A little late...but here

A Musafir remembers!

My last post was in early April and then all hell broke loose, leading to this weeks long hiatus. India’s slide into Covid’s second wave and the continuing devastation is the reason (see below for how to help India). Despite having been gone longer than the years I lived there, India persists in my heart and will always have the power to derail me. A few of mine - whose happiness and well-being remain essential to my own - still live there. The immigrant must pay the piper for her choices - sooner or later.

Meanwhile I am struck once again by the notion of ‘home’, the multiple ones I inhabit in my head and in real life. The traveler, the immigrant, the wanderer who belongs nowhere and everywhere! So here is a post (with a poem) I wrote a few months ago for the beautiful blog Tillism, run by two beautiful sisters (also my dear friends) Anniqua Rana & Selma Tufail that speaks to this idea that continues to define me.

A Musafir remembers...

For years my label for myself has been musafir, which is the word for traveler in Hindi/Urdu. I grew up in India and since my father was a doctor in the Indian Army I found myself in a new city and school every 2-3 years. It was a transitory existence, which I assumed - as any egocentric child - was how the world lived. Seven schools, a couple of universities and many, many homes in many cities later I found myself in a city and home in California where I have now lived the longest. Yet the musafir is still here.

Sometimes even now I get restless for that traveling life, for meeting new people and discovering new worlds, foods, art. Like I did in the India of my childhood - marveling at how people find meaning, happiness, fear, connection in myriad ways. The tens of thousands of gods and goddesses they honor. Yet connected by a single “Indian” identity. It is a miracle, even as it can be a challenge for those that concern themselves with politics. Traveling through India is/was a magical experience - the closest comparison I can think of is traveling through Europe. The landscape, the language, the food, the mores changing rapidly and so completely and suddenly when you leave one state and enter another. I often long to travel through India more thoroughly and discover so much that I have missed. One of these days — before they come for me.

Army life had its perks and its downsides but the constants of my particular family and the Army community that welcomed every new arrival in town made it work. That life - at least in those days - was comfortably middle-class but ironically came with fringe benefits not available to many even in upper classes. Swimming pools, horse riding lessons, movie screenings and club life where we went dancing, socializing without fear for us girls in particular, etc was not available to too many in civilian life. I have fond memories of that life. My sister and I can spend hours reminiscing. But with the years I also know not to blindly glamorize it all. As I look back I can see there were many of my own friends who suffered for the constant change, the school transitions, the transitory friendships that were unceremoniously interrupted. I don’t make light of those hardships either. 

Yet it was a life I found a deep resonance with. I particularly loved living in “cantonment” or “cantt.” area as it was commonly referred to. These towns within towns were modeled on British army stations with wide tree-lined streets, beautiful bungalows sporting languorous verandahs, manicured gardens, all mingling with animal and bird life you could not commonly witness elsewhere in urban India. All of this coexisted peacefully within a city’s hustle and sweaty bustle. It was indeed a life of privilege and I realize my clueless, good fortune in having had it. I still remember the calm that would descend on me when I re-entered “cantt” from the city and even now it has that impact on me. Several years ago when I first came upon San Francisco’s Presidio area I was dumbstruck in being revisited by that same feeling! As a child I loved being in nature, in my mother’s garden or hanging among trees listening to nature’s sounds. All of this somehow centered my notion of a “home” - people I love, a small garden (or at least lots of plants), friends that visit as family, and a willingness to build a place of love without being tied to specific places or material elements. 

A few years ago when I was in Delhi at my parents’ home (not in cantt anymore) a simple sound brought back a flood of this feeling. Next to their flat in a majestic Peepal tree, an early bird Koel arrived one morning to sing her (actually it’s the male bird that sings but in Hindi it’s always a “she” when referring to the singing) sweet song. As I lay in bed listening to her, it brought on a deluge of nostalgia for a childhood gone by, a way of life and a home full of memories. Where my parents live now is not a home I have really lived in - except for my visits - but that is my normal, given my childhood. Here is a poem I wrote for my fellow traveler-companion who surely sang for my nostalgic reveries…

Photo: Reena Kapoor “Not a Koel” … Instagram @1StarDusty

Koel

In the peepul she comes and sings

Every morning pulled by an inexorable longing

Such a sweet song my ears haven't known yet longed for

It's been a lifetime since I've heard her sing

The house I'm in is not one from my childhood

Not one where I know all the nooks and corners

But it's one where my precious have lived to make it oddly mine

Somehow, she knows these truths

Her sweet refrains gently remind me so

Every morning as I lie awake before anyone stirs

She comes to sing and call with her song

She knows I think I'm not from here somehow

Yet as she sings, she makes me gently hum

Come alive to my memories of a time that was

And while I'm not from here anymore, she must know

This place from a lifetime ago

Will forever live within me...

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Reena

May 6th 2016, India

So even when I stay put in my home for many beloved reasons, for ties that bind, for promises made, I travel in my head. It recently occurred to me that my debut book of poetry and my blog are both called “Arrivals & Departures” perhaps for the same reason. Musafir hoon yaaron…. (I am but a traveler, friends...). Such conditions cannot be cured!

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Extra

A beautiful film Nomadland with the inimitable Frances McDormand about the lifestyle of self declared “nomads” (not to be confused with those who consider themselves homeless, as she clarifies in the film, “homeless is not the same thing as houseless”) explores the notion of home especially for someone who’s lost everything that anchors, and yet somehow knits together meaning in the wandering community of people acutely aware of their (our) brief and accidental existence! Life is short is perhaps the truest cliches of all. Maybe we’ll meet somewhere after life itself, maybe not. Either way why wait?

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HELP INDIA! 

The scourge of Covid continues working through rural populations in India as we speak, laying much death and tragedy in its wake. If you’re looking to help you can share evidence-based, usable Covid information with friends & family in India, urge everyone to VACCINATE as soon as possible and DONATE! There are many worthy organizations doing great work; and here and here are organizations that I have donated to. Unfortunately it’s not over until it’s over and second-, third-, n-order effects will continue as will the need to help those we can.