The Hindi-Bindi Club Page 5

  In the lamplight, snowflakes descend from the heavens like angel wings. As I stare, hypnotized, the winter wonder-land of Minnesota blurs. A magic carpet materializes in my mind’s eye. I smile a secret smile and imagine myself un-latching the window and unhooking the screen, climbing onto the flying carpet in my blue-and-green plaid flannel pajamas and hitching a ride to the Other Side of the World.

  The Other Side of the World…

  “We should split up,” Riya-didi said. “The shops close at noon.” Riya wasn’t actually my cousin, but my cousins’ cousin. Still, she told me I could call her didi—older sister—which gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling of connection I never had in my eighteen years at home.

  My immediate family exemplified the stereotypical American suburban demographic in many ways, including but not limited to: two kids, one of each flavor; a black Labrador Retriever named Ash; a soccer dad and a mom who carpooled us from one activity to another in her Volvo station wagon.

  Here you might expect me to launch into stereotypical differences such as our house smelling like curry and incense instead of chocolate chip cookies or apple pie (yes, sometimes); or my parents prohibiting drinking or dating (no, never…okay, once, but it was the exception); or the facts we were not white, not Christian, and therefore not in the “cool” majority (not an issue in our cosmopolitan D.C. suburb of McLean, Virginia).

  No, in my family, those things didn’t matter all that much. Certainly, they didn’t alienate us. What did was more subtle: Unlike most American families, we didn’t have relatives outside our tiny nucleus residing in the country. No extended family. And that more than anything else made us feel, at times, we didn’t yet belong.

  My parents’ close-knit Indian-immigrant community provided wonderful surrogates. Outsiders usually assumed we were related. But it wasn’t the same. In India, I felt the difference. Felt what was missing.

  That year marked the fiftieth wedding anniversary of Dad’s parents, Dadaji and Dadiji, an occasion mandating our attendance. Most of our large extended family had migrated from New Delhi to the west coast metropolis of Bombay, now Mumbai. (Half a century after independence from British rule, many cities reverted to Indian names. Bombay’s Mumbai, Calcutta’s Kolkata, Madras is Chennai. But then, it was Bombay.)

  My parents, my thirteen-year-old brother Tarun, and I flew around the globe to join in the festivities: a winter holiday on the sun-kissed beaches of Goa, a popular tourist state south of Bombay. I had just finished my first semester at the University of Virginia, and my brain was so fried from finals and end-of-term papers that I crashed and slept for most of the twenty-four-hour journey. In doing so, I was the only one to escape jet lag.

  While the others adjusted to the time change, like night owls snoozing through daylight hours, I basked in the attention our relatives lavished on me-me-me. Dadiji, known for her Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde–like transformations between sweet granny and tyrant mother-in-law, spoiled me with a grandmother’s copious affection. Riya-didi, four years my senior, assumed the role of cultural ambassador/translator, let me wear one of her breezy cotton salwar-kameezes, and took me out and about with her.

  Though Westernized Indians strolled the streets in jeans, long skirts, and dresses—the same styles worn in the States—I found that oh so boring, reveling instead in their traditional garb. I didn’t have the grace to pull off the midriff-baring sari, but the salwar-kameez suited me perfectly. How fun to play dress-up in such finery! I had to get my own; I burned through most of my pocket money on clothes. My mother cautioned me not to buy too many, as they’d go to waste when we came home. She was right—I haven’t worn one since.

  “Why do shops close early today?” I remember asking Riya that first day. I thought maybe it was like the early closing elementary schools had on Mondays.

  “Not just today,” Riya said. “Every day. Noon to five is siesta time. The Portuguese influence. It’s everywhere.”

  My lack of knowledge made me feel awkward. During finals, Mom had sent a Goa travel guide in a care package with homemade oatmeal cookies, crunchy Granny Smith apples, and a tub of peanut butter, but I hadn’t found a spare moment to crack the spine yet. I knew the bare bones, that Goa was a Portuguese colony for four centuries, until the early 1960s. “Am I flaunting my ignorance?” I asked and confessed about the unread book.

