Chasing the sun in Kolkata.
Tag: Photography
You are having a boy!
Five year old Sahana was sitting at the ultra sound technician’s office with eyes tightly shut! We were about to find out the gender of the baby in my tummy, and Sahana wanted none of it. She wanted a baby sister and she wanted it to be a surprise! The nice technician said she was not going to say it out loud, but write it for us. When we found out, we told her she could open her eyes. She immediately demanded to know the sex of the baby! So much for keeping her eyes shut. Her face fell when she found out. A boy??? Eewwwwww!
I didn’t feel quite the same way, yet, I have to admit, the word boy sounded ominous for a second. Being an only child, and having parented a girl, I was ready for another one. But what did I know about boys? How would I ever relate? Sean kept reassuring me, boys are easier, and I tried to feel calm about parenting a rowdy boy! Poor Ryan never had a chance, I had already labeled him, before he was born.
Ryan turned out to be a laid back, sweet baby with the exuberance of a puppy. He loved rolling around in the grass, sliding on smooth surfaces scaring his mother that he will have no knees left by the time he is ten, romped around making loud scary sounds but also spent hours in his world of imagination with action figures and toy cars.
Parenting a boy and a girl has had its unique joys and challenges, for sure. The girl is verbal, shares stories…..unasked. I can easily put my arms around her in a crowded mall. She puts her arm around my waist and gives me a squeeze back. She has no problem being affectionate in public, but not the boy. If I put my arm around him in public I can feel his little body stiffen. His face goes red if I kiss him in front of his friends. Yet in the privacy of our home, he sits on my lap, we cuddle as he either reads a book or tells me stories of his life…. when asked. I live for those moments.
Sahana, as a little girl, lived in the world of ‘what if’s. Life was a beautiful, magical journey and she was full of joy and wonder of it all. Mostly I marveled at her imagination, sometimes I did say, “One more what if, then we will talk about something else!” Ryan is philosophical and pragmatic. He likes to think of profound thoughts like is God real even though He doesn’t have a mom and dad. Or what were the bad guys thinking when they flew two planes in the twin towers in New York! I mean what is the point in killing themselves and thousands and thousands of people. They made a very, very bad choice, indeed. He went a step further and called them ‘stupid’ with my permission.
Sahana’s school stories mainly were of academics, grades, school projects, girl dramas and crushes as she got older. And she is… let’s just say she can make a career as a thespian if things don’t work out as an anthropologist. Ryan’s stories of school generally revolve around two main ideas – recess and lunch. Last year, if asked what he liked most about school, he answered….. you guessed it, recess and lunch. This year physical education has found a place in his heart. I eagerly wait for math and reading to be included there somewhere…hasn’t happened yet! He seems blissfully unaware of any slights against him. “So and so told me not to sit next him today because I talk too much and he wanted to have a quiet bus ride!” “Did that make you feel bad?” I asked anxiously, ready to wrap him in my arms and wipe some tears. His surprised response was ‘Why?’ Ohhhh! Because…….
Ryan gave a reason for not talking to girls much, lately. He loves, or rather loved, playing with girls. He defended them when other boys said “Girls are disgusting.” His line was “Girls are not disgusting, your mom is a girl, do you think she is disgusting?” He came up with that on his own. So when I saw my champion defender of little girls not talking about them any more, I was curious. “Don’t you play with girls?” I asked. I loved that he stood up for his girl friends. He mostly ignored my question for as long as he could , finally he couldn’t withstand my interrogation (not many people can) and ‘fessed up, “I get cool stuff from the boys, they talk about real things. Girls talk too much about ‘what if’s!” He summed it up for me, the difference between parenting a boy and a girl. They balance my world, both the ‘what if’ and the ‘real’!
The Japanese song.
I need to write a little bit of the background before I launch into the story. I am ashamed to admit my children do not have great taste in music. They have atrocious taste. I didn’t listen to classical music when I was pregnant with them, like all the good pregnancy books said I should. I listened to Hindi pop songs instead and now I am paying the price. After the candid confession, just one piece of advice to would-be moms, turn on that Beethoven, pronto, if you don’t want to be listening to Katy Perry and Eminem for a greater chunk of your life. Not that there is anything wrong with those singers, it’s just not my kind of music. Since these songs(noise) are ingrained in my brain, I hum them occasionally as I go about my chores till a gleeful, gloating voice calls out ‘Huh, you are singing Britney Spears mom! That’s our music! Haha!” Oh yes, there is certainly an imaginary line drawn between their music and our music. And sometimes when I cross the line it is like crossing over to the Dark Side, like I would be summoning the Death Eaters, momentarily! Tracy Chapman, however, is our neutral zone, along with a handful of others. On long car rides, we all can agree to sing ‘TALKIN’ ‘BOUT A REVOLUTION SOUNDS…..like a whisper…’! Thank goodness for small mercies!
