puja-shah

The holidays came, and they flew to New York and filled their hearts with her father’s hugs, her mother’s voice, his mother’s dosas and coconut chutney, his nieces’ laughter. They stayed up drinking and talking to his sister and brother in law, they watched movies with her sister and brother and she loved the way he joked with her grandmother in Gujarati. It was the best Christmas she said she had in a long time.

When they got back, she was thrilled to feel warmth, to have sun and sand at her toes again. She thought of the cold, dark skies of winter which in no way felt like home to her anymore.

“Should we move to New York, like maybe in the city, for a few months before the wedding?”

They were lying down, talking, and as she let the sound of the ocean in and closed her eyes. She thought of the busy streets, the subway steam through sidewalk vents and taxi cabs honking at corners, the smell of pizzerias and pretzel stands, things that made New York City what it was to her for so many years.

“Why?”

She asked. She thought of the way her heart ached when she missed her sister, the way only sisters can feel; she thought of the distance that grew with her brother as they led their own lives miles and miles apart. The way her parents sounded so happy when she said she would be visiting. The friends she missed chatting in person with.

“I don’t know…”

She looked at him as he missed the things she missed too, and started to think of leaving the life they had built in California; Their own place, own life, own start.

“I miss New York sometimes, too.”

They didn’t speak for some time and she wondered if they were thinking the same things, which often happened between them. She thought of her mother, leaving India, to a new place, a new world almost, for a life with her father, her career, their future children.

“Where are we happiest?”

She let it sit with him, the question they had to answer about what it was that mattered to them most. What it was that made them feel alive, every single day.

Mostly, when they took trips back to New York, they visited their families, spent time with friends and when the busy days became calm, more quiet, she always saw a sadness sit with him.

I don’t like New Jersey… I hate the cold.…I want my kids to have sun and the ocean…

His thoughts resounded against what she already started to feel, to know about what felt right.

Someone needs to do it; someone needs to break that cycle. We don’t have to be somewhere we aren’t happy because our parents had to be there. We can make it work, we already see our families every other month…and we are okay. Her sister and her had a bond that was always strong. Her brother was growing up; she had to let him go. His nieces always loved their visits. Their parents…in the end always wanted them to start their own life-it’s what parents did- let their children be. They had friends all over the country, it always worked. All that matters is when we have each other. All we need is to be happy within ourselves. Doing what we love, being where we feel good, all the time. And for now, it was here, she thought. Who knew what the future held. She didn’t want to live in the future, she wanted to live in the present.

She let her thoughts race and as they filled her mind, she let her new sense of grounding settle in. She would be okay anywhere.

“When our lease is up here, maybe, we could live in that house we saw, you know near bird rock, right by the ocean.”

She listened to him, to his own realization that felt in sync with hers.

“Should I call the real estate agent?”

Sima didn’t say anything as he awaited her reply. She kept her eyes closed and simply kissed him.

Mostly, Sima remembered their smiles. The shy way they averted their eyes when she asked them their names, their ages. The way they were surprised when they replied with a Christian name and she insisted on knowing their Ugandan name. The children’s faces, their timid voices, their silent appreciation when she treated them or educated them, stayed with her, had filled her heart, expanding it in a way she never knew possible, in a way that made her ache, a true, to the bone ache- the way she felt when she watched documentaries on human rights issues, the way it came to her when she passed begging children on the streets of Delhi. But this time, it stayed with her for longer than before.

When she first arrived, she was excited, scared, but finally there. She was there, she thought and it was the first time she was somewhere that felt so beautiful, both outside and even, within herself. Luwero was in no way Spain or Hawaii or Costa Rica,  the places  she had been where awe was easy to find in sparkling blue waters or cliffs surrounded by gardens. Here, she found it in the pink painted doors of mud buildings, in the mango and jackfruit trees that surrounded her, in the mothers holding their babies in vibrant green, blue, red, yellow blended cloth.

When people asked Sima, “What was it like?” It was hard for her to put into words the emotions, the images softly painted in her memories, the smells that she was sure filled her mind’s corners. The roads of Luwero reminded Sima of India, giving her the same nostalgia- the smell of raw gasoline from the boda boda motercylce taxis, the long paths that let dirt fill the air with each step, indian style chapati food stalls on the sides of roads.

She thought of the history of her own people in Kampala, from India, building businesses in a new city, living amongst a culture so different and similar to their own, adding their own influence with food, indian restaurants and temples that scattered the city, even still. She felt a familiar grounding when she saw Gandhi’s statue at the Nile and felt the history of her ancestors connect her to a place that at first seemed far away from anything she had ever known. She thought of the Indians who had been rushed out of the country by a corrupt government to return back to India, with dreams shattered; ties broken.

