Immigrant song

From Gundopant's diary, dated April 2006

The latest book I read had me in tears all thro the day and though it made my head throb, I could not put it down either. Jhumpa Lahiri's namesake. It is a tale of an immigrant bong family who came to America in the 60's. I think I identified with the parents, though not quite with Gogol whom the whole book is about. Except perhaps if you consider that we both have, eh, not so common names.

That is a valid question each of us that leaves our native shores has to answer. Was it worth it? We leave behind loving families and come hole up in poor dumps in grad school and look to completely unknown roommates and classmates to substitute for the warmth that we are used to. Our families let us go because they want our happiness and growth more than anything else. We don't see those that we like as often as we want. Grad school turns into working in corporate america. Some of us are always thinking that we will go back, this is a temporary phase where we make the most of good opportunities and head back sometime and make up for lost time.

Through the book, I first considered the thought, what if I have left for good! What if days turn into years and years into decades. Have I had enough of all my people back home? The answer is a resounding no. I was not aware the day I accepted the admission from my grad school, that my decision might be so onerous. Partly what keeps me going is the thought that in future, there will still be a time when I will come back home to a delicious smell of my mom's cooking and old friends calling and that I will have time to sit around, linger over dinner and chat with my folks. Friends and better halfs do make the situation here better but they can't make the problem vanish.

The characters in the book live in America but not quite, they live here not accepting it completely for its ways and trying to cling to their ways as they remember them from the time and place they came. However both places are moving ahead, and they now neither fit in here nor there. They are frozen in time yearning for what they left behind while going through their routine lives here. The girl in the book never thinks she is here to stay. But life creeps up on her and before she knows it, her time with her family is pretty much over.

The book is true in some part for most of us though I think the situation is much better now, with so many of us here and the world literally becoming a smaller place with improved travel and exchange in every respect.

Probably these are questions every generation from the dawn of civilization has dealt with. Maybe we are just continuing India's story out of India and that is also true for every other immigrant around the world. Like Nehru mentions in his discovery of India, imbibing influences and influencing our surroundings have been part and parcel of Indian life. Traditionally, we have always been open to influences and the fusion has left us stronger, not weaker. Maybe, it is this same process that is continuing now in a global sense. Maybe the venue has just changed.

We are spokes in the wheel of time. If not us, it will be our children that will take the same decisions. But in the short term, that does not mean we excape the decisions and consequences that go along with the changing times we live in. My takeaway from the book is to not take the future and my time with everyone back home for granted but to work on it so they are an integral part of my present life. As for myself, maybe the inescapable truth is that if I am here, I have to think of it has home. Home away from home perhaps, but home nevertheless...

*the title is from a Led Zeppelin song, simply here becuase I love their music though I think they could have worked on some of their lyrics a lil more :)

A Different morning

Once in a way, an incident happens that makes you think of an alternate path along which life could have taken you and feel lucky about the things that otherwise scarcely merit notice.

Jo looked at the whirring disk of the scan above her chest not knowing what to think. From here, she wondered, which path would her life take? What would she be doing this time tomorrow? in a week? In a year? Maybe it would all probably turn out to be alright as had most visits to doctors in the past. Was it probability or wishful thinking her mind was employing to offer her that reassurance?

As you grow older, and have seen and heard more, you are more aware that a small percentage of the people leave similar visits with their life now suddenly bearing no resemblance to the one in which they drove to the hospital for one of those check ups, taking some time off work, calculating when they would work extra to catch up.

She had briefly joked to Adi that she had an appointment at the Radiology lab since she was consulting this over paranoid doctor who smelt trouble at every symptom. She could sense he was worried since he didnt immediately join in the banter. But she hadn't told anyone else including her mom or dad in the hope that there would just turn out to be nothing to tell.

Part of her just kept wanting to throw all thoughts aside and beg and plead with the powers that be to let it all turn out OK. She promised to appreciate everyhing and everyone, especially Adi, more. All the things she really wanted to do in life coursed through her mind, and she felt some alarm that all that was threatened, regretting that most of these things still had to be done and very few had been checked off the list. Not yet, at least, please, she begged.

The next minute she was smiling half amused, at how quickly all her bravado was gone. Who is this person I am begging? she wondered. Well, it feels good to think someone is willing to listen and reason with you. If that was what prayer was, so be it. It had its uses which is why they invented it in the first place perhaps, she mused. If that's how it started, it is unbelievable where we are today.

