Finishing up a Semester at 35,000 Feet

It's 9:09 AM on Friday, December 18 as I write this, on a plane 35,000 feet above Yerevan, Armenia. My body might think it's 11:09 PM on Thursday night, but I've been served lunch once since we took off at noon in Chicago, and another lunch will be served soon. The night/day was short. 

I spent most of the past ten hours grading final projects and exams by students in my Introduction to Poetry and freshman composition classes. Students reflected on what they had learned over the course of the semester; I was moved to read their thoughts about the role of poetry, glad to know that revising their writing made them feel confident. 

A poetry student, responding to one of Mary Oliver's poems about poetry in a question on the final exam, wrote that analyzing poetry teaches that "your way of thinking is not the only way someone might approach the text. You are open to new ways of thinking." Another student, who told me she wants to be an engineer, wrote, "I believe that there is poetry in everything, even if it is not visible on the surface."

One composition student wrote, "I learned how to get my voice to come through my writings and not just be another sentence on the page." He also observed, "I even began to enjoy myself while writing a few of these papers. This is something I wouldn't have guessed before." I wanted to cheer. 

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It is now 3:35 PM on December 31, 2015, in Bombay (Mumbai), India.

I am ending the year in the city of my birth and childhood, among family members in whose faces I can see myself--the color of their skin, the shapes of their smiles, their inability to speak through helpless laughter mirroring mine.  Though this city has been transformed--down the street, a three-story mall houses a multiplex theatre in what used to be a sleepy edge of the city--I am taken back to the seventies as I hear the incessant beeping and honking of traffic and also the cawing and cooing of crows and pigeons. 

Last night, thirty-seven years after I left India for the first time, I reconnected by phone with a favorite teacher: Mrs. Mehta, who taught me history and geography in the fifth and sixth standards (grades). Her voice was familiar even after all these decades. "I learned the most when I was teaching," she said. I told her I have the same experience; I am always learning from my students. And, I thought to myself a little later, I learned about teaching from my many enthusiastic, gifted teachers--and that is why, while flying halfway across the world, the cabin lights dim as other passengers slept or watched movies, I was able to find pleasure in discovering what my students had learned. Every now and then, I would turn to Marilyn and say, quoting from an exam or a paper, "This is why I teach."

Sindhi Children and the 1947 Partition of India

My notebook, pen, and voice recorder on my parents' bed in Bombay in 2012.  I had been sitting across from my Aunt Koshi, my father's younger sister, and asking her about the Partition.  It was probably the longest conversation we had ever had--though interrupted and added to by relatives coming in and out of the room--and one I enjoyed very much.

Our childhoods remain with us, coloring our experiences as adults, affecting how we make sense of the world.  The older I get, the more I realize how much of my past I keep with me, how vivid my seventh birthday is, how clear the memory of a high-school field trip in Kuwait.  My memories include emotions and physical sensations.  As I have entered middle age and this awareness about my past has grown stronger, I have realized that my parents, thirty-one years older than I, also have their childhoods inside them--an obvious conclusion but one that is also startling. 

In recent years, I have been talking with my parents and their siblings about a crucial turning point in their lives, the move from Karachi to Bombay after the Partition of India in 1947, when they were still children. During these conversations, I have been listening, through these adults' memories, to the experiences of those children.

Last month, my short essay, How to Interview Your Mother About Her Lost Childhood was published in Bluestem magazine.  The link above will take you to the essay and to an audio recording of my reading of the essay.*

Before that issue of the magazine was released, I showed my mother the essay, nervous about her response.  "It's all the truth.  It's short and sweet," she said.  And then she added, "You write really well.  You should write a book."  I thought of the essay and laughed.  After you read it, you'll see why.

*The essay is also available here.

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Below are some photos Marilyn and I took in 2012 in the Sion Sindhi Colony, the location of the first permanent homes in which my parents lived in Bombay.  They happened to live two doors from each other.  When I returned there, after a gap of many years, I was struck by how narrow the lanes were.  The homes on that lane now are sturdier and fancier than the ones my parents' families built in the late forties.

The house with the bicycle in front of it is on the spot where my mother's family's house was.  It was a much simpler, one-story structure with a small loft that held a bed.

The house in the left foreground and in the photo below is on the spot where my father's family home stood.

