Tania Saleem Palijo

When we open our eyes as babies we see a sparkling, spotless, scratchless, shinning magic mirror i.e our mother. What we see in that mirror gives us the assurance that we are loved and needed. It also reflects our inner and outer beauty thus gives us self confidence and a sense of worth. Feeling of being loved is a wonderful beautiful feeling that we get for the first time from that early childhood experience of mirroring.

When any infant looks at her mother’s face he can read the expression of love that says:

“You are wonderful”.
“You are beautiful”.
 "You are Lovely".
“You are joyful”.
 “I love you”. And the list is long ......

Child in his/her pre-verbal stage gets the message that he is lovable and likable” and that becomes his yardstick to measure himself. The parent or the significant other, most probably his mother thus becomes a spotless, beautiful mirror that reflects the child’s beauty through her smile and other gestures.

This concept of mirroring was propounded and elaborated by an Austrian-born American psychoanalyst and the creator of self psychology Heinz Kohut. According to his theory of Self Psychology our mothers or significant others are our mirroring self — objects.

Luckily most of us have such beautiful magic mirrors in our lives that help us build our “self” and self esteem. As children our need for validation and acknowledgment from parental figures or significant others continues in our adulthood. We replace our early magic mirrors with other mirrors. But we learn later on that no mirror can be as spotless and shining as a mother or a loving father.

My mother too was my magic mirror; she reflected my inner and outer beauty that every child has, through her infectious smile and through her beautiful baby talk. Not only as a child but as an adult also I craved for that mirroring, so whenever I found myself low, depressed, in self doubt I instantly shared it with her. Mother Why I am so slow in everything (I do)? Mother I don’t think I will be able to do it. I can’t do it (although I want to).

She will get angry at first “why do you always underestimate yourself? “. But then she will unconsciously feel that I am sharing it with her because I need to hear some soothing words from her , something good something encouraging, to make me feel better, to become lively and hopeful again and to regain my confidence. Then she would reflect what her inner soul had captured, something that was hidden not only from the world, other people but from me as well.

We cannot be psychologically content and happy without at least one such magic mirror in our lives. We have heard people complaining about their spouses “He/She does not understand me”. How and why do they get this impression? Most probably because what is reflected back to them does not satisfy them, that seem to be coming from a broken mirror and not a magic mirror. We do get such impression from other people in our lives too but we don’t compare our spouses with the world we compare them with our original magic mirrors i.e. our mother and father .

We never out grow our need for a magic mirror. As adults men and women want their spouses to be their magic mirrors. Young couples who fall in love and get married often find that their magic mirrors work perfectly well till the initial few years of marriage. After some happy well remembered and celebrated wedding anniversaries that spotless, scratches beautiful shining mirror converts into a broken mirror. It starts to reflect our distorted image, an image that is mostly the result of our projections or projective identification.

In our eastern society woman as a young child and a girl becomes so much habitual of the validation, recognition and approval of a male figure mostly her father that she cannot live without it. So if she has to leave that magnificent mirror back at her home to move into a new home and new life she readily gives that place to her husband.

After parting with one of the most beautiful mirror in her life she adorns her life’s wall with a new mirror. But that mirror does not remain spotless and scratch less for long. In most of the cases she knows she is on her own now. As in our eastern traditional societies man lived and still lives with his family most part of his life so he seldom loses such mirrors. And in some of the cases gets an over magnified and idealized image of himself in comparison to his wife.

Coming back to my own mirrors, I have had one more magic mirror in my life. She was a born therapist, after doing her post grad in psychiatry she eventually became a trained psychiatrist and therapist too.

In her book “Becoming naturally Therapeutic” Jacquelyn Small mentions some significant characteristics of a naturally therapeutic person. In the preface of the book she describes these qualities as a “…human qualities inherent within the personality that manifest practically and simply the law of love”. Some of the qualities she has elaborated in her book are: Empathy, genuineness, respect warmth. My sister have had these qualities in abundance.

