Recently, an unspeakable tragedy shook the Indian American community in the Boston area. A 17-year-old boy was accused of killing his 45-year-old mother and 14-year-old brother. I personally do not know the family, but my heart goes out to them.

I found myself unable to process the news. For a while, I went into denial. If I did not read more about it, perhaps it would somehow feel less real. But refusing to know does not make something disappear.

What troubled me even more was my own reaction. In my mind, such an incident somehow did not fit the image I carried of our community–faith-rooted, culturally rich, highly educated Indian Americans. And then I caught myself. Why should I think we are somehow exempt from the darker possibilities of human behaviour? The uncomfortable question, perhaps, is: what exactly do we mean by “normal”?

Abnormal, erratic, violent, or deeply disturbed behaviour can occur in any human being, irrespective of culture, education, religion, or social standing. No family, however loving or accomplished, is entirely immune to human vulnerability.

Perhaps perfection, too, is a perspective. If we were completely predictable and perfectly behaved, would we still be human?

The Stories We Inherit

A recent conversation with an uncle who is in his early nineties and happens to be a psychologist, with an extraordinarily sharp memory, took my thoughts in another direction. Over the years, he has shared stories from Odisha’s lesser-known past, stories that rarely found their way into textbooks or formal historical records.

One observation stayed with me: why do we so often celebrate the glorious past of our communities and civilizations, yet struggle to explain why the present does not always reflect that glory? What have we failed to carry forward?

He reminded me of India’s strong oral traditions – shruti and smriti, knowledge remembered and transmitted across generations. In royal courts, poets and scholars often celebrated kings and their achievements because that was their livelihood. Would they have openly spoken about the king’s flaws? Probably not.

The stories that survived, therefore, were not necessarily an objective record of everything that happened. Perhaps over generations, glory became easier to preserve than uncomfortable truths that were not often narrated. We remember what we hear.

Perhaps the history we inherit shapes the expectations we carry. If we are repeatedly told that our ancestors were extraordinary, that our civilization was advanced, and that our families are strong and resilient, perhaps we unconsciously begin to believe that we, too, must live up to an exceptional standard.

What we repeatedly hear about our past can become a benchmark for what we expect from ourselves in the present and what we imagine for our future. Failure becomes harder to admit. Struggle becomes something to hide. Anything that does not fit the picture becomes difficult to accept.

Were We Trained to Expect Happy Endings?

During my research for Ashtanayika, one idea particularly intrigued me. Indian aesthetic and literary traditions have historically placed considerable emphasis on resolution, harmony, and restoration of order. Sanskrit drama, unlike the tradition of Western tragedy, generally did not centre on an ending of irreversible catastrophe in the same way.

I began wondering whether this long-standing cultural preference for resolution has also influenced our collective psychology.

We grow up hearing stories where good ultimately triumphs, relationships are restored, karma is fulfilled, and order returns. What happens when real life refuses to cooperate?

What happens when the child we raised does something we cannot comprehend? When a marriage fails, a career collapses, a family breaks apart, or someone we love behaves in a way completely outside our understanding?

Perhaps we are not always prepared for endings that do not make sense. Perhaps denial is sometimes our mind’s first attempt to protect the story we have always believed.

The Expectations We Place on Ourselves

This makes me think about the expectations within many Indian families. Why do we set the bar so high?

Academic excellence. Professional success. Good behaviour. Respectability. Family reputation. Financial stability. Social standing. And, above all, the expectation that our children should become better versions of ourselves.

A dear friend and fellow thinker, Prashanth Palakurthi, recently articulated the overwhelming sadness many of us were feeling. His question stayed with me: 

“Log kya kahenge?” — What will people say? 

Why are we so concerned about how society sees us? Why do we hide difficulties? Why do families sometimes protect their image rather than openly acknowledge that something is wrong?

Before asking what people will say, perhaps we should ask ourselves why their judgment matters so much to us.

At this stage of my life, I have witnessed enough to know that education, professional success and social standing do not necessarily protect us from human struggles. I have seen highly educated people, even after successful careers, struggle with alcoholism; marriages end in divorce; people weighed down by pride and expectations; and bright, healthy, intelligent children battle depression. None of this is a judgment on those fighting their inner demons. It is simply a reminder that success does not make us immune to being human. These realities often remain hidden behind the image of the successful, well-adjusted family we like to project.

I have also wondered whether there is something else at play. While helping my mentor proofread his translation of The Empty Canvas by Alberto Moravia, I encountered the idea that boredom and a sense of emptiness can persist even after achieving success. Much later, I listened to a TED Talk by Dr. Riley on the four stages of retirement, which made me think about what happens to us when a long-held goal suddenly disappears.

