Places - 3

Earlier this week I was coming back through the lobby of my office building with the lunch I had just purchased in one hand, the other hand reaching in to find the electronic card that would let me in through the security turnstiles, when my boss, heading out to buy his own lunch appeared in my peripheral vision, his hand raised in a gesture demanding a high five.  I returned the gesture, trying to make it look as natural as possible given my discomfort with all high five and fist bump types of actions.  A few seconds ticked away during the process leaving nothing but a sense of absurdity in their wake.

A gesture of camaraderie such as the one noted above would have made so much more sense with anyone else.  In this case I just proceeded to the elevator with an expression of derisive mirth as I thought about all the stresses from just a few months ago, nights of lost sleep, expressions of lament to anyone who would care to listen, getting nauseous at the "this too shall pass" panacea that listeners offered.  All a distant memory now.  Not because these moments passed but because they became irrelevant.  How I felt a few months ago about the events that transpired was absurd, the events themselves were absurd and the way things stand now underscore absurdity encore because they don't appear to have followed from anything that preceded them.  Context appears to be as fungible and perishable as bananas on a supermarket shelf.

Our memories define us and one would assume how we behave today has some relationship to how we felt the day before, or what we did the day before, or what was done to us the day before, but that is so rarely the case.   We look for themes, we yearn to impose an ex-post narrative upon the scatter diagram within the Cartesian coordinates of our lives.  But if there is a pattern it is stretched on a canvas so grand in scale that we can't possibly discern it during our short lifetimes.

Take the cauliflower leaf for instance, the outline of which was being traced by my dad on graph paper, on a day when I had accompanied him to his office.  This was when he was working at Sabour Agricultural College in a place called Sabour, the back of the beyond of backward Bihar; not even remotely comparable to the whiteness of Canada or the bluish green Pacific charm of Hawaii.  I can't recall if Sabour was a village or a town or just something in between.  We lived there for a couple of years.  I was six years old and my brother was three.  I was somewhat fond of the place.  I never forgot the seven or eight mango trees around the house, the other families with kids my age all living in close proximity, the parks, the gardens.  It was a carefree time for a six year old.

What could be better than eating mangoes by the bucket and romping around wild? But in retrospect I sense it was a dark phase for my parents who had returned to India after six years of being in the United States.  Sketching the outlines of a cauliflower leaf on graph paper isn't something that a research scientist, used to working with state of the art electron microscope technology of those times, did.  It was random, it was absurd and I can't understand how it helped along the general narrative of our lives.  Ranipur and Kumaitha to Honolulu and Ottawa and then a place like Sabour makes it all look so random and so lacking in any grand design, just like the high fiving moment with my boss during a senseless filler moment of the day. But these interstitial phases of our lives, when we are waiting and wondering if something better will ever come along, often cause our biggest miseries.

We shared our living quarters with another family at Sabour.  It was a type of duplex with a large shared courtyard.  The lady on the other side was well settled in the life of Sabour and directed some taunts toward my mom who insisted that her two babies would never do any growing up in that godforsaken place.  She insisted that we would be out of there soon and that my brother and I would not forget our English and adopt the slow-as-molasses Bihari Hindi drawl of that region.  She was quite alarmed at the prospect of that happening!

In retrospect these were just two years of our lives but the two years must have felt like an eternity of miseries and worries to them at that time, a time when as a young couple with two young children, they were at the peak of their worries about what the future held and how they could either mold it and shape it or let it rest, contented or resigned to "fate".

Then out of the blue an opportunity materialized out of the ether, a new clearing in the woods, a new direction, setting us all on a path that could not have been logically deduced.  For my parents this was the move to Delhi.  The place where we were to be for the next ten to fifteen years.

So I sit here waiting for my clearing in the woods, for the path that's out there, obscured in fog or just unseen by me even if it sits in plain sight.  I know this much is true: whatever that next step is it's not something that will follow, de rigeur, from whatever it is I am doing at this moment.  I can't plan for it at least not in any conscious way.  But I do wish I was blessed with some fog lamps!

Places - 2

So many of us, especially the believers in a western, non-fatalist, deterministic line of thought are certain we can plan our lives.  Much effort and much thought goes into having a vision and then directing and acting in a self-written play, taking center stage, lifting the curtains on the enactment of our own scripts.  We want it rendered alive, drawn out of the recesses of our brains and made real.  Willpower plays a key role and certain cinematic cliches like "if you build it they will come" or people saying "dream big".

