What Kind of Love Has It Got To Do With

What Kind of Love Has it Got To Do With

 I first starting telling my life story to my father over spicy tomato soup in 2009. Sitting in a busy restaurant in Connaught Place – a librarian from Oklahoma dining alone on my right, a South Indian family with two small children who were picky eaters to my left – we looked each other in the eye as I began telling stories. We crunched on South Indian papadums, and, in between my little-girl gulps and tears, we zig-zagged through pieces of the last 20 years.

 Later that week, we sat in a maroon booth at Nathu’s (in Bengali Market) in the warm evening heat, eating vegetarian sandwiches with abundant mayonnaise, drinking lukewarm, weak chamomile tea, and continued piecing together more parts of the past. You see, I only remember bits; large chunks of my childhood are a dark blank to me. My memory has deleted years at a time. I finally admit this to him. My dad, in a rare moment of showing me physical affection, put his hand over mine and said: “I’ll help you remember.”

In Connaught Place eating dosas

 Our detective skills led us to realize that my mother did take off from the U.S. for India with my sister and myself in 1987, without telling my father. He didn’t know where we were for almost half of 1987. “Dad, I know where we were for part of 1987,” I told him with confidence and pulled out my digital camera. I had just returned from the Ganga River in Haridawar (6 hours from Delhi), where I performed the final rites for my mother and located an ashram on the banks of the Ganga that my mother’s family have been visiting for generations. The elderly priest, who runs the ashram with his family, remembered my sister and myself from a visit with our mother when I was 10 years old. He even remembered how I loved to sleep on the roof. I have memories of the monsoon, bedbugs and rose petals on the Ganga River, but, that’s about it. To prove to me that he did remember, the priest turned to rolls and rolls of scrolls that all his guests sign and date. He immediately went to my mother’s family scroll – the Dhingra family scroll – and traced signatures back to 1913 of my great-grandfather, who had signed in an old-school Urdu script. Flipping forward through generations, he showed me my mother’s signature. My heart stopped a little; seeing her handwriting brought so much of her back. Then, right next to her signature, was mine at ten years’ old and my sister’s. Geeta Raj. September 1987. There it was, 20+ years later, preserved next to the Ganga River, my signature that I had no memory of.

Back in Nathu’s, as I tell my father this, I flip through the images on my digital camera. “Dad, look, look, I can prove it. We were in India in 1987.” My father held the camera to his face, the pain of lost time written into the curves of his cheeks, and sucked deeply on his cigarette.

 ***

It’s a strange feeling to get to know your father at 31, kind of like a pair of pants that don’t fit just right. Kind of like an interview, where you wonder how much or how little to say. Almost as if so much distance has been put between both of you that you question if it’s really possible to go back. I do have snapshots about my father stored away. How he used to tell me: “don’t go out in the rain because you’re so sweet that you might melt.” How he encouraged my love to read but would caution: “don’t use a word unless you know its meaning.”

Dad and G

Portrait of Dad Close-Up

I remember when I saw my father for the first time as an adult and not a little person less than 4-feet tall. I was in India dropping my mother off at a hospital in Bangalore. She was very sick. Providence took over and I found myself with a canceled Air France flight, now transiting through Delhi for 12 hours. The night before, I shot-off a random email to my father with my flight details in Delhi. Email was the only way I know how to get hold of him; I had never emailed him before that night. I had no idea if he was alive, where he was, if he ever even checked email. I just gripped those seat handles on the plane as we landed in Delhi, not knowing if my father was waiting on the other end.

Everything about my father that day of our meeting in Delhi’s domestic airport was grey. The years had shaded his hair into a wise-grey color. The airport floors were grey. My mind was fuzzy. He was in a grey jacket, holding a bouquet of red roses. Our reunion was magical but also awkward. I wanted to flee. It didn’t occur to me for months afterwards that he may actually love me. My father, the bohemian, had received my email the night before and boarded a bus to travel overnight to Delhi, stunned at how I suddenly materialized in India with no precedent. I found out later he only checked email once a month; what serendipity that he checked email when I randomly chose to write. Thank you, Air France.