When she went back to NY and California, she tried to fall back into place with her everyday- planning her wedding after her recent engagement, dinners with her family, meeting friends. She planned her trip to India for wedding shopping, but researched NGO’s she could volunteer for during her free time. She saw her upcoming journey with a new set of eyes and a freshness in her heart that made her feel ready for anything.

It was at night when she thought of the frustration she felt for Uganda. The ongoing political situations, the hardships the women she met faced everyday, the stories of war, of the Congo, of young boys taken to be Rebels, of young girls being raped without any protection or justice for their pain from society. She thought of  the fate of the children, mainly, the girls, that she treated or educated for oral hygiene, but spoke to about dreams, likes, dislikes. What is your favorite color? What school subject do you love? What do you want to be when you grow up? Questions that perhaps no one had ever asked them, their responses vivid and full of life. Her fears for them seeped into her heart, stayed and stayed with her at night, into the morning when she woke up.

You can leave Africa, but Africa never leaves you. She had heard the quote said by a volunteer in the guesthouse she stayed in during her time there.

Africa, in fact , had stayed with her like the volunteer had said, and with it, brought a whole new chapter for Sima. She found peace in helping people who needed it the most. Perhaps, she thought, it was her dharma. She was ready to let her heart unfold to this place where spirituality went hand in hand with her purpose, her dharma, as she often heard her grandmother speak of finding as one.  And Sima knew that now that she had found it, in her heart of hearts, it was something that would never leave her.

In the late fall, after her last licensing exam, he took Sima to Spain. They went in a group, with his friends, to a small island off the coast, facing the Mediterranean Sea. The flight there felt exhausting. Their first few days there, it rained, and they spent their days fighting jet lag, attempting to go to beaches and roaming the city centre. On their first attempt for shopping, they were unaware of siesta times when all the stores closed and ended up at a small café where they people watched. The local men and women were beautiful, with sharp features, olive toned skin and tall, slim bodies. The women were covered in European flare dresses and loose scarves, the men in sheer shirts and fashionable hats. Everyone seemed to move at a pace they were not used to, no rush to meals, sipping on coffee or tea for hours at a time, smoking cigarettes and chatting with friends. Their waiter or waitress would disappear often, sometimes forgetting their order, casually stating they usually forget things, as if, these customs were normal, they felt at first, when after a few days into their stay, they realized how very normal it was to be relaxed, and sometimes they had to tame their U.S temperaments during such leisure.

Navratri came to San Diego with a cold breeze that swept across the city, the palm trees adjacent to their balcony swaying, the sound of the ocean hitting the shore, it seemed, faster and harder than when Sima had arrived. Sima spoke to her father on the phone, and as he told her of their community’s garba-raas event she heard the clanking of small steel bowls against the silver plates, and she pictured their home, her grandmother making thalis for the pujas of different nights, one for the full moon, one for the welcoming of the month, with different items for the prayers for each god, figs, gold coins, the silver milk bowl sweetened with saffron. She thought of the colors splayed around her home, the red tablecloth her mother put out, the large easel her mother had made of dyed orange and green rice in the shape of ‘om’, the candles that she would place at their bedroom windows.

She looked around her own apartment; the bare wooden tables felt awkward to her. She lit incense to let the scents of her favorite holiday penetrate the air, only to make her miss it all more. She looked up garba/raas events near her, finding one at a local school, excited by the prospect of going, already feeling the tight silk blouse, hearing the payal at her feet as she walked around and got ready, thinking of her sister at home who would put colors of their choli dresses against her skin, picking the best one for each of them. She told him of what she found on the internet, in her excitement, and he shrugged it off, thinking it wouldn’t be that good. “We can go but who will we know? I don’t even really like garba” Hurt, she left it. In the morning he had told her he felt like potato poha, the way his mom made it, so she found a recipe online that an Indian mother placed on a blog, thinking she would surprise him with it during the week and she felt sad that he hadn’t thought that for her in this small gesture. After all this time, though, she knew the ways he showed his love for her and so she didn’t take it to heart, but it still pinched her while she missed the details of their festival of lights, being thousands of miles away from her family.

She called her closest friend in California, from graduate school, that lived an hour away, her Thai friend that had taught her how to make the pad-thai and Tom Yum soup he loved, and asked her to go with her. She knew her friend agreed because she heard homesick in Sima’s voice, and Sima was happy that she had found someone to go with, still though, feeling empty she had no one to share her excitement with. The rest of the day, she dreamt of the music and sounds of feet, the clicking of the dandya, the wooden sticks, during raas, the colors that swept the circles of clapping hands and she almost felt a bhindi on her forehead when she awoke from her daydream. When she brushed the small baby hairs aside to tuck behind her ear, though, she noticed, that her forehead was actually bare.