I am attracted to this line of thought as well.  I make lists, I set goals, I resolve to do certain things, not do certain things.  I gain immense satisfaction from checking things off my lists.  My notebooks and journals are full of plans and lists.  I have spreadsheets that track our expenses, I have repayment schedules chalked out for my debts, I have fitness goals, writing goals, I want to train hard enough to become a seasoned musician, I want to live in a home that isn't mortgaged and drive a car that's paid off, I want to share breakfast with my family every morning; I, like everyone else, believe that these things could make me happy because if I live here, in this country, at this point in time then I have to believe in the pursuit of happiness.  All my steps and all my missteps are taken in an elusive pursuit of happiness while the definitions of happiness keep morphing as I become a different person from one day to the next.

But this is what it always remains, despite the stacks of notebooks chock full of plans and lists and grand visions, we never move from pursuit to destination.  There's nothing wrong with an eternal pursuit, this is what life is all about, but as I grow older I realize that the most gratifying moments in my life have been the unplanned ones, the serendipitous ones.  Something unexpected happens, as it did for my Dad when he took off for Hawaii, and everything changes.  "Plans" almost always get relegated to the dark attic-like space in the surrounding ether that stores all the roads that weren't taken because we took detours from the most obvious plans, from the ones that appeared to be the most logical segues at any instant.

The most logical segue for me in 1988 certainly wasn't a final move to the United States.  I was in the middle of a master's degree in Economics.  I was uninspired and listless and not at all at home with the mind-boggling squiggles of Econometrics.  The prospect of another year of mastering something that was so challenging and so uninteresting was unpalatable in the extreme but I was resigned to it.  I was sticking to the plan and willing to put myself through every stage of the torture, despite distractions, despite immense boredom.  The plan was to finish that degree.  But something unexpected happened again when my dad got a Fulbright scholarship that was to take him on a tour of universities within several states in the US.

I remember those days, I remember standing at the terrace of our New Delhi flat at Mandakini Enclave, gazing at the horizons, wondering what life had in store for me.  Boredom was the most overwhelming state back then, with distraction close on its heels.  I also had a very distressing asthma condition and my parents had been assured by a doctor at the Patel Chest Institute that my problem might go away with a change of venue; a change that would take me 7,000 miles away, perhaps.

So the biggest and most pleasant surprise of my life was when mom and dad asked me if I wanted to accompany dad to the US.  As if they needed to ask! Of course, of course! I had never wanted anything more than I wanted that.

I was often asked what I would do in the US.  Unlike others my age who came here having secured an admission to an Ivy League institution, or some others who got married early and followed a spouse here, I didn't have a plan.  I used to say I would "earn and learn", that this is what Americans did.  A vision of learning while earning was all I had, no other plans, no other details fleshed out.   And even this broad vision was only trotted out for the curious, the nosy.  All I wanted was to break free, to start afresh.  I wanted to see my own footprints in the sand as my fingers slipped from my dad's guiding grasp, amidst a pool of tears - both his and mine - as I walked on with steps that were shaky and determined at the same time.

Places - 1

I like listening to Ranipur and Kumaitha stories whenever I am sitting in a living room of the 17th floor of my parent's apartment building in Ottawa, watching the sun set at the Rideau River, the skies the color of mystic topaz.  In my mind, I occupy some sort of a moving point within the imaginary lines of the scalene triangle marked out by these three points on the globe: Ranipur, Kumaitha and Ottawa.  Or perhaps the boundaries of my existence don't map out a triangle at all; There would be too many points left out in a shape as restrictive as a triangle.  What of Honolulu, Patna, Sabour, Delhi, Columbia, Washington DC, Baltimore, Hackettstown and New York? Perhaps it's more of an amorphous and amoebic shape that our footprints have traced.

People are always curious about my antecedents.  They want to know where I am from.  I still haven't figured out a short answer to this question.  What could the short answer be? My parents still don't have any trouble saying they are from India and my daughter could just say New Jersey and be done with it.

I don't have the luxury of a short answer in a country where attention spans are short and most questions are rhetorical; demanding a non-answer or no answer at all, and the question is asked in the first place because the person doing the asking is stocking some shelves in his or her brain and wants to be able to find a special shelf for me.  The answer I give could put me on a shelf for which I don't particularly care. 

