Shadow of the Titan

I was five years old when I learned that my father was a man people feared.

It wasn’t a lesson taught in words. He never sat me down to explain the dynamics of power, or the weight of his reputation, or the way his silence could suck the air out of a room. It was a lesson taught in the flinches of strangers. In the way waiters hurried with trembling hands. In the way neighbors lowered their eyes when he walked by, as if looking directly at the sun might burn them.

To a five-year-old, fear is a confusing emotion. We are taught that monsters are to be feared, and heroes are to be loved. So when I saw adults big, strong, complicated adults, shrink in my father’s presence, I didn’t understand that they were respecting his power. I understood that they were afraid of him. And if they were afraid of him, I reasoned, then I should be too.

But I wasn’t. I was just lonely.

Because fear creates distance. And distance, for a child who already felt isolated by her autism and her trauma, was a vast, uncrossable ocean.

My father’s fear-factor was his armor. It protected him from the vulnerabilities he couldn’t name. It kept people at arm’s length so they couldn’t see the cracks in the foundation. But it also kept me at arm’s length. I grew up believing that love was conditional on performance, and that safety was found in invisibility. If I were quiet, if I were useful, if I was perfect, maybe he would look at me without that cold, assessing gaze. Maybe he would see me not as a liability, but as an asset.

So I learned to mimic him. I learned to use silence as a weapon. I learned to control rooms not by shouting, but by withholding. I became a coordinator of secrets, a trader of influences, a master of the subtle threat. I thought that if I could make people fear me, even a little, they wouldn’t hurt me. They wouldn’t leave me. They wouldn’t ignore me.

It was a survival strategy born in the shadow of a giant. But it was a flawed one. Because fear doesn’t build connection; it builds compliance. And compliance is a hollow substitute for love.

Now, at twenty-three, standing in the village with the taste of turkey meatballs on my tongue and the truth in my chest, I see him differently. I don’t see a titan anymore. I see a man who was also afraid. Afraid of failure. Afraid of weakness. Afraid of being seen as anything less than invincible. His fear was a cage, just like mine. He just built his out of steel and silence, while I built mine out of lies and personas.

I used to hate him for his absence. I blamed him for the loneliness that haunted my childhood, for the anxiety that gripped my throat, for the belief that I had to earn my place in the world. But now I realize that his fear was not a rejection of me. It was a reflection of his own brokenness. He didn’t know how to be a father because he didn’t know how to be vulnerable. He only knew how to be powerful.

And power is a lonely thing.

I am breaking that cycle. I am choosing connection over control. I am choosing truth over fear. I am learning that it is okay to be seen, even if I am not perfect. Even if I am not powerful. Even if I am just Saransh.

My father may still be a man people fear. But I am no longer a child who fears him. I am a woman who understands him. And in that understanding, there is no anger. There is only sadness. And a quiet, determined hope that I can be different. That I can be loved not for what I can do, but for who I am.

And that is a lesson no one ever taught me. I had to learn it myself.