Anjali's Red Scarf Ch. 01

And her conversation had become much more normal. I wasn't sure whether to be glad of that, or sad...

One of the classic autistic traits is "special interests". (Or "intense hobbies", or just "obsessions", depending on how you want to frame it.) The kid who knows the entire history of Sweet Valley High, the entomologist who spends a lifetime cataloguing beetles of the world, the violinist who's devoted their life to Bach: none of those people are necessarily autistic, but there's a good chance of it.

Fortunately for me, one of my passions is highly marketable. Introduce me to a major airline - or a busy cargo port, or a road freight hauling company - and I can usually find a way to improve their throughput by half a percentage point, just by tinkering with their schedule. That might not sound very impressive, but think of it this way: if you're running a fleet of two hundred aircraft, and I can make them zero-point-five percent more efficient, I've just given you an extra plane's worth for free - well, not quite for free, but much cheaper than buying a new 767. So I'm in demand.

But for a lot of autistic people it doesn't work out so well. An encyclopaedic knowledge of My Little Pony or mediaeval wagon construction isn't likely to pay the bills, and if you speak too enthusiastically about your interests people are likely to start backing away from you.

The "mild" ones among us learn to suppress those enthusiasms, along with the other traits that would make us stand out too much. We can do it, but it takes a toll; there's a reason so many "mild" autistic folk burn out in later life. For those reasons, I was both glad and sorry to see that Anjali had learned that particular skill.

Happily, it didn't take too long for me to remind her that she could speak freely around me, and within half an hour she was telling me all about her studies. She was doing well in medicine, passing all her exams, but most of all she wanted to talk about the astronomy and astrophysics she'd been taking. She'd moved past Jupiter now and was out among the stars, rhapsodising about the carbon-nitrogen-oxygen cycle and the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. I didn't absorb much of it, but clearly she was enthralled.

After about fifteen minutes of telling me about the cosmos, she seemed to remember that she'd come here for a purpose. "Sarah, you know how you said I could ask you about anything?"

It took me a moment to remember that promise. It had been two years, after all. "Oh, yes? Sure."

"Well, I've been seeing this boy..."

It was pretty much what you'd expect. He was a nice boy, she liked him but wasn't sure how serious this was going to be. She was considering sleeping with him and wanted my advice. ("On what aspect?" "Everything?")

I told her the sort of things I felt she ought to know about consent, respect, safe sex. I didn't try to persuade her one way or the other, and to this day I don't know or care whether she actually did sleep with him. I just wanted to make sure she was in a good position to make an informed choice for herself.

After that discussion we shared a pot of Edgar's awful tea-bag tea, and then she wished me bon voyage and walked out of my life again.

* * * * *

My year in Germany was fantastic for my career, but it also spelled the end of the line for me and Edgar. We'd been growing apart for some time before I left, and the distance and time difference made it harder to keep papering over the cracks. Four months into my stay, we agreed to call it quits.

At first I drowned my sorrows in late-night work, but eventually I realised it'd be a waste to spend the year locked up in my office. I did some sight-seeing, I looked up the places where my father's grandparents had lived, and most of all I explored the German gothic scene. Luisa, one of the other foreign postdocs, shared my musical tastes, and so we went clubbing together.

It took me several months to figure out that Luisa was making passes at me, and by the time I realised it she only had a month left on her contract. Talk about wasted opportunity! Still, we did our best to make up for lost time in that last month. It was quite sweet and very therapeutic, and knowing there was a natural end date on things ensured that both of us went into it with matching expectations.

With all of that happening, Anjali had once again dropped off my radar. If I'd been paying attention I might have picked up a few hints of trouble in that direction. As it was, I didn't notice a thing until she sent me a plaintive but uninformative email - "everything is a disaster" - and it took a long IM conversation to get the rest out of her.

Most medical students struggle to remember all the facts they're supposed to learn. Anjali's problem was the opposite: she remembered too much, and struggled to filter it down to what was actually needed. Usually the obvious answers are correct - there's an old medical saying, "when you hear hoofbeats think horses, not zebras" - but Anjali had difficulty gauging what was obvious.