For a while, it was country music. A lot of tractors, guns, trucks, finding ticks on girlfriend’s body (not kidding, there is a song of that nature by Brad Paisly, look it up) till Ryan started talking with a distinct Southern drawl. After the country music phase, Sahana and Ryan got obsessed with Rihanna’s S&M song. The refrain goes something like this…(in case you are not a Rihanna fan)
’cause I may be bad, But I’m perfectly good at it
Sex in the air, I don’t care, I like the smell of it
Sticks and stones may break my bones
But chains and whips excite me.
Now, I don’t pay much attention to the songs that kids listen to. Yes, I admit, that is negligent parenting at its best. When they ask me to turn on the radio in the car, I turn it on to their station, heave a sigh of relief that I won’t have to hear ‘she looked at me the wrong way’ or ‘he is reaching out and touching me’ . One day, I heard my kids singing along with this particular song and I almost hit the brakes!!! Sahana, having had the talk on ‘birds and bees’ was either humming the ‘sex’ part or using the word ‘muffin’ instead of ‘sex’! Young Ryan didn’t care, he was screaming ‘Sex in the air…….excite me!’ I felt like a complete failure as a mother. I failed to instill good taste for music in my children! They are grooving to the beat of ‘chains and whips excite me’! They will not grow up as cultured music aficionados. Oh, the sorrow! I quickly changed the station to sports and was accosted by a combined shriek of “Mom….that was like our favorite song! Can you please turn it back???” “No, sorry! My turn to listen to the Orioles update!” I don’t even like the Orioles anymore. They lose almost every single game.
These days they listen to a band called Mindless Behavior. Don’t you love the name? Now that I think about it, I believe they relate to the name of the band ‘Mindless Behavior’ more than their songs, but what do I know? Anyway, this band, Mindless Behavior is made up of four sweet, thirteen year old boys who have extremely fun dance moves. The song that my kids love is ‘Where is Mrs Right? I want to meet her, travel all across the world just to see her….!’ The music video shows a Geography class, the geography teacher pulls down a map to teach the kids about different countries. All of a sudden, our four, young friends feel the need to go to Switzerland, Japan etc to look for Mrs. Right…..at age thirteen!!! My kids have been singing this song non-stop. They sing four lines, and then start from the beginning and sing those four lines again, and again and again and….till I scream “STOP THAT, NOW!!!”. When she sees poor Mom has reached her limit for tolerance, Sahana quickly puts on Yo Yo Ma to calm my nerves. It works.
But my husband doesn’t get to hear the various renditions of this song since he is mostly at work or traveling. So the other day, we were coming back from some sporting activity, the kids started singing the dreaded song of finding Mrs. Right! It would be tough for me to really write down how they sang the song but I will try.
Where is Mrs.Riii I gotta see haaaaa(her)
Travel all acos (across) the wol (world) jus (just) to mee’ (meet) haaa (her)
Get me on a fliii (flight) I gotta see haaaa
Travel all acos the worl’ jus’ to mee haaa.
Travel to LA and maybe to the Bay,
Come to Chi-Town, she mi’ (might) be out the states,
Book a fliii to London, book a fliii to France,
Cawe (Can we) go to Switzerland, cawe (can we) hit Japan?
After hearing mee haaa, see haaa, and the word Japan a few times, Sean, his chest puffed up with fatherly pride, asked me with sweet innocence, ‘Wow, they are singing a Japanese song? Where did they learn that?’ Amidst the cacophony that they themselves were creating, this comment was heard by the singers. Indignation, disbelief! Is daddy for real? A torrent of words like this followed, ‘Dad, what do you mean Japanese? It is a hit song from Mindless behavior, you don’t know anything about modern music…..’ and it went on and on. I sat back, relaxed and let the spouse take the beating! Oh, honey! You need a crash course in modern pop music that your children listen to. Can you please drive them around to their activities….. at least for a week?