Her mind snapped back to the present, and she was reminding herself to be sensible and act her 32 years. Either way, she chided herself, I have to be prepared. That's the best I can do in this situation, besides not allowing the panic to get out of hand. If it turns out that something is wrong, I'll still make the most of it, she resolved. She would read all those books she had always wanted to and never had time for. Maybe even write the book she always assumed she would write some day. She always felt she had one compelling, heart warming story to tell. The rest of the time would be taken up planning how to bounce back to her normal life. There she thought, while straining to listen to the instructions being given to her by the machanical voice of the scanner, the key is to not spend a lot of time mourning about the new situation, but to get used to it as soon as possible. But she knew she was not completely convinced. To implement that would be the hard part, she thought sighing hard, while following the nurse's instructions to breathe out. It would be so much more convenient if it all turned out OK. Please! I am just getting started.

She wondered if it would be fair to Adi to be saddled with a sick person so soon. After all, unlike her parents and siblings, he was the most recent entrant into her life even if she was married to him. She felt a bit guilty when she thought of him, like a scamster who hides the unattractive details of a deal in the fine print. What had she gotten him into?
Her mother was apt to painfully ponder about the why. She believed at the back of her mind in some kind of balance between your deeds and your reward and always found it hard to digest that it is sometimes good people that are unlucky.
But Jo had no such illusions about some divinity meting out justice. She was willing to believe that your genes and nature are perfectly ignorant and unconcerned about how good a soul you are. It is a function of probability and if the odds are against you, thats just too bad she thought as the nurse came in.

"So is that all?" "Yes, You are done.", said the nurse "Will you need me to come in for the biopsy you talked about", Jo Said fishing and looking hard at her for any indications, one way or the other. "The doctor only said that would be all for today" "I see!" said Jo, relieved for no real reason. "umm, could you tell then from the scan if it was benign?" "sorry" the nurse gave her a quick look, " I am not qualified to tell you that, you'll just have to wait to hear from the doctor"

Well, I suppose thats really good or really bad that they are done that early, she thought, as she dressed. Did the nurse look sorry for me when she said I could go? No Maybe not. Also, I think if something were wrong, they woudl hold me longer. Or maybe it was so obvious they didnt need to look anymore. aahh!!! I am trying to read signs like a superstitious villager. Well, its goign to be a couple of days of hell at the least, she thought, folding up the gown.

As she pulled into the street for the short drive to her office, she felt strangely glad for the routine of her life. Her relaxed morning coffee on the deck with Adi, the beautiful drive to her office, her work, a few of her colleagues who made her feel like coming into work each day, both of them scrounging for dinner after a long day, her long chats with her family back home, the playful arguments that she and her sister had almost all the time. Just the morning before, she had been mad about Adi cutting down their vacation to come back to work sooner. She was wondering if they were losing their enthusiasm for each other now that the initial heady days of getting to know each other were over. This was on top of the fact that she was in a bad mood this entire week and had been monotonously plugging away at work, wondering if she had had enough of her work. She had decided to be a brat and indulge her bad mood for this week.

Today, she felt thankful for every little aspect of normalcy her life had & felt that if something bad were to happen, in the people surrounding her, she had all the support she could want. Each day was too short to stuff in all that you really wanted to do. She watched this contrast amazed, wishing she would remember it even if things turned out to be OK. Funny !! she thought while settling in her chair to try to work while awaiting the results. I wish it didnt take something like this to make the small things in life important again.

Credits

I think I came down with the writing bug. Here is the symptom. However I suspect it is only a mild affliction. We'll see. Rather, I have always been writing. But it has never left the confines of my scratchpad tucked away safely in a folder, the only thing I have sole proprietership to. Never written for an audience, rather, the possibility of one. So this is an experiment.

If anything useful should come out of this blog, I should first acknowledge the blog and its author that made me want to write something. http://shreemoyee.blogspot.com
Shreemoyee, take this as evidence of your good writing :)

If the title needs any explanation, for reasons we need not get into here, I went by that name and its variations for a while as did some members of my family. But Gundopant here is just an alter ego, somebody to whom all the stories I want to tell actually happened. Also, I find that name highly amusing. Apologies to anyone that really goes by that name. But in my defense, I went by that name for a while too.