When I have the luxury of a leisurely answer I tell them I was born in Hawaii (at the US-Canada border the officers sometimes want to know how that came to be), grew up in New Delhi, did some more growing up in Maryland and DC and then ended up in New Jersey.  An answer that could be a head-scratcher for those shelf-stockers.  In the end I probably get stashed on a shelf reserved for miscellany or exotics.  Of course there are always those who walk up to me and want to know, "habla Espanol?" and still others who ask if I am from Ethiopia or Somalia - maybe something about the longish nose, the eyes the curly hair, the dark complexion, who knows?

I can't name any one place as a starting point for me.  Even though, as a child I used to view the slides and photographs from Hawaii as often as I could, I was entranced by the colors on the island, the blues, the greens, the exquisite colors of the saris my mom wore, saris that were still fresh from her trousseau.  She never gave the impression of being in an alien environment there, she always looked gorgeous and at home, even with her two long plaits of thick hair; a hairstyle not seen in 1960s Hawaii.  They were so young and in such a perfect place.  I recall with vivid clarity a picture of my mom standing next to a hibiscus plant, the colors were so rich, so tempting, I used to feel I could sink deep into the picture if I stared long enough and hard enough.

As the show went on a little baby made an appearance in the frames projected on the walls and that baby born in the month of June, the month of the pearl, on an island that is often referred to as the pearl of the Pacific, was enveloped in all the love and care her two very young parents showered on her.

Every time I saw these slides I felt special.  When school was dreadful, when friends were hard to come by, when teachers frightened me and any spectacular academic achievement seemed impossible in an intensely competitive world, I could lose myself in pictures of Hawaii and convince myself that my life would be exciting and different, because the starting point of my narrative was unusual...in my mind.  The shimmering Pacific of my dreams always soothed and comforted me and kept me from lapsing into the dread of ordinariness.

So they reminisce now, towering high above the streets of Ottawa.  They launch Google Earth on their computers once a day and trace the rural roads that lead right up to their ancestral homes in Ranipur and Kumaitha.

Dad peers at the aerial view of Ranipur, a small village near the city of Bettiah, in the middle of the erstwhile Bettiah Raj, where he took his very first steps.  His dad, a freedom fighter, a Gandhian, born at the tail end of the 19th century, couldn't see beyond the vision of an India free of the British.  That was the only thing on his mind.  He was beaten by the British, jailed by them for passive resistance and satyagraha and each instance made his resolve stronger.  But there were some moments of reflection when he gazed upon his son playing in the courtyard and dad remembers my Baba asking him,"What will you do when you grow up? Will you be a rickshaw puller?" Maybe he knew India would be free and independent soon enough but he couldn't envision a bright future for his son within independent India.

Mom traces the roads that led up to the village where she grew up, a village called Kumaitha.  I always thought Kumaitha was a funny sounding name, but she mentioned it came about when Kumbhkarana, on his quest to vanquish Rama and company, sat there for some rest and relaxation, "Kumbh baitha" (Kumbh sat here) became Kumaitha.  I recall the maternal side of the my family being constantly ribbed and ridiculed by my dad about their propensity for long siestas, a la Kumbhkarana.

My mom's grandfather and my own grandfather were contemporaries and friends.  Both of them fighting the British in the Gandhian way, both passionate about the cause, they rode the crest of this passion all the way, until they breathed their last.  Their dedication, their work, their sacrifices bore fruit.

I hear these stories and make attempts to juxtapose the trajectory of my own life against the stories of these ancestors and it makes me question the heft of "nature" in the "nature vs nurture" debate.  Do I possess these genes of passion, of conviction? Or did nurture overwhelm nature completely, vanquishing it, making me a privileged and complacent person, lackadaisical about so many things and taking so much for granted?

I live in a world where I don't have to imagine my daughter pulling a rickshaw.  But she is also a child of privilege, how many things would she take for granted?

Dad and mom talk about a large chunk of their pre-Independence childhood spent playing in the dirt.  Dad was in the Gandhian system of basic schooling.  He tells me about Basic School and how all they did was weave thread from cotton, dig the earth using a shovel, plant things.  There wasn't much emphasis on anything academic.  The focus appeared to be the development of efficient agrarian skills.  He never wore anything but khadi growing up.  My grandfather passed away when he was twelve and I hear stories about the rest of his childhood where all the basic needs of food, shelter, clothing were essentially being covered by the wave of goodwill that was my grandfather's legacy.  I hear about him trudging several miles, the first of every month, to collect the money for his school expenses from someone who wanted to see him get a good education.  He didn't enter the world of academics until a much later age and had no English until 8th grade.

