ROOTS
Meenu Gupta
24 January 2008, 17:01The wind had whipped itself into gale proportions that evening in New York. Snowflakes hit like pebbles between the swishing wipers of our car’s windshield. Weather channel predicted a storm, so we were eager to reach our friend’s place. My husband cautiously steered through the dark roads. I was meanwhile packing the gift for the newly married couple.
Jayant is my husband’s old friend from college but I was meeting him and his wife for the first time. Ever-since I came to the States, at that time 3 months ago, it was the first Indian couple I was about to meet. “Apurva, Jayant’s wife, was born in U. S. but her parents are Indian”, my husband gave me a snappy introduction of the hosts on the way.
I expected to meet a modern American lady dressed in jeans and speaking only English. But when we reached heir place I was surprised to see her in ethnic suit and greeting us with a warm Namaste. She conversed fluently in Hindi. Within minutes we set the ball rolling and were discussing our emotions as passengers in the same boat, I mean both being married to immigrants.
At the doorstep there hung a gorgeous painting of Lord Ganesha, lined with golden intricate carving. Adjacent to that was a picture of baby Lord Krishna sitting lovingly in the lap of Ma Yashoda. Apurva served us delicious Indian dal tadka with roti. I lent a hand to her in her kitchen which had all the amenities of an Indian kitchen, the cooker, kadhai, copper vessels et al. In the centre of the living room, rested a devotedly decorated temple. She told me how her parents had kept Indian traditions alive although they brought up all their kids here. She had known and imbibed the best of both worlds.
Uprooted from the culture in which we are inherently grounded and living each day in another culture which shall always be foreign to us, is what we all Indo-Americans experience each day. Not to mention this gets carried on in our families, to our children. Born in America as U. S. citizens but having their ancestral roots in India, we hand over to them a heterogeneous mixture of diverse cultures.
ABCD – American born confused desi is oft-mentioned jargon, but living in U.S for the past six years I know very well what the word “confused” is all about. There are many days when I have had a tête-à-tête with that feeling in my 6 years stay of U.S. but one such day in particular was when I was expecting my first baby and we went to a housewarming party of our friends.
I loved meeting their vivacious 5 year old. The kid is intelligent, aware of the laptop, internet, ipod and the latest of the techie world. When he was playing with us and his grandma who had just arrived from India, I couldn’t fail to notice the communication problem between the generations. “Ishaan, time to speak in Hindi”. Naina yelled from the kitchen as she poured the simmering pasta and grilled the garlic bread. The kid switched to his well-rehearsed vocabulary in Hindi. He was having a hard time jostling with the words and the grammar.
“Mommy, can I please talk in English now, pleaseeee…” Naina has made the best possible effort to bring home to him his own language. There were charts of names of vegetables, fruits, colours, and things pasted in every nook and cranny of his room. I came home confused and concerned. My kid is now 2 years old and for the past year ever-since he spoke the first word “mama” I have tried to drill Hindi words day and night onto him as I keep my fingers crossed.
The other day at the Christmas sale when we were at Sears
shopping for some gifts to take to India next year, we met a friend of ours for the first time in more then a year. As we greeted each other my kid folded his hands to say “namaste” and started talking in Hindi.
“Oh he can speak Hindi!” Vipul said his eyes open wide. His reaction obviously did not seem awkward here but in India it surely would have been weird. This Thanksgiving dinner we were surrounded by Chinese, Koreans and Americans at a party. As we all gathered around the turkey, and chatted in English, the common connecting dialect, I noticed that every now and then each one of the members switched to their own dialect. As a Chinese met another Chinese they preferred to talk in their own language. It feels so personal, brings two strangers closer in a foreign land the bridge of our mother tongue. I wish that each kid of our next generation wherever he lives gets the gift of speaking Hindi, our mother tongue.
Back home learning English, French used to be a matter of pride.
It still is, knowledge of a new language is commendable but the first step is being well-versed with one’s own mother tongue. I’ll feel a sense of achievement when my toddler is fluent in Hindi the way we are. This feeling would be more rewarding than when he picks up the English accent before the high school or learns French before visiting Europe. I wish to nurture the roots, so that they stand firm and strong as they spread in the vast azure sky of multicultural world.
Like Mahatma Gandhi said in 1921 in Young India:
“I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet.”
