“With everything that happened this year in LA and then here in India, I’ve had to ask myself what is truly important to me. The truth is I’m not sure if I’ve been fighting for the right things. I fought so hard to be accepted since the first day we arrived in America, and I’ve never stopped trying. I always thought being different from white people was the problem, but then I realized how exhausting it is to try to be the same as everyone else.”
She gazed into the distance, contemplative.
“We thought you kids would be okay. You learned the language quickly and could speak with no accent. You learned the customs. With those things, you could mix with the Americans. Your father and I had spent too much time in India to do those things the same way.”
I realized that my parents didn’t know how hard it had been for Neel and me. They’d been busy protecting us from financial hardship, and we’d been busy protecting them from our social hardship. We’d all fallen into this pattern, and it had become second nature to each of us. What would have been different if we’d shared those struggles with each other rather than growing apart because we didn’t trust the other to handle the truth?
“You know what Nani used to say?” Her voice quivered in that same way it always did when she remembered her mother. “It is better to fail at the right thing than to succeed at the wrong one.”
Was my mother saying that she thought she had failed by moving us, but that it was still the right thing? I looked at my life through that lens and wondered how much of it I had spent trying to succeed at the wrong thing. I had been on such a lifelong quest to fit in—with my family, with my job, with Alex, with everything—that I never stopped to ask myself whether it was the right fit. Had I picked law because it was one of the whitest professions in the country and if I could succeed there, then it meant I would be accepted as an American? Had I picked Alex because I thought he would make it easier to blend into the world around me because he fit in so naturally that surely I would, too, simply by association? As I studied the wistful expression on Mom’s face, I wanted to know how she felt about Nani’s words. Had she pursued the right path?
“Do you ever wish you had stayed in India?” I asked. It was the first time I had touched upon whether she was happy with the life she had chosen.
“It is not sensible to think that way. We can only know the path we chose.” Her expression grew somber. “I wish I could have spent more time with Nani and Nana before they passed. It was hard being so far during that time.” Her eyes welled up as she remembered her own parents.
“I’m sorry you couldn’t,” I said, guilt rising within me.
Money had been so tight when Nani passed away that my mother could not even fly back for her funeral because it was too expensive. She’d been practical and said that it wasn’t worth spending that kind of money when Nani was already gone. That year Neel was going to be starting college, and they needed to put as much as they could aside for his education.
Mom had married my father based on the families’ suggestion when she was twenty-four years old. Thirteen years later, she was whisked off to America—a country she had never set foot in. She was half a world away from her parents and brother and surrounded by strangers who didn’t understand her language or customs. I couldn’t imagine a lonelier or more terrifying situation.
Tears were now brimming in both our eyes. I couldn’t envision a time when I had felt this close to her.
Finally, Mom said, “But we cannot dwell on the past. Now, we must focus on Neel.” She looked me straight in the eyes, something she rarely did. “Together.”
I looked at her, knowing we were on the precipice of a great shift. She and I had never acted as a team in anything that truly mattered. We had worked together on homework when I was a kid, but since then we’d both been on our own paths and existed as part of the same family, but I’d never felt we were emotionally together. After I moved away from Chicago, the physical distance let us mask the emotional one that had formed between us. In many ways, it had seemed like we were both more comfortable with that game of pretend. Now, we needed to join forces for the first time in my adulthood, and I hoped we could do it.
22
Ahmedabad hadn’t been home for such a long time, and time passed slowly without day-to-day distractions like work and errands. It seemed all we did was spend each day milling about the bungalow consumed by the grief. So, when Virag Mama suggested I create an album with the photos I had taken from the wedding, I was ecstatic to have a project away from the sadness and some sense of purpose to my days. As was the Indian way, Virag Mama knew someone who was willing to let me share the darkroom space he had for his photography business. December 24 was just another workday in India, and I was happy to be distracted from the memories I had with Alex last year at this time. Virag Mama and I went to the workspace together so he could make the introductions and leave me there to work as he headed to the office to meet Bharat.