I now know, after point-blank asking my father, that he loves me. That I am linked to him by the intensity of which he loves both my sister and myself. But like all the Gemini men in my life, my father is a difficult man to love. Do we actually get along, as two humans, or does he love me because I am biologically his daughter? Or does he love me for the person I have become, for my choices, my preferences, my judgment? When my father says he loves me, what kind of love has it got to do with?

Dad and G at Laal Kila (Red Fort)

In 2009, I have been and continue to be esurient to know my father, to know his history, to fill the equations. To experience more moments like the one in the round-about at Bengali Market, when I saw so much of myself in my father. I guess in our case it is nature, not nurture. Watching him strike up conversations with random strangers at every corner, my sister nudged me in the side and said “Uh, G, I think that’s where you get it.” I am well-known to talk to everyone I cross paths with.

I am esurient for more stories. To hear more about my father’s journey from present-day Pakistan during the 1947 partition to Punjab to Delhi to Kabul to Washington, DC, then to Kansas, New York City, Boston. To color in the gaps of who my father is, of what he believes in, of what he supports.

***

Back again in Nathu’s, the vegetarian sandwiches are long gone; we have now moved to the delicious chocolate truffles that don’t taste like other pastries made in India. My father tells me his journey through refugee camps, government-run widow’s homes***, working through his university years, earning 5 degrees. I’m hiccupping because I’m crying so hard; I feel so proud and am surged with intrigue.

“Dad, did you know that I also moved to Washington, DC and then to Kabul? I had no idea you lived in either of those places.” I feel us growing closer. I learn how my dad enjoys photography and takes too many photos; my friends have the same complaint of me. He comes to watch me give a presentation in Delhi to MBA students on international development; he has tears in his eyes when I take him to the USAID offices / U.S. Embassy in Delhi to have lunch with my friends. I take his hand as we walk into the Embassy and proudly introduce him as my father, for the first time, to my colleagues and friends. I tease him and say “Hey Dad, it’s a good thing you look so good for your age. And that you have such great skin. Hope I got those genes!”

In the process of telling stories, for my father, it was almost as if he was looking into a mirror. There’s an assurance that we’re meant to be together as father and daughter; that’s the kind of love it’s got to do with.

 ***Later that week, I beg him to go see the government-run widow’s home he grew up in. Even though it was only a 3-hour drive from Delhi, my father had not been back since 1959. He calls his brother to tell him, “can you believe my daughter is the one taking me back to Mahila Widow’s Ashram after all these years?” We take donations and gifts for the ashram. I’m proud to be by his side.

Mahila Widow's Ashram, Karnal, Punjab, INDIA, 2009

Mahila Widow's Ashram, Karnal, Punjab, INDIA, 2009

Dad at Mahila Widow's Ashram

Potty Mouth

Potty Mouth

I’ve noticed a potty mouth phenomenon at work for the past few years. Our bathrooms are your typical, government-issued stalls. Black and white checkered tiles, gray stalls, nothing “pleasant” about the design. I remember a ridiculous argument we had at my office in Bulgaria years ago – about whether the design of the new office space would have stalls with walls that came to the ground or were raised. I learned then that European bathrooms have closed stalls – for more privacy.

My colleague and I were in-synch with one another walking to the bathroom recently. She started telling me about how she was supposed to go the gym last night but didn’t go. The conversation started steps before the bathroom door, which was really unfortunate for me. I don’t understand why people keep on talking to you, even in the bathroom. It’s just uncomfortable and not positive for team-building.

Anticipating that she had a potty mouth, I purposefully shortened my responses in proportion to how close we were getting to the bathroom. If I had been heading to the elevator, I would have probably responded with: “Oh, well you can try going to a class tonight to make-up?”

But painfully aware that we were steps away from the bathroom, I kept my answer short, hoping the conversation would end as we walked into the door. “Yeah, that happens.” (Big smile to look nice but non-verbally signal that I am about to end this conversation.)

We cross the threshold, I dart towards the first stall I see. There were plenty of other stalls for her to choose from, but she chose the stall right next to mine. (I now see why my Bulgarian colleagues were fighting so hard for closed-wall stalls!) And then she kept on talking.

Ziiippp. “Do you go to the classes? Do you like them.”

