In Run and Hide by Pankaj Mishra, Baba, Arun's father, demonstrates passive-aggressive tendencies. Baba is a father to Arun and Meena, but more importantly to Baba, he is a man of a low social caste. He is obsessed with the notion that if he provides educational opportunities for Arun, Arun will support the family once he becomes a wealthy and successful man. He only focuses on Arun and does very little for Meena, his other child. Despite paying for Arun's education, Baba has a minimal attachment to his children. He displaces his feelings as a father. Baba is so motivated to have a better life that he disregards Arun's ambitions. He is aggressive because he wants Arun to break free of his caste. He feels that through education, Arun will be able to escape his caste. 

Baba cares very little for Meena's ambition. He feels she is useless because her caste is inconsequential. She is a woman, and women are a burden, and a son can improve the family caste.

Throughout the novel, Baba displays maladaptive behaviors with his lower-caste lifestyle in India. He can not accept that he will never move out of his caste. Baba believes in quid pro quo. He expects Arun to care for the family since Baba is paying for Arun's education. Baba pays only for Arun's education and not his other children. 

When Arun spoke about his and his friend Virendra's early days trying to get a better life through education, he inadvertently explained the pressures placed on him and his friend. In chapter one, he states, "At some point in our early teens, when our school grades started to show promise, our parents had decided that they would go into debt, skimp on clothes and food, and deny education to our siblings, in order to put their sons in the Indian Institute of Technology and on the path to redemption from scarcity and indignity." This notion of going toward a path of dignity was not their dream but a dream instilled into them when they lived a life of poverty. Not once did their parents think about the pressures this would place on them or help them try to navigate them. Instead, their parents saw them as a ticket to the 'good life' and nothing more.  

Furthermore, Baba exemplified this unsaid agreement with Arun with the text stating in chapter five, when Arun is not as successful as Baba wants, "First in the family to receive an education, for which he claimed to have sacrificed much, I was expected to become a breadwinner. And yet in his eyes I was another nikamma and muft khor, a wastrel and parasite, frittering away my expensive education in a lowly occupation." This ideology of becoming a breadwinner and making a name for yourself to improve your family's impoverished conditions is absurd. Arun, who his father fails to realize, is a person. A person who faces unique struggles because of their status on the caste. Baba has a lot to say about Arun not making it out of poverty, especially when Baba could not do that originally. For example, in chapter two, Arun explains why his father could not advance in life due to his parents pulling him out of school, "His family in Rajasthan had been peasants in a semi-arable part of the desert state, and I knew, for he declaimed this bitterness often, that he had only just managed to read and write when they pulled him out of school and put him to work in their fields.'' Thus it explains the subtle disappointment Baba displays to Arun because he could never have those opportunities with how his family treated him. Also, it showcases Baba's disgust for himself since Arun did not escape poverty as fast as Baba would have hoped. Since Baba views Arun as an extension of himself, Arun's early 'failures' are especially displeasing, thus creating a horrible bond between Baba's character and Arun's psychological development. 

Many could argue Baba uses hostile aggression when verbally demeaning Arun and stating that he is invaluable because he is not the breadwinner Baba wanted. But instead, he uses instrumental aggression to get his point across to Arun. It is not how many words he says or how bad he says them but the underlying meaning of those cruel words to Arun that directly points to instrumental aggression. 

Baba is passive-aggressive and will blow over at the smallest point of dissatisfaction, even if it is demeaning to others. These subtle hints of parental narcissism can show underlying deep tones of Baba's chronic shame as a person and parent because if the one thing Baba thought he could help with his child is a better life, and for his child not to have that, what does that say about him?

The problem with his unsaid mutualistic altruisms is that they are unsaid, thereby applying pressure on his son Arun. Baba's behavior is a sign of dissatisfaction with his own life, but it, in turn, ruins the quality of life for Baba's other child, Meena, Arun's sister. Since all of Baba's energy is used to ensure Arun is successful, it implies a dysfunctional attachment bond with his children, as they can tell from his parental style that they are not his children but rather an extension of him. This very true ideology of his children being an extension of him derives from the innate narcissism in Baba because he could not achieve a better life for himself, so his child Arun should achieve it for him and the family. Many could argue that his parental style is permissive as he is lenient as long as Baba's goal for Arun is accomplished. He does not care what Arun or Meena do, as he has never pressured Arun to marry. The passiveness in his parenting style shows he has no care or acknowledgment of what his children do outside of his goals. Many could argue that his passiveness in parenting is good as he is very aggressive and shows demeaning attitudes to not only his family but strangers too. However, his mental health breach with passive and permissive parenting shows a lack of caring, which no child should feel. Baba needs various amounts of emotional therapy to have a better relationship with his kids.

Despite his immense need for control to improve his life or lifestyle, Baba shows aggressive tendencies and hypocritically uses selective attention to discuss things that plague him. Consequently, he does those same actions to those below him. Moreover, his son Arun recalls a memory in which Baba avidly hates corruption "His most favoured target is corruption, and it is true that hardly a day passes without some kind of swindle. The merchants who sell him weevil-infested flour and withered betel leaves {...} But, he, a swindler himself, underpaying the under-age boys he employs, is really complaining about his own life and the lives of so many men like him.." His hypocritical responses towards life show that although he uses an internal locus of control, he blames his life occurrences on corruption, showcasing he uses some aspects of an external locus of control. Overall, Baba gets mad at the world for the same stuff he does, thus reinforcing his bad behavior. 