One of several incidents she mentioned: she'd been asked to look over a patient who'd come in complaining of an upset stomach. She noticed a smell of garlic, immediately remembered that this can be caused by certain types of poisoning, and recommended testing for arsenic, thallium, and organophosphates. She had never thought to ask the patient if he'd been eating garlic recently.

Knowing Anjali as I did, I understood why she had difficulty with that kind of challenge. Things that are obvious to other folk sometimes take longer for our kind to learn. But her teacher had handled it in the worst possible way; he'd implied to her that her only competence was rote-learning, and then he'd talked about the incident in front of the entire class. He hadn't named her, but I'm pretty sure her classmates would've figured it out, if only by the look on her face. Two weeks later, she still couldn't let it go.

AK: what if he's right?

AK: what if the only thing I'm good at is memory???

PrincessOfParallelograms: NO. He's wrong and he's an arsehole. Don't you dare start thinking like that.

I reminded her of the girl I'd tutored, who refused to memorise the laws of complex numbers until she understood how they were justified in the scheme of things. Then I paused, aware that what I was about to say might give offence, and I typed and retyped the next sentence half a dozen times before hitting send.

PrincessOfParallelograms: Anjali, are you familiar with the diagnostic criteria for Asperger's?

AK: why would u say that? Do I seem autistic to u??

AK: are u saying I'm mentally ill?

PrincessOfParallelograms: Just saying that I'm autistic and some of this sounds pretty familiar.

AK: well, I'm not.

PrincessOfParallelograms: Do me a favour? Please read the criteria and just think about it?

I waited a while, but there was no answer, so I logged off. Luisa and I had plans for the evening, and I didn't want to spoil my mood with an argument.

Three days later, I finally got a reply from Anjali:

AK: Hey Sarah, I apologise, you might have a point. Can we talk?

As I'd suspected, there was a gulf between what she'd been learning in med school and what she'd internalised in the previous seventeen years. Her parents would have rejected any suggestion of autism outright - "nothing wrong with our child!" - and some of that attitude had rubbed off on her. But once she sat down and thought about it, she found herself checking off a lot of the boxes.

Every autistic person is different; it's a bad idea to make assumptions about what we can and can't do. But some issues come up a lot, and they're easier to spot if you know what you're looking for.

There's a stereotype that we hate interacting with other people. It's not true; I like almost everybody and I enjoy talking, but it wears me out. When I talk to you I'm doing all sorts of mental work just to maintain the semblance of a normal conversation: am I making enough eye contact? Am I talking too much, or too little? If I fold my arms, are you going to read something into that?

So I have to budget that stuff. Given time to prepare, I can give an excellent seminar - I've won prizes for the clarity of my student presentations. But I need to allow for self-care; in the breaks when everybody else is networking, I'll sneak off for some solitary time the way other people duck out for a cigarette, and in the evening it takes me hours to unwind enough that I can go to sleep.

When I mentioned that to Anjali, she considered it for a while and acknowledged that she had similar issues. She was worried about what that might mean for her career, and I thought she was right to worry. Dealing with difficult people is a big part of a doctor's job, and patients are the least of that.

AK: so do you think I can still be a doctor?

PrincessOfParallelograms: You're a smart girl. I think you could pass the course and get your M.D. if you set your mind to it. Maybe if you get a formal diagnosis they can make some accommodations...

PrincessOfParallelograms: My worry is what it might cost you. I don't want you to burn yourself out and make yourself miserable just to prove a point.

I tried to brainstorm medical career paths that might be suited to her aptitudes. If we'd had that conversation a couple of years earlier, it might have gone somewhere. But by the time she reached out for help, she'd been bottling up her unhappiness for so long that it had congealed into a huge intractable lump that I couldn't dismantle. The idea of continuing her medical degree filled her with overwhelming dread and hopelessness, no matter what I suggested.

AK: so what should I do?

PrincessOfParallelograms: I can't make that choice for you.

AK: doesn't feel like I have any choice.

PrincessOfParallelograms: What do you *want* to do? If you didn't have to worry about pleasing your parents and if money wasn't an issue?