Sky….and my favorite bare tree, now budding.
..and then the war began.
In our family, a major war begins with a simple nudge, an innocent poke or a certain look. The parents planned a family walk through the woods on a nice winter morning. It started off pleasantly, with good cheer but didn’t last. I documented the fight instead of mediating.
Wild things…
First snow of the season in 2012! The boy and the dog couldn’t wait to get outside. The boy bundled up and called the dog to follow. I captured two happy souls and some happy moments in my camera!
Ryan believes Sage will outlive him. He will designate somebody to take care of Sage when his time finally comes. We tried to tell him, dogs don’t live that long. The thought brought tears, so we let it rest. I hope when he is a grown man, looking back upon his childhood, he will remember these happy times he spent with a big, yellow dog by his side.
I am brown and I smell of chocolate chip cookies.
Sahana was born to a brown mom and a white dad in New Delhi with light skin, brown eyes and brown hair. In parks and play grounds, well-meaning people cooed over the baby, turned to me, the brown mom and asked if I was the ayah (nanny). I was indignant the first couple of times, ‘No, I am her MOTHER!’ Once the novelty of being the first time mom wore off, I found it humorous and replied, ‘I am her ayah and mother rolled into one!” I am not sure children notice the color of skin much, but I distinctly remember the day Sahana looked at me with wonder and said “Mom, you are brown!!!” She was close to three and I honestly think that was the first time she noticed my color being different from her. Before we had children, Sean and I sometimes wondered how our children will feel about being of mixed race because children desperately needed to belong. Sahana had no problem, whatsoever. We told her she was special since she belonged to two countries and she truly believed us. Fluent in Hindi, Bengali and English, she mingled with her Indian friends and her American family and friends with equal ease. In fact, she loves to be different, loves to be noticed. In a Ravens (football team) pep rally, she was the single brave soul who dared to wear the jersey of the nemesis, Patriots (a rival football team) and sit right in front to be noticed. To this day, she revels in her uniqueness at having two ethnicities, Irish American and Indian. As a little girl, she boasted to anybody who would listen, “I am half American and half Indian”! Later, when she learnt percentage, that changed to “I am 30 percent American and 70 percent Indian because I was born there!”
Young Ryan was very different. He was born in the United States. He didn’t feel he needed to belong to two countries. He wanted to be like most of his preschool friends, white and American. He loved his Indian mom but denied his Indian heritage. In fact, he got angry if we pointed out that he was darker than his Caucasian friends. He noticed the difference in our colors early on. He always identified as mommy and Sahana being from India, while daddy and he were from America. Unlike his sister, he didn’t want to stand out, didn’t want to be different, he just wanted to blend in. I felt sorry for him and it would be a lie if I said I didn’t feel bad about his attitude towards part of his heritage. I noticed a gradual change in his outlook towards his ethnicity when he went to kindergarten. Slowly he started to acknowledge his difference from his other white friends and felt good about it. Two things helped, school and our dog! We are fortunate to live in a very diverse community. Once he went to school, he befriended children from India, Pakistan, Korea, China. School talked about our differences, read cool books on how wonderful it was to be different, how special. That helped. He started telling people he had not one, but two countries. Our lab mix, Sage helped as well. Ryan considers Sage his dog brother and shares a wonderful connection with him. Ryan, a die hard Ravens fan sometimes roots for the arch rival Steelers, when they are not playing the Ravens. Reason? Sage was born in Pennsylvania, (Steelers are a football team from Pittsburg, Pennsylvania). A Ravens fan rooting for Steelers, that, my friends, is true love! If Sage is a mix then it is OK for Ryan to be a mix too. Now he is proud to call himself a mutt like Sage. I do tell him he doesn’t have to go that far but….
Sometimes, when I go to have lunch with Ryan in his school, his little friends pipe up with the refreshing innocence of a six-year-old, “Are you Ryan’s mother? But his color is different than yours!” So now he introduces me to his friends this way, “Oh this is my mom, she is brown because she is from India. And I am part Indian too, but I am not brown because my dad is from Boston!” The other 6-year-old he talks to, generally gives us a blank stare and says “Do you want to play ball?”