Those who work as a magic mirror for someone have all these qualities for that person. For instance they are good, empathic, active listeners. They are genuine at least in their interactions with you “Their outer words and behaviors match their inner feelings”. They give respect to you. They have warmth expressed mainly through their non verbal communication. They can shower you with intimacy, the sharing of feeling in here and now. They even have concreteness which sounds very technical as it involves getting to the whats , when , where and hows of relevant concerns but it makes us feel listened empathically and with a genuine interest . We feel that what we are sharing with our magic mirrors is important for them because we are important for them.

My mother and my sister who were my magic mirrors both have had these qualities. The only significant difference in them was that my mother was mostly a magic mirror for the people she loved and as a mother just for us but my sister Dr Anita Aijaz have had a magic mirror personality.

Carl Rogers gave us the concept of unconditional positive regard and described it as a necessary condition for a good and effective therapy. Our magic mirrors are so much therapeutic because they also have this characteristic within them. These magic mirror people interact with us with unconditional positive regard.

I have had considerable share of broken mirrors too. One such unlikely broken mirror was one of my uncles. I had started to draw and paint and write at a very early age. I used to draw and paint at least one sketch a day. My mother and maternal grandmother who were both writers themselves and appreciated art and literature always encouraged me. But whenever my uncle came to visit us and found me drawing something he said something discouraging about it. In his eyes it was worthless and I was wasting my time.

He was so much critical about my activity of drawing and painting that I started to doubt myself too and after some years I stopped drawing at all. With so much negative mirroring attached to it this activity of drawing started to feel something worthless. Perhaps not surprisingly it was my sister who few years back encouraged me to take up the pencil and brush again.

We avoid the company of those people who function as a broken mirrors for us for long or whom we perceive as broken mirrors. Because it is emotionally distressing to be in such people’s company. And if we can’t avoid them because we happen to live with them, then our self esteem goes down so much that we can’t even recognize ourselves.

We all are magic mirrors for some and broken mirrors for others. Without having any such intention we end up being a broken mirror for some people. Many relationships do not work because of that negative mirroring. Because we reflect back only bad things, habits or characteristics in that person. With that reflection is mixed our own negativity about that person sometimes because of our own transference.

The term “transference” was coined by Sigmund Freud to describe the way clients "transfer" feelings from important persons in their early lives, onto the psychoanalyst or therapist. But transference is not just specific to client therapist relationship it happens in our everyday life too. When you happen to dislike some people for no obvious reason at all chances are they remind you of someone you did not like in your early life. In our hearts we may be having positivity as well about that person but it’s not reflected in our behavior or in our interaction with that person as much as is required to maintain a positive and meaningful relationship.

I have lost three most significant magic mirrors in my life, my maternal grandmother who left us more than a decade ago, my mother who passed away three years back and my younger sister my only real sibling (she passed away this year, at a young age, because of a heart problem). I long for all these mirrors and their magic mirroring but they come only in my memories and dreams , luckily these memories are vivid and powerful enough to give me the emotional strength and the mirroring I still need and will always need.

 - See more at: https://scriggler.com/DetailPost/Opinion/24954#st_refDomain=t.co&st_refQuery=/SCgplCvJf6

We don’t need to call each other,

What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;

Shakespear’s Juliet said this to Romeo while arguing that it does not matter that Romeo is from her rival's house of Montague. It has no relevance that he is named "Montague."

Romeo’s response to that was as beautiful as Juliet’s argument.

I take thee at thy word:
Call me but love, and I'll be new baptized;
Henceforth I never will be Romeo.
Romeo went as far as forsaking his name for the love of his life.

So it’s generally true for everyone everything that the names of things do not affect what they really are. But our name does play an important role in our lives. As it’s a name that we listen or read every day so it is bound to affect us and affect our personalities.

I have played a lot with my name, I was born Tania Palijo, transformed myself into Tania Thebo when I started writing I gave myself the pen name of Tania Thebo, because my mother was a fiction writer too and she was a Thebo by cast. I chose to be called Tania Saleem when I got married to a Man whose name was Saleem. Lot of women want to retain their surname and just add their husband’s name or surname to their names. I did the same too and sometimes I still do.

Lot of children attach the surnames of both of their parents just like Benazir Bhutto's children Bilawal and Bhakhtawar. I never did that. I was either Palijo or very briefly Thebo. In school record I was always Palijo for obvious reason. Finally my name has got some permanence. When I read my current name I feel as if it is a name of an Urdu speaking poetess. It’s a name of a Sindhi woman who occasionally writes poetry in Urdu, but is not a typical Urdu speaking poetess.

