My last memory of my mother is her sitting dejected on a hospital bed. She said it was time to go, but I explained that she had years ahead of her and that I needed her to plan for her trip to the US for the kids' graduations next year. I realize now that she was trying to say goodbye, but I didn't want to hear it. This whole thing was intermediated by microwave communications that flattened us to 6 inch simulacrums of who we really were. A mother in deep distress and a child who could not face the reality in front of her.
I've spent the last 2 weeks in rituals to send her soul to her next destination, to the feet of the almighty or her next go around the sun. But the ancients were savvy about death - and the fact that rituals are for the living. As each played out, the sheer exhaustion of the process, but also the brutal and poetic process of consigning her body to the fire, her ashes to the seas, her food to the crows, her blessing to twelve married women...I'm slowly burning through my guilt and agony of not having spent more time with her.
Sixteen days in, I am looking at this image of her, and have to admit that I was half-way across the globe partly because that's where she had sent me. No, it's not like Chennai couldn't hold both of us. It's that she had aspirations for me. She was the one who accompanied me to shooting ranges as I trained, not just sitting back and reading as she sometimes did, but picking up the pistol to win medals herself. She was the one who woke me up at 4am to study, and didn't go back to bed on the off-chance that I tried to get some shut-eye. Nope, she was up and pottering about the house or garden and shuttling in with coffee and snacks. Those exams needed to be aced...
More than anything, I wonder what distance does to belonging. She was mine...but 30 years apart meant that I knew less about her day than her housekeeper did. What right did I have to try and get her to go for a walk in the mornings? I wasn't by her side.
I'm here in Chennai now, and realize that I had no context. There are no sidewalks for her to take walks in, after all.
Come to think of it, what right do I have to look around me at my beloved Chennai and rant about the sidewalks? I spend a month out of a year here. Does my first twenty years of having lived here mean I still belong? Or should I accept that I live in the "between" space - where I can't really comment or contribute to a place I didn't grow up in...and don't have the rights to comment or hope for better for a place I left?
Let me start by saying that I absolutely love my hometown Chennai. Growing up here, the city nourished my soul and mind, and was the space that allowed me to accomplish wonderful academic and athletic achievements. Over the past decades, I've marveled at the development in the city - high rises, overpasses, metros, parks - even as the essential spirit of the town was maintained with small shops, restaurants and distinctive neighborhoods.
So, why do I return to my beloved Chennai only to rant about to its awful, often missing, pavements?
Because I worry about the health and wellbeing of Chennaikars. Just like I worried about my mother. Does my distance decrease the legitimacy of my caring? I wrote the following as an OpEd...and then realized that my "not belonging" here would make this less an act of affection, and more an imposition. I don't think the dailies want to hear from me. Sigh. But here it is anyway....
Maybe my distance allows me to see the lack of sidewalks better than those who call Chennai home permanently? I've taken to discussing politics and polity with my father, in an effort to distract him from his sorrow. When I brought up sidewalks, he was a little surprised. He hadn't really thought about it - the erosion of sidewalks had happened gradually. One copes when the first section disappears, and then the next. And before you know it, you just decide that it's easier to drive.....
More than anything else, I'm making peace with my complicated states of belonging or semi-belonging. In my career, I've often had to reconcile myself as the newcomer who didn't "grow up here." With family, I defer to others on rites and rituals - they will be here when I take my flight back to NYC. And with my city, I appreciate the complexity of trying to bring to fruition the vision of a modern city while being handicapped by an existing ancient infrastructure. Change is difficult. Maybe someone in the "old guard"...the ones who "belongs"...might take a second to look through my eyes and see that if I hope for change, it's because while I value the past, I also see a better future.
Goodbye, mom. I was far away, but you're always going to be in my brain, pushing me on. Thank you!
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