It is always amazing and fascinating to me that he ended up in Hawaii on a grant from the East West Center of the University of Hawaii for a doctoral program in plant physiology, given his entirely rural background; by some benevolent quirk of fate the rickshaw pulling prophecy was dodged and dismissed.

This fascination of mine will endure for me as it does for my parents.  There must have been so many days of despondence, of not knowing what life had in store for them, of wondering, of frustration until things literally turned on a dime (or 25 paisa coin) for my dad and someone encouraged him to fill up an application that would have him winging his way more than half way across the world.  The 25 paisa application that he reluctantly filled out at the urging of a professor at his college.

Practice makes perfect ...does it?

I thought things are supposed to get easier with practice but I am not seeing much evidence of that lately.

I’ve been walking across (west to east) Manhattan everyday for the past year now. The walk lasts anywhere from 20-30 minutes based on the level of briskness. The brisker the better - say the health and fitness journals - so I walk, making up my own little games along the way, for instance the one where I take two steps per sidewalk square for as long as I can sustain it and the one where I resolve to cover each white strip of the cross walk in a single stride a la the Beatles’ Abbey Road album cover. So shouldn’t this walk now be the easiest thing in the world for me? Painless?

I should be stronger, muscles trained, breathing steady, I should be in a good position to break into a run any day now; the crowds should be gawking as they see me pass by in a zippy flash, after all I have been trying to walk faster and faster!

But hey…what’s this? Sounds like the patellas registering a protest, threatening a strike! Instead of zipping across town I am now a hobbling geriatric. What happened? Instead of adapting and strengthening they chose to just get worn out, synovial fluid depleted, cartilage rubbing against bone.

Agnes Oaks, principal ballerina with the English National ballet, who has been dancing since the age of 10 said in an interview that injuries have often been the low point of her career, that they have stopped her many times. She has been dancing for twenty eight years, putting in several hours of practice everyday, why is it then that she is still prone to injuries? With so many years of practice and experience hasn’t it been possible to learn how to avoid injuries?

But that’s ballet. I am just talking about plain old walking! I have been walking for many years now. I can’t quite recall the precise moment of delirious joy when I had the epiphany that walking on the soles of my feet wasn’t just possible but much more convenient than crawling around on all fours. I rose and have never looked back. My heels got rougher…they figured they had to, in order to resist and retaliate against the pounding they took. They didn’t just shut down and quit on me. So why can’t the patellas join the party?

The more you do something, the better you are supposed to be at it. It is supposed to work with mathematics, music, dance, writing, airplane flying, sailing, spacewalking, surgery, toll collecting, paper pushing…you name it… hence the universal insistence on experience. If you’ve done it enough you should be doing it faster, better, smarter, or so the story goes. One can tack on another layer to this, the “self-fulfilling prophecy” layer.

So if you tell yourself that each repetition is making you better and stronger at any activity, if you believe in yourself and have a Paul Coelho like faith in the universe egging you on in your endeavors then you are doubly assured that things are going to fall in place, sans missteps, wrong turns, twisted ankles and smarting knees. The flipside is supposed to be true too, i.e., if you have low expectations your performance is dismally proportionate to them. Which is why the Little Engine That Could kept telling himself - "I think I can, I think I can".

And yet something always goes wrong – especially when you want it all to be as flawless as ever –like the presidential oath getting flubbed because the Chief Justice thinks he has it all memorized, leaving some talking heads wondering if we indeed had a president!

I keep digressing to presidents and ballerinas, maybe trying to see if I am in good company with my walking woes, my music playing woes, battles with rhythm and tempo, my work and home and time management woes and my occasional absent mindedness …wait…occasional??

That’s one thing where practice has actually made me perfect: from leaving water bottles hanging on trees, losing lunch boxes, pens, pencils, giving my Mom a blank look when asked where the spare change that a vendor returned disappeared and coming up with no better explanation than, “it flew away with the wind” to more recently, and on more than one occasion, wearing a different shoe on each foot – wondering why I developed a sudden limp - standing in an elevator wondering why it wasn’t moving while repeatedly hitting the button that corresponded to the floor I was on. Yes, when it comes absent mindedness – I am honing this particular science to perfection!