The cutest thing both my kids say to me is “Mom, your color is brown and you smell of chocolate all the time. In fact, you smell like chocolate chip cookies!” I like the sound of that….. a lot. Maybe, just maybe I can bottle this chocolate chip fragrance and sell it to make some dough? Hmmmm….let me think about that one!
Dating a white guy.
I started dating my “white” husband in mid nineties in a very parochial (I think) place called Kolkata, India. A white man with a brown woman was a rare sight in those days in my city so we got our fair share of snide comments and stares, bumping-into-telephone-pole kind of stares. We roamed the streets of Kolkata, the gardens of the National Library, the campus of my university, exchanging ideas and learning about our vastly different cultures in the musty yet magical Kolkata evenings. We even sat on the grounds of the infamous Victoria Memorial (supposedly anti-social activity is rampant there in the evenings), till the ‘peace keepers’ felt we were disturbing the sensitive morality of the city by sitting next to each other and drove us away, along with other amorous couples. I believe, it was there that I was called a “lady of the night” keeping company of a white man. I have to defend my earlier statement of Kolkata being extremely parochial here, where ever we went, we met a relative, a friend or an acquaintance of mine. And since I was sneaking out to meet my boyfriend, that was a ‘slight’ inconvenience. I don’t even want to talk about what happened when one of my aunts saw me walking down the street with Sean, holding hands.
Our romance survived all the surreptitious rendezvous, or in other words, sneaking around and we decided to take the plunge. My wedding was the first Catholic mass I ever attended. Growing up, I had dreamed of getting married in a white wedding dress, they looked so ethereal and beautiful in movies. Yet when the time and opportunity came to get married in one, I opted to wear a sari. I got married in Catholic ceremony, wearing a golden and black sari, Sean looked dashing in a tux. After the homily, the priest started giving the communion. I followed Sean’s lead through out the entire mass, like a two step dance routine. I kneeled when he did, stood up when he did, sat when he sat. So when he extended his hand to recieve the communion, I did the same. I am pretty sure Sean pinched me then, to deter my enthusiasm, although he denies it now. Instead of giving me Communion, the embarrassed priest put his hand on my head and blessed me. I was slightly miffed as I went through the rest of the ceremony.
It was important to Sean to incorporate some Hindu traditions along with the Catholic. For him our marriage was not just a union of two people but also a union of two cultures and two religions. He wanted to know “what can we do that is a Hindu wedding ritual”? How would I know? My focus in a Hindu wedding was always on fun, frolic and food. Did I ever pay attention to the rituals? So we did the very basic sindur ceremony where the bridegroom puts vermillion powder on the bride’s forehead, after we exchanged rings. I was just ecstatically happy to sign the marriage certificate and be done with it, but the rituals, both Catholic and Hindu, were important and meaningful to my husband, I respected that. Even the euphoria of marrying the sweetest guy didn’t take away the feeling of being slighted by the priest. I asked Sean why the heck was I denied the bread that everyone got, that too on my own wedding! That was NOT a nice way to treat a bride! He explained I had to be a Catholic to receive the body of Christ. I felt discriminated against, but let it slide. Later, when we went to enter the Temple of Jagannath in Puri, in India, Sean was denied entry for being a non-Hindu, I was appalled again. How can one be kept out from the house of God?
We decided to go to Cyprus and Israel for our honeymoon. Cyprus, because Sean had a meeting there, and Israel, because we felt it would be symbolic to go to a place where a new religion began, like our new relationship. Getting into Cyprus was easy, those island people were pretty laid back about the difference in the skin color between my husband and I. But Israel? Oh, we confused them. Those young immigration officers weren’t sure we were telling the truth when we said we were husband and wife. I have no idea why our relationship would matter to Israeli immigration, anyway! First, here was a brown woman and a white man, who claimed they were married, second, my passport said my maiden name and third, we didn’t carry our marriage certificate. They detained us for more than three hours along with some unfortunate Palestinian travelers, and asked us the same questions again and again, “Who is he to you?” and “Who is she to you?” “Why did you choose to layover in so and so place?” etc etc. It went on and on, till Sean smiled and said, “No matter how many times you ask, the answer is not going to change, she is my wife, I am her husband, we are here for our honeymoon. And why we chose to fly the way we did? Because we got a better deal with the airlines. Do you have any other ideas?” Finally, they let us go with the warning that we should stay in Israel and not stray into the West Bank. We, of course, promptly forgot the advice of not straying into West Bank, Sean’s organization has an office in Ramallah which we visited along with several other places.