A long, long moment of silence. “Ummm, yah sometimes.” I tried to sound very disinterested.

Eventually the conversation trailed off, after a few more one-liners back and forth. I think it came to a natural conclusion rather than her purposefully bringing it to a close.

What’s worse is if you’re sitting in a stall and two people on either side of you are having a conversation. That’s happened before. About work. About that memo they have to write. About that evaluation they have to read. About that email they will respond to. Back and forth, back and forth. It’s tricky because if you flush at the wrong time, when there is no pause in their conversation, you could interrupt the flow of their conversation. Then it might look like you’re listening. Or if you cough (to subtly signal your presence), your cough could be considered rude as it might interrupt the flow again.

I don’t think guidance for potty mouth etiquette has been issued yet.

Romance is “brewing”

Last week you introduced me to TAZO Passion tea.  I joke, putting away my choice of green tea, and say “I already have enough passion, the last thing I need is more!” And then I think I giggle.

It was delicious. The tea, that is, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

Today you surprise me in the afternoon by bringing me TAZO Wild Orange Spice, saying it reminded you of me. I squealed so loud when I saw you brought me tea as a gift. I think I’ll reciprocate tomorrow with Numi Moroccan Mint Tea.

How did you know a cup of tea is my answer to everything? How is it that three different men have brought me luscious, exotic, delicious tea in the last two weeks?

You remind me of a simplicity

i think I’ve figured out

that you (blond, blue-eyes, sculpted lips)

occupy a space of simplicity

in me.

that you are the opposite

of the kind

of the LRA

kidnapping and torturing children,

that now run to towns every night to sleep

to avoid being turned

into killing machines.

 

that you are not

the children of Afghans who fought Russians

and grew up in madrases

to become institutions of hate.

 

that you are the many operational departments

of the UN,

unexplained, necessary, confusing but hopeful.

 

that you are resilience,

stronger than will.

 

and admist your affections,

which you drench me in,

little jewels of a juicy pomengrante,

pear juice dribbling down my wrists

during summertime,

warm oils on achy muscles,

 

your love of water

and my love of swimming,

our love of existing in water

 

i now understand a little more how the world functions

with reality television shows,

superstar drama

and struggling NGO’s

side-by-side

as a generation of HIV-AIDS orphans in Africa

become a generation,

as mental illness destabilizes the brave,

as seeds of hate mature into violence.

 

so now when you tell me

how my mother’s gold jewels

make me look like a princess,

and your favorite is me in yellow silk,

(that one I wore with the white lace)

at the wrong time,

it is the right time.

 

or when you make an inappropriate joke

when I’m trying to fur my eyebrows

at the complexity,

it now makes me giggle.

 

you remind me of a simplicity

which renews hope.

 

when our worlds collided on the street

you didn’t absorb my limitations,

and the laughter, the cool evenings,

the water, the teasing, the red t-shirts,

the tickles, the runny mascara, the prickly heat,

all told me I’m not limited.

 

i love how you’re happy to be yourself. i love how you’re happy to be yourself with me.

 

you are the capability of co-existence.

Some terms to live by

Some things I wrote while “chatting” with Hugh-licious today. Mind you, I was fever delusional, but perhaps for the better.

1. Mosquito doubts

2. The redonks, totally lollipop little 5-year old girl who taught me that Lincoln used to talk to trees and about a new tribe in Kenya in the same sentence.

Chat with hugh-licious, Part A.5

Hugh then informed me in South Africa, where he’s from, mosquitoes are called mozzies. So, I think I’ll leave it at: Mozzie Doubts.

(which begs the question, mozzie doubts who?)

and then before Hugh and I finished our chat today, I offered him a sermon. (a.k.a., my advice). And then at some point I, in a rather self-aware manner of my sermon’esque behaviours, proclaimed: “so I think the choir’s next.” Trying to apologize for my sermon’esque tendency by making a joke.

How you made okra

Mom, I figured out a new way to make okra. I know how much you loved okra, how it was one of those dishes that was just ‘in your blood,’ how it stood for everything North Indian about you.

