I fell into the habit of keeping secrets even before I knew what a secret was. I think I must have been around 5 or 6 years of age when I was touched inappropriately by a man much older to me. At that time I didn’t know what to make of it. Perhaps it might have appeared as one of those mysteries of the world which was slowly opening up before me. I understood it was something wrong, something very terrible that had happened to me when I was sort of reprimanded or possibly given some stern instructions after my parents found out about it. I don’t remember anything of what was said to me. The man was a tenant in the same house we lived in. He was thrown out of the house following the incident. I vaguely remember being afraid, being very afraid at the time. Though for all my ability I hadn’t really grasped the meaning or import of all that had come to pass. 

That sense of being afraid had stayed on. From then on probably, as far back as my memory goes, I learnt to keep secrets. Not telling things that I thought might upset the elders. Slowly it became a habit – keeping things hidden or not speaking about them if it meant they would hurt others or would result in an uncomfortable situation for me. 

Do we all learn to keep secrets this way? As a result of some incident or unlikeable situations, or is keeping secrets inherent to human nature? Do we do it out of habit or because of a dire need to avoid unpleasantness in relationships? Are we sometimes enamoured by the sweet pangs that secrecy births or troubled by the guilt that keeping some may bring along? Does keeping a secret follow a set of principles or is it more of an intuitive attempt? Can we classify secrets based upon the intent of the keeper or on the intensity of the supposed reaction they may induce? 

I don’t really know the answer to any of these. It became a habit so early in my age, I didn’t think much of it until I came to the theme of your present call. So deep-seated has this notion been, that I have barely ever tried pulling out my secrets in the open completely (which might be something everybody does, I think), dusting them and putting them up for my own scrutiny. That is until now.

I sit down today to look at them, to call them to these pages and perhaps commit them to write forever. Would that be just an act of acknowledgement or also repentance? Only these pages would tell. 

To begin, I remember there were things I would keep a secret from my mother during childhood, innocent things like punishment in school for not doing maths homework in class 5 because I found the exercises tough (It is another thing that the secret made its way to her via teacher’s note and resulted in a double punishment!) or about fights with close friends or little detours on way back home from shops nearby. Also, casual flings and flirting during their teenage, which by the way were serious concerns at that age and the possible escape into daydreaming only felt more savoury because of the secrecy around them. 

Then there were other things, which could have resulted in grave situations if escalated beyond control, like not telling my mother about the indecent sexual advances made by a cousin during childhood. Initially, it was a plaything, like a game, which he tried to pass on as fun. But as I grew older, I started feeling uncomfortable around him, so much so that I would be terrified by the mere sight of him. Luckily, one day I found enough courage to threaten him with consequences should he ever try troubling me again. Perhaps that worked. Or the fact that we no longer lived in the same city again and our encounters, barely a couple since then, were more formal. As there has never been a sense of closure around this experience, for I couldn’t reveal it before my parents although they knew about his ways for sure, those encounters formed the basis of my uneasiness while meeting relatives, especially male members of extended family. 

Growing up came with its own set of secrets. The ones I needed to hide from my parents so they wouldn’t be hurt by either my waywardness or my troubles and from my partner because I didn’t know how they would react to a certain truth. 

The one secret, that I have kept from my family and that has hung heavy on my mind for more than a decade now, is my transition from a theist and religious believer to becoming an agnostic. The reasons were many, primarily being the question of existence which had started troubling me in my early thirties. Quoting Camus, as I came face to face with the absurd one fine day, no amount of reading of religious books or my faith could help in understanding the relevance of life on this tiny planet in a dark, bigger than our imagination universe. I couldn’t wrap my head around all the ugliness this world seems to grapple with – the evil things a man can do to another – the wars, genocides, murders, deceit and hatred – how can an omniscient God ever let that happen? 

In the absence of the comfort of the imaginary hand I used to reach out to, I turned to books and they became my saviour. I could, however, never gather enough courage to accept this truth in front of my family, not even before my spouse. I have been afraid of hurting their sentiments, yes, but far more than that I find it to be more cumbersome an exercise to explain to them why and how I came to this point. Further, I am not sure if they will understand my views. It might not be right on my part but this is how I have always felt. 