  Riya laughed. “No, you’re cute. It’s fun to see the world through your eyes. And some things are more exciting to learn from real life, not books.” She pointed out a card shop. “You go in there. I’m going next door. We’ll meet outside.”

  I looked at my watch. Riya wasn’t wearing one. “Wait, it’s only eleven-thirty. We have half an hour.” We didn’t have so many things on our errand list to warrant splitting up. Maybe she wanted to be alone? Some kind of embarrassing purchase? My mind leapt to feminine hygiene or birth control. She looked too innocent for the latter, but in my first semester, I’d learned a thing or two about the “appearance” of innocence. And innocence lost. I was about to remind her I was in college now, a woman of the world, when she laughed again.

  “Trust me,” she said. “It’ll take half an hour.”

  “For postcards and sweets?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “But…but…” I raised and lowered myself on my toes with the separation anxiety I had at age seven when my mom dropped me at ballet class. “What if I need a Hindi speaker?”

  “Everyone speaks English,” Riya said over her shoulder.

  I knew this. Still, I liked having backup. The accents—mine and theirs—could prove tricky.

  In the store, I selected a dozen postcards and got in line to pay from my stash of colorful Indian rupees that looked like play money from a board game. With only two people in front of me, I thought I’d be out in a breeze. I didn’t count on them shooting the breeze. For ten minutes each. And counting!

  I shuffled through my postcards, arranging and rearranging, reading and rereading the blurbs. My foot started tapping on its own. I barely resisted the urge to clear my throat. Not that it would have helped. Neither the owner nor the customers seemed in any rush. I contemplated starting my cards. At this rate, I could put a good dent in the stack before I left the shop.

  Dear Jen, namaste from the other side of the world. I’m writing this, not out on the beach sipping fresh baby coconut water through a straw as I should be, but standing in a line that’s slower than molasses.…

  I glanced at my watch for the umpteenth time. At a low chuckle behind me, I turned.

  It was his smile I noticed first, his twin dimples sweet, boyish, disarming. It was his eyes that lured me. Ink black. Intense. Soulful. In his hands, he held a sketchpad and a set of colored pencils. I guessed his age between mine and Riya’s.

  “First time in Goa?” he asked. At my nod, his smile stretched out, deepening the dimples and propping up the apples of his cheeks, so the skin beside his eyes crinkled. “The pace takes some adjustment. A watch serves the same function as a bangle. Ornamental.”

  “Yes.” I thought of Riya’s naked wrist. “I’m learning.”

  His eyebrows knit together. “You’re…a foreigner?”

  I smiled, pleased he hadn’t figured it out until I opened my mouth. “I can dress the part, but the accent gives me away.” We chatted a while. I learned his name was Arsallan, his family was from Bombay, and they usually spent their holidays at a beach or a scenic “hill station.” I gave him the skinny on my family.

  “Ah. So you’re type of an Indian export,” he said.

  “Type of,” I repeated, amused as always by different usages of the same English language. “Are you an artist?” I gestured to the sketchpad and pencils.

  “By profession, no. I’m in medical college. This”—he held up the supplies—“is strictly time-pass. To amuse my nieces and nephews. You can hear them from here….‘Chachu, Chachu, draw me a picture.’ ‘Chachu, Chachu, tell us a story.’ ‘Chachu, Chachu, let’s fly kites.’”

  “How
many are there?”

  “Twelve.”

  “An even dozen.”

  “No, more of an odd dozen.” He grinned.

  Riya entered as I was—finally!—paying for my purchases. I introduced her and Arsallan. “He’s from Bombay, too,” I said. It turned out they had mutual friends at each other’s college. Six degrees of separation and all that.

  Arsallan asked if we had plans later that night and invited us to a beach party. It was a casual invite, one of those “hey, swing by if you can” deals. But when he tossed those carefree words into the air, a feather of excitement tickled my stomach. I liked the idea our paths might cross again.

  And they did indeed cross. At the party that night, and for at least a few hours almost every day afterward.

  Mostly we walked, for miles along the seashore, leaving our footprints in the sand and watching the tide wash them away.

