Leaving India

by Minal Hajratwala

  Finally, when the day was almost over, and the scheduling most definitely was, and Dhiren had had a couple of glasses of Scotch, a genuine smile came onto his lips and stayed there. As the DJ called the first dance, to Jim Brickman's "Valentine," Dhiren and Alana stood under purple, green, and yellow disco lights. Smoke from dry ice rose into the glow, and soap bubbles floated out of a bubble machine—a scene straight from the fantasies of the bride's teenage sisters, who had planned this portion of the evening. At the other end of the ballroom, Tara and my mother handed out favors to the guests: traditional Indian sweets in foil boxes. The disco ball spun and ABBA's "Dancing Queen" came on. Then the aunts in saris, the Iowa friends, the young cousins already being eyed by the matchmakers all came together on the dance floor, shaking their limbs to rhythms as suitably diverse as Cyndi Lauper, Lauryn Hill, bhangra, salsa, and Vietnamese pop. The party was, all of a sudden, hip and cosmopolitan, a scene that could have been taking place in Mumbai, Hong Kong, New York. As Dhiren's friend Jaime, a Venezuelan table tennis player turned Internet entrepreneur, quipped, "I can't believe this is Ames!" And as Nilesh's schedule said, capping the day, "Reception—Let the good times Roll!...thank god, right?"

  Only in the diaspora.

  Everything was put into a small photo album to be circulated back to Aunt Pushpa and our other relations around the world, except for the presentation of the sacrilegious pig.

  FIJI

  In Suva, I stayed a few nights with Aunt Pushpa's family, where I learned her folk remedies. To treat a cold, boil a nugget each of copper, silver, and gold in a pot and stand over it, breathing in the steam. For pinkeye, sweep seven fresh mango leaves over the affected eye seven times, then tie them in a bunch where no one, especially the patient, will look at them. As they dry, the pinkeye will heal. If no mango leaves are available, Aunt Pushpa told me, you can substitute seven cloves of garlic.

  The traditions my parents had left behind as superstition and old wives' tales, I found interesting, humorous, and enjoyable. Pushpa and her husband lived in a house on a hill with their younger son and his family, but the son had put in emigration papers and was waiting to hear from New Zealand and Australia. He had found himself afraid of native Fijians ever since the coup and the ensuing increase in violent crime; he feared letting his children near them. He and his wife were both accountants, so they were sure to be approved. Within a year he hoped to emigrate.

  In Fiji I also stayed with my father's youngest brother and his wife, and with various cousins of my parents. It was politic to dole out my time among the families, an arrangement that also allowed me to interview people in a leisurely way. In every house there were empty rooms and cupboards, plenty of extra pillows. "I cried when we sold the beds," one aunt told me. Her sons were already in Australia; she and her husband were just waiting out the months until their papers came through and they could join them. In many homes only the older people were left, the young people having taken jobs abroad. Nearly every day of my visit I heard of another relative who was applying, or had been approved, or had already started to pack, to move overseas. I had arrived at the very moment of migration, when the old country empties out and a society will be re-created, reinvented, in new lands.

  In a time of great change, such as the past century has seen, each life also contains a moment that comes to stand for the transition from the old world to the new. I have looked for this moment of migration in every life, and in my own, until I begin to believe I can see them all, shimmering, a string of lit buoys in the dark sea of history—each light leading to the next, so that the tracing of many lives takes on both a luminosity and a kind of causality, which is the law of karma. As I write, I find that each story takes on a personal quality; that is, I begin to take each of my ancestors' lives personally, almost as if I am looking in their lives for what made me, and looking ahead to what I will make: finding a place for myself in the stream, in this most intimate history. I am reweaving the threads, reassembling what has seemed ruptured by time, geography, temperament, quarrel, or neglect, gaps in memory and in the historical record through which our stories, being small ones, might so easily slip and disappear.

  But perhaps our stories are not so small after all. For even as I write this, I see the whole sweep of history, the epic of my people, and here too is what I want to say: The real story of our diaspora began long, long ago, and continues past the end of these pages. It is being written by every computer programmer in Silicon Valley and contract laborer in Kuwait, even now; every new wife stopping to barter in a foreign market, to search among the strange fruits and vegetables for some familiar flavor, even now; every schoolchild feeling all eyes upon her as she pronounces the jewel of her name in her ancestors' accent, before she has lost it for good, even now.