I leave it to you to judge me for my integrity, reader, and wouldn’t mind at all if you are critical of my position. I, however, believe that it is better to leave some things unsaid. It may well be wrong but surely many of us do this at one point in life or another, not as driven by the idea of keeping a secret intentionally, but more by the agony it may cause others. 

Initially, I would struggle to keep up with rituals at home, especially with the poojas on festive occasions. Then slowly I started treating them as a routine activity which could be undertaken like any other. I respect people’s adherence to a God and their faith, provided it doesn’t become a reason to hate another. Perhaps it is the fragile and ephemeral nature of life and fear of uncontrollable things that originally pushed humans to put their faith in some entity supposedly stronger than them. Who are we to say, even after inhabiting this planet for thousands of years and having advanced in science and learning now, that things could be any different for the human mind? For all our learning, there is still so much to discover about life, about this existence. It is understandable if people have faith in an imagined protector who they believe will always look after them no matter what.    

Now, this brings me to open another closeted thing I haven’t addressed yet, something I have kept a secret from myself too. 

Dostoyevsky once said:

“There are certain things in a man’s past which he does not divulge to everybody but, perhaps, only to his friends. Again there are certain things he will not divulge even to his friends; he will divulge them perhaps only to himself, and that, too, as a secret. But, finally, there are things which he is afraid to divulge even to himself, and every decent man has quite an accumulation of such things in his mind.” 

And I do relate. I imagine every person has a stock of such things she might be afraid to reveal even to herself as I have this one thing that I have never explicitly accepted before myself. 

It is the sense of loss I have felt in all these years after turning an agnostic. 

Previously, if something wrong happened I would turn to God to blame him or in the case of good things, to thank him. I would occasionally turn to him for solace, for I had this feeling of never being alone because I believed there was always someone who would take care. 

I miss that feeling now. That sense of being able to place complete trust in something/someone. Not that it has ever pushed me back into believing again. The loss, however, has been irreparable. Now that I find myself figuratively on my own in this whole wide world, I sometimes feel burdened. My thoughts, at times contradictory and at others just pushing too hard to reconcile, never stop befuddling the self.  Maybe it is because I never really learned to put my complete faith in another human. 

This, I think, begs the question – does anyone do that completely? Who can say for sure. If that were the case, perhaps we wouldn’t need to keep secrets from each other. But we do. All of us. Maybe putting complete faith in another person makes one more vulnerable, more available to others to inflict hurt, abuse or take advantage of. Perhaps this feeling of being vulnerable, assumedly being weak, is something that most of us do not wish to experience, resorting thence to secrets to build fortified walls around our hearts, walls strong enough to protect and perhaps much more strong so as to obstruct the complete embrace of life. 

And as if this need to embrace secrecy in personal life hasn’t been enough, I also find I resort to doing the same in public life as well. Though it is done more for the reason of keeping the family and a normal life safer, I do condemn myself for not openly voicing my political opinions. Being a government employee, my job restricts me from doing that or I might stand the danger of suspension or worse termination. The sheer hypocrisy of the situation continues to add to the gloominess which now pervades, there is no silver of hope which may bring some sense of respite. Although the fencing of secrecy continues growing taller, it doesn’t offer an escape from this feeling of identifying with the collective trauma permeating the society at large. Keeping this despair a secret feels like an enormous task the mind is not equipped to handle. 

How to come out of this? How to voice the concerns without the risk the present circumstances pose? Where is that compassion that makes it possible to pour one’s heart out without the fear of getting harassed or arrested? I wish I had some answers. Change, the only inevitable, might one day bring a breather. Till then one can only wait. 

Whilst we may continue to keep erecting bulwarks around our persons, to possibly hold ourselves tighter in the solitary journey through this life, I do hope that we persist together and succeed in creating a more harmonious world where we learn to sit and listen to each other without judgement, without any fear.