  Too soon to make sense, I felt an uncanny familiarity with him, a connection that grew the more time we spent together. He didn’t feel like a new friend. It was as if we had met a long time ago, in another time, another place, and were just picking up where we’d left off.

  “Have we done this before?” I asked one day.

  “Yes, we walked here yesterday.”

  I shook my head. “Before yesterday. Before I came here. Somewhere else. Sometime else.”

  He stopped, crooked his head, held my gaze. “So it’s not just me.”

  I shrugged. “I can’t explain it.”

  He smiled, his eyes warm on my face. “You don’t have to. Whatever it is, we share the feeling.”

  Off the top of his head, he spun countless yarns about our past lives together. Tales that stretched from the pink palaces and desert sands of Rajasthan to the great pyramids of ancient Egypt, full of magic and adventure to rival The Arabian Nights.

  We didn’t touch, didn’t even hold hands as we walked. Yet I felt him, close to me. I felt his heart.

  The Vikings and Packers are playing at Green Bay, and I’m trying not to cut my finger as I chop vegetables for dinner and peek at the mini-television on the counter. I’m distracted not just by the game, my mind in the past, my knife in the present.

  I’m dying to call my mother, to tell her about Arsallan’s book, but I can no more tell her now than I could fifteen years ago. My eyes sting, and I know it’s more than onion vapors.

  Just because we choose not to talk about something doesn’t make it go away.

  I stir the Goan shrimp curry, stick my nose over the pot and sniff, taste the coconut gravy. Something’s missing, but I can’t figure out what. Mom would know. I glance at the phone. Should I? Shouldn’t I? No. Better not. The way I’m feeling, I don’t trust myself not to snap, say something in the heat of the moment and live to regret it. We’ll be there soon enough, the day after Christmas. I take another whiff, another taste, and ponder. The missing ingredient flits on the edge of my senses. An elusive lightning bug, now you see me, now you don’t. Catch me if you can. I take up the challenge, I’ll catch you, little bugger…

  Every other weekend, I cook Indian. At our house, it’s a special treat, even for me, whereas when I was growing up, Tarun and I begged for the rare decadence of Kraft macaroni and cheese. My kids—all three of them—love to eat with their fingers. Any excuse to play with their food.

  I dole out golden brown samosas onto four plates. I use my mom’s recipe for the potato filling, minus green peas, which none of us like. For convenience, I cheat and substitute store-bought refrigerated dough for the pastry and bake instead of fry.

  My mom has conniptions over how I Americanize her recipes. You’ve never seen someone micromanage to the degree my mother does. And in the kitchen especially, oh baby, watch out! As she’ll be the first to instruct, there are right and wrong ways to do everything, and I mean everything. Chopping, stirring, standing, serving, cleaning. Probably even breathing. “You can’t call that a samosa,” she says. “It’s a Hot Pocket.”

  Whatever. It’s my kitchen. I can do what I want to.

  Today I made one spicy batch for the adults to dip in mint-cilantro chutney or tamarind-and-brown-sugar chutney and another mild batch for the kids to dunk in ketchup. From the freezer, I fetch two frosted mugs and pour chilled Taj Mahal beer—strictly an export, not available in India.

  “Peanut, take this to Daddy, please,” I say to Lina, my sous chef in training. Will I become like my mother and micro-manage my daughter one day? I vow no way, never, even as I instruct, “Careful. Walk slowly. Don’t skip, or you’ll spill.” Lina’s such a bubbly child, she constantly skips, rarely walks, given free will.

  “Ah. This is the life,” Eric says from the den, where he’s sprawled on the couch in front of his new wide-screen television. He did the grocery run, so he’s earned full couch-potato rights.

  “Ah. This is the life,” Jack echoes as he pushes his dump truck around the floor.

  “Ah. This is the life,” Lina says, skipping back into the kitchen.

  I laugh and, just like that, the missing ingredient occurs to me. “Um, Eric? How much do you love me?”

  “Enough to go back out and get whatever you forgot, if it can wait until halftime.”

  “That’s love.” I smile and lean back against the counter. Tipping back my beer bottle, I take a long sip. Life is good.