AK: I can't think of anything. This stuff just keeps going round and round in my head.

PrincessOfParallelograms: Okay, then, what do you do for fun?

She had difficulty answering that. Her state of mind was a long way from "fun". But eventually I was able to prompt her into remembering a few things. She liked movies, especially the Bollywood kind; she took a mostly-vicarious interest in fashion and dressmaking; she enjoyed reading, of course; and she liked to go outside at night and look at the stars.

Hmm.

PrincessOfParallelograms: How did you go with those astro courses, by the way?

AK: 98% in the last one :-) but that doesn't count towards anything, alas.

Hmmmm.

PrincessOfParallelograms: Okay, let me think about things for a while. I'm busy tomorrow, but we can talk Wednesday?

AK: okay, Wednesday. Thank u for listening <3

After signing off, I went on the web and did a bit of digging. It wasn't hard to find the names of her astronomy lecturers. I jotted down a plan of attack, went over it until I was comfortable with it, and then dialled Australia.

"Hello, Professor Thomas? Doctor Sarah Weber speaking. Sorry to trouble you, but I'm looking for career advice for a friend - I don't suppose you remember Anjali Kapadia?"

He remembered Anjali very well. She'd asked a lot of questions, and he'd appreciated her enthusiasm. Yes, he would be happy to talk to her about career options in astrophysics. Obviously he couldn't make any promises, but perhaps something could be arranged.

It wasn't the only option that I investigated, but it seemed the most viable, and it was the one that caught Anjali's interest. She met with Professor Thomas, and when I talked to her afterwards she was starting to believe that there might be possibilities outside medicine. She could switch into the science stream with credit for most of her medical subjects; if she spent a year catching up on physics and astrophysics, then she could do an Honours year and go from there to a PhD.

It would be academically demanding - she'd have to take extra subjects to catch up what she'd missed - but I didn't doubt that she could do it. I had a feeling she might even enjoy that kind of punishment.

The hard part would be selling it to her parents.

As Anjali explained it to me, parental authority is very strong in Hindu families. Mother and father know best, and even as adults, the kids do what they're told. If they laid down the law and she refused to obey, that would be a very serious infraction; not quite unforgivable, but more than Anjali wanted to deal with.

(By now, you may have gathered that she was a sensitive lass, and averse to conflict. But she was also a kindly soul; she genuinely loved her parents, and would've hated to cause them distress.)

Her father would be the toughest obstacle. We talked about a dozen different ways to persuade him, and all of them ran up against the same brick wall. He was a businessman, and abandoning a guaranteed meal ticket for a precarious career in stargazing was bad business. There was no winning that argument. Ergo, we needed to find some other advantage.

Mrs Kapadia might be a little more sympathetic, but not enough to contradict her husband on something like this. Besides, between the two of them they had told practically the entire Indian diaspora in Sydney that Anjali Kapadia was going to be a doctor. Backing down from that would be awkward, and it was exacerbated by some sort of rivalry with the Daswani family down the street, whose son was in Anjali's year.

Anjali and I went back and forth trying to figure out some argument that might persuade her parents. When she signed off an hour later, to go to class, we were no closer to a solution.

Meanwhile, I ran myself a bath and tried to think if I'd missed anything. I have a wide repertoire of logical problem-solving skills that I've picked up in the course of my work. They're better suited to mathematical problems, but if you squint hard enough, sometimes you can make a people problem look like a mathematical problem.

As the heat soaked through my bones, I thought to myself: does family influence define a partially-ordered set? If it does, we're really stuck. So we need to show that it's not a poset, which means finding a cycle...

Which translates back to "is there anybody who Anjali can persuade, who has influence over her parents?" I expect to some people that seems like a very roundabout way of arriving at the obvious. But it's how my mind works.

The next day - in my time, not hers - we continued our plotting.

PrincessOfParallelograms: hey, I remember you had a white telescope. Who did that come from?

AK: That's from Dadi.

AK: That is, my father's mother. I still have it.

