was even higher. A constant reminder at these ‘concentration camps’ for students was hauntingly simple: “Miss one five-mark question, and your chance is gone. An entire year wasted.”

Life at SRV was quite drab. It was a place with a handful of big-name teachers like Kanakavel and Ramaswamy. Kanakavel was the chemistry teacher, running classes from his home, which doubled as a hostel. Picture this: about 15 kids crammed on each floor, 30 to 40 kids in total, all packed into this house for a year. And that was just one of the many mini-hostels. Across the town of Rasipuram, there were easily 400 to 500 kids all doing the same thing—cramming, stressing, and trying to claw their way to that elusive cutoff and get that prestigious medical seat. Rasipuram was a small town that had gained notoriety as an ‘improvement center.’ I heard that recently, after the Tamil Nadu government changed the rules and did away with the improvement system, these places probably stopped being improvement concentration camps. But when I was there, it was a full-blown industry.

It was like a mini South Indian version of Kota, the Rajasthani city known for IIT aspirants preparing for exams for many years. Luckily, improvement was time-boxed—you have a year and that’s it. Through the year, it was either exams and classes. Exams are more than classes because you have already completed a year of studying in classes. So almost every other month, you would have exams which reached a crescendo just before the final board exams happened. I ‘improved’ along with Nirmal and PraveenDaniel who were from my same school. We were in the same hostel and gave exams together. I used to score a little better than him in most exams, but in the end, he scored higher in board exams and now works as a doctor in Tirunelveli. I am happy for him—at least one of us got to complete our goals after sacrificing a year. Praveen Daniel was like me, didn’t cross the qualifying bar and didn’t become a doctor.

Here’s what a typical day in SRV, Rasipuram looked like – a riveting saga of academic survival and caffeine-fueled desperation:

1. Wake up around 7 am, looking like a zombie that’s been hit by a textbook truck, and zombie-walk to the Ramaswamy center for tea/snacks. That’s where my friend Praveen studied – misery loves company, after all.

2. Return and study, attempting to cram formulas, facts, and concepts into my brain that was already screaming, “No more! I surrender!” Brain cells were dying faster than mosquitoes in a bug zapper.

3. At 9 am, shuffle off for breakfast, more out of a biological imperative than actual hunger. Like any self-respecting hostel, the food was firmly in the ‘could sustain life, but might make you question that life’ category. Chef Venkatesh Bhat would have had a breakdown.

4. Back to the books for a few more hours, lost in a monotony so thick you could cut it with a scalpel – how ironic for aspiring doctors.

5. Lunch at 1 pm – a brief intermission in the endless study marathon. Join a hundred other students in a feeding frenzy that looked more like a scene from a nature documentary than a civilized meal.

6. More studying – because apparently, sleep and sanity are overrated luxuries for medical aspirants.

7. Evening classes from 5 pm to 7 pm, where keeping my eyes open was an Olympic-level sport. Blinking was a luxury, staying awake was the gold medal.

8. Dinner, followed by – you guessed it – more studying. Because why have a social life when you can have equations and anatomical diagrams as your best friends?

9. Finally, collapse into bed around 11 or 12, hoping to recharge for another day of this academic boot camp. My pillow became my most intimate relationship.

10. Dream about getting enough marks to get into a medical college and become a doctor – finally. Because nothing says “sweet dreams” like the hope of one day escaping this study prison.

Motto of SRV: Eat. Study. Survive. Repeat.

And that was my life for an entire year. The endless cycle of cramming and studying, with no attention whatsoever given to any hobby or art or anything else—how could there be, with hundreds of kids all fighting for the same thing? Even health took a backseat to studies. I was left to my own devices, and in this dull, drab world, I began to lose weight. My dad visited once, and I remember the look on his face when he saw me—lean and tired. He cried, seeing how much weight I had lost. But by then, it was too late to turn back. It was around December, and in a few months’ time, the board exams and our final obstacle would have to be crossed. The choice my father had made for me was in reality, and I was too deep in to consider any other alternative.

I don’t remember much else from that year—probably a good thing. Occasionally, we would escape the cramped study rooms and find a spot outside a nearby marriage hall to study, just for a change of scenery. Some kids would go to a nearby temple and study there, probably seeking divine spiritual intervention along with their studying. As the final months approached, my health took a nosedive from all the stress. I developed an anal fissure just before the exams—a painful condition that made it nearly impossible to focus during the tests. I still remember sitting for one of my language exams, wincing in pain with every word I wrote. But somehow, I got through it and completed all the exams and entrance tests. The stress had taken a toll on my health. Somehow, I survived both the theory exams and the entrance exams.