They fell into a routine quicker than Sima thought would happen.  He was intuitive to her feelings, her needs and it made it easier for Sima to find a fluid return of the constant love she wanted to create here, in her new home with him.

She tried to wrap the silk scarves she had in neat bundles the way her mother had done for her when she went to college. The fabric was tricky though, smooth all over on the exterior with loose threads on the interior, like miniature saris, so they kept unraveling at each fold, until finally she tucked them in her suitcase underneath her favorite designer jeans, flattening them to increase the surface area of the things she needed to still find places for. She had packed and unpacked for years, 9 times, in and out of dorm rooms and apartments, becoming an expert at finding corners for things in suitcases and boxes; an expert at knowing what things to leave behind. Though this time she had some trouble in deciding.

She had a pile on her dresser she would take that reminded her of her friends, the New York print Nikki gave her, the pendant from her chakra balancing workshop at a retreat, the songs she wrote down to put on her ipod that reminded her of dancing with her closest girlfriends in the past summer nights. In that moment, she felt different about leaving NY, because unlike leaving for graduate school, she was sure it would be harder to say good bye to the things she knew so closely. Dinners with her girlfriends, the museums and shows she explored, the sounds of neighborhoods she had grown attached to. It was knowing she was letting go, of home, even temporarily, that made it hardest. What if she loved it there enough to want to stay? This was home, could that happen?

She lay her clothes out on her bed, her shoes lined in front of her closet, the movies she loved placed next to her carry on bag, a round tin of turmeric, poppy, fennel and the spices her grandmother knew she may crave. She had taken the same tin with her to college, being only half an hour away from home. In graduate school, she had her father mail it to her, when she realized she had forgotten it as she organized her small Bostonian kitchen with exposed brick and brownstone windows. In all the years she had only used it twice, once to make the chick peas her parents always made for her, but she had put too much tomato sauce in them and she let her roommate, Ashleigh, eat them, who adored the flavors that were new to her palate, the ones of Sima’s childhood that she tried to create but felt her American born hands had failed in doing so. While in graduate school, she often went to the Indian restaurant in Beacon Hill, where she enjoyed watching evening snow falls through the front window as she slowly let garam masala in fresh saag, fill her throat with warmth. This time she knew that there were Indian restaurants that lined the cove, there were stores she saw on her drive from the airport that would carry the things she needed, if she craved any part of home.

Yet even in knowing so, she still tried to find space for these things, she still held onto her tin of spices, still found room for her small ivory Ganesh idol, the incense her family would buy from the temple, the small Indian tea strainer that even caught the shredded ginger root that would slip through the American strainers her family had tried.

In preparation of her going, her sister threaded her eyebrows, plucking the fine hairs from below her arch, and she held her sisters knee as she always did, squeezing at each pull, observing in the end, the shapely arches, the red skin and white residual talc powder around her forehead. Sima had placed the powder on her brows herself, as her sister coiled the thread, but had missed most of her eyebrows, sending powder to line her cheekbones, lips, left ear. Her sister started laughing and like always, they doubled over almost crying. It took Mili 6 tries to finish, to finally get through it without one of them giggling. “Didi will you need this?” her sister held up the bottle of jasmine powder, the one her masi brought for her mother when she first came from India, that had lasted all these years. She wanted to take it for the smell, to always remember it, in case, she started forgetting.

“No I think ill be okay…” and so her sister left the room, taking the scent with her, of memories Sima would long for.

Her brother had left for college a few days ago, and she walked by his room, let her fingers run along the shelves she helped him organize before he left, the dorm check list she printed for him sitting on his desk. She felt excited for him and his new chapter in his life, and thought how ironic, a decade apart, in age they must have felt the same emotions about starting and ending these unpredictable stories.

She saw herself in him in moments when they had packed his things. He took two frames with him, one of their family, one of their grandfather, the same one they all had framed in their rooms, reminding them of him, his presence, his strength. Reminding them to make him proud. She had taken the same photographs with her, packed between books she couldn’t bear to leave behind, along with, of course, her journal. Her grandfather had chosen his name, Anuj, youngest brother, fitting for their family, who adored him as the baby, as their last one to grow up. And yet, now, in her grown up self she felt young again, scared to embark on anything new.

Her brother was ready he said, “I’m ready to be here.” And she prided in his confidence, in the adult frame of his tall lanky body that she once knew fit perfectly in her lap when she fed him his cereal on Saturday mornings as his favorite childrens’ show, Power Rangers, blared in the background. When she hugged him goodbye, in front of his dormitory, she felt him hug harder, for the first time that she could ever really remember, and when the tears came, she felt him soften, her in his chest, her younger brother. He swallowed once, did not cry and with a strong voice told her not to worry. Later sent a text message to her and her sister, saying I love you, a gesture that surprised them; it was unlike him to show emotion. Only 4 days there, he had already made her proud, by just being who he was in his new element. The past few days, they shared stories over the phone like they had never done in all the years she was away, in all the time she spent at home when she returned for her residency.