Baba's passive-aggressive tendencies were not only subject to Arun and his other child Meena but to others as well. Even when engaging in simple acts of charity, when Baba deems the people he is 'helping' as less than satisfactory, he utilizes his aggression. Earlier in this analysis, I explained his verbal aggression to demean and criticize Arun's failures, but Baba has been known to demean others he 'helps' too. For example, chapter two states, "But my father is fuming as he distributes his unsold samosas to the station's perennially hungry residents. Suddenly tired of the recipients of his charity shoving and swearing at each other, his arm leaps out into the crowd of ragged faces, and cuffs someone on the ear or cheek." Baba is a man-child. When the goings get tough, or when being generous becomes too much for him, he lets his aggression get the best of him. This should not be a grown man's trait and is even less of a trait for a man with children. 

Baba lets his aggression get the best of him constantly and refuses to take accountability for the roughness of his actions. Baba's lack of accountability for his rough actions has translated into his son in many ways, more than one. At a young age, Arun suspected his father was involved in a mob killing; this asserts two of my notions about Baba: his minimal attachment to his kids and his passive-aggressive tendencies when they blow over. In chapter two, Arun states, "I wondered for months afterwards, until other childhood fears emerged, if my father had been one of the mob leaders; I couldn't look at his hands, large with hairy knuckles and veins swollen on the back, without imagining them wrapped around the hapless neck of a turbaned head." Baba's minimal attachment and passive-aggressive tendencies blowing over with Arun let his child believe he could be capable of such malice. For a little child to believe his father could kill someone with no remorse says much more about Baba than it does for Arun. Even though children come up with wild conniptions, no child would randomly suspect their father to be so evil without seeing previous notions of his malice.

Arun has seen his father be verbally abusive to not only himself but others, specifically his mother. In chapter two, Arun, after witnessing a heated discussion about money between his mother and father, states," Baba shifts uneasily. He has never physically assaulted my mother, not in my presence at least, but there is always a first time." Arun, Baba's own son, does not know what his father is capable of, or rather knows what his father is capable of, but dares not to say anything. Verbal abuse is always the precursor to physical abuse. Arun does not say anything, which shows his fear and compliance with his father as he does not want to test what he believes his father is capable of- malice. Baba did that to his son, not Arun, Meena, or his wife. Baba is the only one responsible for his actions, yet the only one who can't see his fault in them.

Overall, Baba constantly displaces his inadequacies onto other people as if they are at fault for his current predicament in life. Baba could benefit from extensive therapies, which resolve his need to get better within India's caste system. Yes, money and social classes make the world go round, but it should not make Baba go round, as his class, money, and predicament should not define him. But how he views his predicament defines him.

          Background: 

• From: Rajasthan India

• Social Caste: Kurmi -a member of an essential agricultural caste distributed throughout India except for the extreme south

• Profession: Refreshment server for a small station and local merchant

Desires

• To reach excellence either through a higher caste or financial status

Mental Illnesses Exhibited: 

• Permissive Parenting - Way too lenient on various aspects of his children's lives as he does not engage with them to asses their mental well-being

• Although I did not speak about this in the analysis, Baba exhibits signs of Disruptive mood dysregulation disorder as he has frequent and infrequent outbursts of anger that he displaces onto others with the use of both hostile and instrumental aggression.

• Signs of maladaptive behaviors require serious attention with cognitive and humanistic therapy approaches, as these behaviors infringe on his and others' well-being.

• Lack of self-actualization, self-esteem, and many other critical parts of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

• His body stays too long in the alarm mode in Selye's General Adaptation Syndrome, most specifically shown when Baba is involved with external and internal stressors; he immediately engages in fight mode.

• Showcases signs of maladaptive Reciprocal determinism, in which behavior, internal personal factors, and environmental influences all operate as interlocking determinants of each other. Baba can not see past getting above where he is in life, which is also a sign of either learned helplessness or extreme pessimism with workaholism.

Clinical Psychology and Where We Go From Here:

• Since the Client exhibits such maladaptive disorders, client-centered therapy would bode well with Baba.

• Client-Centered therapy (Person-centered Therapy) would work well with Baba because his controlling yet overly permissive and aggressive behaviors need to be centered back on him. In addition, Baba needs therapy that focuses on him to see where he engages in maladaptive behaviors that infringe on his well-being and others. 

• Counterconditioning Baba to see the error in his ways and making a contingency management schedule to make sure the consequences of his actions shape his behavior will lead to more polite behaviors that show remorse for his actions.

• Rational Emotive therapy would be beneficial to help Baba's challenges with unhelpful thoughts to avoid negative emotions and behaviors.

• While Mood stabilizers are not the most sought form of action, later in therapy, a psychiatrist should give mood stabilizers to Baba to steady his already repressed and uncontrollable anger.