Perhaps, as human beings, we are constantly setting one goal after another. We achieve something, briefly experience fulfilment, and then reset the goalposts. We move to the next ambition, the next milestone, the next destination. Perhaps it is not achievement alone that gives us a sense of fulfilment, but having a purpose that gives meaning to the journey. Without a sense of purpose, could we begin to feel lost even after achieving everything we once wanted?

Raising Children Without a Map

We often tell our children what they should become without necessarily teaching them how to navigate uncertainty, disappointment, failure, loneliness, anger, confusion and moral ambiguity. We teach them how to succeed. Do we teach them equally well how to struggle?

And perhaps this raises another question: why are we hearing so much more about mental-health struggles today? Are the problems increasing, or are we simply becoming more willing to acknowledge them? Perhaps modern life is also creating pressures for which our emotional vocabulary has not kept pace..

Parents do not have a manual for raising children, particularly in a world so different from the one we grew up in. We naturally draw from our own childhood memory bank when we face a challenge. But what happens when there is no precedent to draw from? We are raising children for a world for which our own childhood gave us no reference point.

Are We Carrying More Than We Understand?

Many Indian traditions speak of rebirth, karma and the continuity of the soul—the possibility that something from previous lives travels with us into the present. I do not know whether that is literally true, but as a thought experiment, it fascinates me: could traces of past lives influence who we become?

Interestingly, spirituality is not the only lens through which people have tried to understand the hidden influences shaping human behaviour. Carl Jung’s idea of the “collective unconscious” suggests that beneath our individual experiences lies a deeper layer of the psyche containing inherited patterns and archetypes. It is not the same as the spiritual idea of memories from past lives, but both raise an intriguing question: how much of who we are is shaped by forces beyond our conscious understanding?

Human behaviour emerges from an extraordinarily complex interplay of genetics, environment, upbringing, experiences, culture, memories and perhaps influences we do not yet understand. How confidently, then, can we predict what any individual will become?

Perhaps there are simply too many variables for human behaviour to fit neatly into the categories we create. We can observe some influences, study others and sometimes even diagnose them, but there may always be dimensions of another person’s inner world that remain invisible to us.

And perhaps that is why humility is so important when we try to understand another person’s behaviour.

We Are All Somewhat Uprooted

Another conversation took me to an even broader question.

I once heard a speaker compare human beings with other living organisms in nature. Plants grow where they are rooted; their environment, seasons and natural rhythms shape them. Modern humans, however, have become remarkably mobile. We leave our villages, languages and communities, sometimes even our countries, in search of education, opportunity and a better life.

My psychologist uncle once shared an observation about tribal children studying at an urban institution in Bhubaneswar. Some had been brought to a hostel during their formative years. There is no question that education and opportunity can transform lives. Yet his observation made me wonder about the psychological consequences of growing up away from the language, family structures, surroundings and rhythms that shaped previous generations.

And then I wondered: is this not, in some way, the story of immigrants everywhere?

We leave one world and enter another, learning new languages, social codes and ways of living. Yet somewhere within us remains the world that formed us; the language of childhood, food, rituals, relationships and familiar rhythms. We become accustomed to living between worlds, negotiating between belonging and becoming.

Perhaps modernization itself has uprooted us in ways we do not always recognise. We have gained mobility, convenience and opportunity, but in the process, have we lost some of the grounding that once helped us thrive?

For many immigrants, survival is not only physical or financial. It can also be psychological: the constant effort to belong, succeed, adapt and remain connected to where we came from.

And Then Came Artificial Intelligence

To begin with, the internet era brought us an unprecedented abundance of information. We moved from a world where information was scarce to one where we were constantly learning to navigate information overload. And just as we were beginning to adapt, AI arrived bringing another, far more profound shift.

A few weeks earlier, I had read another article by Prashanth, in which he argued that science has evolved at an exponential rate, while human beings have not evolved at the same pace to keep up with it. That thought has stayed with me.

He recently raised another question that I cannot shake: At what point should AI be trained to recognise that a command itself may be dangerous?

We created artificial intelligence using human intelligence. And now the intelligence we created is beginning to operate at a scale and speed that can overwhelm the humans who created it.

The question is no longer simply What can AI do? Perhaps the more important questions are: What should AI be allowed to do? And who decides?

Who teaches a machine the difference between what can be done and what should be done?

And perhaps the deeper question is one we must ask of ourselves first:

Are we, as humans, evolved enough to keep up with what we have created?

What Are We Putting Into Young Minds?

This is where I become particularly concerned about children.

I think about the games, images, videos and narratives that enter a child’s world almost effortlessly today. I am not suggesting that every child who plays a violent video game will become violent. That would be far too simplistic. But I do wonder what repeated exposure to simulated violence does to a developing mind, particularly when entertainment increasingly blurs the boundary between fantasy, simulation and interaction.