Her parents did not bring up her leaving until days ago. They let the days pass, thinking it was still far away, until her father and her sat in his office and he asked her, what she would need to order for supplies, and she said “Daddy I will be leaving next week, there’s no need to order anything for me now…”. He looked up and said out loud “Next week?” And she knew it was not a question for her, she knew he was just wondering where the time went, wondering if she knew how concerned he was of her future in her career, love, the things fathers carried in their hearts for daughters. And so he became quiet, the way his nature was, and touched her shoulder softly, the way his love was. The moment was hard for her, with all the fear and protection in his eyes, with his silent advice. She always felt deepest for him, her understanding father.

She would catch her mother looking at her when they worked together on patients, mistly eyed. Often she would hear her mother say ‘there is no one else like you’ under her breath, as if, like her father, thinking out loud. She would remember her childhood, making rotis after school as her mother ran home from work, ready to prepare dinner but always being so happy it was half done by Sima. Her mother, who, on most days, she butt heads with, arguing about things that didn’t seem to matter when she thought of how much she would miss her warmth, her hugs against her mushy body, malleable to Sima wherever she squeezed.

This morning, her grandmother had Sima’s chai ready for her the way she liked it, like she did every morning, with extra milk and only half a spoon of sugar. She kept Sima’s chai in the dark green mug, always, next to the stove with a cover on it. In Guajarati, she told Sima the tomatoes were ready in the garden, so they went, together, and picked the ripest ones. Her grandmother let her smell the fresh mint she used in the morning chai, showed her the baby cucumbers she would cut with dinner in which she would season with the blend of coriander and cumin powder that went on them. She had heard these things before, but Sima listened intently, still taking it in like it was new, letting her grandmother’s voice fill her heart. Her grandmother, in their native tongue, Gujurati, told her the house would be empty without the sound of Sima saying ‘Nani!” in the morning as she came down the stairs before reaching the kitchen, her grandmother stopping her morning prayers to kiss Sima on the cheeks, pulling her up if she bowed to her in respect. Sima helped her cut the unripe mangoes for the spicy pickle when they returned from the garden. Her grandmother boasted about the mangoes, since her sister had bought them from the Indian grocery store, saying Mili had picked the best ones.

Sima was proud too, of something so simple but symbolic of her sister learning the care needed to keep what Sima loved so much alive.

She often feared what will happen? Will her parents be ok, their age, the help they needed, her grandmother’s old age and comments of reaching God and felt guilty of leaving it all behind, keeping the guilt, intertwined with the love she would take with her, across the country, far from her comfort of home.

When she spoke to him on the phone, she wondered what fears he had, of what he anticipated, of how he too felt on their new path together. He was after all, the main force pulling her to the west coast. She was excited, juxtaposed with the fear she knew was natural to feel, but ultimately thought of the peace she had found in her decision, the one she knew, many people close to her had accepted, but swallowed with concern.

When her sister napped today, she lay at her feet, watching her peaceful breaths, careful not to wake her, just like she did when they were younger. She remembered when she would come home from school, Mili would be napping already after her day in nursery school, and Sima would be ready to explore their backyard together but would wait for Mili to wake up. She would sit like she did today, watching her sister, waiting, and remembered their youth how many times, she would fall asleep right there, the two of them side by side.

For me, it’s about this new chapter. Twenty six years have passed and I have been through storms on my journeys, through seasons of changing hearts and it all has brought me to here, to this place where it feels okay now. I can remember finding writing in my heart at age eight, stories and poems flowing through me… Back then, I did not know what it meant to find truth in fiction, but instead I imagined waterfalls and large aliens, let my childhood imagination shape me. In my teenage years it was the angst of a generation gap, culture gap, the music that I blared in my mind’s eye, as hormones filled my poetry, my spoken word, the core of my creative soul. Now, I write from this place, where peace has settled within me, where it didn’t always feel that way, where the beauty is not in the words I use but in the way I somehow fit emotion in syllables and letters that once put together, words once spoken, make sense to me. Some of it may be raw and real, and for those who know me, be very close to my personal life. Some of it can be truth embedded in fictitious events, places, people… some of it fears of a what the future of an unknown path holds molded into a piece of writing… some of it my childhood imagination shining through. That is the beauty of this art, like so much art around us. I keep names sometimes, because it is the sound of these names that brings the colors of my story alive. My story. I am not sure if there will ever be closure to this piece, these pieces, this chapter, all chapters, but I like the ambiguity of not knowing, of opening this book and turning the pages of a story I am living in each day. For me, it’s about breathing this, whatever it may be.©

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