Witnessing An Angry Mind
A sound of metal cupboard creaking open can be a foretelling sound of a cold quarrel soon to ensue. How do I know? It happened, that’s how I know. Imagine a timeline —
Your mother is opening that metal cupboard and on top of that creaking voice asking you to do something. You can’t hear what she said over the creaking sound that unveils in periodic cracking and cackling, kinda like you hear in horror movies. Also the doors to both of your rooms are closed so that does not help either. You get up to ask her what she said, but because you’d missed hearing her out on a number of similar occasions before, she’s tempted to go sardonic —
“Did you not listen? Is there something wrong with your ears son?”
That’s exactly what happened, and after it did, I could see mercury rising in my breath. At that point, when I was at the brink of exploding on her for the fatuous conclusion she had drawn from the event, I should have remembered the struggles she raised me against. I had ought to right? I should have weighed down what I was about to do with the possibility that she might have had a rough day. I was fighting a war between logic and anger, which had already started destroying anything I could have been capable of thinking, for the next few moments. I could see myself suppressing my irregular anger ridden breaths — trying to kill long and taut sighs to forcefully calm my breath with deep haul ins and exhales.
I wasn’t being able to keep my temper and still cautious to not shout, I chose a middle path. I closed my eyes, still heaving long deep breaths, went to my mother and said —
“Mom, I’m getting really angry”.
It was on the lines of how an adolescent would go embarrassed to their parents confessing that they had wet the bed after a horrific dream.
I came back to my room, shut the door, and started crying, still drawing in long deep breaths, because I knew if I didn’t, I’d get raving mad, anger still sitting on the tip of my nose. I could feel the tightening of the muscles of the side of my nose, so as to help nostrils widen up to let more air in, in this dire state of emergency.
I kept pouring. I do not know exactly why — was it because I was self pitying myself for what I considered wrong that had happened with me, was it because of this weird breath exercise I was trying out to control anger with, which had ultimately started draining out in my tears? After all of this was over, I came to a conclusion that it should have been the latter, for if it had been the former, I’d have ended up bursting and shouting to redeem it, so to speak, anyway.
By this time I had closed the door to give me some time and space, for I feared that if I opened the door, no matter what mom would have said, anything at all, I’d have found a reason to pick a fight with her. I kept crying and crying, even when I knew I was past my anger. This was the phase I started doubting myself, about the things about my existence that made it difficult for my parents to endure. After a while it all stopped. I opened the door and ate dinner without speaking a word with her. After reading for a while, I slept, only to wake up in the morning to find mother talking casually like always — it was over.
While trying to think back about what had happened last night, I flash-backed to a time I had in fact ended up shouting at my mother —
I was driving mother to her school. She’d constantly keep telling me to blow horn even when it wasn’t needed, and shriek whenever some biker would try to overtake from the wrong side. Her out of nowhere shout outs would startle me to death. I shouted at her so loudly, I had to stop the car, get out take a minute walk away from her, to settle my mind lest I over sped the car.
What did I do differently from then was that I took control of my breath. You’d ask me how it was even possible in that fit of anger to even shift my attention to something as mundane and ongoing as breathing. I’d tell you that I received a gift from an practice I learnt when I was in first year of my undergraduate studies. It’s called Sudarshan Kriya, provided by the Art of Living Foundation. To know more about Sudarshan Kriya see this video
