Issue 21 Preview: Son of Immigrants by Jaya Wagle

Son of Immigrants

Jaya Wagle

This piece is featured in Issue 21 of Barrelhouse magazine. Order your copy today!

The son of immigrants will never know

the saaundhi mitti ki khushboo that signals the arrival of the first rains of monsoons, dark clouds bursting their pent-up water on a cracked earth, the rising of the soft dust, the slurry of water and soil, the rutted roads and the delicious puddles in the middle of the streets, the cozy scent of musty blankets and the weight of damp clothes that dry on your body.

The son of immigrants will never know

the joy of playing badminton under the street

light in front of the house while scooters and mopeds

and cars honk their horns and navigate around

two sisters, his mother and aunt, their braided

hair tied with rubber bands, their watchful eyes following

the birdie, their racqueted hands and salwar clad

                        legs moving in rhythm, the warm, summer breeze

cooling their sweaty foreheads.

 the anticipation of scoring runs while playing

cricket in the square that stood in the middle of his

father’s boyhood apartment complex or the sheer

determination it took for his father to

compete to be on his older brother’s team,

 to be a fielder, catcher, batsman, bowler,

his eager eyes devouring every

word written on Sports Star, Sports Week and Sports World.

The son of immigrants will never know

the comfort of a warm sun on a winter

day in an unheated brick and mortar home.

The son of immigrants will know

the sound of a Hawkins pressure cooker whistle

the aroma of warm puffed up rotis

the tang of mildly spiced gravies of chole, kidney beans, black-eyed peas,

the crunch of crispy dosas

the slurp of sweet and sour soupy lentils.

The son of immigrants will know

the love of his parents and the attention that an only child gets and sometimes he will resent them because they expect too much from him in the land of opportunity where they encourage him to play the trumpet and make him attend all pre-AP GT classes and learn swimming at the natatorium and join a robotics team in the fall and compete.

The son of immigrants will know

how to chant the Omkar, the Maha Mrityunjaya and the Gayatri mantras before bed.

The son of immigrants will know

his only job in the house is to get straight As

that his parents will receive automatic emails from his school’s home access center,

that his parents will scoff at his school’s “no homework” policy and make up homework for him anyways,

that his parents’ rules will be different than that of his friend’s parents,

that he will get a gift for Diwali, Christmas and his birthday, but nothing for Easter and Thanksgiving.

The son of immigrants will savor

aloo parathas

khichadi

wilted garlicky spinach in a chickpea gravy.

The son of immigrants will never experience

how his Mamma and Papa rode their bicycles to school, ten kilometers away, where they sat in a class rooms on wooden benches, and kept their distance from their teachers, whom they called “sir” and “ma’am” and “father” and “brother” and “sister” and looked forward to recess so they could gobble their lunch quick and play with their friends before they had to troop back into drab classrooms dominated by a blackboard and a ticking clock.

how their schools, St. Joseph’s Girls Convent and St. Xavier’s Boys High School, enforced dress code, so no one stood apart in the corridors and hallways and quadrangles of the school building.

For her: cream collared blouse, blue tunic, house tie (red, blue, green or red)

  black Mary Janes and white socks,

  long hair parted in the middle,

  two plaits secured with a black rubber band,

  no chandelier earrings allowed, only studs

For him: white shirt, khaki pants, Xavier’s badge,

   black shoes and white socks,

   hair trimmed and oiled, parted on the side

except for sports-day-Saturday when they

both wore: white uniforms and white Bata tennis shoes over white socks.

The son of immigrants will never know

he could have asked his mother to play nursery rhymes in the car instead of NPR.

The son of immigrants will never speak

Hindi but he will watch Bollywood movies and read English subtitles.

the mother tongue of his parents,

Hers: Marathi. His: Konkani.

The son of immigrants will ask

why he doesn’t have siblings and it will be a question his parents won’t be able to answer because how can they tell a child that his mother has had a miscarriage and an ectopic pregnancy, that his mother is the carrier of the DMD gene that can cause muscular degeneration in her male progeny, that his parents got too busy with their work and school to have time to plan for another baby, that his parents thought about adopting a baby but got overwhelmed with the paperwork, that his parents still sometimes think of the child they may have had, the one they conceived a few months after their marriage, the one they aborted because…

The son of immigrants will

extrapolate when his parents speak in Hinglish.

have a limited but functional vocabulary of vernacular words, a mix of Marathi and Hindi: varan, bhaat, khichadi, poli, lauki daal, aloo paratha, anghool, pani, zopu, kharaab, kachara.

The son of immigrants will never know

the pent-up anger that sometimes swirls in the car after his parents have dropped him off at his friend for a sleepover.

the quiet, comforting silences between his parents

the early morning conversations over chai and toast

the cold war his parents engage in for days while he does his homework, eats his dinner, watches TV and plays with his Legos.

the late-night bonding over Anthony Bourdain’s travel adventures

the lunches and dinners shared at Nigerian, Sri Lankan, Thai restaurants

the search for hole-in-the-wall taco joints for tender barbacoa and spicy chorizo tossed with sharp red onions

The son of immigrants will never know

his mother, at the end of a tiring day, sometimes drinks a peg of brandy with hot water or rum with a squeeze of lime in her Yeti cup.

