Exhausted, Benjamin begins another orbit around the synagogue, slower this time.
The women reach out two fingers to touch the Torah as it passes, then place the fingers to their lips. I watch through my viewfinder as Sangeeta reaches out a hand and mimics the motion, then closes her eyes and says a small prayer of her own. I wonder for a moment what language she prays in.
At the end of the service, the group pile into rickshaws and onto motorbikes and drive in a long caravan to the Waskar home, where another sukkah has been set up in the yard. The inside of the hut is ringed with red plastic chairs. With some surprise, I notice a rented sound system and a young man with a microphone acting as the DJ. I look up and see that fresh vegetables— long cylindrical gourds and round melonlike fruits—hang from individual strings all over the ceiling, just out of reach. David takes the microphone from the DJ and asks all the young men to gather in the hut. They assemble eagerly, watched closely by the young women of the group. This is clearly the part of the night that everyone has been waiting for. David calls out a countdown, and when he reaches zero, the young men begin leaping into the air. They shout and laugh, reaching over one another to hit the fruit and vegetables and try to knock them free from the ceiling. The women watch, covering their laughter with their hands, slightly alarmed and amused by the show.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Ellis’s wife, Noorit, and Benjamin’s wife, Shoshanna, the younger generation of women in the Waskar house, tying up their own stash of fruit and vegetables in a separate, smaller tent, and go to investigate.
“Want to play?” Noorit asks me, and I smile, glad to be included and to see that the women do not intend to be left out of the festivities.
We gather the women and girls, including the elder Mrs. Waskar, and huddle together in the room. Noorit counts down in her small but strong voice: “Panch! Char! Theen! Do! Ek!” We reach up our arms, raising them to grab the fruit and bring it to the ground, where we stomp on it with glee. Though I’m a full head taller than any of the women, I’m the least coordinated and the worst at the game. We return to the main tent, panting with the exertion and laughing among ourselves.
The DJ makes some kind of announcement, and four young children, clearly siblings, get up from their seats and walk toward the front of the tent. I notice a large man in the background who must be their father. He waves his arms as though he is conducting them, and the children begin to sing the traditional Shabbat song, “Shalom Aleichem,” to a tune that strikes me as both familiar and slightly Indian.
Shalom aleichem malachei ha-shareit malachei elyon, mi-melech malchei ha-melachim Ha-Kadosh Baruch Hu.
Bo’achem le-shalom malachei ha-shalom malachei elyon, mi-melech malchei ha-melachim Ha-Kadosh Baruch Hu.
Barchuni le-shalom malachei ha-shalom malachei elyon, mi-melech malchei ha-melachim Ha-Kadosh Baruch Hu.
Tzeit’chem le-shalom malachei ha-shalom malachei elyon, mi-melech malchei ha-melachim Ha-Kadosh Baruch Hu.
I videotape the children singing, and a woman looks at me and smiles. From her pride at the group I realize that she must be their mother.
Soon afterward, I’m surprised to find that some of the adults, even a few of the women, have gathered in the back of the tent, where they are drinking small pegs of whiskey with Thums Up. The whiskey must be expensive, but this is clearly a special occasion, cause for celebration. I take a seat next to the father of the singing children, who introduces himself as Solomon.
“You are from U.S.A.?” he asks.
“Yes, from New York.”
“Ah, New York.” He raises both eyebrows. “There are many Jews there.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me, do they know about us?” he asks.
“I think some do,” I say tentatively. “But many do not.”
I compliment him on his children’s singing, and he tells me that he and his wife are very proud. All of their children are learning Hebrew, and both of his sons are learning to blow the shofar, the traditional ram’s horn that is sounded in synagogues on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.
“How many people worship in your synagogue in New York?” he asks. “Five hundred? A thousand?”
“I’m not part of a synagogue . . .” I hesitate.
“Not part of a synagogue?” he asks, looking alarmed. “But where do you spend your High Holidays?”
I feel slightly reluctant to tell Nana’s story in this context. I realize that I have enjoyed, for a short while, the assumption that I am Jewish, that I belong here. As I tell it, people start to listen in, gathering around me, translating the story into Marathi, and I become a greater source of curiosity. Those who missed the beginning ask me to tell it again, how my grandmother grew up in Castle Rock, Thane, Pune, and Bombay, how she eloped with my grandfather in the 1930s, how she moved to Pakistan. I look up and catch Rekhev’s eye. He is standing in the doorway of the tent and watching me, and he looks attentive, protective almost.
