Where I Come From . . .

the house had jasmine bushes that scented the backyard, veiling the odors from our rubbish bins. It’s where my sisters screeched with laughter every time I read the lines “Sing Mother Sing, Can Mother Sing, Mother Can Sing,” from The Radiant Reader because our Ma had the voice of a man, where, when Ma answered the phone, callers thought she was Pa who died years ago, and where Ma forced us to drink Ovaltine or Bournvita or Horlicks until we turned ten, eleven, thirteen and begged for tea―ginger forward, sugar heavy, milk-thick.

Where I come from, the house had decorative cracks snaking across the bedroom walls, one shaped like the map of Australia, one like the United States, one like Brazil, but none like our state, Maharashtra, or our country, India. It’s where my sisters and I giggle-whispered that someday we’ll travel to farflung places like New York, Canberra, and London as we huddled under our blankets and listened to distant, static-crackly radio stations—BBC, Voice of America, and Radio Australia―and where we attempted to imitate the different accents, mastering none, making a kachumber of the English language. 

Where I come from, the house had many nooks and crannies into which we folded ourselves when Ma chased us―with a broom―to make us complete our homework. It’s where we retreated to the downstairs storeroom, by the buckets and mops, to share secrets and heartbreaks, where Ma caught me one night, jumping out of the broken window dressed in a sequined salwar and high heels to attend a wedding with Rishi, dragged me into the kitchen, triple-slapped my cheek, left-right-left, and said, “He’s just playing with you!” and, where I stamped my foot in frustration and screamed, “Any mother is better than you.”

Where I come from, obedient girls like my older sisters married the men Ma picked, one went to Sydney the other San Francisco, while I provided fodder for nosey neighbors who likely gossip-chattered about me, anointing me as the “runaway girl” because I fled home after leaving a note by the storeroom window. From where Rishi and I took the night train to anonymous Mumbai to blend with the multitudes, where, after a couple of years, Rishi took off for Dubai with a secretary in his office while I scrimp-saved-scrimp-saved, raised my son alone, longing for Ma, for her Ovaltine/Bournvita/Horlicks, her manly voice, and I call my sister’s place in Sydney because Ma had moved there, because I wanted to apologize, only to have my sister tell me, “You’re too late.”        

Where I come from, there’s no Ma I can hug now, no Ma I can beg for tea―ginger forward, sugar-heavy, milk-thick―no Ma I can introduce to my son. It’s where there are no screeching sisters, no jasmine bushes, no smelly rubbish bins, no walls with maps of faraway countries, no nooks, no crannies, no storerooms, no mops, no buckets, no broken windows, where the neighborhood’s shiny-new road signs and imposing multi-storied apartment buildings stand tall like disdainful sentinels mocking the piece of land that was once our humble abode, and where I sit on the rubble, excavating, sorting and gathering memories, so I can tuck them inside my heart, carry them to the place I today call home.