The Taste of Ginger(56)

I had seen that chart in college, but in America the poster had become obsolete. Everything was digital, and apps reigned supreme. I appreciated that some things in modern-day India were closer to where I had left off with photography in the past.

“Thanks. You know, your English is pretty good,” I said, cringing after I said it, remembering the times when people in America had said that to me even after I’d been living in the country for years and had no accent. He didn’t look offended, but I tried to recover and said, “I meant, where did you learn it?”

I admired his mastery of another language and had no doubt his English skills were better than my Gujarati skills.

“Thank you, madam.”

I stopped loading my film onto the spool. “Seriously, you can call me Preeti. I would prefer that you do.”

Despite the lack of lighting in the darkroom, I could see him shift his weight as if searching for the words to convey his thoughts.

“It is as your uncle explained. Your family must be treated with respect. Your uncle has been very kind to us—provided my family with much work.”

The hue from the dim red light hanging over us seemed to erase our different skin tones. In this room, we were just two photographers.

I moved closer to him. “I’m American. I don’t believe the same thing he does.”

Tushar stepped back. “But I am not American, and we are in India. What matters is how the Indian culture believes.”

“Fine. But at least in here, in the darkroom where no one is around, you don’t have to treat me so formally.”

He bobbled his head from side to side. “Very well then. What shall I call you here?”

“Anything other than madam!”

He paused for a moment, his lips curled into a slight, shy smile. “You are the only girl I know from California. I will call you California Girl.”

I laughed. “Suit yourself.”

He looked at me quizzically.

“Never mind. It’s an American expression.”

I slid the spool of film into the developing chemicals while he stood over me, checking to see if I was doing it the way he had shown me earlier.

“Did you go to an English-medium school?” I said, assuming he had learned English the same way my cousins had.

It was Tushar’s turn to laugh. “No, of course not. English-medium schools are all private. I went to the public Gujarati school.”

He had no malice in his voice and spoke matter-of-factly, but my cheeks warmed as I realized how insensitive my comment must have sounded. During my Indian childhood and infrequent trips back, I never had occasion to be around anyone from another caste outside of servants and vendors, and I wasn’t familiar with the differences in lifestyle between them. It hadn’t even occurred to me that there were public schools here because I’d only ever known people who went to private ones. What I knew of India applied only to the upper caste, and I realized I knew nothing of how most of the country lived. I vowed to be more careful about what I said around him and to be more observant of the rest of the country.

“Sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed.”

He poured enough chemicals into the tray to submerge the film and then covered it with a push cap. While showing me how to agitate the film, he said, “My father knew some English from running this store and speaking with the NRIs. I learned what I could from him. After that, I watched all the Hollywood movies I could find. Hearing it helped me learn more than what I would need simply for the shop. Now, I can read it—slowly, but it is better than nothing.”

I thought about how even though I could speak Gujarati with relative ease considering I was now classified as a foreigner, I could no longer read a word of it. The symbols might as well have been hieroglyphics considering I had not used them since I was seven years old. That he had taught himself to read something with a different alphabet was beyond impressive. The more time I spent with him, the more interested I was in learning more. In just one day, he had made me question so much of what I thought I knew about India. I knew that for the rest of my time in Ahmedabad, I wanted to keep learning more.

He removed the push cap and gently lifted the film from the tray. With a steady hand, he used a watering can to stream water over it to clean it. In college, I recalled using a faucet to do that step, but running water was much more of a scarcity here, and clean running water scarcer still.

As he worked, I could not help but notice how his bicep flexed from the weight of the can or the way his calloused fingers handled the film with such delicate ease. Stop it! I scolded myself. I needed to focus on what he was doing rather than the way he looked while doing it!

“How did you learn so much about photography?” I asked when he handed me the film to hang on the line to dry.

“How you learn anything—I practiced. I took photos. This shop belonged to my dada and then my father. It has been a part of our family for many years. I believe I may have taken my first photo before I took my first step!”

I pictured an infant Tushar with a giant camera dangling from his neck. “Why not travel beyond Ahmedabad and take photos? Turn it into a larger-scale business?”

“My family is here. It doesn’t make sense to be anywhere else.”

“I wish it were that easy for me.”

He shrugged. “This is home.”

Tushar was thirty-two years old and had never gotten a passport because he had nowhere to go, and probably couldn’t afford to travel even if he did have the desire. Maybe for someone like Tushar who lived in a place where he truly felt he belonged, there was no need to explore the rest of the world. Maybe the rest of us were so restless because we were searching for that feeling of belonging that Tushar already had.