Ramblings On the Fence

Nice essay, Jawahara! Good to see you back at Chowk. This theme has been dealt with quite a lot in many essays and novels. The British Asian community always voices the fact that the ``home`` their parents long for no longer exists - it is nostalgia for the past, which erupts when one faces difficult circumstances in the present. I guess it`s a psychological phenomenon that makes us return, in our minds, to places where we felt safe when we are not feeling quite so secure in real life. Some people turn that into an obsession and thus are never happy in the present moment, but when they go back ``home`` and it doesn`t match up to their memories, they find themselves forever dissatisfied with both reality and fantasy.

Very nice. One of your best articles.

``On that razor-wire edge, tenuous and slender, surely there is a place where America and home converge.``

There is such a place. It is called Toronto :-)

I think people give on migrations too quickly. In my book, either one is at home (place of birth) or one is an immigrant (doesn`t matter which country one is in). Once someone has immigrated, one should be willing to go the whole distance, i.e. keep migrating until one finds, ``the razor-wire edge`` you have mentioned. I am sure it is out there somewhere. And I plan to find it. If I cannot find it, then I will return to Pakistan, on retirement, and leave my kids in Canada (which is the closest I have reached to this, ``edge,`` so far).

After Canada, it will be UAE, then maybe somewhere else......

Just keep in mind that the, ``them`` is a passing phenomenon. Based on this, I am not quite sure why Bush and Saddam are fighting so much. Arabs and Goras are an endangered species. In the coming future, the whole world will be South Asian and Chinese. And the country where this phenonemon has already started is Canada......

some thoughts about `melting pot`....
just the word conjures up the first scene in Macbeth...but seriously, I just find the term melting pot revolting...it`s a term obviously coined by WASP`s for non-WASP`s to jump in and blend into their particular mixture. Diversifying is one thing...going into a melting pot and peeling off layers and layers of yourself to become someone or something else is something completely different.

interesting article...
as an immigrant, I`ve grappled with the notion of home and identity for many years. read about it in post-colonial literature classes, written a poem and stories about it. And since my first home is a country where I was often made not to feel at home, and my second, America, where often it is difficult not to feel isolated, and away from home, I decided that my identity--who i am as a person--should not, and need not be tied to a place. The Pakistan I knew will never be the same again, the America I live in keeps surprising me every day. And while it`s difficult not to think in terms of us and them even more so these days...for me, home is more a state of mind, home for me in the temporal world is a person...that is where i find my middle ground with the fence torn down.

JS,

such thoughts exist in the minds of most immigrants. I certainly

have not found a more flexible way of looking into this dilemma but let

me just add this:

A friend of mine took his family ``home`` to Pakistan to see how they

like it. It was great for a few weeks but then his American born 10 year

old asked him a strange question: ``Dad, when are we going home?``

That is the question my kids will ask. I just know it.

Ras

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Hi Jawahara:
What you say could refer to anyone who feels `disoriented` by life`s ironies and vagaries. The fence is not always a precarious outsider`s dilemma...`home` too can leave you pretty sore-assed. The conflict arises when we try hard to belong and to make our surroundings our own when they might not be meant for us...

Just feeling a bit low I guess :( But, nice essay and, hey, the fence can be a great adventure too; it never lets you guess your age!

Farzana

Jawahara,

Good to see you back!

Over here:
I don`t know what its like outside of NYC anymore...but I imagine its not pretty. My bro copes by having his study group/friends- a bunch of smarty pants musicians of all backgrounds who can discuss the Patriot Act II, organise in the suburbs while delineating the finer points of Led Zep.

It is hard, and its getting even harder. I dont remember the US being this crazy; anyone who argues with that can visit Tom Ridge`s safety website at www.hyterics.gov... apparently we`ve got to fight for our making our homes here...

Nice but brief article. While the US may be a great `melting pot`, I think it was former President K R Narayanan who wrote that India was a `mosaic`. People of various communities live together, but retain their identities. Whereas, in the US, second generation immigrants give up their mother-tongue and most of their culture and take on the `American` culture. However, I dont think the melting pot will successfully `melt` people from the Indian sub-continent.

Immigrants relatively free from pull of *home* are the ones who`ve find people and ideas they can relate to in their adopted homelands. As a global citizen, it doesn`t matter if you are born in Lahore or Montreal as long as you share the same values. It`s entirely possible to spend one`s entire lifetime in Karachi and yet have more in common with an American from the midwest.

The unhappy immigrants are mostly those who`ve cocooned themselves into a familiar world of desi potluck dinners, bollywood movies and cricket on Dish TV. When these things don`t excite them anymore, the pull of *home* gets difficult to ignore. Surely America has divisions but which place doesn`t? Only the categories change. Our generation never really had to face any major upheavel in our lifetime. The life changing question for most of us was......medicine or enginneering, Emirates or PIA, rare or well-done. Things have a funny way of changing priorities. One can deal with them by turning inwards as this article suggests or by turning outwards as others would. Its individual choices.

later
-sac

This is probably one of the most bland writings I have ever read. One bland paragraph follows another in a monotonous tone. The sense of power and anguish has passed it by miles. It’s a total bore! The writer has no emotional feelings into it, or more likely, cannot convey her feelings through her writing.

This essay starts as if it were a movie review (btw, the movie mentioned in the essay has absolutely no connection to the follow-up the writer is about to embark!) rather than an essay on the pain of an immigrant going through life thinking about the familiar environment she left behind and is now living an environment that is entirely alien to her.

This essay makes sweeping generalizations: What does it mean by “we all”? Speak for yourself, Ms. Writer!

A better writer would have left us feeling numb with anguish and an indescribable pain of lost childhood in a setting that cannot be retrieved in an alien land. “Ramblings On The Fence,” on the other hand, doesn’t do anything, except that it makes one feels one has wasted his time reading it.

jawahara:

“But our lives are complicated. We do like living here. We came here for a reason, of our free will. We came here looking for something. And like Dorothy, when we found it, the only thought left was of home. We want to clack our ruby shoes together and be transported home, in an instant.”

is above quotes is based on your US experience?

the reason why i asked is the experience of immigrants in other parts of the world can be different…canada follows a different path…opposite that of the ‘melting pot’ in the US…multiculturalism is the state policy…mosaic the state fabric….

…and…

to this i would add a certain ‘duality’…in us…in me…have this love and respect for both the subcontinent and Canada…in much the same manner as a mother loving her children…happiness or ‘satisfaction’ is a state of mind as bina, ana and ferzi alluded in their posts…

when you look for “... that elusive place that can also be called home…”…please pause and look at the ‘american’ experience from the POV of say the navajo indians or the hopi….you talk of invincible fences…jawahara…when you read up on them you will find they are barricaded behind fortress walls by the governement policies…and alas the fate of native indians and inuits is no better in canada…

…sorry this is getting longer…while on the movies…check out lee tamori’s once were warriors (1994 new zealand) or read alan duff’s book of the same name…

lve

t

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!

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.

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....

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