foreigner – whatmamathinks

I lied through my teeth for almost three months.

“I have double shift at work today. I have to leave by 9.00 am’ – was a common one. Every Saturday I would leave home after a faltering, mumbling lie. Walk with a fluttering heart towards Golpark bus stop, the heart rate increased as I neared Ram Krishna Mission. As I turned the corner I always broke out into a sweat of happy anticipation and guilt.

“Will he be there?” He always was. He stood in front of the Ram Krishna Mission, brighter than a sunshine, facing the corner where I would come from. As I turned the corner, his face split into a huge smile and I glittered like a diamond under its brightness.

After sneaking around for a few months, I decided my over active conscience can not bear the burden of this sneaky rendezvous, I needed to tell my parents that I was seeing someone. And the ‘someone’ belonged to a far away land.

So one summer afternoon as I lay next to my mother, I decided the moment was as good as any.

“I wanted to tell you for a while, I met someone I like.”

My mother’s head turned, excitement, apprehension in her eyes.

“Oh, really? Who is he?”

I knew the answer to “who is he” would be the hardest. He belonged to a different country, a country very far away.

I wanted them to meet him and nervously, they agreed. I was nervous, my parents were nervous and I believe Sean was nervous as well, although he does not admit it today.

The day finally dawned when he was supposed to come. Our house was cleaned thoroughly, the tiny living room was given a make over, the curtains were washed, cushion covers replaced, my seventeen cats were reprimanded and asked to be on their best behavior. My mother supervised the work and asked me if I thought the preparations will be up to Sean’s satisfaction. I reassured her he won’t really care. And then there was the question of what to offer him to eat. Although I had been seeing Sean for three months, we really had not shared a meal since our meetings were short and between meals. I had no idea what he ate or what he liked. I was not helpful, I just said, “Oh, don’t fret about it.”

Finally in the evening, Sean’s car entered our narrow alleyway. My mother was nervous and a little angry with me for putting her in this position where I thrust her into this realm of the ‘unknown’, out of her comfort zone. She did not know what to say to a man who was not from our country and did not speak her language! Why did I not find an Indian boy to fall in love with? Anyway, Sean entered our house holding two beautiful and expensive looking bouquets. He extended the bigger one to my mother and the smaller one to me. Neither ma nor I had ever received flowers from anyone, let alone a man. Flowers, rajanigandha sticks, were bought on our birthdays and put in a vase when we expected guests. We were baffled to receive flowers and worried right away if we had two vases handy to put them in. Sean seemed very comfortable. He shook hands with my dad and settled comfortably in the couch. Ma asked in halting English if he wanted any tea. Sean said, “Yes, sure. Thank you!”

At this point, my mother asked me to follow her. I went in towards the kitchen. She turned around to me with and said with gritted teeth, sweating a little,

“Ekta kotha o bujhte parchina!! Ki kore kotha bolbo?” (I can’t understand a word he says, how will I carry on a conversation?)

I said, with a concealed chuckle, “I will translate.”

After hot, milky tea and some halted conversation, mainly around me and how we met, a little about his work, they offered Sean some sweet yogurt – mishti doi, a specialty of Bengal. He accepted and ate it. Later I found out, he does not drink tea and he hates yogurt of any kind! The evening ended, Sean left and we started talking about him behind his back.

“He seems like a nice man. But the accent! Oh the accent! Can’t understand anything! How do you understand what he says?”

I said, “You get used to it. I can understand him fine!”

A trend started. He became a regular in our house. He had a very active social life, yet most evenings he came over to just hang out Indian style, sitting on our big bed with his legs folded under him, mainly laughing and listening, teasing my mother and perhaps observing the middle class Bengali culture through us.

I have been in several embarrassing situations and my parent’s unabashed pride in my achievements was certainly one of them. The pride was sweet, very endearing yet embarrassing. My trophies, cups and certificates were treasured in our Godrej almirah and Sean, once he became a bit more familiar, was subjected to each and every one of them, followed by a lecture on how smart I was and how well spoken and how many debates and public speaking competitions I had won. I was a catch and he better believe he is lucky to have received my attention – this message was delivered in subtle and sometimes not so subtle ways by those two who did consider me their prized possession, no matter how little I mattered to the world. I tried to divert the conversation, but I was ignored mostly. Sean showed interest with a quick amused glance in my direction and a meaningful smile which conveyed, ‘Oh you will be teased about it later!’

As our relationship grew and became richer so did his association with my immediate and extended family. My grandmother became Sean’s fast friend. They were often found in a corner in a family gathering, didun talking nineteen to the dozen to Sean about her trips to Belur, about her arthritis pain and other metaphysical discourses. Sean nodded and contributed to the conversation in English. This continued after our marriage and till she passed away to the other side.

A relationship between two individuals does not stay limited to just them, does it? It spreads its sweetness (or bitterness, as the case may be) to the people related to those individuals. Sean’s zest for life and his ability to spread love and cheer made him a favorite not only with me but with my family. We had our challenges in bringing our love to fruition but I believe our love and respect for not only each other but for those who we love helped us overcome those.

After eighteen years of togetherness I look back on the day when my two worlds met and how they interacted with each other. There was that fear of the unknown, there was curiosity, there was a little pride, there was a lot of stress and there was happiness too. It is with a smile that I look back and reminisce on how it all started, how we found acceptance and love in not only each other’s hearts but also in the hearts of family who nurtured us.

