The house is very old. In the smallest room in the farthest corner, is my fathers study. The ceilings are low and he’s sitting at his iMac surrounded by wrapping paper, photographs,hard drives, a cup of tea, and objects that trace a life and erupt daily with memories the same and changed. He’s looking through his folder titled “Mother India”, named after the autobiographical book that he seems to both want to finish and not. He’s looking for archives to share, our archives, at my request.
We watch one of the very rare home videos that he made of us during our visit to Lukshmipudi, his cousin, my second cousin, who had a curry leaf farm in Florida and who, I realize as I watch, was the only one of my Indian relatives to share in a way that connected me to an experience of being Indian. I wonder about that. I ask Vikram, my father, about it as it slowly dawns on me that maybe my disconnection from that heritage has other textures within it. We think about the family that emigrated to the US, the family that are successful wealthy bankers in New York. We think about what one has to do with one's past to become one's present. And he shares that his half-brother, one of the ones in New York, didn’t even know his father was in jail when he was younger. He laughs in wonderment about the things we have to do to ourselves, and to each other, in order to find ways of being in the world. He means this about his step-mother, but he means it about all of us, himself included.
He opens an audio file on his computer. He double clicks it and because of his settings, it opens in iTunes. I think about how now it’s in his iTunes library and if he shuffles his songs, it will be in the mix, playing somewhere between a Bob Dylan and a Screaming Jay Hawkins song. I want to tell him about how he can change that so iTunes doesn’t automatically import it, but it somehow doesn’t seem the right time, especially as the audio begins to speak.
As it begins to speak, my father starts to at the same time. He’s saying something about how it’s hard to listen to your father going mad. He laughs, but it feels like a very old laugh that comes from a world inside. And then I hear my grandfather’s voice for the very first time. He talks quickly and with a heavy Indian accent, one with all the inflections of education and high class. One where the colonial and the colonized mix. As I listen, I watch my father listening. Teja, my grandfather, speaks about possibility, about God, about education. He’s speaking at a commencement address at a college in India. I ask if there are many videos of Teja, he was infamous after all. But Vikram says no, and I wonder why.
I feel a disconnection and a connection, but mainly because of seeing my father listen to the words of his father while I watch my father at his desk, and all the words feel like they reach so far and out and through and yet not, all at the same time. And I realize I have a loss I don’t even know about.
We watch one of the very rare home videos that he made of us during our visit to Lukshmipudi, his cousin, my second cousin, who had a curry leaf farm in Florida and who, I realize as I watch, was the only one of my Indian relatives to share in a way that connected me to an experience of being Indian. I wonder about that. I ask Vikram, my father, about it as it slowly dawns on me that maybe my disconnection from that heritage has other textures within it. We think about the family that emigrated to the US, the family that are successful wealthy bankers in New York. We think about what one has to do with one's past to become one's present. And he shares that his half-brother, one of the ones in New York, didn’t even know his father was in jail when he was younger. He laughs in wonderment about the things we have to do to ourselves, and to each other, in order to find ways of being in the world. He means this about his step-mother, but he means it about all of us, himself included.
He opens an audio file on his computer. He double clicks it and because of his settings, it opens in iTunes. I think about how now it’s in his iTunes library and if he shuffles his songs, it will be in the mix, playing somewhere between a Bob Dylan and a Screaming Jay Hawkins song. I want to tell him about how he can change that so iTunes doesn’t automatically import it, but it somehow doesn’t seem the right time, especially as the audio begins to speak.
As it begins to speak, my father starts to at the same time. He’s saying something about how it’s hard to listen to your father going mad. He laughs, but it feels like a very old laugh that comes from a world inside. And then I hear my grandfather’s voice for the very first time. He talks quickly and with a heavy Indian accent, one with all the inflections of education and high class. One where the colonial and the colonized mix. As I listen, I watch my father listening. Teja, my grandfather, speaks about possibility, about God, about education. He’s speaking at a commencement address at a college in India. I ask if there are many videos of Teja, he was infamous after all. But Vikram says no, and I wonder why.
I feel a disconnection and a connection, but mainly because of seeing my father listen to the words of his father while I watch my father at his desk, and all the words feel like they reach so far and out and through and yet not, all at the same time. And I realize I have a loss I don’t even know about.