“But how were you raised? With what religion?” Solomon asks me.
“I was raised with three religions.”
“Three religions? In one house?” he says, translating for the group. “But that’s not possible!”
“It is possible.” I try not to sound defensive. “Now I’ve come here to learn about Judaism.”
“You’ve come here to learn about Judaism, or about our Bene Israel Judaism?” he asks pointedly. I think for a moment about his question.
“I’ve come here to find out about Bene Israel Judaism. About the life that my grandmother left behind.”
“You are doing this thing for her, then.”
“Yes,” I say.
AS THE EVENING PROGRESSES, the tent gets more and more crowded. Rekhev tells me that people are arriving from all over the area, making trips as long as two hours to join David’s party after the celebrations at their own synagogues are over. Solomon’s children beg him for the chance to stay another day in Revdanda. They are camping out in a house on the Waskars’ property and enjoying the holiday atmosphere.
Solomon laughs, turning to me.
“My children are from the city, but they feel at home here,” he says. “Everyone feels at home in David’s house. Everyone is welcome.”
At well past midnight, Rekhev and I catch a ride to Revdanda with one of the departing cars and slip quietly up the stairs of the Sea Side Holiday Home.
“Tonight was fascinating,” Rekhev says as we walk up the stairs.
“You thought so?” I’m pleased to hear him say it. “You had a good time?”
“Think of it. They live this story, each week, in chapters. Then they come together on this night and they celebrate this story—then they begin it again, they start to read it again with new eyes. Some stories, they will seem the same to them, perhaps. But others, others will change. The stories will grow with them as they grow, as they age.”
“It’s a beautiful idea,” I say.
“I saw how you told your story tonight,” he says. “I saw how you told that story to explain who you are. And I think all of this”—he makes a quick wave of his hand, indicating everything around us—“all of this will be part of it.”
We stand for a moment in silence, in the flickering light of a night-light that dispenses mosquito repellent.
“I don’t travel, Sadia,” he says. “Never. But with you, I’m a traveler here as well.”
I put my arms around him.
“Don’t do that,” he says softly, pulling away from me. “I don’t want to be a chapter in your book.” He turns around and reaches for his key. The key turns in the lock. “Good night.”
“Good night, Rekhev,” I say, watching him enter his room and shut the door.
I get into bed fully dressed. I watch the silhouette of palm-tree leaves moving back and forth across my window. I try for hours to fall asleep. I wake up, exhausted, at dawn, still in my borrowed sari.
The next morning, Rekhev and I pretend that nothing unusual has happened be
tween us. We walk in silence to catch a rickshaw to the Waskars’ house, where we begin to shoot the everyday goings-on of the house. We do this for a week, folding ourselves into the daily rhythms of the place. The children come to visit with us, pushing their small faces into the lens and asking to look through the camera at one another. But mostly we fade into the background, becoming a part of the yard, like the swing or the water pump. Rekhev and I build separate relationships within the Waskar compound: he with the Buddhist carpenters in the Waskars’ woodshop, and I with Benjamin’s and Ellis’s wives, Shoshanna and Noorit.
I sit cross-legged on the kitchen floor and videotape Shoshanna and Noorit peeling ginger and garlic, chopping vegetables for the midday meal. I watch as the local Koli fisherwomen, their saris tucked between their legs to create a functional pair of shorts, come to the doorway with baskets of fish for sale, which they carry on their heads. I am reminded of the Bene Israel folktale I have read about a man named Rahabi, a Jewish traveler, who visited the Bene Israel in the Konkan hundreds of years ago. During that visit, he gave the women of the community a test, to make him a meal of fish. He watched them sort through a basket for the fish with fins and scales and discard the rest, according to the kosher laws, and decided then that they were really Jewish. Shoshanna and Noorit tell me about the other ways that they keep kosher, how if they are having lamb in the evening they will not take milk in their tea in the morning. How did you learn these things? I ask them, but they have no answers. It’s always been this way, they tell me.
I ask if they plan to migrate to Israel. If they can live like this, they tell me, together in one house, then they’d like to go. If they would have to live separately, then they want to stay here.
IN THE AFTERNOONS, David sits on the porch and entertains a string of male visitors, his Hindu friends and business partners, acquaintances from other towns. He serves them tea, coconut water, and melons from his farm, and they tell him the latest news of the crops, who is selling and buying which properties in the area, who has stolen from whom. These visits are how David gets his news, how he stays on top of what is happening locally.
“These two are putting us on the movie camera and taking it back to Bombay!” he tells his friends.
