Humbling and Humility

Humbling and Humility is a narrative of an Indian American father, an immigrant to America, betrayed by his spouse and humiliated by the state, who overcomes great adversity to reaffirm his cultural values and discovers peace within.

This father, a technology entrepreneur, is forced to undergo a court-mandated intervention process for domestic violence, the first act of the narrative. The classes he attends are interesting and humor-filled, with participants from many cultures; the sessions provide common experiences and comprehension of a deeply biased system whose nature is not only obvious to all participants but also affirmed so by representatives of the state. He engages with this process diligently, questioning the actions by the state that forces such experiences upon its citizens. This helps confirm what he has known all along – knowledge that upends conventional thinking.

In the second part, he works to maintain the integrity of his family. He soon develops greater clarity about the individualistic nature of his spouse, the antagonist. Shunning contemporary social practices that partition a family, he accommodates his spouse's demands creatively and strives to maintain a reasonable family life for his children. Finding this task beyond his capabilities, he applies himself to helping other Indian-American families in similar domestic discord with limited success. His idealism turns into a pragmatic view of contemporary family life for all immigrants.

The last act finds the protagonist taking a philosophical approach, adapting to social practices alien to him and finding measures of peace in other aspects of life. He finds greater clarity in his own direction ahead and also in his view of the ills of social systems that entrap and torment immigrants in America.

The narrative is based upon true events. It is a sympathetic depiction of the price of infidelity and self-orientation, the benefits of restraint and social consciousness, and the gifts of uncommon empathy, compassion, and love.

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As nonfiction, the work does not promote characters or a plot. The protagonist and the antagonist are developed gradually, as are others undergoing similar challenges. A principal focus is upon learning through agonizing experiences, individual confrontations, the clash of cultures, and choices made to address intractable social problems. The plot, if any, is that of an irreconcilable domestic conflict and a father's attempts to navigate his children and himself through without harming the innocent.

The narrative takes a very critical look at law enforcement, prosecution, and correctional practices applied in America. The story begins with the father facing corrupt and unyielding processes of American policing, details the 'swing of the pendulum' mode of excessive force and incarceration by the state, and illustrates the ineffectiveness and social harm of such punitive methods. The epilogue refreshes readers' memory of the protagonist's experience, of the impact of a big man of the law in a southwestern state of America, introduced at the beginning.

As for the father's journey, he grows in the reader's mind as a lover and warrior at heart…loving others, his children, family, and all life. His learning may be summed up in a noteworthy comprehension of his life's purpose, best expressed in the words of Sitting Bull, an eminent Native American leader:

“The warrior is not someone who fights, because no one has the right to take another's life. The warrior, for us, is one who sacrifices himself for the good of others. His task is to take care of the elderly, the defenseless, those who cannot provide for themselves, and above all, the children, the future of Humanity.”

In a land where materialism rules, the protagonist found in himself traits of a warrior, of a suppressed culture native to this land, one that has through a quirk of history also been named ‘Indian.’