Portrait

Come in from the snow and take off your boots otherwise you’ll get frostbite and your little toesies will fall off, you don’t want that, good girl…and now the other foot, there and now mumma will make you a castle by the heater.

The grey sofa cushions are very much taller than her and they make a cozy fort to keep the heat in nicely and she can feel her toes again and it is almost her favorite part of playing in the snow except for when her father pulls her around the block in her sleigh. The sleigh is red and it is new. Except sometimes Sean comes too and he is mean so she does not like him. But her mother has told her she must be nice to him because it is Manners and besides his parents bought the light blue and dark blue house next to hers. Her house is red and green and white and there are wild raspberries in the backyard and a big mulberry tree on the deck. When the berries fall on the deck they make a dark stain and her father can get very angry about that.

She is given her berries to eat in the kitchen which has a shiny white floor. It does not stain. She knows because she has spilled berries on it before. And when her grandmother cleaned it up her mother had said Don’t Spoil Jahnavi.

*insert cryptic Joyce-like diamonds*

It was warm under the blankets. So warm that she did not want to get up, but her mother was talking to her softly and she knew that it was time to get ready for school. Her mother had laid out a pair of jeans and a yellow shirt with a sunflower on it for her to wear after she showered. Her mother was very keen on showering in the morning. So was her grandmother. Something about energy but she never had much energy to begin with, at least according to Miss Sellers. Miss Sellers was always telling her to Look Alive in Gym class but she wasn’t quite sure what that meant. Honestly she wasn’t quite sure what to make of Miss Sellers either, who had very short hair and kind of looked like a boy. But her mother said Miss Sellers was definitely a girl. But it was still hard to believe sometimes because why would a girl teach Gym. Anyway, she was pretty sure she was alive even if Miss Sellers didn’t think so. And running around the field for Exercise was so very tiring, especially in the sun. Besides, if she ran an entire lap then she had to pass the big gray house behind the trees on the far side and all the older kids in the fifth grade said it was haunted. And she knew that the fifth graders were always right because they were so much taller than she was and kids didn’t lie to other kids the way grown-ups sometimes did, like when her father had told her he wasn’t divorcing her, only her mother, but then he still moved into another house and he only took her around the block on Thursdays and only if she rode her own bicycle, which was hard and sometimes she skinned her knees.

Picking the dandelions that grew along the edge of the field was a lot more fun than doing laps and that was how she had met Samantha, who didn’t like Gym either. Samantha’s mother was a hair cutter and sometimes she did free haircuts for Samantha’s friends. One day she said Do you want a haircut Jahnavi and Jahnavi said yes, and after that she always got free haircuts and she and Samantha were best friends.

After she had put on the shirt with the sunflower on it her mother gave her a glass of milk and a jam sandwich and drove her to school. School was very loud because of all the kids screaming and running around like little angry heathens and she really didn’t want to go, but her mother had to go to work so she squared her small shoulders under her big backpack and got out of the car. She allowed herself to be buffeted along towards the stairwell, which was where Ms. Fraser took attendance before everyone got to go into the building. She tried to stay by the wall and remain inconspicuous but somehow she found her path blocked by Ryan Emery, who said nastily Your head’s so small, I bet your brain is really small too. There’s no one with a smaller head than you. She looked up at him and tried not to have the afraid expression on her face. He was very much taller than she was but he was not a fifth grader: he was in her class and mostly the only time he ever talked to her was to tell her that her head was too small. In kindergarten there had been a girl named Corey whose head was even smaller than Jahnavi’s, but they both knew that it didn’t matter how big your head was as long as you got A’s on the weekly spelling tests. And anyway Corey had moved away when they got to the first grade and Jahnavi thought that it was so sad that they didn’t get to enjoy being big kids together.

The Fat Uncle

The fat uncle first of all is from "foreign." Not America – he has not made it that far – but from Europe or Australia. Because of this the fat uncle is laboring under the delusion that he is always right. Delusion, I say, because this is nearly always untrue. The fat uncle visits India only once or twice every decade, and he calls it ‘my country’ in as patronizing a manner possible – “In foreign, they give you big-big ice cream scoops, and I am telling in my country one ice cream scoop is not even half the size!”. This is another thing – the fat uncle doesn’t have any grammatical skills to speak of and refuses point blank to accept it. His English is also heavily accented, which for some reason becomes even more extreme when he is in public, as if he is trying to prove something.

The fat uncle has a fanny pack. He has a camera also. He will bring these two items with him everywhere. The fanny pack resides under his ample stomach rolls and no one knows what it contains, but he tucks his thumbs under the straps importantly as if its contents are of national importance. The camera is a source of constant interest to him. It is an SLR and is of course equipped with multiple lenses, flash diffuser and all. He will take all this out and always be screwing and unscrewing something. Then he will take aim ostentatiously, preferably cutting across your line of sight, and when he takes a picture it will make a loud ‘click’ sound. He has set it up like this to make sure you know he is very good in photography.

