The Taste of Ginger(51)

I started with a soft approach. “Why did we leave India?” I thought back to what Neel had said about those early years in Chicago. It would have been so easy for them to see how hard it was going to be and just turn around and go back. Return to a caste system and life in which they were in a dominant, rather than subservient, position.

Mom stared ahead at a spot on the lawn, seemingly concentrating on what she would say next. I continued to push my feet against the dirt, rocking the hichko back and forth.

She said, “We moved from this country so you and Neel could have more options than you would have had here. We were thinking: Our kids are smart, and we want them to have all the opportunities.”

Her voice was heavy. I wondered if she doubted whether she and my father had made the right decision all those years ago.

“But why did you think we couldn’t have done that here? Wouldn’t it have been easier with all of the privileges that come with our family name?”

She stared at the large bungalow she grew up in. “Maybe for Neel. But not for you.” She sighed. “Maybe not even for him. There’s no reason to work hard when everything is handed to you. Who knows if Neel would have pursued medicine. You would not be a lawyer. Seeing how well you both can take care of yourself now . . . it’s hard to say the decision was wrong.”

“But why did you keep saying how misbehaved we were after moving to America and we should have stayed here?”

“We wanted you to have a good education and job, but not give up all of your culture. We wanted you to have both. Perhaps it was silly to think that, but because Neel could keep both, we thought you could too.”

I pushed my feet into the ground to stop the hichko. It creaked as it fell out of sync and shifted from side to side. “I’m not like Neel.”

Her expression grew weary. “I know,” she said.

We sat in silence for a few moments, each of us escaping to our own thoughts.

I thought about her words. Had I lost my culture? I felt like I was constantly reminded that I was Indian—at work, at a store, when talking to white friends—some part of me was always aware that I wasn’t like the other people around me. It crept into every facet of my life, whether it was someone mispronouncing my name and me grinning and acting like it didn’t bother me, or people assuming I knew every other person with the last name Desai and not understanding it was as common as Smith and in a country far more populated than America. It followed me as I moved about my day, mentally tallying whether I was positive or negative on the karma scale, because while I wasn’t sure what the afterlife entailed, in the event reincarnation was our fate, I wanted to make sure I was on the right end of it. I still understood our native language, wore the clothes when needed, and ate the food mostly without complaint. I certainly never felt like I had “lost” it, but I wondered what made my mother think I had.

“With everything that happened this year in LA and then here in India, I’ve had to ask myself what is truly important to me. The truth is I’m not sure if I’ve been fighting for the right things. I fought so hard to be accepted since the first day we arrived in America, and I’ve never stopped trying. I always thought being different from white people was the problem, but then I realized how exhausting it is to try to be the same as everyone else.”

She gazed into the distance, contemplative.

“We thought you kids would be okay. You learned the language quickly and could speak with no accent. You learned the customs. With those things, you could mix with the Americans. Your father and I had spent too much time in India to do those things the same way.”

I realized that my parents didn’t know how hard it had been for Neel and me. They’d been busy protecting us from financial hardship, and we’d been busy protecting them from our social hardship. We’d all fallen into this pattern, and it had become second nature to each of us. What would have been different if we’d shared those struggles with each other rather than growing apart because we didn’t trust the other to handle the truth?

“You know what Nani used to say?” Her voice quivered in that same way it always did when she remembered her mother. “It is better to fail at the right thing than to succeed at the wrong one.”

Was my mother saying that she thought she had failed by moving us, but that it was still the right thing? I looked at my life through that lens and wondered how much of it I had spent trying to succeed at the wrong thing. I had been on such a lifelong quest to fit in—with my family, with my job, with Alex, with everything—that I never stopped to ask myself whether it was the right fit. Had I picked law because it was one of the whitest professions in the country and if I could succeed there, then it meant I would be accepted as an American? Had I picked Alex because I thought he would make it easier to blend into the world around me because he fit in so naturally that surely I would, too, simply by association? As I studied the wistful expression on Mom’s face, I wanted to know how she felt about Nani’s words. Had she pursued the right path?

“Do you ever wish you had stayed in India?” I asked. It was the first time I had touched upon whether she was happy with the life she had chosen.

“It is not sensible to think that way. We can only know the path we chose.” Her expression grew somber. “I wish I could have spent more time with Nani and Nana before they passed. It was hard being so far during that time.” Her eyes welled up as she remembered her own parents.