  The moment of migration is not singular, of course, but part of the string of moments, as the universe is composed (it seems now) of strings, each looped to the next in inextricable continuity. Rupture the strings, and you create a black hole. A journey is only a place to start the story; the human story. And we migrants are not merely curiosities and wonders, but humans after all; if we stand out in the throng, it is only because the storyteller chooses our moment, our string. The trajectory of light has crossed us, illumined us—as a thread seems, in the proper angle of sunset, to burn.

  MICHIGAN

  In the Hindu temple that he helped raise, in the midwestern town where my family spent its formative American years, my father celebrated his sixty-fifth birthday in April 2007 among seventy or eighty of his closest friends. Relatives drove up from Toronto and Iowa, and others from around the world telephoned their congratulations: from Texas, Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, London. In southeastern Michigan, the mini-community of mostly Gujarati engineers and other professionals for which my parents had served as a kind of glue for twenty years coalesced again. The food was spicy and familiar, catered by one of the now-abundant Indian restaurants that dot a landscape where once we made long pilgrimages to distant suburbs to find a single spice shop. As with most areas of the country, Michigan is no longer as homogeneous as it once was; Indians have been the largest single immigrant group to the Detroit suburbs in recent years, with the latest census showing 54,000 people of South Asian origin making their home in the state.

  In the 1980s, when my father's Apple IIe computer was brand-new and his hope that his children would marry within the caste was intact, he compiled a directory of the Khatris of North America. The families numbered a couple of hundred, and most cooperated by providing complete listings, including their children's birth dates—which everyone knew was not only for curiosity but also for ease of matching. Although the community was spread out, such a census was a project that one organized man could conquer in his spare time. It took him perhaps six months, and the resulting booklet was thirty-two pages in neat dot-matrix columns.

  Today, hundreds of families of our clan live all over the North American continent; there are Khatri societies from Modesto to New Jersey, from Houston to Toronto. Each one holds annual talent shows, picnics, holy-day feasts, and summer barbecues featuring whiskey and curried lamb. No print directory has been compiled; it would be an unwieldy and fast-changing enterprise.

  And as the number of "mixed" marriages grows, there is the difficulty of defining who "counts." At least one Khatri association has held a public debate on whether girls who marry outside the caste should continue to be invited to social events or, upon their deaths, be sent funeral wreaths from the caste association. This debate is intricately wound with the story of our people today, a people far from one home and trying to make another. What were once considered isolated and shameful "family problems" have been identified as a trend, one that is snowballing forward, despite fierce efforts to preserve the old ways. Even for those who stand up to rant against mixed marriages, each discussion is a step forward. It is through such conversations that culture changes. What was once unthinkable becomes, slowly and bitterly but surely, part
of the common experience. A taboo devolves—like overcooked vegetables, business scandals, too-bright saris, or too-dark skin—into a topic of gossip. Each "first"—the first American wife, the first American husband—implies and makes way for others to come.

  I am also a first. As far as I know, I am the only lesbian, and the only writer, in the recorded history of our clan. It is only now that the circumstances conducive to my existence have come into being.

  And perhaps for that, I must thank my great-grandfather, who gave up the art of prophecy for the art of trade. In our family, he was the first to leave the homeland; the first swerve on the map toward infinite destinations.

  Marrying and procreating beyond one's circle of birth is not, of course, unique to our community. The 2000 U.S. Census counted Americans of mixed race for the first time, and found 6.8 million of them, with a large percentage of those being children—quite remarkable for a nation where segregation and anti-miscegenation laws existed within living memory, and where many immigrant communities work to hew strongly to their own. Among these new multiracial Americans are my three nieces, who dressed up for my father's birthday festivities in new salwar kameez made of bright flowing synthetic fabric adorned with sequins and gold trim. Their parents, whose marriage was so groundbreaking, are no longer the only mixed-race couple in our family, and the children do not seem destined to be the confused pariahs that the elder generations once feared they would be.