A few months later, the results came in. Initially, I scored 294/300 from both the theory and entrance combined. Then, as luck would have it, someone sued in court over a disputed question, and the court revised the answer key. My entrance marks dropped. This happened not once, but twice more. Finally, my score settled at 293/300. I had to score at least 296 and I scored only 293. The three-mark gap meant I had not qualified for studying to be a doctor. And with that, my dream of studying at Tirunelveli Medical College came to an end.

With no other choice, I turned to engineering. Since I had studied science and given all exams, my Engineering cutoff improved. My elder brother, who had studied at PSG College in Coimbatore, suggested I aim for either GCT or CIT in Coimbatore. And I chose the former.

So there you have it—my year of ‘improvement,’ a year filled with stress, struggle, and ultimately, a disappointing result and finally a change in course. It’s funny to think that all of this was because of an obsession with becoming a doctor. But that’s how life is sometimes—you think you’re headed in one direction, and then life hands you a detour.

Trauma 2: The recurrent trauma of floods

One of the most memorable days in my childhood life was something which happened in 1992 when I was around six years old. I don’t know the exact dates when it happened, but that was the first time I experienced floods. Our home is situated around 2 kms from the banks of Thamirabarani river. Our home was situated in such a way that if you drew an imaginary line from our main door, it would reach the bank with no man-made structure in between. Though there is a stretch of ‘mullkaadu’ (a patch of land with thorny bushes and trees in between the river and our home), it was very much possible that the river waters, if it flooded, would reach our home.

On that fateful day in 1992, the clouds were dark, and we could see the river water slowly gaining ground and reaching towards our home. There were talks of Manimuthaaru dam being opened to make sure the water doesn’t damage the dams. My father was a bit complacent and was like ‘these waters will never reach our home’. Around 2 or 3 pm, the water was about 700/800m away from our home. My father was still in his ‘this will never reach our home’ complacency. By evening, the water was close to our compound walls, and only then did panic kick in. A little too late, a little too much. We scampered to put some things above the loft so they would be safe. The TV was moved to the loft, and so were some clothes. Some heavier things like the fridge and bed were just left as is. My parents asked me to go with a person who lifted me and my brother on his shoulders and took us to a home nearby which was on higher ground. I still remember being lifted by that person (blessed be his soul) and being carried on his shoulders while water kept lashing till about his knees. The water eventually went as high as the chest level of an average person inside our home. And it took time to recede as well.

The next two weeks were spent in our relative’s home. There was no school for those days, and my brother and I kept playing among ourselves. My parents probably stayed in another home. Two weeks passed like this, and finally, my parents came and took us back to our home. By now, the waters had totally receded, but there were a lot of things which got damaged. The walls still had a line marking the level to which the water had entered our home. Slowly but surely, we resumed our day-to-day life activities, and things came back to normalcy. Since I was a kid, I wasn’t fully aware of the impact of these floods.

Fast forward to December 2023. We as a family made a trip to India from Germany. The idea was to stay in my hometown Tirunelveli for about 10 days and then in Madurai, Bengaluru before moving back to Germany.

So we landed in Bengaluru. And since Lufthansa messed up our baggage delivery, we had to wait one more day and then get our bags. We got the bags and then took a bus ride and moved to Tirunelveli around December 14. We met some of our relatives and were relaxing in our home when the Saturday of December 18 came.

It was raining the whole day, and we thought at some point it would stop. So we stayed indoors the whole day. It was just another lazy Saturday when we watched some movies on TV (another mistake not catching up on local news) and were about to sleep. Around 10 pm at night, we saw people coming up near our home and looking in the direction of the river. We opened our doors and took a look. That’s when the coin dropped. The rains throughout the day had caused the river level to rise, and through one corner in our compound wall, the water was already coming into our compound. We realized there was going to be a flood very soon. Then panic started, and we began to save whatever we could by placing them in the loft. We kept the TV on top of the loft and moved a few more things. Sathya took Ranjana and moved to the first floor. My parents and I were on the ground floor, thinking that we could quickly move to the above shelves so they could be saved. We spent about 30 mins doing this, and then the current went off. It became pitch dark. By now, water had started to slowly enter inside our home as well. I asked my parents to move to the first floor. And then I locked the door and moved to the first floor. The whole street and neighborhood people were in panic, trying to make sense and save stuff as much as they could.

The roads submerged near our home during the floods. The black rectangle seen near the middle of the right edge is the top of a car

We kept watching as the water level rose in a slow manner. Around 11:30 pm, there were some police officers who were below, and they said they could rescue a few people. We now had to take a call; Sathya, Ranjana, and I could go with the police van to a safe place. After a quick discussion, we decided to take this route. We rushed to put our most important items, such as the laptop, purse, and passport, into a bag. Then, we decided to go with the police. We came down and couldn’t open the gate in our home because it was locked. So we had to jump the wall ourselves. We got out, I carried Ranjana on my shoulder and Sathya came behind me. Water had reached about my knee level. And as we moved to the main road, the police said the van was even further! Now we have lost trust in these people – how long do we need to walk? We felt betrayed. A distant relative in a corner home on our street called my name. They invited us to their first-floor flat. So we made a quick decision and all three of us went to their home on the first floor. It is where we spent the entire gloomy night. There were about 10 to 15 people in that home. Their home had become a temporary relief home where many people from the street were staying. Through the night, we heard news that the water level might increase the next day. Fear and panic was in all our minds.