The son of immigrants will know

the joy of train travel in the AC compartment of Indian Railways

eating home packed food in paper plates

playing cards with his uncles and parent and grandparents

running up and down the train corridors

staring out the window at the passing landscapes

spotting Indian army’s tanks and Jeeps stacked on platform cars

the unique railway station smells of frying food mingling with odors of urine and sweat

the joy of peeing over the tracks at the end of the long platform.

The son of immigrants will never understand

the ambition and courage and drive it took for his father to leave his native lands and build a home and a career on foreign soil

because of the moto the Jesuit priests of St. Xavier’s imparted

on him, emblazoned on the insignia of his

school, on the badge he wore for

twelve years: A Teneris Impende Laorem,

apply yourself to hard work every day.

the blind leap of faith his mother took to marry his father and follow him oceans and continents away from her family and friends, to leave her career behind and start over in a new country.

because of the moto the sisters of

St. Joseph’s Convent instilled in

the culture of the school: virtue alone ennobles.

A mantra she remembers but

doesn’t always believe in or follow.

The son of immigrants will know

his father picked up swear words at the age of five and used them with abandon, just not in front of his parents, and still uses them while driving or talking to his brothers on the phone or watching football, basketball, baseball.

The son of immigrants will never know

the sensation of misty air

from a Bajaj water cooler fan filtering through

khus scented screens on an Indian summer day,

the joy of sucking sweet mangoes cooling in a bucket of ice-cold water

the crunch of long pale green ribbed cucumbers sprinkled with salt and pepper

sweet ripe red juicy tomatoes lightly dusted with sugar

            watermelon slices brushed with black salt and pepper

fibrous sugarcane stalks that leave the tongue raw and throat sweet.

the pleasure of biting into a freshly picked

corn-on-the-cob, roasted on a roadside

cart over coals and rubbed with

ghee, salt, red chili powder and sprinkled with lemon juice.

The son of immigrants will never understand

his parents’ passion for Bikram yoga even though they will drag him to yin yoga classes on Sunday mornings, while his best friend will reluctantly go to church.

The son of immigrants will never know

what it is for two girls, one boy and their parents to live in a one bedroom-one bathroom-hall-drawing room-kitchen

or for three boys and their parents to live in a two bedroom-one bathroom-living room-kitchen.

The son of immigrants will know

the names of the Gods in the Hindu pantheon: Ganesha, Vishnu, Shiva, Brahma, Krishna.

the stories from Mahabharat and Ramayana epics.

the tales of India’s independence, its history, heroes, freedom fighters: Gandhi, Subhash Chandra Bose, Bhagat Singh, Maharana Pratap, Bajirav Peshwa, Jhansi ki Rani

because

his parents will buy him Amar Chitra Katha comics, the same ones they grew up reading, and he will read them in the bathroom and before bedtime and after school.

The son of immigrants will never know

the numerous threads that tie his mother and father to their

parents

brothers

sisters

cousins

grandparents

uncles and aunts.

The son of immigrants will not experience

the claustrophobia, the intrusiveness, the familial politics of

brothers

sisters

cousins

grandparents

uncles and aunts

The son of immigrants will never experience

the quivering anticipation during sleepovers with his cousins in his Aaji’s cramped living room, everyone sleeping next to each other, covered with blankets, waiting for the warning, “paad aa rahi hai (the fart is coming),” and everyone raising their legs in unison to air the noxious fumes.

The son of immigrants will never know

the camaraderie of playing hide and seek in twilight hours with the power cuts enveloping the neighborhood in darkness.

the fun of playing gilli danda on the empty streets during afternoon siestas, the neighborhood quiet with the hum of water coolers and fans

the satisfaction of quietly rolling the homemade dice—made of tamarind seeds or cowry shells—to play asht, chang, pe, a homemade version of Ludo—on a grid of squares drawn on a wooden board with chalk; match sticks, pebbles and dried beans for pawns.

The son of immigrants will never know

his mother felt like a failure when she couldn’t breast-feed him.

his mother’s guilt for not noticing the yellowed skin on her two-day old son, the jaundice

that made him weak

that made him sleep more and feed less

that led to loss of appetite

that led to loss of weight,

that led to formula feeding to boost his weight.

Hopefully, the son of immigrants, will never have to experience

a searing pain on his forehead because he and his cousin stood in front of the full-length dressing table mirror and rubbed Amritanjan balm on their foreheads, giggling all the time because it felt cool slathering it on and then screaming and crying when the heat from the balm started seeping into the delicate pores of his head.

the loneliness of being locked in his house alone, waiting for his mother to come home from the vegetable market because they lived in a bad neighborhood and his mother needed to finish her chores before her two older boys came home from school.

The son of immigrants will never know

his mother’s regret that he will never have the emotional and physical connection with his grandparents

what it is to live with his grandparents during the summer holidays

the alliances and rivalries that are formed while playing cards with cousins on the cool slate tiled floors, sneaking shankarpalli, Glucose and Bourbon biscuits from his Aaji’s repurposed Brook Bond Tea tin.

The son of immigrants will know

what a meta move is and point it out during an episode of Frasier when Frasier’s ex-wife, Nanny G asks him, “Do you know what it is like to play a character for twenty years?” because he has watched Cheers where Kelsey Grammer plays a younger Fraiser with a full head of hair and is married to Lilith.