I have always liked my name and I have been thankful to my mother for giving me this beautiful name. My mother had told me that she had named me after a Russian girl who had took part in Russian revolution. She was caught by Czar’s army and was to be hanged but was rescued at the last minute. As they say our names shape our personalities or sometimes destinies too. So I have also been saved at the last minute through some divine intervention.

I have been told by Russian lady that Tania was name of a flower. She had been living in our neighborhood after marrying a Siraiki speaking Sindhi man who had met her while doing his Masters in Russia. I also knew that it was a nick name or baby name. It was short form of Tatiana. Tatiana is a Russian female name of Latin origin. Tanya or Tania is its Russian version. Basically it’s a Russian name and its main meaning is “Fairy Queen”.

I had read this name in Russian novels too. Tatiana Larina is the heroine of Alexander Pushkin's celebrated novel-in-verse Eugene Onegin. The poem was and continues to be extremely popular in Russia. Pushkin was a Russian author of the Romantic era who is considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature. By the way this man was my first crush when I was little girl.  

My mother used to say her ancestors came from Thebes Valley in Greece. And later on it was turned into a joke that they did not come from Thebes’s valley but from “Thieves valley”. As a little girl I had doubt that any such valley existed in Greece. Because it was Pre Google Era so it was difficult to verify. But finally when I googled it I found out there was not just one but there were two Thebes valleys, one was in Egypt and the other was in Greece. 

Why I had interest in my maternal origin? There are many reasons. First and for most it had link with ancient history. It was associated with Greek Gods and Goddesses. Furthermore my distant past was embedded in my personal as well as collective consciousness. Jung defines his concept of collective unconscious in the following words.

The collective unconscious - so far as we can say anything about it at all  - appears to consist of mythological motifs or primordial images, for which reason the myths of all nations are its real exponents. In fact, the whole of mythology could be taken as a sort of projection of the collective unconscious... We can therefore study the collective unconscious in two ways, either in mythology or in the analysis of the individual. (From The Structure of the Psyche).

The Greek Gods and Goddesses were strong Archetypes that have been part of thoughts deeply embedded in my psyche.
Thebes is a town in central Greece which has been continuously inhabited for five millennia. It was an important Mycenaean centre in the middle to late Bronze Age and was a powerful city-state in the Classical period, participating in both the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars, reaching its peak of influence in the early 4th century BCE when it was the most powerful city in Greece.”

Thebes was, according to legend, the birthplace of the mythological pan-Hellenic hero Hercules. It was also the place where the Sphinx - a mythical creature with a woman’s head and a winged lion’s body - appeared to terrorize the area until her riddle was solved. Her riddle asked passersby to identify the creature that may have two, three, or four feet, can move in air, water, and on land, and moves more slowly the more feet it has. Oedipus solved the riddle - man - and in a rage the Sphinx leapt to her death from the Theban acropolis.

Following the Dark Ages in Greece (c.1100 to 700 BCE), Thebes re-emerged as an influential Greek city-state and for the next four centuries the city would be a constant rival to Athens and Sparta for regional dominance. Finally Alexander, destroyed the city and sold the population into slavery.
And finally when I googled “Women of Thebes” I thought I am not going to get anything from this search but lo and behold I found that there is an article titled “ Women of Thebes” written by Barbara Goff and published by The Classical Journal .

Coming back to the magic and mysteries of names casts and their origin, my curiosity was satiated for the time being. I did not find anything common in my maternal family and ancient Greek people except that some of the women including my mother had same complexion. Besides same complexion she had many characteristics of Greek Goddesses. She was beautiful she was innocent but sharp at the same time she was very romantic and believed in freedom from every kind of slavery that man or women had ever endured.

So what I have in common with those ancient people? I will have to consult my collective unconsciousness to find out what are the main archetypes that dominate my relationships and my thought process. It’s going to be a long story so better share it when we meet next time.

Yeh Ghabranay Key Baat Nahen.

Albeit nonchalantly,