And God forbid you live in America and the fat uncle decides to drop in. He will bring his fanny pack and his camera and he will be unbearable. He will force you to take him sightseeing and he will insist that you stop at all the places on the freeway marked ‘tourist view point’ and he will take out his camera and take many ‘scenic’ shots. Then he will ask many questions and compare all your answers to what it is like in foreign (Europe or Australia or whatever). If you go anywhere the fat uncle will cling to you like a wart plaster and nothing you say will dissuade him. Even if you are going out to buy vegetables and toilet cleaner he will insist on accompanying you. Then he will adjust all the settings in your car – stereo volume, back rest, everything and he will talk so loudly he will give you a headache. And he will probably stick his arms out of the window on the freeway too. Then when you reach the shopping mall he will be tired (from what?) and decide to wait by the fountain while you complete your work, and when you come back he will be taking pictures with his camera again. When you ask to see these pictures he will tell you they have not turned out well and he will pretend to delete them, but actually he is just worried you will upload them to your computer and try to pass them off as your own (he has great faith in his talent).

When you reach home he will collapse on the couch and occupy the whole thing also (after all he is the fat uncle). He will sit like Ganesha and look like he is waiting for you to feed him grapes. If any small children come near him he will poke and prod them until they are dissuaded from occupying such a location. Then he will drag himself off to shower and when he comes back he will refuse to play with the children (that he has only previously riled up) because he has had enough exercise from accompanying you to buy toilet cleaner and after all he has just showered, besides.

Finally the day will come when it is time for him to fly home. On the way to the airport he will ask many questions whose answers can be found on the roadside signs, and then he will answer them himself as if he has figured it out all on his own. After all this is his last chance to show that he is very knowledgeable even if he is not living in the same foreign as you. When you reach the airport he will read all the signs out loud as if he is the designated navigator and actually knows where he is going.

After he has gotten his boarding pass he will make you sit with him to give him company, and then he will take out his flashy touch screen cell phone and play games with the volume on high. In between he will get some calls which he will not answer because of the roaming charges, but nevertheless he will let the phone play ‘Cosmic’ (or ‘Rumba’ or whatever ringtone he has chosen instead of a normal ‘Ring 1’) for a full fifteen seconds before dismissing the call. When you tell him it is late and you want to go home he will insist that you accompany him all the way to security, just in case there is something in his bag that is not allowed (hasn’t he flown to America from his foreign? Doesn’t he know you can’t take water bottles through security?).

Once he is through security he will wave forcefully at you for at least ten minutes, and then he will gesture regretfully that he has to go (he has probably only just figured out in which direction his gate is) as if he is depriving you of some very basic happiness by taking his leave.

We all have these uncles. We can’t say anything also. What to do? Athiti devo bhavah.

You bet I'm an AB(no C)D

Born to Indian parents in America, I don’t really count as an immigrant. But there are some differences between me and the other Indians born here – back home we call them ABCDs, American Born Confused Desis – that make me feel like one. My accent, for instance. My roommate, one of the only people comfortable with commenting on my accent, says I pronounce the “th” sound in “thank you” like a “t”, making it sound like “tank you.” I don’t see it. But I don’t see a lot. There are so many things high school in India neglected to teach me – that blt stands for bacon, lettuce, and tomato, or that in America, movie tickets rarely have to be bought in advance (in India, tickets to a first day showing have to be bought as soon as they go on sale, or chances are you won’t get to see the movie until everybody else on the subcontinent has). Sure, I learned to solve diff eqs before anyone in AP math had heard of them, but only after living in America a year did I break the habit of giving truthful responses to the worn out question “How are you?”, or realize that telling friends’ parents about “my boyfriend” wasn’t going to make me seem racy or impertinent (in India, although the mindset towards “dating” continues to soften, many parents still see it as almost shameful for their teenage children to have significant others). Although you’d think, me being born here and all, that my brown skin would be the only things to delineate me from everyone else, there is an astounding amount of difference between us.

In India too though, my friends tell me I stick out like a sore thumb – affectionately, of course. Apparently my Indian accent has developed an “American twang” – again, something I don’t see. But there are some manifestations of my “American-ness” that have convinced me that maybe the countless people who tell me I’ve changed have a point. For example, auto drivers no longer nod unquestioningly when I name MG Road as my destination – they try to charge me twice what the meter would record, and are surprised when I point this out, or point them in the right direction when they try to take me via a longer route. When relatives ask me how life in America is, I have to bite my tongue to keep from offering the standard answer “good,” and remember to give them the detailed response they really want. When older relatives learn that I don’t live at home, it takes me a moment to figure out why they look surprised – in India, living alone before even getting a job is practically unheard of. Most live with their parents until they get married, or until they start work, at the very least. People are also impressed with my job at the library, and find it odd that is not only normal to work while in school, but also necessary. My dress sense is different now, my taste buds less accustomed to spicy Indian food, less eager for (to me) bland Italian or similar– the first time I came home from college over the summer and asked for dosa and chutney, my servants (yes I have servants, everyone in India does. Get over it) looked at me with incredulity, amazed that I wasn’t asking for an omelette or pancakes. All small things, really. But smooth a corrugated edge even a little, and it will no longer fit in its niche, will it? I’m different enough not to fit in here, but changed enough not to fit in there, either.

I’ve lived in America for two years now, and I am well trained to answer “How are you?” with “Good, how are you?” no matter how badly my day is going. I now not only know what a blt is, I am almost tempted to order one sometimes. I still haven’t learned how to say “thank you,” though – I might be American Born, but I’m still a Desi.