Lady fingers, bhindi, okra. However you want to call it. The names rather confused me, as a kid. Your fingers naturally became the measure of accuracy for the name lady fingers. Did my mother’s fingers, clearly the fingers of a lady, really look like the green vegetable tumbled into the white strainer?

And the other name, the Punjabi name, bhindi. Sounds oddly like bindi, the dot on your forehead. I still conjure up images of your big, red bindi. The big, red bindi on your forehead that maybe for you was more a significance of marriage or of fashion? I don’t know. I never did. But the images blur and mix, and marriage and food and symbols and green and red all become one in my mind, colliding.

 I’d sit with you, on the faux-wood kitchen table, and you would bring over a white strainer full of freshly-washed green okra. The strainer dripped with big blobs of water, even though you tried to shake off as much water as possible in the sink. Most likely, I was with you at the Indian grocery store while you hand-picked each okra. Actually, come to think of it, I still snap off ends of okra like you did to check for their freshness. The soggy ones, the ones with tips that bent but didn’t snap, got tossed away into the pile for a less meticulous mother to choose for her family. The crisp ones went through your arms into the plastic bag. Destination: your kitchen.

Not everyone knows this, but okra becomes slimy when in contact with too much water. Because of this, I’d sit next to you and, white paper towel palmed in one hand, dry okra after okra after okra or finger after finger or bhindi after bhindi after bhindi. I’d squirm when the paper towel got so soggy from pulling so much water from the okra, but we made do somehow. It was a mantra that we entered. A deep chant, one that you composed and that you recited. This was your system.

Next, in the assembly line, you’d slice off tips of the okra. Again, one by one. The slicing was the next line in the mantra you so carefully brought from India and preserved. I wish our okra-time together was as smooth as transitioning from one line to another, like it is in a poem, in a mantra, in a short expression of emotion through words.

But I was often annoyed. At how much work preparing okra was. Annoyed at you because I knew you were using only .9% of your talent, of your smarts. I didn’t like the machine you turned into – I wanted to see more at the end of a long afternoon of preparing okra than just dinner. I wanted to see you soar higher, complement the okra with who you are, with your inner mantra.

 It’s a conundrum for me. Because the beauty of you and your okra never went not noticed by me. After slicing the tips, your soft and gentle hands would horizontally slice each okra. Not too deep that the okra separates but deep enough to stuff it with spices. Sliced only in the thickest part of the okra, not from end to end. It was perfection, the hands of a surgeon. Your lady fingers would transform into multitudes, the bhindi then looking like a lady finger as you sliced.

Yes, mom, you had a preciseness about you that I just cannot replicate. I love it. You would never let me slice the okra but I’d watch, with eager eyes, wondering if I’d ever get that good at it like you.

Next you’d stuff the okra with masala. You never taught me the masala mix- but I can guess. A master blend of cumin, turmeric, black pepper, dried cilanthro. The usual.

 “Beta,” you’d say, “bhindi takes so much oil to cook.”

 You’d somehow, craftily, balance each sliced and stuffed okra, on a makeshift plate or surface, without spilling any of the spices. A clean transition from one harmony to another, from one pitch to another, in this now-complicated mantra of yours.

I’ve never actually made okra this way, since those times in your kitchen, because of how much oil you’d pour into the pan. No water, since it would make it slimy, and you’d just pour oil into the pan and sauté a big pan of okra until it was cooked. The mantra burned loudly through my nostrils at that stage….especially when the spices spilled out of the bhindi into the hot oil.

I wear bindi’s now, mom, and finally have become a lady and have lady’s fingers. Last week I came up with a new recipe, a new song, a new rhythm, a new mantra for okra. It involved the same drying, since that’s a meditation inofitself. But instead the okra was married to tomatoes, onions, potatoes and baked in tomato sauce instead of fried in oil.

Reflections on Moving

I place a full bowl of popcorn, freshly popped on the stove, (very little canola oil, very little salt, very little butter) next to the 24-carat gold jhumkhe earrings my mom bought me. I dug them out to wear to Paul Auster’s reading the other night (hoping he would remember me in the future by those earrings) and carelessly tossed them on the corner of the table. My mom bought them for me when my dad, after a childhood+ years of being absent, came to my sister’s graduation. He had brought a similar pair from India with him and, in a childish gesture, returned to India with them. I had always loved jhumkhe earrings – seeing how my father’s stupid actions hurt me, my mom went ahead and bought me a similar pair for Diwali that year. 