From what I recalled, it was a decent telescope. Nothing extravagant, but not a plastic toy; not a trivial purchase. A favourite-granddaughter gift?

PrincessOfParallelograms: Is she interested in astronomy then?

AK: More astrology, but close enough. I avoid getting into that particular argument with her.

AK: ...wait, I think I see where you're going with this. That just might work.

I learnt that Mr Kapadia's widowed mother was seventy-three, a little frail now, but sharp as ever. She was fond of Anjali, and yes, she had considerable sway over Anjali's father. She lived in Mumbai, and the Kapadias were due to visit her in two months, after Anjali and Mahesh had finished their exams.

From there the plan fell into place. Anjali would wait for their visit, and then ask for her dadiji's support. We worked out some scripts she could follow for talking to her grandmother and her parents, covering all the contingencies we could think of. We also made arrangements to obtain a letter from Professor Thomas testifying to her talent for astrophysics and encouraging her to consider it as a career. I figured it couldn't hurt if we gave them an opportunity to spin it as Anjali's being headhunted rather than dropping out.

AK: And I'll have to make sure I beat the Daswani boy in finals.

I was still concerned for her. It was a good plan, as far as I can judge these things, but there were still far too many things that could go wrong. If it didn't work, if her parents still said no, it would be shattering for her.

Those two months must have felt like a very long time for Anjali. But for me, the time flew by as I said good-bye to Luisa and worked to wrap up my project. If I hadn't set myself a reminder, I would have quite forgotten to wish Anjali luck before her exams. The day after she finished them, she flew out with her family.

She messaged four days later.

AK: Hi Sarah. I had the talk with my parents.

PrincessOfParallelograms: How did it go? How are you?

AK: Well...

* * * * *

As she told it to me, when her father learned that she wanted to switch from medicine to astrophysics, his first reaction was "Hey...Bhagwan".

PrincessOfParallelograms: Is that good?

AK: It's Hindi for "Oh God".

PrincessOfParallelograms: oh.

Her parents had argued with her for three hours. This is just a passing fad - you're throwing away all hope of financial security - what use is astrophysics to anybody? - look, your mother is crying now - what sort of example are you setting for your brother? - and so on, round and round.

Thankfully, we'd anticipated most of these gambits and planned out scripts for Anjali to use in reply. If she didn't manage to win her parents over to the idea, at least she was able to hold her ground and prevent them from talking her out of it. At last, when she saw them beginning to tire, she sprung the trap.

"Maybe we should ask Dadi what to do about this?"

Mr Kapadia took the bait. He had no idea that his guileless little girl had already spoken with his mother, and so he was caught off-guard when the matriarch sided with Anjali.

"It's not the most practical ambition," she said, "but sometimes people need to follow their talents. You say this professor invited you specially?" And Anjali produced the letter that Professor Thomas had so kindly written.

Worn down, Mr Kapadia conceded. "Very well. If your heart is set on it. But you cannot expect us to pay for this, do you understand?"

* * * * *

Some people are fixtures in one's life, as dependable and regular as the sun or the moon. I had come to think of Anjali as something more like a comet. Every once in a while she would drop in, shine brightly for a few days or weeks, and then fade once again for years at a stretch, as her orbit took her back to the dim periphery of my life.

But at the right moment, the slightest nudge can bump a comet's orbit into an entirely new course.

Anjali reappeared in my life two years after she'd made the decision to change her degree. By then I was living in Melbourne, working for a logistics consulting company. I loved the work, and they loved me back; I was getting paid good money to do a job I would've done for free.

The only major downside was that I didn't have a chance to spend it. I was working ten-hour days and then taking work home with me, and I didn't know many people in Melbourne so I had no reason to go out. Eventually my boss took me aside and warned me about workaholicism. "You're doing a great job, Sarah, and I don't want you burning out. You need to go out and have fun, find a hobby."

It was good advice, but hard for somebody like me to follow. I'm the kind of person who goes somewhere to meet new people and then spends the whole night trying not to be noticed, because strangers are scary and I don't know how to start conversations.

That was when Anjali texted to say she was in town, in fact she had been for a couple of months, and would I like to get coffee some time?