An Author and A Young Woman - Chapter 4: Going Back to India for the First Time
Chapter 4: Going Back to India for the First Time
Diva walked up stairs from the platform, got out of the train station, reached the ground level and started taking a walk. She could’ve taken another train, but she wanted to walk. She walked along Broadway and walked toward Columbus Circle. As she walked, she started recalling her first homecoming to India.
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It was late summer of 1995, right after the summer quarter; she went back to India for the first time since she started going to the university in US and she stayed there for two weeks; Diva arrived at the airport at 5:00 pm as scheduled; she felt tired after the long flight from California. Her father was there to pick her up; he left his work early for it that day. She had chitchat with him on her way home. As she arrived home, her father unloaded her suitcase. She just carried her backpack and entered her house. Her mother was waiting for her. Though her mother was not a very expressive person, Diva could see that she was very happy to welcome her back. Her bother was there, too. How her family welcomed her was very unusual as an Indian family, but there was an exception in everything. Her family was very reserved and they tended not to act emotionally; family ties were strong, but, on the surface, there was little screaming, laughing out loud or crying.
She spent the next couple of days meeting her relatives; she also met a couple of her friends. But, after a while, she started feeling a little bored with meeting relatives and old friends.
It was a week after she came back to India; she had almost no jet lag. She woke up early. After she took bath, she decided to go take a walk. She walked along Laxmi Nagar toward Yamuna River. As she reached Sharkarpur, she took a left turn and walked into the south side of Laxmi Nagar where there were many small shops, offices and factories. She came here often in the past and she knew that it was not the prettiest part of Delhi, but she suddenly thought “Wow, this place is a total mess.” She walked around more and she found many houses. She also found sewage filled with dirty water and trashes. She obviously saw this so many times in the past since she grew up in India, and sewage was used the same way in the past, but she had a very strong reaction today. “This place is fucking filthy.” She was not the kind of person who cursed when she spoke, but she could not help. “What’s up with these fries and mosquitoes?” She felt a little strange about feeling so negatively about the country where she grew up, but that was her honest feeling.
After she took a long walk, she went home. It was hot outside, so she was sweating. She decided to take bath, but she found that water was not running. She couldn’t understand what was happening for a second, but she realized that this was nothing uncommon in India. She felt slightly irritated, but there was nothing she could do. She just decided to wait until water started running again. Later that day, electricity went off; it happened a couple of times for the last couple of days, but electricity was off for longer than a couple of hours this time. She felt like cursing again. By the time electricity was back, she was feeling sleepy and she decided to go to bed.
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She was approaching Columbus Circle. She thought, “It’s not that I hated India, but it was the first time that I recognized my transformation.”