Next to the swollen bowl of popcorn, I place a steal glass of water with lemon juice that I had been carrying in my other hand. 

I think, like a flash of lightning – I must write. I have to write. 

This is how I prepared to pack up the better part of the past 5 years of my life. The mortality of the little things were suddenly so apparent to me – the last weekend I have in this apartment, the last meal I cook on this gas stove, the last garden I raise in this backyard. It’s comforting to me to bask in the finality of it all. When I first moved in, by myself, I had no furniture and slept on a couch I requested the previous tenants to leave behind instead of throwing away. The apartment was empty at night, in those early days, me sitting by myself on the old couch (which I had covered with a white bedspread I bought at Urban Outfitters for $15), sometimes watching DVD’s on my laptop. The echoes of the pristine wooden floors were tremendous at that time – while the light from the laptop was the only three dimensional object in the house, or so it seemed.

 How many feet have traversed the doorway of this apartment, how many versions of myself have crossed the threshold. Have I morphed along the way, one continuous stream of “Geeta’s”, each version unable to exist without the other, or have I changed mind, body and soul into myself at 30 years now? Have I come where I hoped I’d be by 30?  

The depth of the losses I have endured after first walking into this apartment seem so real to me, when I think about all the ones that occurred while I lived here. (Was my karma in this apartment in any way attached to the failures? Am I breaking free of karma or entering a new karmic debt by moving?) At the same time, the gains and strides which have blessed my path since I moved into 2339, Apartment 2 – described as without boundaries and invaluable. My life at USAID started here. The second half of my 20’s lived in and out of this apartment that I often made a spinning door. Somewhere along the way, while at this apartment, Washington, DC became “home.” My friends in DC transformed from acquaintances to family, with stories of the “old days” to reminisce about. I was no longer a student, when I moved into this apartment, but a professional I had so yearned to become. In this apartment, countless sublets, guests, friends, family and strangers have walked. I’ve had 3-day-long birthday parties (complete with sleepovers), bring your own topping pizza parties, and intimate dinners with boyfriends that were eaten during the stillness of night in the backyard over the flame of a single white flame. My mother’s long visits, helping her down the stairs in the snow, carrying her luggage up and down the stairs, teaching her how to use the bus down the street.

I know the parameters, the soft spots, the boundaries, the on-street parking rhythms, the touch of this neighborhood as you would know a lover. When I found this apartment, I was two days away from having to move from my old place. I had nowhere to move to – but I was holding out for a 2bdrm, with wooden floors, gas stoves, spacious energy on 40th Street. I walked into the apartment at 7am the day before I was supposed to move, signed the lease that night by 7pm, and sat deliciously on the steps afterwards with Marc, who happened to be jogging by as I signed the “J’ in Raj on the lease. I had gotten exactly what I was holding out for.

Earlier tonight I saw my tater tot. Walking up to the car on the street, I found her in the backseat, body folded into an L shape, sleeping in a carefree, beautiful, peaceful way. Her breathing was deep and rhythmic – I wanted to melt right into her restful state. Suddenly I wanted Clarity to be two again, waddling up the stairs to my apartment in the way she used to, so I could scoop her up and fall asleep with her in my arms, her comforting me instead of me comforting her. She was wearing a brilliant purple and radiant turquoise Rajasthani langa that I brought from India last year for her. The radiance from the bright colors and the silver sequins floated above her head, in an angelic way, but also calmed the energy surrounding her sleeping self. This image lasted momentarily, as it broke when I caught a glimpse of pink tights with yellow flowers that she was wearing underneath her skirt.

 This munchkin is so grown up, I tell myself and the munchkin’s mom, as I squeeze into the car to hand Clarity a gift box for her first day of second grade. Second grade for Clarity, I think, and a whole new home for me.  Let’s get on wid it. I’m ready. As I’ve witnessed her grow up, witnessed her slumber parties and dance parties and games all at my apartment, I’ve also grown up while being here. It’s been the longest I’ve lived anywhere in my whole life, the only place I truly could call home for more than 6-9 months.