The whole night was very gloomy. It was dark because there was no electricity. But the community of people who gathered there made it somewhat passable. There were some ladies there who kept on talking and made us part of their conversations. They also made some food in the morning. Ranjana, who became a bit afraid because of the floods, felt tired and slept by that time. We all took a bit of a shut-eye and woke up the next morning. The water level now wasn’t increasing. But it wasn’t decreasing either. Some volunteers who braved the floods waded through neck-deep water in the streets. They provided some food and water to the people confined to their homes. It is thanks to their generosity that helped us survive that horrible night.

By afternoon, the water began to recede in a slow manner. In the evening, some boats ferried people from the flooded streets to higher ground. We took one such boat, then walked to a wedding hall. They had repurposed it as a relief center. We slept on the floor and the hall was filled with people who had moved from their homes. The next morning, we went to a hotel. We stayed for a few hours before moving to our home. Now the water had receded completely, but it left a world of muck and disaster in its wake. Things like furniture had become wet and destroyed. Many things had lost their form. A muddy layer covered the whole floor and even the shelves. It would take almost a month to complete the cleaning of the home and restore normalcy. I helped my parents as much as I could before traveling back to Bengaluru and then taking the flight to Berlin.

The 2023 flood reminded me of one in my childhood. Then, I forgot about it. And to top that, there was a flood in Tirunelveli a hundred years ago in 1923, almost on the same date (December 16 – 20). After the 90s flood, I never expected another flood 21 years later when my daughter was 6. Again, we went to my grandmother’s home, where we took refuge 21 years ago! Somehow we scraped through it without any major loss of life. Of course, some things got damaged, but we managed to survive it.

Trauma 3 – the acute tenant trauma:

There was one more trauma in my childhood. This happened during my early childhood, around the time I was 4 or 5 years old.

We had rented a part of our home. It all started when some trouble brewed between their family and my parents. I remember waking up one day to high-pitched shouting. I went to the backyard and found my parents in a fight with the tenant’s family. Since I was a kid, I didn’t know the full details of it. Only that there was some conflict between both the families. The conflict came to its peak one day, portions of which I still remember.

On that particular day, my father was at work and my mother and we both kids were at home. The tenant was standing near the entrance of our home and my mother was a bit restless inside. I saw her getting anxious and she was afraid to go and talk to the tenant guy who was waiting outside (to talk about something?). My brother and I were little kids. We didn’t know what to do. Should we go talk to the guy or wait for things to calm down? Even if we would talk, what would we talk about? My mother didn’t let us go and at one point she got so anxious and out of her mind. A knife was involved and she got hurt. Blood started dripping from her forehand and she suffered at least three or four cuts. Watching her cry and getting hurt made me cry and I couldn’t stop feeling bad for my mother. Somehow that day passed. Later, my father arrived. We took care of her. Then, the whole tenant issue went to court where it was resolved.

It affected my family. During the court case, we had to keep shifting between rental homes. My studies suffered. I began to struggle in many subjects in school. For any kid, such turbulence in the family usually leads to poor academic results, and I was no exception. Somehow, the issue got resolved after a few years, and we came back to our home. But the damage was done. For many years after, my mother was skeptical in allowing anyone else to rent our homes. She harbored a deep animosity for anyone who would ask to be a tenant in one of our house portions.

The impact on me was significant. For any kid, a mother being harmed causes deep trauma. She is the center of your universe and when she gets affected, you are impacted too. The impact lingers in your subconscious for a long time. It can take many years for a kid to get over it. As an adult, I can articulate this. But, as a child, I lacked the words and the skill to cope with the situation and its effects. Nor was there any psychological or mental counseling in those days. The impact of this incident on my mother, brother and I is deep and gradually over a period of time, we got over it.

There was probably some PTSD – Post Traumatic Stress Disorder – that my mother and I suffered from. It showed in some ways in my childhood and later. But even this vocabulary is something I picked up in my late 20s. So I am not sure how exactly this PTSD affected my family. After this issue got resolved, I started to excel in my academic work. Maybe it was a case of high-functioning depression or coping up with studies after the trauma? I am not sure.

So these are some of the traumas – mostly from my childhood and teenage years. I was lucky enough to get through some natural calamities like flood and some man made calamities like improvement.