The Homecoming Album
SIDE A:
Song #1 — Tadka Dal, Tadka Dil
It is still quite early in the day — 6 or 7 AM — yet Mumbai is as brightly lit as noontime. The sun flooding the hallways, the roads, the tall swaying trees and also falling softly on my father’s tired face. The first sounds I hear, after my ears pop, are of the churning luggage belts toppling bag after bag on the conveyor like servings of the dal tadka made at home. In my head, I can already hear the crackle of the tempered mustard seeds and the whistle of the pressure cooker pulping the tiny golden slits we called toor dal. Toor. No, it does not rhyme with tour, door or poor. It is one of the staple ingredients in all Indian homes — whether you lived in Dharavi or at Antilla.
Wednesdays — as they were called before nominally transformed into ‘humpdays’ — was the day we ate dal. Dal, made with love and dried red chillies that accompanied freshly cooked grains of rice and a side of beetroot poriyal. There is a special scent of cooked rice depending on who handled it. Somedays, it was my grandmother rinsing and soaking and the rice would smell of warm, rustic and tidy homes. On other days, it was my mother’s fingers that sifted through the rice — it would smell affectionate, slightly hurried but comforting and I was sure if I ate enough, I would fall prey to afternoon slumber. But, the fact remained that I hated dal (in dire contrast to my sibling who could devour it since he was 2). It was the worst lunch I could come home to, for in my head, it had too much texture, clogged too many taste buds and put them out of service. My tongue was always numb from the shimmery golden liquid we Indians praised so much. But, like a hungry and obedient school girl, I ate it all anyway.
Song #2 — My Ab(Ode) to Mumbai
In the days after I landed in Mumbai, I would ride around on the city’s ubiquitous vahan — the autorickshaw — and think deeply of my relationship with the city. There are countless odes to the city of Mumbai and even more names; the city that never sleeps, the city of dreams and so on. The city is no longer a city but a living, breathing giant. Sometimes gentle, sometimes cruel. Sometimes depicted as a glitzy seductress, other times as a tender and loving mother. The city has seen a lot. And that, in itself, is an understatement. So, it was futile to even want to talk about Mumbai where scores of others had done so and a tremendously good job of it too. During those little rides, I swallowed and coughed and refilled the little bit of Mumbai in me. I had never really lived here and yet it was a home like no other. It was foreign, familiar and in between all at once.
Song #3 — A Few Creases, A Different Future
A few years ago, as I was walking into a restaurant with a friend of mine, a palm reader beckoned us. Back then, I was stuck in a small, desolate town with only flamingoes and fireflies for company. Both of us had been conscripted into our roles in this far-flung territory without volition but we had found each other and wanted nothing more than helping each other make it through this time — however long it took. There was an inexplicable weight during those days. I could not understand this India. It was empty; devoid of all those whom I loved. Worse, it was devoid of those who loved me. The language was alien, the script intelligible. Yet, this was my soil. How could I not fit in? These questions consumed me. I was trying to make home what was already supposed to be home.
We crouched and lent our palms to the fortune-teller. He peered at the creases, pressed the soft flesh and traced invisible patterns on my hand. I looked at my friend and he smirked. We weren’t believers — this was a farce, an indulgence. The palmist looked at me with his wrinkled grey eyes. They shone brilliantly as if he was in a trance. “You are destined to see distant lands. You will travel the length and breadth of the world!” I jerked my hand away and stood up. My friend laughed, put his hand around my shoulder and walked me back to the restaurant.
But deep within, a knot had simultaneously tied and untied itself. How do I explain? Palm reading is unscientific and baseless, I told myself. Yet, I was hopeful. It meant that I would leave the wretched town and I would resume my status as a nomad. It also meant that there was a sprinkling of truth in his absurd clairvoyant abilities.
In other ways, it also meant that I might never share a roof with my family for very long, ever again. It’s what makes travel and homecoming so bittersweet.
Song #4 — Put In Place
When I flew to India, I wanted to take the life that I lived here, with me. I selected food, products and trinkets that one could only find in this part of the world. I wanted to show them who I had become, where I’d been and what I ate. The latter, specifically, was of utmost importance to me. I wanted them to eat all that I had eaten. The cheese, the sugar, the chocolate I had saved from my trip to the Alps — I wanted my family to have it all.
If you know me a little at all, you’d know that I am filled with grand ideas that elicit grand emotions, all the time. All my attempts are in one way or the other, larger than life. Such was this endeavour too. It wasn’t surprising then when India did not comply. She pampered me for a few days and then slapped me hard in the face. I could not bring a home into another home just as I could not take all of India with me back. I laughed at the parmesan packets that lay unopened. I had planned to make pasta for my family. Instead, my motherland had refused and fed me her dosas and her dals instead.
SIDE B:
Song #5 — Be at Unease
For many reasons, though, this trip was unlike any other trip I had made. I had snoozed a large part of India within. The noise, the chaos, the smells and the crowds were all cursory experiences. There was a deeper, throbbing vein that I had been ignoring. The vein called politics that I had been “privileged” to ignore.