28th August, 08

 My thoughts today in a few minutes, 1.5 pages, and 2 sections.

1. August 28 is certainly a day to remember. The night of Martin Luther King’s speech. Now, the historical night of Obama’s speech to a roaring crowd of teary-eyed, fiery-eyed, emotion-ful Democrats in Colorado. He spoke like a lion on this night, emulating MLK’s cadence in the final minutes of his speech, like the grand finale of firework display. Yes, we were waiting for it. Waiting for the climax, feeling the build-up. When it hit us, we were ready. And…there it was. Here’s Obama- everything McCain is not, he’s telling us. Education, renewable energy, health, tax breaks- let me outline the true American dream, he tells us. Let me reflect YOU, you the average U.S. citizen, by telling you I am not the elite. I am the change, bringing it to Washington – a city on which I was not nurtured. Woes of single parents, calling out to fathers to stand up for their children. Individual responsibility and mutual responsibility.

Amen.  Vigorous nodding, ferocious clapping.

 The fireworks literally go off.

 The cute daughters are literally embraced. The dream-team family shines on stage. The speech of the elections is now over.

 The facebook status’s begin burning.

“Obamamanos!” one of my friend’s says. Another is so happy to be in the States to see the speech. And yet another, comments on my own status of “Absolutely brilliant, Obama, just brilliant. So proud.” I wanted to put “kick ass Obama!” on m own status but I’m afraid it might offend some of my dear Republican friends.

 Practically orgasmic, fo-real, fo-shizzle.

Where was I on August 28 last year? I believe in New Delhi, having a forced dinner with my father in some of Delhi’s best restaurants, asking him to tell me about his plight, about his life, about his struggles. Please tell me more about my roots, about your journey, about the forces which moved you from here to there and then even further. He too, that night, I learned, was raised in a single family household. He too, went from nothing, not even food stamps, to a stellar education. He too, a father who he had hushed and dimmed memories of.

 No, I’m not comparing my father to Obama. I’m just sayin, you know, just sayin.

2. Today I was reminded of a lot of things. Of a greater importance in life. No, not a dawning of religious light. (My rebuttal to that argument is if God is truly present in every molecule, everywhere, then doesn’t that, by mere quantity and ubiquitous virtue, automatically give you access to God but simultaneously de-value the rarity of it?)

 Today I was reminded, while picking up black pepper at the Au Bon Pain on G Street for my vegan chili, of a moment two summers ago when I was dashing off to State Department in heels to present an argument of a lifetime and save 1.5 million U.S. dollars for a USAID Anti-Trafficking program in Albania and simultaneously fielding calls from the doctors/nurses at the psychiatric ward my mother was admitted into in Texas. I was reminded of the horror I was feeling inside but the confidence I had to exude outside. How many universes can one operate out of before going crazy? At least, at that moment for me, those two for me, but most likely more.

I was reminded about having fun today, when I teased a Republican appointee from the White House in my office about missing our happy hour the other day because he had to meet his laundry guy to get his laundry. “Elite much?” was my instant email response to him on Monday night and today I coined a term, as soon as I saw him. “Hello Wade. Looking “clean” today, bro, looking “clean.”” This followed by an eruption of my own giggles, in my suit, in my heels, my hair bouncing everywhere. I don’t even try to contain giggles anymore at work. It just doesn’t work out for me.

I was reminded how sometimes I get depressed and how I need to go with the flow when I do. And that it will pass.

I was reminded about Afghanistan, about the lentil soup the cooks would sometimes make especially for me since I was vegetarian, when an old friend I worked with there and who now lives in Hungary, stopped by to say hello today.

I was reminded how important sleep is for my skin and for my sanity. I love you, my pillows and bed.

I was reminded how this is the last night I’ll be in the apartment, thusly celebrating with music by Midival Punditz, a warm comforting cup of chai, sweet jalebi, some veggie chicken……surrounded by my life as its manifest in boxes and piles and clothes and letters and jewelry.

 I was reminded how today, August 28, is now dedicated to eras. MLK, Obama-rama, new home for G.Raj. Era of hope and astounding beauty lying ahead.