The Road to Oz

I was born in 1983. The promise of brewing monsoon rains hung heavy in the air, thick with the smell of overripe mangoes and jackfruit, when the nurses at the dreary Holy Cross hospital in Quilon, India announced the arrival of their newest inmate. I have no idea if any of that is true. But it seems fitting to say so.

I decided early on that I was destined to be somebody. Somebody, however, turned out to be rather more ordinary that I had imagined. Oh, I had the odd rendezvous with achievement and success. But fear and lack followed me far more faithfully, like ravenous hounds. Desperate for purpose and meaning, I lived recklessly for years, even embracing my growing infamy in the little town I called home.

Somehow, I just managed to wade through the shallow end of life, a poor swimmer at best, and a flailing hazard when the tide was in. In some almost-forgotten place in my psyche, I still stubbornly clung on to the notion of significance, but twenty something years, and many, many misadventures later, greatness continued to elude me.

Then one profound summer, through a remarkable series of coincidences that I can only ascribe to the hand of God, I was memorably christened “Lionheart” by a stranger at a Chinese market. (God, at least, was feeling cheerfully optimistic about my future.)

Lionheart! I was esctatic. What a grand, brave name! One could hardly fail at anything with a name like that.

And so, in the cringe-worthy fashion of a self-indulging twenty-something year old, I went with it.

I mean, I really went with it.

It wasn't altogether a bad thing. I woke up from my long slumber. I bounded through the next few weeks, convinced that this would be the making of the new and improved me. I embraced my reinvention with wide open arms. I had hundreds of imaginary conversations, preparing myself for imminent fame.

Like a five year old who has suddenly discovered the power of the autograph, I used up pages and pages in my journal, practising my new would-be signature. I researched hundreds of tattoos. Real ones, not the stick on type.

And of course, I promptly went on to write to my parents and tell them I was changing my name. My very respectable, and equally long suffering family did not respond for a few days.

I like to imagine they sat around the breakfast table, and brightly discussed my ambitions with fair and unprejudiced enthusiasm, certainly not in the light of any of my past indiscretions.  My father eventually wrote to me and said he thought I was very brave indeed, but gently suggested (in that tone you use with a child arsonist holding a match and a can of petrol) that perhaps brave people did not need to shout it from the rooftops.

He had a point. But it was too late. True to my all-or-nothing self, I was already in my car, en route to the Indian Consulate, passport in hand.

The Indian Consulate in Johannesburg is an excellent monument to stoic, religious zeal for convention. At first, they just looked at me like I was mad. Then their faces contorted into ever-increasing degrees of bafflement. I felt bad for them. It looked painful. The more I tried to make them understand, the less coherent I became, till finally I was almost positive I was drooling and making moose-like noises. At some point even the security guard seemed confused.

"Ooooohhh...I see....You're getting married, eh?"

No. Gloob idekrumoooo.

"Oh, getting divorced, eh?" This was said with a smirk.

No. Bulpuroop dwibblewaaah.

"Then what? Why you're changing your name? These things we don't do here. Laaiyon Haart? Who is this Laaiyon Haart? Rajiv..Where are you? Come and see what does this girl want.."

Rajiv did not know what this girl wanted.

Finally, exhausted by the futility of the whole exercise, this girl went home, feeling just a little foolish.

As the weeks and months went by, foolishness turned to shame and shame to doubt. Doubt triumphantly reminded me that most days I was scared out of my wits. Always afraid that I would be caught out for the imposter I was, that I would not measure up, would not be good enough, or beautiful enough, or clever enough, or funny enough.

I had forged my way through life with determination, I thought. Or was it fear? It was hard to tell the difference.

I realized with a sickening bottomless feeling in my stomach, that I didn't feel very lionhearted at all.

I stopped signing my pretend-name for fun. I wanted to curl up like a fetus in a dark hole. Because there is nothing worse than feeling like a fraud. Unless of course you are a professional conman and your resume is the better for it. But I was no lion, and I was no conman and I was no fetus, and since the were few other vocations left to choose from, it was painfully apparent that i was altogether a dismal failure.

Lionheart, I was most certainly not.

And so it was that my short-lived reign of fame (unapparent to everyone else) ended.

***

Part 2.

With passing years comes less self indulgence and more quiet understanding.

One day, an unruly stray memory from an old movie bounced around the walls of my head.

It was the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of Oz.

I didn't remember too much of the book or the movie. But I remembered that he was the ugliest looking of the lot, by far. And his quest seemed the saddest. He was looking for Courage, you see. As for the others, there was something noble about a scarecrow wanting a brain, or a tin man wanting a heart. They weren't made that way, and no one expected them to have those things. They were reaching pretty high.

But lions are supposed to be…well…lionish, you know. Roar and eat zebras and that sort of thing.
To admit that you were a big old scaredy cat? That was sad.

But wait…wasn’t that also.. brave? Was his quest for courage not indeed his great act of courage?

All at once, and all in space of many years, I was him. Looking for the courage to believe in me. Finding that courage is often found in unseen and ordinary moments. And that when courage fails, as it sometimes does, laughter can be a really good substitute.

If you are anything like me, it feels mighty good to know that I have a merry company of brave-ish, if somewhat flawed, kinsmen on that Road to Oz.

*Note: Names are awfully important things. When I went all solopreneur that year, I decided on a whim to call my business Lionheart Ink*. Creative is, after all, a brave and imperfect journey on the best of days. I eventually scrapped that name, for what should have been apparent reasons from the start. I explain this in Things People Ask.