Arushi, a 14-year-old schoolgirl and the family’s domestic help were found murdered in her house in NOIDA, a satellite town of the capital New Delhi, on May 16, 2008. Her father Dr. Rajesh Talwar was arrested for the murders. After a month in detention, he was released and the compounder of Dr. Talwar, Krishna and two domestic helps Rajkumar and Vijay Mandal were arrested and subjected to narcoanalysis, where they purportedly confessed to the murders. However, as the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the premier investigating agency of India, did not provide any corroborative evidence the Courts released the three accused.
The case continues to engender tremendous anxiety and distress among children exposed to intense media coverage on television. The murders remain an unsolved mystery. In January 2010, CBI requested and got permission from the Court to subject the parents of Arushi, Rajesh Talwar and Nupur Talwar to narcoanalysis. In February 2010, the Talwars were subjected to narcoanalysis, a procedure which generally takes a couple of hours, for five days.
The process of narcoanalysis involves the administration of drugs to a person with the object of “free-association” on the part of the subject. “Free-association”, which is at the heart of psychoanalysis, makes little distinction between reality and fantasy and may have little relevance for a criminal investigation. However, a psycho-analytic approach with its emphasis on ambivalence may be a useful direction to explore the nature of the child-parent relationship.
The January 2010 application of the CBI that fresh clues required the narcoanalysis of Arushi’s parents has once again compelled focus on the parent-child relationship which had been under intense scrutiny at the time of the arrest of Dr Rajesh Talwar for the murder of his daughter. Children are wondering whether Arushi’s father loved her, suppressing as well as partially expressing anxieties about their love for their own respective fathers. A polarisation seems to have taken place. According to Arushi’s mother Nupur, Rajesh is a caring father and it is inconceivable that he could perpetrate such a heinous crime. The police, however, project Talwar as a father who killed his daughter with viciousness and rage. There is little room for ambivalence.
‘Doting father’ versus ‘hating father’ and ‘bad mother’ versus ‘good mother’ is the universe we are asked to inhabit. A universe where children love their parents and parents love their children — with no negative emotions clouding these feelings. However, fantasies of a simple world of clearly defined binaries of good and bad soon hit the rock of reality.
A mother loves her child; yet at times she experiences feelings of rage at the perceived obliteration of the self while catering to the needs of the demanding child. The child loves the breast from which it derives nutrition, but at times bites it in anger and frustration. The negative feelings towards a ‘loved’ child are too unsettling to be tolerated and immediately get pushed into the unconscious. However, it is akin to pushing the dust under the carpet and believing that it has vanished.
We have all witnessed mothers clothing infants with balaclavas and sweaters even in the middle of summer and some of us have wondered about it. In the case of the ‘over-clothing’ mother, it could perhaps be a compensatory response to unconscious guilt created by the suppressed negative emotions towards the child. Indeed, the mother’s apparently caring act, which brooks no possibility of negative feelings, may well lead to the child’s dehydration.
Unfortunately, society offers little space to mothers/parents for harbouring any negative feelings towards the child. But a negative feeling which is allowed to come into the consciousness offers one the possibility of working through it and is a healthier option than suppression, which finds a substitute release through some other avenue. Parents should recognise and communicate to the child that ‘it is okay’ to experience anger at times for either of the parties. This would equip the child with a more resilient emotional health for facing the vicissitudes of life.
Ambivalent feelings in intimate relations are universal in nature. Explaining them away as symptomatic of a degenerating urban value system or attributing them to ‘Western’ influence does not carry us far in terms of insight and understanding. Both in rural and urban settings, in the East and in the West, the reality of ambivalence is one of the most difficult things to accept with respect to people we ‘love’. The intense desire for absolute, unadulterated ‘love’ untainted by hate will act as a block to the consciousness of negative feelings for loved ones.
We expect a person to be totally good or totally bad. Teachers feel Arushi “was brilliant in every subject”. Friends recall her as the most popular and sociable person. Most probably, Arushi was not an epitome of perfection. Like other girls of her age, she must have had likable and unlikable facets.
There is no doubt that the Arushi incident has affected the psyche of children in a major way. Questions as to whether their father loves them or will kill them are bound to arise in their minds. Some children may articulate these anxieties. Others may not, perhaps sensing that the parents may judge them as ‘bad’ children for even having such thoughts. The policy adopted by some parents — of not talking about traumatic incidents —will not help in resolving these anxieties. Children can sense feelings of resentment and as well as those of evasiveness on the part of parents. Hiding or camouflaging such emotions may add to their fears and anxieties. There are no easy prescriptions. An attitude which is non-judgmental, an openness to engage with the child, and a genuine effort to address the complex issues involved seems to be the only route towards mitigation of the distress caused by such traumatic events.
