Ramblings On the Fence

re. Umair, #4:
``There is such a place. It is called Toronto :-) ``
By golly, I think you may be spot on!

Here`s a poem that reflects on the `diasporic condition`

A Better Life
~~Diane Mehta

Driving on midsummer`s deserted roadways
past the forts and empires, temple idols
praised like liberty, the abandoned tires
in your expression

How the evenings spread like a rooftop fire
in the heat of winter; Diwali sparklers
making citizens in the sky, your gilded
gardens with fences.

Countries have no sympathy; only praises
amplified like distances for the newer
land: the housing gauntlets we had to enter,
stripped but with freedom!

Standards change like faith in a foreign country:
how the slurs ignited like gas; remember
when he lit the match, then the flame was dancing,
swaying like cobras

Don`t you miss the rains in July, your mother`s
hair in wet braids, sandalwood-scented, spices
shaped like cones on plates and the servants laughing,
chewing on peppers?

Did you pledge allegiance to lawns and fences,
better lives for us; the best western education?
Neighbors take the place of extended families,
freedom expires

like your father dying in Bombay, hardly
sixty when he leaned into whiteness. Packaged
smoke unfurled and pulled him with yellow fingers
past all the rooftops.

Now you drive on highways to work and homeward.
Winter cuts the windshield with blistered fingers,
feeds you flashes: corn in the husk on street-grills,
red with paprika.

Jawahara,
I didn`t know smart people thought and felt the same way I did. Thanks for the affirmation of sorts.
As always, found you writing penetrative and elegant in simplicity.
rgds,
PM

Re Jay #18
What do you mean left overs. Ours would refuse to eat her chappatis unless my mom had made them herself. And there was this strict vegetarian Iyer family one of them whom would cook meat on a daily basis because thats what their Alsatian`s diet required :).

re Jay #18:

I wish you`d post more stuff like that. Too bad you had to slip in the PS to spoil it.

Regards
-sac

I try never to defend my writing so I will not start now. My work is what it is; some people like it, other`s don`t. That is a matter of personal taste.

I will say that while Molly, her sister and cousin faced angst and fear and anger, most of us willing immigrants do not. I was not writing about ``home,`` as that one place frozen in time in India (or wherever) else, but ``home,`` the idea, the longing and the yearning for a sense of belonging.

Is this something that tears at me everyday, making me a misfit in the U.S., isolated and ghettoized? No. This is just one of the delicately shaded intervals of my life, free from true angst. For the most part I live a fulfilled, regular life, free from strife and struggle.

Though the root of his article (for me) has an emotional base, it was largely an intellectual exercise. As Samina says, I wanted to raise some points which I would like to discuss. I have no answers and do not claim that I do. This, like other things in life, is open-ended.

Re: Samina, #20

Samina, it’s not that I’m against “genre,” it’s a matter of what is good writing. I believe I have an ability to distinguish good writing from bad. For me, the overriding aspect of any writing is “how” it is said and not “what” is being said; the use of words, metaphors, analogies, allegories, imagery, reign supreme over theme. Written well, a lousy theme can be very powerful; and written badly, as in this case, a good theme can leave the reader regretting the time wasted reading it. “Ramblings On The Fence” is a good theme; it’s the execution that’s atrocious.

If you want to talk about the theme of the essay, that’s fine. Just don’t go around showering accolades on a third-rate piece of writing.

Jawahara
Well written, thanks, particularly this is very familiar :``But when you peel back the layers, the only thing that remains is: I want to go home``.

I think many NRIs have found that one good way to partially reconcile with the complications and contradictions you talk of, is getting involved from overseas in supporting unambiguously useful causes at home. For example primary education, AIDS awareness, health care.

This way, the fact of one`s being nonresident can be seen to even be an advantage. For example, IIT alumini who made their millions in pardesh, were able to donate millions to IITs` corpus? funds in desh. There was a NY cabdriver who by spending approx $2000 per year of his earnings runs a whole girls school in his hometown. Another example is of a well-to-do doctor settled in the US whom I personally came to know of, who has been running a mobile clinic in his home state for over last many years.

AND such activism(which should be of the benign constructive kind of course!! not like `friends of Bajrang Dal `:)) gives a sense of connection and involvement with home. Of course this should be within limits. I knew of someone who got admitted for a PhD in a prestigious US school, arrived in the US and got so involved in worthy causes `back home` that he returned without completing his studies.

Re: Jay, #18

``godot on perennial attacks``

Oh, please, Jay! This essay sucks and you know that. It’s just bad writing. But I suppose one wouldn’t know bad writing from good if one doesn’t read good writings!

This is not the first time that a less-than-mediocre writing has been hailed as mark of excellence and “moving” at Chowk, and it’s not going to be the last. Many Chowkies need a lesson as to what constitutes quality writing. You are one of them. This essay isn’t quality.

Godot and Jay Sahibs,

If you are unable to appreciate more experimental writing, i.e. non linear personal narratives, I suggest you temper your responses with that admission. Otherwise, it sounds like both of you are two have some kind of definitive monopoly on what is ``legitimate`` longing for identity and safety-which Jayaprakash Sahib I am waiting for you to claim exists in the West lately and legitimate genre adherence-and Godot Sahib, I refer you to A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius for genre busting that will spin the socks off your ankles.

Until then, the writer has raised some genuine issues. Perhaps we can actually discuss them now.