“What for?” they ask.
“Oh, they want to know everything about how to be a Jew,” David explains. “What we eat, how we pray, what the old stories are, how we came here in a ship . . .”
We conduct long and rambling interviews with David, who tells us stories from his life and his impressions of Bene Israel history. He tells us that, in the old days, his grandparents’ grandparents did not have a synagogue. He explains that on Passover his ancestors sacrificed a lamb and placed a hand-print of blood on each doorway of their home, in memory of the sacrifice that the Israelites offered at the command of God the night before their Exodus from Egypt. The blood of this sacrifice sprinkled on the doorposts of the Israelites was to be a sign to the angel of death to pass over the homes of the Jews. David takes us around his compound and shows us the handprints that can be seen in every Bene Israel home in the region, even now.
Each Yom Kippur, his ancestors would whitewash their homes, dress all in white, and pray. On this day, their neighbors knew, the Bene Israel would do no work, and so neighbors offered to tend their livestock for them. They offered similar help on the Sabbath. Out of respect, the Bene Israel abstained from eating beef, taboo to the Hindu population, even though it was not against their own dietary laws.
“Have the Bene Israel always enjoyed such good relations with the other communities?” Rekhev asks.
“India has been good to us Jews. Elsewhere, the Jews have had many problems. But not here,” he says. “The problems between the Hindus and the Muslims are not our problems, though in the city it is not always so easy. Sometimes we have been caught in the middle; we are neither one nor the other. . . .”
“What do you mean?” Rekhev asks.
“I’ll tell you,” David begins, pulling up a stump and sitting down. “I was working in Bombay when the Hindu-Muslim riots broke out at Partition time, in 1947. My brother had taken me to Bombay to work, but the riot was at its peak, and there was a curfew order. We used to work in the daytime, and at night we would hide underneath the building. Then, one day, I was very hungry and I went to buy pav bhaji to eat, after curfew. What could I do? I was very hungry. A crowd of people caught me.” David straightens his spine and impersonates someone from the crowd. “‘Who are you?’ they said. ‘Tell! Are you Hindu or Muslim?’ Now what could I do? I am an Israel Jew. I didn’t know what to say, which was the right answer that would save me. They picked me up in a Muslim locality, and I began to realize that they thought I was a Hindu. I was worried that they might kill me. So then I dropped my pants!” David makes a quick motion to pantomime dropping his pants, and laughs, a sharp exhalation of breath. “And I was naked! And I was circumcised! And everyone started saying, ‘He’s a Mohammedan! He’s one of us!’ and they embraced me and let me go. One of them even dropped me home.” David laughs at the memory. “What to do? I am an Israel Jew!” he says. “But one has to adapt to the country one is in. . . .”
IT’S OUR LAST DAY in Revdanda, and I ask Rekhev if he’ll accompany me to shoot some street scenes in the Revdanda market. After we finish, we run into Sangeeta, who asks us to come to her home for tea. Inside her apartment, Rekhev sits on a chair and I sit on the bed while Sangeeta boils water in the kitchen. I look around the tidy room, ready and waiting for Sangeeta’s husband to arrive. Her young daughter, Neena, returns from school, and Sangeeta asks the child to practice her English with me. Neena is shy, almost engulfed by her mother’s large personality, but tries to converse with me. I ask her about school, if she gets along with the other children. She’s learning Marathi, and she tells me that she’s almost fluent. When our tea is ready, Sangeeta hands us each a cup and saucer and sits cross-legged on the floor as she hooks up her camera to her television and searches through the pile of tapes. She wants to show us her films.
Most of the tapes are Sangeeta and her husband traveling around Maharashtra and visiting local temples, set to popular Hindi film music. In almost all of them, Sangeeta can be seen popping behind and out of small groves of trees and smiling at the camera like a Bollywood heroine. True to her word, she has made extensive use of the special effects on her camera. We watch, mesmerized, as Sangeeta and her husband can be seen in mirrored images on either side of the frame, doing dance moves, waving to us as if they are performing in a fun-house mirror. Sangeeta’s husband is tall, with a carefully groomed mustache, and it is clear that he plays the romantic lead to Sangeeta’s heroine. In the later tapes, a small Neena can be seen loping along amiably behind her parents, waving to the camera and gamely inspecting the temples and picnic spots of their family outings. The music swells, and there is a dramatic shot of Sangeeta’s husband in a black leather jacket and dark sunglasses, standing at the top of a small cliff.
The Girl From Foreign: A Memoir Page 34
