In 2008 I spent 6 weeks in India. I was 22. I visited relatives, travelled on my own, and was in culture shock for most of the time, as it had been 12 years since I was last in India. After this chaotic post-undergrad trip, I returned to America, feeling that I wouldn't ever be able to comment on anything happening in India. Who was I to do so? I was an outsider, regardless of my name and family; I didn't grow up in India, I couldn't ever possibly understand even one issue there with nuance and depth, no matter how hard I could try.
So I didn't try, and India remained a mystery, and a faraway place that my parents visited every few years. Once in a while, I would chat briefly on the phone, and later, briefly via a video call, to an older relative. My father was always in constant touch with his family and friends, no matter where they were or how long it had been since their last meeting, while most of my mother's family still resides in India. Their ties to India remained strong, but for me and my brothers, we had a distant connection to our parents' home country, if at all.
This is the case for many im/migrant children. Though me and my siblings are fluent in Urdu, and we understand the customs and indeed practice them if needed, to code-switch if needed, there never seemed to be any real point or reason to try to stay connected to India, to our family there, in any way. No need really, to even visit, because after all, it takes so long to get there, and it's so expensive, and who has the time? Going back to India seemed far off, and not important.
That all changed, almost exactly a year ago, in about 24 hours from now.
My father died in an Indian hospital bed, in Bihar. My parents had been visiting relatives, in fact they had returned for a shaadi, when Papa came down with pneumonia and with complications, passed away within days. We were summoned to get to India, when he was admitted to the hospital. By the time me and my oldest brother finally arrived, we pulled back the hospital room curtain and saw that he was gone, that he had died just a couple of hours before. My father was buried the next day, and lies next to his parents, my paternal grandparents; a few meters away, my maternal grandfather is also in the same cemetery. Their kaberstaan is part of a dargah, next to a shrine of a Muslim saint from the 13th century.
The last time I had been in India, was that post-college trip back in 2008. It was now just over 10 years later, I was now 32, and my father was forever gone, just like that. He had returned home - fully returned, and I also as a result had to make my own return.
We left after a week, because what was the point in staying? The day my father died, the day that I got to Bihar, I said that I never wanted to come back to Bihar, in the midst of my angry sobbing. I was angry at India, at Bihar. Angry. Furious. Thankfully, I quickly got past blaming the place and understood that I might as well come to terms with what happened, and since Papa died smiling, he must be happy, truly, he must be with his family.
In fact, I was able to make another return to India for several weeks at the end of 2019. It was much needed, as many pleasant memories were created in the places where we had just experienced so much despair and misery just a few months prior. I didn't feel any culture shock, probably because this was my 2nd time in India within a year; indeed I felt fairly competent at being able to navigate, figure and find things out, and I came to understand and appreciate the South Asian way of knowing how to wait.
What happened a year ago instantly and automatically changed the relationship my brothers and I have with our parents' country, forever. India's no longer a distant land. India is where our father died and where he is buried. Not just our grandparents, but our own father, subhanAllah. And because of this, we are also more connected to our Indian relatives, who miss our father and also empathize with our loss; many of them also witnessed my father's demise, death and burial.
This time, after coming back to America, I have a need and a want to feel connected to India. I want to keep returning in order to visit Papa's grave. I want to stay in touch with my family, to try to follow in Papa's footsteps in that regard. I hope to one day make another work that is set in and filmed in India. I am continuing to learn how to read and write in both Hindi and Urdu scripts.
And this time, I also miss the chaos and the noise. Time seemed to stretch in India, I felt present in every minute and every moment, whereas my last few weeks in Los Angeles have seemed to melt together. I found that in India, whether I was in rural Bihar or in more obviously rowdy places such as Kolkata and Bombay, the noisiness and the sheer numbers of people made me hyper-aware of my surroundings, and so I stayed present. I stayed aware. In the moment. Back in LA however, I find it to be a very quiet city, and I have gone back to being very much in my own head. There are no street peddlers hawking their goods at 6:30am, to wake you up and get your day started.
My mind is also fixated on India because a week after my mother and I got back to the States, the Citizenship Amendment Bill (now Act) was passed. This, coupled with the promise of a nation-wide National Registry of Citizens, effectively puts India's 200 million Muslims at risk of being rendered stateless. (Go read up to educate yourself, if you've no idea what any of this means). I've been following the news in India because, well, I come from an Indian Muslim family, I was just in India, and plan to keep returning, because my relationship with India has now forever changed.
I find myself unable to be present at being back in Los Angeles, at being back in America, as my mind is preoccupied with the Indian protests and the resulting violence and attacks on students and Muslims, and my mind is also busy with thinking about my family. It's been a year now since Papa died; how can we help our mother to resettle? Her life has changed the most. With being back on campus and back in classes after 6 months, I know that I need to finish out my degree, but for so many reasons, not just a graduate student sense of "senioritis", my mind is checked out.