Jawahara,

You are too young, too early on the trail. There is the next stage, when the children have grown up, on their own path of realization of their potential, the dog has died at the age of twenty, having survived only on the left over Indian food, as it is in India. Then the short term memory fades and the long term one is enervated as though to close the birth death cycle. Then you remember the childhood, the long walk to the primary school, the care free nature of your child hood and feel sad for your own children in the developed country, you feel a longing for the land that endowed you with that indomitable spirit, the pursuit of knowledge, vidya, the greatest wealth. The dilemma dissolves, you return, to go to your old college, talk about aircraft long range operations, tell them why even a B747 cannot follow the shortest route, why it has to be 180 minutes from an airport. And they ask you a lot of questions, many are surprised by the intricacies of aircraft engines, the flight envelop protection of A320 where the machine over-rules the pilot, and they give you a traditional Kerala oil lamp, as a mark of respect for coming back after 35 years to kindle the spirit of enquiry among a new generation. You come home, light the lamp every day, which you never did before, in silent prayer to the spirit, the spirit of the land. You feel a completeness, from dust to dust.

Regards

Jayaprakash

P.S.

Then you get on the chowk to do some paki-bashing, you see tahmed seething in rage, godot on perennial attacks, temporal quotes from posts of yester years, ylh starts posting lies about abdus salam, then you realize that you are also a catalyst for evolution, the bipeds are evolving to Homo erectus pakistanicus, and you go to sleep with a smile.

i haven`t seen rabbit-proof fence (rainbow centre hasn`t acquired rights yet.) though i was reminded of one of mira nair`s films, mississippi masala, about an indian family expelled from uganda and running a motel on some US highway. how the father is in constant effort to try and reclaim his land from the government and when he does finally go back it`s only to realise that ``home is where the heart is.``

Enjoyed reading this. My two cents. . .

I think being an immigrant lends face to a conflict that would occur irrespective of where we live. Having worked themselves into a familiar groove people find they`ve now got their breath back enough to think about what`s happened to them, to take stock as it were. Priorities are evaluated, landscapes excavated as one strives to reach an emotional balance with his circumstances. And during this people infallibly, and perhaps irresistibly, finds themselves drawn to what someone referred to as ``the universal republic of childhood``, that sacred country where we were once safe and protected and loved and within whose shy borders our most precious memories are stored. We want to go back and retrieve them in an effort to reintroduce that color into our lives, that equilibrium we so unthinkingly took for granted. But it doesn`t happen and perhaps in that sense we can never go home.

Though that`s not to say the past is dead and gone. It`s still there, surviving in the people we love, in the relationships that have endured in spite of the distances. Perhaps growing up then, and resetting the balance, involves giving a new shape to that love, a new form to the affection that saw us through.

Regards,

Aamir

sac...#12: i like what you said about individual choices. :-)
About Rabbit-proof fence:
I saw this movie over a month ago (it was only four blocks away) when I returned from Christmas holiday. It is a very powerful film, the silences, the trek of Molly, her sister and cousin, combined with the `for God and country` statements of the Kenneth Branagh character say more than enough about the plight of `half-castes` or `aboriginals` in Australia. It is a film about the intense longing for home and family. It`s a film about the struggle to hold on to one`s identity and culture and not to give in to it`s erosion. Molly feels her identity tied more to her `aboriginal` mother and community, and to her language, more so than the white, `Christian` group who abducts her, and other `half-caste` children. And within these `half-castes` it`s the lighter skinned ones who the director of the `training facility` is more interested in `saving`.
these children were not immigrants like some of us are, they were `already there` and until the `70`s as Jawahara pointed out, they were snatched away from their `aboriginal` parent and put in these camps. What Molly did with her sister...to travel 1200 miles relying on nature for their food, and little water, was incredible...an act of great courage and determination, which she repeated, though with the loss of her older daughter. I recommend this movie to everyone!
godot, you have a point when you say that RPF itself is not really connected to what we as immigrants who choose to come here go through, but we are connected to this longing for home and holding on to an identity associated with home, are we not? It wasn`t the entire story of RPF that Jawahara was connecting us with, just a theme that clicked this snapshot.
sammi,
i personally think that it`s always been kinda crazy here, with the xenophobia, the rise of neo-nazi groups, the continuing struggles of people of color, and immigrants, this is an extension of that craziness, it`s taken on a different look and tone, and yes it is getting crazier....

jawahra, quite a moving piece. Don`t know what the solution could be or any good way to deal with these feelings but we all have such thoughts and feelings once in a while. One thing I know from my own experience is that ``back home`` is not what we used to know or think it is. Over a period of 10/15 years things and people change so much that what we called home once is not really that homely anymore. Although I love where I am, once in a while I do feel goign back forever some day...The problem I see with it is that we really need a higher purpose than usual(to live a relaxed life, our adopted home is becoming hell, I need to be with my own people)...one almost needs a mission to accomplish back home to really make the going back possible. For the most of the mortals, it is a continuous dilemna that will end with death eventually. The ones born and brought up here will have much less feelings like that and will have to fight their fights here...there is no back home for them.

Greetings all!

I am slowly making my way back into writing. it is good to be back. This article really was just a rambling, a snapshot of what I felt after watching the movie. Samina, it is getting rather crazy and hysterical. In my 17 years of living in this country, I feel the burden of my differentness the most acutely now.

Farzana, of course I agree with you. Sometimes when we talk of going back to live in India we come face to face with that dilemma as well. So, maybe keeping India (or any home) as this unattainable, mythical place at least makes us feel we have some place to go, if all else fails. An imperfect solution.

Culture and differences are issues I have written of in other places for a while now (including academia) and it only made sense to write a small, rambling piece on chowk. To test the waters. :-)

Romair, I am buying my ticket to Toronto right now. You will pick me up at the airport right? :-)

I look forward to more discussions. Yay!