  Don’t open Pandora’s Box.

  One intercepted phone call in Goa, and it was over.

  “Who’s calling?” my mother asked. When her eyes widened, the hairs on my arms rose in foreboding. She looked directly at me. “Preity isn’t available right now. I’ll tell her you called.” She hung up. “Arsallan Khan. A friend of yours?”

  I nodded.

  “Just a friend.” A statement she wanted me to confirm, rather than a question.

  I couldn’t lie. I shook my head.

  “Preity,” she shot the two syllables of my name rapid-fire like two bullets. “Khan is a Muslim name. He is a Mussalman.”

  “I know.”

  “You know?” She set her jaw in a firm line. “How can you know and be more than friends?” She paced, cheeks red, breath labored. “You know, but you obviously don’t understand. You can’t understand the scars of Partition.” She shook her head, pain in her eyes. “It’s my fault. That’s what everyone will say. Your father and I shouldn’t have raised our children in America. We sold out on our heritage.”

  I ached for my mom when she talked this way. “That’s not true—”

  “See how you talk back! That would never happen in India. Children don’t contradict their parents!”

  I couldn’t defend myself—more backtalk—so I stood there with my gaze lowered as she delivered another of her lectures, her duty as a good Indian parent: tough love.

  “You learned trivial details of American history, but not even the most vital of Indian,” she said. “Your schools didn’t teach you one single thing about our holocaust, our wars, our independence, our leaders. Far more important the leaders of tomorrow can name Columbus’ three ships, your state bird, tree, and flower. That will help avert the next hostage crisis, or hijacking, or nuclear attack of your generation.”

  She was right that, up until then, everything Indian of relevance, consequence—everything critical to understanding problems facing the modern world—I learned from my parents. From their homeschooling. Even the significance of Gandhi.

  When the movie Gandhi hit theaters, my parents took me opening day. They cried through most of it, even parts that didn’t strike me as particularly emotional. Later, I learned their tears were as much, if not more, for the epic bloodshed that followed a nobly won independence.

  For me, India’s independence wasn’t just a history lesson, pages in some dull, dry textbook. My parents, my family, lived it. Partition isn’t a story. It’s their story:

  In 1947, after almost two centuries of British rule, India won independence, the triumph of a monumental freedom movement—nonviolent activism—led by Mohandas Gandhi, w
ho came to be known as Mahatma, meaning “great soul” in Sanskrit. “I’m willing to die for this cause,” Gandhi said, “but for no cause am I willing to kill.” And Albert Einstein said about him, “I believe Gandhi’s views were the most enlightened of all the political men in our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit: not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by nonparticipation in anything you believe is evil.”

  At the stroke of midnight, August 15, 1947, the British Raj turned over the keys to the kingdom, returning the stolen “jewel in the crown” to her rightful owners. Buffed and polished, yes, but bashed into pieces.

  Partitioned.

  Hacking off chunks of the northwest and northeast created two countries. Democratic, secular India in the middle, flanked on either side by Islamic Pakistan, “land of the pure,” a victory for the Muslim League. The theory: a separate homeland for the Muslim minority, should they wish to leave Hindu-majority India. The reality: the most colossal human migration and exchange of population in history. Unprecedented carnage.

  How did it happen? Who was to blame? Ask five different people and you’ll get five different answers. According to my parents and other family who survived to tell, fanatic leaders and militia groups played on communal fears and suspicions, and people of differing religions who’d managed to coexist in peace for centuries turned and raged against each other. For millions who suddenly found themselves on “the wrong side of the tracks,” remaining in their homes wasn’t an option. Driven by hope of a better future, or fear of peril, they got the hell out of Dodge.

  In the Punjab, my family’s ancestral state in the northwest, the dividing line carved by the British boundary commission onto a map, akin to a butcher’s knife slitting the throat of a Hindu’s sacred cow or a Muslim’s sacrificial goat, rendered ten million people homeless. Among them, my mother’s family.

  Forced to flee their beloved Lahore, “the Paris of India,” they were among millions of Hindus and Sikhs who migrated east. Simultaneously, millions of Muslims migrated west.