A child can move from homework to a violent game, to a murder mystery, to an AI-generated fantasy, all within minutes. What happens when the extraordinary becomes ordinary? What happens when simulated violence becomes entertainment?

Perhaps the scientific answer is far more complicated than I understand. But as a parent and an observer of children, I believe the question deserves serious research rather than dismissal.

We should not wait for technology to tell us what our children are becoming. We should be asking first.

Have We Forgotten Some of Our Own Wisdom?

Our ancestors had their own ways of shaping the mind and body. Music was not merely entertainment; it involved discipline, listening and repetition. Dance demanded coordination, rhythm and control. Yoga connected movement with breath. Pranayama trained attention and breathing. Stories often carried moral consequences.

There was a science behind many of these practices, even if we did not always use the language of science to explain them. Mythological stories gave children narratives through which they could understand courage, greed, loyalty, betrayal, compassion and responsibility. Perhaps much of this was experiential education long before we had the vocabulary of neuroscience.

The Nāṭyaśāstra itself can be viewed as an ancient exploration of human psychology. Through the principal elements of dramaturgy, it examines and mirrors human emotions to a great deal.

Even something as simple as the old practice of pulling the earlobes while doing squats, once viewed simply as a punishment for a child’s mischief, has now resurfaced under the name “Super Brain Yoga,” with claims that the practice can help relieve stress and improve focus. 

Perhaps, as the narratives behind such practices were lost over generations, we reduced them to mere punishment and abandoned their practice.

I am not suggesting that every old practice was scientifically validated, nor should tradition be placed beyond questioning. But I strongly feel there was wisdom behind many of these practices, even if we did not always have the language of science to explain them.

Instead of dismissing ancient practices simply because they are ancient, perhaps we should ask whether there is wisdom within them that can be examined through modern science.

Sometimes wisdom is lost not because it was wrong, but because we stopped asking why.

What Are We Losing in Translation?

Perhaps this is the question that connects everything for me.

Our ancestors passed down stories, rituals, music, practices and values. Our generation inherited them, but also modernised, questioned, migrated, adapted and sometimes simplified them. Our children are now growing up in a world where technology is adding an entirely new layer to human experience.

At every transition, something gets lost.

A practice becomes a punishment. A story becomes a ritual. A value becomes a stereotype. A cultural expectation becomes pressure. A tradition becomes something we follow without understanding.

And perhaps, somewhere in that process, wisdom gets lost in translation.

The answer is not to romanticise everything from the past, nor is it to reject everything modern. Perhaps the answer is to pause long enough to ask: 

What should we carry forward?

Raising Children in an Unfamiliar World

Parents are raising children in a world that did not exist when they were children themselves. Our parents had no exposure to the overwhelming flow of information through social media. They did not have to explain artificial intelligence, monitor online communities, gaming environments, deepfakes, virtual relationships or an endless stream of information entering a child’s bedroom.

Yet we expect ourselves to know exactly how to parent in this world..We don’t.

We are learning as we go.

Modern life keeps adding layers of complexity while our emotional and cultural conditioning often remains rooted in an older world, particularly for immigrants trying to raise children between cultures.

We are parents trying to balance achievement with mental well-being. We are human beings trying to understand technology that is advancing faster than our ability to comprehend its consequences.

And somewhere in the middle of all this, we are still asking... Log kya kahenge?

Perhaps it is time to ask a different question:

“What will this do to the human being?”

Perhaps the Real Evolution Is Still Ahead of Us

Coming back to the tragedy that triggered these thoughts, I still do not have an answer. The posts and comments by friends, my own arguments with my children, my exposure to various texts and my conversations with people I respect are all fighting inside me to find an answer to one disturbing question:

According to reports, the teenager had searched ChatGPT for ideas related to theatrical killings of family members. What made him turn to such a search in the first place? 

And perhaps the more uncomfortable question for us, as parents or as a community, is:

What should have happened before he ever reached that point?

Perhaps there is no single answer. Perhaps there never will be.

But I do know that denial cannot be our response. We cannot protect our children by pretending that darkness does not exist. We cannot protect families by protecting their image.

We cannot prepare children for a world of uncertainty merely by teaching them how to succeed. We have to teach them how to navigate what happens when life does not follow the script.

We cannot assume that because we created technology, we automatically know how to control it. 

Maybe the next stage of human evolution is not to become smarter, but to become more self-aware – to recognise our vulnerabilities, to accept that profound struggles can exist in any family, and to create space for conversations about mental health without shame.

And perhaps, most importantly, to accept that human beings were never meant to be perfect.

We were meant to evolve.

The question is whether we are evolving fast enough to keep up with what we have created.

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PS: Sorry for leaving you with a trail of unanswered questions and this spiral of thoughts. As a mother, wife, friend, and well-wisher to many who are quietly fighting their own inner battles, I find these questions deeply unsettling. Perhaps all I can do is keep asking them.