“Mine too,” I said, realizing how much this floral smell reminded me of those early years in Ahmedabad before we had left for Chicago.
“When I talk to Neel, it doesn’t feel like he is there anymore.”
“It felt the same way when I talked to Dipti.”
She nodded. “You never expect something like this. You never expect to watch your child bury his child. I’m supposed to be well into another life before even thinking about burying my child, let alone a grandchild.”
We continued to rock slowly back and forth on the swing. “I guess no one can be prepared for something like this,” I said.
“And to not lean on each other . . .” She shook her head. “That’s what love marriages are for, right? You have a partner?”
She was admitting she did not understand such a central part of Neel’s life. Of mine. She could not understand marrying for love because it was such a foreign concept to her. I thought about how much romantic love wove its way through my being and wondered how a parent and child could be close when they lacked the ability to understand the other’s worldview on love at such a basic level.
I found myself wondering about her life before marriage. About more than the man in the photo. I knew she had a degree in pharmacy from a prestigious Indian university, but I had never heard her speak of a career or any professional aspirations. I had never heard of any of the women in our family seeking such goals. It had never occurred to me that my mother might have wanted something different. Something more like the life I had back in LA: career, choices, freedom. I wanted to ask her but didn’t feel like I could be that direct. My family didn’t talk about the past or hopes and dreams like that.
I started with a soft approach. “Why did we leave India?” I thought back to what Neel had said about those early years in Chicago. It would have been so easy for them to see how hard it was going to be and just turn around and go back. Return to a caste system and life in which they were in a dominant, rather than subservient, position.
Mom stared ahead at a spot on the lawn, seemingly concentrating on what she would say next. I continued to push my feet against the dirt, rocking the hichko back and forth.
She said, “We moved from this country so you and Neel could have more options than you would have had here. We were thinking: Our kids are smart, and we want them to have all the opportunities.”
Her voice was heavy. I wondered if she doubted whether she and my father had made the right decision all those years ago.
“But why did you think we couldn’t have done that here? Wouldn’t it have been easier with all of the privileges that come with our family name?”
She stared at the large bungalow she grew up in. “Maybe for Neel. But not for you.” She sighed. “Maybe not even for him. There’s no reason to work hard when everything is handed to you. Who knows if Neel would have pursued medicine. You would not be a lawyer. Seeing how well you both can take care of yourself now . . . it’s hard to say the decision was wrong.”
“But why did you keep saying how misbehaved we were after moving to America and we should have stayed here?”
“We wanted you to have a good education and job, but not give up all of your culture. We wanted you to have both. Perhaps it was silly to think that, but because Neel could keep both, we thought you could too.”
I pushed my feet into the ground to stop the hichko. It creaked as it fell out of sync and shifted from side to side. “I’m not like Neel.”
Her expression grew weary. “I know,” she said.
We sat in silence for a few moments, each of us escaping to our own thoughts.
I thought about her words. Had I lost my culture? I felt like I was constantly reminded that I was Indian—at work, at a store, when talking to white friends—some part of me was always aware that I wasn’t like the other people around me. It crept into every facet of my life, whether it was someone mispronouncing my name and me grinning and acting like it didn’t bother me, or people assuming I knew every other person with the last name Desai and not understanding it was as common as Smith and in a country far more populated than America. It followed me as I moved about my day, mentally tallying whether I was positive or negative on the karma scale, because while I wasn’t sure what the afterlife entailed, in the event reincarnation was our fate, I wanted to make sure I was on the right end of it. I still understood our native language, wore the clothes when needed, and ate the food mostly without complaint. I certainly never felt like I had “lost” it, but I wondered what made my mother think I had.