Recently, I watched a movie The Best Exotic Marigold hotel where a group of elderly British people make a conscious choice to live their golden days in a retirement facility in Jaipur, India. They all have their unique reasons for doing so – one goes to get a hip replacement, one goes looking for lost love, one goes due to financial difficulties. But the movie is not the reason I decided to write the blog. It is because of all the memories the movie brought back. Memories of incidents, memories of people who came in our lives for a brief time. Incidents that made me fill up with inexplicable pride that I was born in India, incidents that made me enraged over the cunning of some of my fellowmen, incidents that made me indignant against how, many in my country, were treated, incidents that made me want to hide my face in shame, and incidents that made my heart melt at the show of human kindness.

Sean and I hosted many friends and family from the United States during our six-year stint in New Delhi. The movie brought back memories of how India can be a complete onslaught on an individual’s senses. Nothing can prepare one for the country. No matter how many tour books one reads, how many videos one watches, one can’t comprehend India unless one has felt the full-fledged blast of the country on one’s sensory organs at arrival. The smell, the explosion of colors, the multitude of people, the complete disregard for personal space, the honking cars, the errant cows, the street dogs, the weaving auto rikshaws, the little make shift shops along the road – the little composites of the larger picture. And hidden within the chaos is the amazing sunset over the river Ganges in Varanasi, the silhouette of a fisherman’s boat drifting idly on the Hooghly river as the sun sets over the horizon, the tiny little nameless flower growing from the crack in a concrete within the moldy buildings of a city, the kind auto driver advising me, like one of my own, to give a warm bath to my rain drenched children as soon as I get home, so they don’t catch a cold.

The question that friends and family asked me often was, how did we deal with the abject poverty staring right at us, wherever we went. My brother-in-law was very disturbed by the people, little children and elderly folks, begging on the streets. I said ‘We have to learn to look past them because it is impossible for us to help each individual that accost us! You have to ignore them, develop a slightly clinical detachment or else, their sorrow will engulf you!” He said, “I can’t. I simply can not!” At the end of his visit, the poverty, especially the little children begging on the streets wore him down. I remember him breaking down in tears after sitting at the train station in Agra, surrounded by little children asking him for money, food!

I realized, after watching the movie, how bewildering India must have seemed to the visitors who came to tour. Living in the midst of the chaos, I didn’t completely empathize with my guests. While they shuddered at the sight of little, scrawny children hitting the window of our air-conditioned car in the hope of money, I nonchalantly talked on about the sight-seeing I had planned for them or the place I intended to take them for dinner. Their focus was somewhere else, I realize now. Since I lived with the problem, it ceased to be one, for me.

Sean developed his unique way of dealing with beggars during his eight year stay in Kolkata and Delhi. When elderly beggars asked for alms, he folded his hands and bent his head – the Indian gesture of Namaste. As they insisted, he smiled and did the namaste again. With children, he established a relationship by either juggling (he does juggle relatively well) or making funny faces or asking them their name in atrocious Hindi. The result was unadulterated, joyful laughter. The white man playing the fool. It never failed to elicit a smile, a laugh.

Every Saturday, we went to the American club where we played sports, ate pizza and swam. At a traffic light, about 5-7 children ran to the cars asking for money or food. They were led by a wild haired, young girl of about 12. She managed the kids, led them to the cars and when the lights changed led them safely back to the sidewalk. But it always made us nervous to see them weave between the chaotic traffic. They came to our car as well. Sean rolled down his window and shook their hands, I smiled and baby Sahana gave them toothy grins from her car seat in the back. One very hot summer afternoon, Sean offered the wilting children his water bottle filled with Gatorade. The faces were worth watching. They had expected plain water but what they tasted was so much better, what a treat. From then on, it was not money they wanted but “Bhaiya paani, paani” (brother, water, water)! We started carrying extra bottles of Gatorade to share. They drank quickly while the light was red, passed on the bottles to us as the light changed and swiftly moved back to safety as the cars started moving. The girl made sure each child was safe. She did a lot of talking and laughing, all in Hindi. Sean responded with a big grin and some broken Hindi. Neither understood what was being said. I smiled at the exchange.

A couple of days after Rakhi, the girl brought a rakhi to our stopped car and tied it around Sean’s wrist. Rakhi is a beautiful festival celebrating love between a brother and a sister. Sisters tie strings around their brothers’ wrist wishing long life and happiness. Brothers swear to protect their sisters. I won’t go into the whole spiel of gender discrimination here. Suffice it to say it is a festival of love, the intentions behind are beautiful and good. Anyway, Sean was touched beyond words. We didn’t have anything to give her. So the next time we met Sean got her a warm, soft shawl to keep her warm during Delhi’s bitter cold. She touched the shawl in delight and felt the softness against her cheek. “Accha hai, bhaiya!” (Its good, brother) and ran away as the light turned green.

We continued to see her and her charges for the next few months that we lived in Delhi. We never saw her wearing the shawl ever and wondered if she got to keep it, after all. Then we left Delhi…..and I forgot about her. Till I saw the movie, and the young wild haired girl came back to my mind. Now I don’t stop thinking about her. I wonder how she fared. Did she find happiness or is she still roaming the streets, begging or selling….herself?