  Rather, with their soft brown curls and creamy-to-olive skin, Zoë, Ava, and Téa were the darlings of the crowd—easily stealing the spotlight from the birthday celebrant, who could not have been more glad. At age five, Zoë adores both Dora the Explorer and the Hindu monkey god Hanuman; she loves both the grandfather who taught her the University of Michigan fight song and the one who tells her long stories drawn from the great Indian epics. She is also old enough to explore her identity, coming up with such apparently spontaneous formations as "I'm Indian, and Ava and Téa are Indian, and Daddy's Indian, but Mama's not Indian—right?" along with "I'm a girl, Mama's a girl, Daddy's a boy, Ava's a girl, Téa's a girl ... Grandpa, do you have a penis?"

  Diaspora is nothing if not an endless series of questions. May they proliferate.

  HOME

  Another Navratri approaches; the air cools; the moon is new. I am spending this year home in San Francisco, so I can plan to go with my mother and with friends to dance the garbaa for nine nights, or at least a few. Our options are plentiful in the nearby bedroom communities of Silicon Valley, where the Indian population has tripled in the last two decades. We might go to the temple in Fremont, to the college gymnasium in Hayward, or even to the massive Oakland Coliseum, where Indo-Americans pack the house to dance to traditional tunes belted out by a famous singer from Gujarat; she is known for wearing masculine attire, and news articles note coyly that she is always accompanied by her female "best friend," who has been traveling with her since high school. Having set out to write the stories of relatives scattered around the world, to uncover our humble histories, I find myself dancing.

  As the garbaa speeds up, the cut mirrors that decorate our skirts scatter the light: swirl of dancers and audience, children, men, old people, teenagers; deities perched on altars, carved or sculpted, garlanded in gold and flowers; a moonless sky full of stars. If we could track one tiny mirror's journey, all that it reflects and refracts, we might see the world entire.

  At night we dream of circles, spinning, the earth tilting under our feet.

  * * *

  Chronology

  ca. 961–1242 Solanki (Chaulukya) dynasty rules northwestern India

  1607 First British East India Company ship lands in India, at Surat

  1765 Naanji, earliest paternal ancestor recorded by family genealogist

  Aug. 1, 1834 Slavery abolished in British Empire

  Sept. 9, 1834 Beginning of Indian indenture: thirty-six men sign agreement in Calcutta to become laborers in Mauritius

  1857 Indian Mutiny; Queen Victoria takes over rule of India from British East India Company and proclaims "equal and impartial protection of the law" for Indians as British subjects

  1874 British take possession of Fiji

  1893 Mohandas Gandhi travels to South Africa, begins to agitate for rights of Indians as subjects of British Empire

  1902 British win Anglo-Boer War in South Africa

  1905 GANDA KAPITAN, my paternal great-great-uncle, travels to South Africa

  1909 MOTIRAM NARSEY, my paternal great-grandfather, travels to Fiji

  1911 M. Narsey & Co. opens its doors in Suva, Fiji

  1912 G. C. Kapitan Vegetarian Restaurant opens its doors in Durban, South Africa

  1914 Gandhi leaves South Africa and returns to India, where he will work for independence

  1916 British India ends indenture system, phasing it out by 1920

  1917 United States bars South Asian immigrants

  1918–19 Worldwide flu epidemic kills millions, including Motiram Narsey

  1922 Ratanji Narsey, Motiram's eldest son, my paternal grandfather, migrates to Fiji

  1923 U.S. Supreme Court rules that South Asians, although "Caucasian," are not "white" and are therefore ineligible for U.S. citizenship

  1930 Gandhi leads salt march to protest British rule of India

  1931 NAROTAM CHHAGAN, my maternal grandfather, travels to Fiji

  1946 Motiram Narsey's brothers retire to India; Ratanji Narsey takes over M. Narsey & Co. operations in Fiji

  1946–49 United Nations holds sessions and debates on situation of Indians in South Africa