A view of the lane looking out towards the street.  

That's me in 2012  in the lane where my parents' spent their teen years (though the lane looked much different then): Block 8 of the Sion Sindhi Colony.

Another view of the lane, looking towards the railway tracks at the end, just beyond the wall.

This alley runs perpendicular to the lane.  My paternal grandparents moved to Block 16 of the Sion Sindhi Colony, and my brother and I walked countless times down this alley from the house of our Nani, our maternal grandmother, in Block 8 to the house of our Dadi, our paternal grandmother, whom everyone in our family called Ama.

This is the Sita Sindhu Bhawan, a community center for Sindhis in Bombay.  In 2012, I visited during a gathering, and I was touched that several elderly Sindhis there were willing to share with me their stories of the Partition.  Being surrounded by Sindhis reminded me of my childhood, when on the weekends, visiting my grandparents in the Sion Sindhi Colony, I would hear the sounds of Sindhi being spoken, see the Sindhi script on the newspaper on my grandmother's bed,  and smell the aroma of Sindhi food cooking.  I lived in a multi-ethnic neighborhood, where for most of my childhood ours was the only Sindhi family. So the weekends were the only time I had this experience of being immersed in Sindhi culture.

Last Weekend in Three Photos

On Friday evening, entering the mall to run errands, I noticed this sign.   I immediately read it as, "One world separates," and thought, sarcastically, "Partition--at a discount!"  I have been transcribing interviews with family members who experienced the 1947 Partition of India, so the Partition has been on my mind a lot.

Crossing the street in Chicago on Saturday afternoon to attend a performance of The Book of Mormon, I looked up and saw this huge sign (a 2011 piece by Kay Rosen).  After watching the musical about missionaries in Uganda, I thought again about the idea of "doing good" for others.  What do we intend?  And what actually happens?

On Sunday morning, I read the paper on the deck, a favorite weekend ritual.  When I got up to go in, I looked down at the table and saw this. 

Scarves Make Me Happy

A display of dupattas at one of my favorite shops in Bombay.

When I was a child, my mother and I wore scarves on road trips to keep our hair from blowing in the wind.  The scarves were square, and we would fold them in half, into triangles, and knot the corners under our chins.  My mother sometimes wore sunglasses and looked glamorous.  Our mini vacations often took us to the hill stations outside Bombay, where the air was cooler, so sometimes we wore the scarves to stay warm.

I was much more familiar with the long dupatta, the scarf worn with salwaar kameezes, North Indian baggy pants and tunics.  As a child, I would ask to play with my aunts’ dupattas, and they usually let me.  I remember one, belonging to a great aunt who lived in Poona.  A gauzy black fabric dotted with tiny red, green, and gold sequins, it seemed magical to my eight-year-old self.  When we returned home, I was more sorry to leave behind that dupatta than I was to say good bye to my aunt. Now I have many dupattas of my own, and I love experimenting with draping them and like seeing how other women wear them. 

Scarves are in fashion these days, and as I walk the halls of the college where I teach, I notice the many styles and colors worn by our students.  It brightens even a long, tiring day when I catch a glimpse of a silk scarf twisted into a cheeky knot or a knitted one draped in chunky rolls.

These pieces of fabric have been around for centuries, serving to warm us or to adorn us, or both.  When I wear one, I know I am part of a long tradition.   And each scarf is so simple—a square, a rectangle—and offers so many opportunities to be creative.  

The other morning, I was on YouTube looking for videos to use in my poetry class when a title caught my eye: 25ways to wear a scarf in 4.5 minutes.  I was in a hurry with much to do before class, but I couldn’t resist this title.  For 4.5 minutes, I sat there smiling.

 

A Colorful Surprise

Recently, I was looking through photos taken in Bombay last summer and came across this one of a paan waala’s stand.  I took the photo on Colaba Causeway near a small bookstall where Marilyn and I had bought a couple of books that the seller recommended. 

The colors of this display stopped me; I don’t eat paan, but I asked the vendor if I may take a photo.  He nodded in that minimalist way many Bombayites have.  I was grateful.

What a delight it is to see these colors again and to be reminded of that hot afternoon of shopping for kurtas and books—and of our break for a cold fresh lime soda at Café Mondegar. 