A year after our Catholic wedding, we went back to India to have an Indian wedding. My country, I am sad to say, has a white skin fetish. Abiding by ‘the whiter the better’ rule, women spend a fortune on fairness creams and lotions to lighten their skin tone. Being dark is akin to being ugly, in most cases. When the beauty parlors do bridal make up, they lather foundation on the face of the bride. The face and neck turn very white while the other exposed body parts remain the original skin color, brown mainly. The same was done to me. Sean saw me at the reception hall and exclaimed, ‘What have they done to you? If I wanted to marry a white woman, I would have found one in the US!’ Between smiling and greeting over three hundred people I reproached my husband for reverse discrimination. What does skin color matter, white or brown, he is head over heels in love with me for my inner beauty and he better remember that!
We had our share of misunderstandings mainly due to our cultural differences. My poor husband, trying to be romantic (????) referred to me as “chick” one day and I let him have it! I thought the word was insulting and demeaning, to him it was complimentary. He didn’t know what hit him. Finally, when he figured out what caused this outburst he burst out laughing. Chick was supposedly a cute endearing term that was meant to convey the woman is young, attractive….whatever! There were others, I didn’t get the humor of Saturday Night Live, or Jerry Seinfeld for that matter. And when he said, “Are you bringing your pocketbook?” I gave him a blank stare. What in the world is a pocket book? He didn’t understand my Indian English and phrases sometimes, especially when I used phrases like “Come on, don’t give me that cock and bull story!” “Cock and what?????”
Most of the times we laughed about it and learned about each other’s culture. Sometimes we got into fights and argued about who is right. At the expense of sounding like a Fisher Price advertisement, we literally laughed, learned and grew together. And then came our golden skinned children….How they dealt with their ethnicity is another story. Sort of a sequel to this one.
Thank goodness for the “accident”!
The breeders had a “The Lady and the Tramp” moment. Their beautiful, purebred, shiny black labrador retriever did the unthinkable. She got out and fell in love with the neighbor’s sheep dog of insignificant repute. And the accident happened. Thank goodness, since one of those accidents came to our house and moved straight into our heart. We named the “accident” Sage.
We foolishly committed to getting Sahana a dog when she was 10. Oh, we heard all the “I will take care of it, feed it, walk it. You don’t have to do a thing!” We didn’t believe her for a minute. But we are gullible, indulgent parents, we gave in. Sahana, predictably, doesn’t feed him, doesn’t walk him or doesn’t take care of him, but she loves him with all her heart. Mom and dad, the suckers, are fine with that. Sage does many jobs in our house. Oh no, not ‘fetch the paper’, ‘open the door’ kind of jobs. He doesn’t do any of that. He does make himself available to Sahana when she suffers from her momentary preteen angst. She swears, stroking Sage gently, helps her calm down. He sits by Ryan’s feet when he reads, he listens yet doesn’t offer any criticism. He makes Sean feel like the most special man on earth when he returns from work (I know that’s my job, but a little word ‘delegation’)! For me? He is my sounding board. I talk to him all day, ask his opinion on things. He agrees with me, ON EVERYTHING! Never talks back, which is so refreshing! Oh goodness, did I just confess I talk to my dog all day? I am sharing much more than what’s good for me. Let’s say I think aloud, Sage just happens to be in the vicinity. Bottom line, all four of us agree, thank goodness for the “accident.”
A moment of silence
I opened my front door to let the children in the other evening when I felt a pinkish golden light wash over me. In fact, the whole world had taken on a hue of reddish gold. A bare, winter landscape had become a scene that a painter would give anything to paint. The trees had lost their natural splendor, yet their silhouette against the backdrop of the radiant, amber sky, made the scene surreal. Seeing my silent, upturned face, both the children turned around. The three of us stood there, at our front door, in complete silence for a few minutes. Then Ryan said in a hushed whisper, ‘Mom, take a picture!’ The moment of awe that I shared with my two children will be etched in my mind forever, even after they have flown from the nest. I am thankful to the universe for this glimpse of beauty that we shared that evening. The picture of the sunset is beautiful indeed, but the picture that I have in my mind’s eye, of two little faces mesmerized, humbled by the inexplicable beauty of the world that they are going to inherit one day, is invaluabe. That is my treasure.
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