  1947 India and Pakistan become independent nations

  1948 Apartheid government elected to power in South Africa

  1949 Riots in Durban, South Africa

  1950 RANCHHOD HAZRAT, my father's brother, travels to Fiji

  1952 Ratanji Narsey and others establish Merchants Club in Fiji, a drinking club for Gujarati businessmen

  1953–56 M. Narsey & Co. becomes Narseys Ltd., first nonwhite company to receive license to sell liquor in Fiji

  1963 Duty-free boom begins in Fiji

  BHUPENDRA HAJRATWALA, my father, travels to United States along with Champak Narotam, my mother's brother

  1965 United States begins to allow significant Asian immigration

  1967 BHANU NAROTAM marries Bhupendra Hajratwala and travels to United States

  1969 New Narseys building completed in Suva

  1970 Fiji wins independence; Indians make up more than 50 percent of population

  Ratanji Narsey dies in Tokyo airport; company leadership passes to his eldest son, my uncle Chiman Narsey

  1971 MINAL HAJRATWALA born; family migrates to New Zealand

  1972 Dictator Idi Amin expels Indians from Uganda

  1978 Hajratwalas migrate to United States again

  1981 Narseys has 110 employees, six retail divisions, two joint ventures, two factories, and more than one million shares held by family members

  1987 Two military coups in Fiji; economic sanctions; Fiji Indians begin to emigrate

  1988 RANCHHOD HAZRAT, my father's brother, moves with his family to Australia

  1989–90 Indo-American hotel and motel owners organize to battle discrimination

  1990 United States institutes "Diversity Visa Act," a.k.a. immigration lottery

  1992 G. C. Kapitan & Son Vegetarian Restaurant ceases operations in South Africa

  1994 Narseys department store closes in Fiji

  1995 South Africa holds first post-apartheid elections

  1997 British hand over Hong Kong to China upon conclusion of ninety-nine-year lease

  1999 MALA KUMAR, my mother's niece, and her family move from Fiji to Los Angeles after winning immigration lottery

  2000 Military coup in Fiji; Indian emigration increases 3,391 U.S. households have a South Asian head of household and a same-gender partner, according to Trikone magazine's analysis of census data

  2001 11.5 million people of Indian origin living ab
road, according to Indian government

  2009 19 million to 30 million people of Indian origin living abroad, according to unofficial estimates

  * * *

  Notes

  PAGE EPIGRAPH

  [>] On the sixth night Vidhaataa: While textual references cite Vidhaataa as a god (one face of the masculine deity Brahma), many Hindus worship Vidhaataa as a goddess. I have followed this grass-roots practice.

  PAGE 1. WATER

  [>] The Solanki dynasty: Transliteration creates a diversity of spellings. Various sources call this dynasty by the name Chaulakya or Chalukya, tracing the etymology to challu, the palm of the deity's hand, where they were formed (Tod, Annals and Antiquities, p. 112; and the 1896 Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, p. 156). Sholanki is another modern variation. As for other names cited in this chapter: Mulraaj is found in the texts as Mularaj and Mularaja, and seems to come from mula, root, and raajaa, king. Chaamundaa (also Camunda, Chamunda) seems to take her name from two buffalo demons she killed, named Chanda and Munda. Tod lists the other fire-pit (Agnikunda) tribes as Rathod, Parmar, and Chohan—all common surnames in our Khatri community of the five villages.

  [>] Vadodara is: The population and relative size of Vadodara—known in the days of the British as Baroda—are drawn from the "Index of Primacy" table, based on the 2001 census, at the website of the Urban Development and Urban Housing Department, Government of Gujarat (www.udd.gujarat.gov.in/udd/urb_scn.htm).

  an honorary parade: Photographic engraving, San Francisco Public Library "India" photo file, unsourced image dated February 5, 1876.

  [>] "emaciated body": David Kinsley, Hindu Goddesses (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), p. 148.

  [>] Vishnu's sixth incarnation: The listed number and order of Vishnu's incarnations vary, even among ancient authorities; Dipavali and Bebek Debroy's summary English translation of the Agni Purana (New Delhi: Books for All, 1991) lists Parasurama as the sixth. The story of the slaughter of the Kshatriyas twenty-one times is contained in the Mahabharata, the great Hindu war epic. The creation of new warriors from the fire pit is told in various lesser scriptures known collectively as the Puranas.