My hair's been turning grey. I'm no longer a wide-eyed 22 year old, staring at cows being on the road. I am still very naive about many things, but unlike at 22, I no longer feel that I shouldn't speak out on what's happening in India, that I somehow shouldn't care, that it doesn't affect me or my family. Because it does. It directly does.
So I didn't try, and India remained a mystery, and a faraway place that my parents visited every few years. Once in a while, I would chat briefly on the phone, and later, briefly via a video call, to an older relative. My father was always in constant touch with his family and friends, no matter where they were or how long it had been since their last meeting, while most of my mother's family still resides in India. Their ties to India remained strong, but for me and my brothers, we had a distant connection to our parents' home country, if at all.
This is the case for many im/migrant children. Though me and my siblings are fluent in Urdu, and we understand the customs and indeed practice them if needed, to code-switch if needed, there never seemed to be any real point or reason to try to stay connected to India, to our family there, in any way. No need really, to even visit, because after all, it takes so long to get there, and it's so expensive, and who has the time? Going back to India seemed far off, and not important.
That all changed, almost exactly a year ago, in about 24 hours from now.
My father died in an Indian hospital bed, in Bihar. My parents had been visiting relatives, in fact they had returned for a shaadi, when Papa came down with pneumonia and with complications, passed away within days. We were summoned to get to India, when he was admitted to the hospital. By the time me and my oldest brother finally arrived, we pulled back the hospital room curtain and saw that he was gone, that he had died just a couple of hours before. My father was buried the next day, and lies next to his parents, my paternal grandparents; a few meters away, my maternal grandfather is also in the same cemetery. Their kaberstaan is part of a dargah, next to a shrine of a Muslim saint from the 13th century.
The last time I had been in India, was that post-college trip back in 2008. It was now just over 10 years later, I was now 32, and my father was forever gone, just like that. He had returned home - fully returned, and I also as a result had to make my own return.
We left after a week, because what was the point in staying? The day my father died, the day that I got to Bihar, I said that I never wanted to come back to Bihar, in the midst of my angry sobbing. I was angry at India, at Bihar. Angry. Furious. Thankfully, I quickly got past blaming the place and understood that I might as well come to terms with what happened, and since Papa died smiling, he must be happy, truly, he must be with his family.
In fact, I was able to make another return to India for several weeks at the end of 2019. It was much needed, as many pleasant memories were created in the places where we had just experienced so much despair and misery just a few months prior. I didn't feel any culture shock, probably because this was my 2nd time in India within a year; indeed I felt fairly competent at being able to navigate, figure and find things out, and I came to understand and appreciate the South Asian way of knowing how to wait.
What happened a year ago instantly and automatically changed the relationship my brothers and I have with our parents' country, forever. India's no longer a distant land. India is where our father died and where he is buried. Not just our grandparents, but our own father, subhanAllah. And because of this, we are also more connected to our Indian relatives, who miss our father and also empathize with our loss; many of them also witnessed my father's demise, death and burial.
This time, after coming back to America, I have a need and a want to feel connected to India. I want to keep returning in order to visit Papa's grave. I want to stay in touch with my family, to try to follow in Papa's footsteps in that regard. I hope to one day make another work that is set in and filmed in India. I am continuing to learn how to read and write in both Hindi and Urdu scripts.
And this time, I also miss the chaos and the noise. Time seemed to stretch in India, I felt present in every minute and every moment, whereas my last few weeks in Los Angeles have seemed to melt together. I found that in India, whether I was in rural Bihar or in more obviously rowdy places such as Kolkata and Bombay, the noisiness and the sheer numbers of people made me hyper-aware of my surroundings, and so I stayed present. I stayed aware. In the moment. Back in LA however, I find it to be a very quiet city, and I have gone back to being very much in my own head. There are no street peddlers hawking their goods at 6:30am, to wake you up and get your day started.
My mind is also fixated on India because a week after my mother and I got back to the States, the Citizenship Amendment Bill (now Act) was passed. This, coupled with the promise of a nation-wide National Registry of Citizens, effectively puts India's 200 million Muslims at risk of being rendered stateless. (Go read up to educate yourself, if you've no idea what any of this means). I've been following the news in India because, well, I come from an Indian Muslim family, I was just in India, and plan to keep returning, because my relationship with India has now forever changed.
I find myself unable to be present at being back in Los Angeles, at being back in America, as my mind is preoccupied with the Indian protests and the resulting violence and attacks on students and Muslims, and my mind is also busy with thinking about my family. It's been a year now since Papa died; how can we help our mother to resettle? Her life has changed the most. With being back on campus and back in classes after 6 months, I know that I need to finish out my degree, but for so many reasons, not just a graduate student sense of "senioritis", my mind is checked out.
My hair's been turning grey. I'm no longer a wide-eyed 22 year old, staring at cows being on the road. I am still very naive about many things, but unlike at 22, I no longer feel that I shouldn't speak out on what's happening in India, that I somehow shouldn't care, that it doesn't affect me or my family. Because it does. It directly does.