Unexpected Gifts

Who knew there were so many shades of test-tube slime?  (Who knew there was test-tube slime?)

When our nephews, nine-year-old-twins, were visiting last week, I played more than usual.  We went to the dollar store and returned with treasures.  Test-tube slime in a rainbow of colors was a highlight.  I found myself as fascinated as the boys were by the liquid-like substance that felt wet to the touch and flowed off my hand but was spongy and stayed whole.  We also bought fireworks that came in small tablets which, when lit with a match, sprouted a black snake or a glow worm.  The smell was one I remembered from the Diwali celebrations of my childhood in India, as was the delight in the creature that suddenly appeared.  “It looks like it’s growing straight out of the ground!” one of the boys observed. 

One evening, when we were throwing small fireworks on to the driveway where they made a loud sound, I looked up at the house from the bottom  of the drive.  The garage door was closed.   The lights in the house were on.  Inside, the dinner dishes sat in the sink and on the counter.  I was outside because the twins had invited me to play with them.  I watched them from the bottom of the driveway as they divided up the fireworks equally, throwing them down and picking up the paper trail so that they did not litter. 

Our house felt different with children here, more like some houses I pass on my walks, with kids’ bikes leaning against porches or chalk drawings covering the driveways.  Much as I love my life with my partner, with its room for art and writing and travel and movies, and am passionate about my teaching career, I was glad to be a part of that other world for a little while, to be on the driveway in the evening not to weed the garden or to bring in the trash can, but to play, to laugh, and to know the dinner dishes could wait.

 

They experimented with mixing all the shades of slime.  The result looks like an opal, the twins' birthstone. 

Silences and Sounds

In Abu Dhabi, where I was in transit, the sun rose while a bus took us from the plane to the airport terminal.  After Bombay, with its tropical air and its intense colors, this landscape seemed to belong to another planet.

This lone bird, on the plane I was about to board in Abu Dhabi, appealed to me.

After I returned from India--where I had been in big cities, moving quickly, making the most of every day, and talking with many people--I needed to turn inward, slow down, and be silent.

My partner, Marilyn, had returned a week earlier, so I made the long journey home alone.  For those twenty-four hours, I didn't have to speak to anyone except airport personnel and the flight attendant. The solitude was blissful--and striking because I was surrounded by people the entire time.

The shoreline of Chicago appeared as we flew in over Lake Michigan.

Every year, I plant this strawberry jar with a different combination of flowers. 

Marilyn nurtured this pot of geraniums over the winter, and now it lives on our deck again  Red geraniums are among our favorite flowers.

After returning home to the Midwest, I have spent time in the garden, deadheading flowers from the pots I planted and stripping dried lavender from its stems to make sachets. I have watered the hostas and filled the birdbath. I have listened to cardinals and doves instead of to honking cars, and I have spent hours being silent.

The twins played with the spinning tops I bought them in India.  I have a small collection myself. 

Now our nephews, nine-year-old twins, have arrived for "Aunty Camp." The quiet has been replaced by giggles and questions, knitting lessons and pillow fights. Sometimes, we stop to read in perfect silence.

As I washed dishes the other night while listening to the twins squealing in glee in the next room, and later, as we watched videos I had taken in India, I was struck by how all these worlds, all these silences and sounds coexist in my heart.

Colors and Textures of Indian Textiles: Photos

These sarees were waiting to be picked up at the dry cleaner's; the display case was above the counter where clothes are dropped off and picked up.  Textiles woven and printed all over India are worn as sarees, dupattas (scarves), shawls, and tailored clothing, and they are also used to cover tables and beds.  Living with such beauty is good for the soul, for my soul at least. 

 

 

 

 

When I come to Bombay, I buy most of my dupattas at this small shop in an old market near Chembur Station.  The shop is more like a stall, maybe six feet wide and four feet deep.  Two floor-to-ceiling displays on either side of the stall are at right angles to the counter. 

A close-up of scarves at my favorite shop.

Kashmiri embroidery, at the Cottage Industries Emporium in Delhi.

Kashmiri embroidery on black fabric.

This embroidery was amazing in its detail.  I cannot remember now what part of India it was from, but the northeast rings a bell.  I saw this at the Cottage Industries Emporium in Delhi.

 

 

Silk brocade, at the Cottage Industries Emporium in Delhi.