I learned, from reading and talking, that there were certain strong emotions that needed meditation. I poked around, asked my friends and shrugged off the ‘politically correct’ coat I’d been wearing for so long. This was my homeland. It mattered to me that I understood it.
In Bangalore, on a chilly night, I went to a loud and spacious place named House of Commons. In Hindi, Lok Sabha. We were five and we had been doing what everyone my age in Bangalore does on Friday evenings. At one point, we discovered that there was a far-right and a far-left person at the table. I seized the opportunity and I listened. I listened to both. I listened to what was being said between the lines. A lot of it hurt me in a way I never thought it would. At one point, the discussion devolved and I had to let go. It was too loud, everyone was too drunk and after all, we were sitting in the House of Commons.
What was home? What is it? Is it a place that you leave so you long for it? Is it a place where you stay because you have nowhere else to go? Will I always understand it from so far away? Or was it time to let go?
Just as feminism and India’s #MeToo movement had evolved, so was my investment in everything India. Why did we do what we did? Why did we vote them in? Why did we not? It mattered. It all mattered in a way it had never done before. It was a homecoming of my heart in a way like never before.
We had gone, in the feminist sphere, from ‘She’s someone’s sister, mother, daughter..’ to ‘She’s someone’. This has been my favourite journey to observe, so far. And now, I was asking questions. Thorny, prickly questions that caused paper cuts. I’m called a buzzkill, over-thinker and asked to just live it. In other words, to use what I texted my friend the other day, ‘I have begun to own the space I take.’
Song #6 — The Clock
“Every visit to an aged parent is in the nature of a farewell.” Paul Theroux wrote this in a piece for The New Yorker a few years ago. I’ve forgotten the piece, the author and the publication itself with time but these words have etched themselves on the walls of my brain. There is a certain discomfort as well as perspective that comes from remembering this line.
I watched my father as he drove. His grey hairs like weather buoys signalling the coming of ‘old season’ in a sea of black. He had just had a long debate with my brother about religion. My brother, a teenager, has begun to question everything as well. “Why can’t I be Christian? Why do I have to be Hindu?” How would you answer such a question? My dad had, as usual, responded with ease and told that he would accept his decision to pray at a church if he ever wanted to.
Yet, our parents are not always this right. At some point, for the first time, after many many years, you will spot their first falterings and you will have to remind yourself of what Paul Theroux said.
Song #7 — The Remains of a Disease
In a lovely city, in a quiet hospital, there is a general cancer ward with my mother’s name on it (see footnote). I had the opportunity to visit it this time. In (what hardly feels like) a decade, I was returning to an oncology centre to see the building rather than a patient. The technology has exponentially advanced and I was briefly disillusioned that perhaps, just perhaps, we might be able to defeat cancer after all.
In one of the rooms, lay a child — sick with fever and squirming from the pain of chemotherapy. For now, cancer remains a terrorist. A sleeper cell in our bloodstream. Circumstance can cause it to activate, writes Siddhartha Mukherjee — the renowned author of ‘The Emperor of All Maladies’. It is easy, as a science lover, to dive into the realms of cancer’s origins but the splintering truth remains. There is life and there is life with cancer. Patients, who survive, are forever glancing backwards.
Some days later, I would read Jacqueline Detwiler’s essay where she writes, “There is a before cancer. And then, there is an after.” For young children as that little girl in the hospital, there is not enough of a before. Someday, I think to myself, I will be able to chronicle my versions of both.
Song #8 — The Homecoming
I returned to this part of the world on a cold and chilly evening. Everything was just as I had left it and I was both delighted and miserable to be back. At the airport counter, my baggage had been over the limit by a few kilos. I immediately knew the culprit. I fished in my bag, struggled with the tight, sailor-like splice in the tie and yanked the Toor Dal out. My prime suspect. It was a big packet that my father had insisted I carry. I had argued, wanting to carry a smaller, lighter packet but it was futile. I weighed my bags again, I was safe.
I walked outside the airport and handed my dad the packet. He laughed, and so did I. Back here, I realized I had left behind something — not just the Toor Dal — but something more. But, I had also brought back something new. As I began writing, I knew I had had a homecoming experience. I just didn’t know in which direction it was. But, does it really matter?
Thank you.
Footnotes:
1. Toor Dal is a yellow colored split pigeon pea lentil.
2. Poriyal, from where I come from, is a dish made with vegetables sauteed with spices and grated coconut.
3. A vahan, translated often as ‘mount’, is the vehicle that a Hindu deity chooses to travel in. Do not ask me about what the actual purpose is, if being deities, they can apparate.
4. Lok Sabha or House of the People is the lower house of India’s Parliament where members are elected from their respective constituencies
5. The names and details of this memorial ward are withheld on purpose. For personal reasons, it is something I am not willing to share. It is not an honor or a privilege and in its most truthful element, it is but a monumental reminder of the void in my life.
