An NRI Comes Back
(An NRI Comes Back Raj Madnani describes his unique brand of nostalgia.)
Bangalore 1998: I plonk myself onto the soft, black leather sofa, click on my remote and squint at the hazy image of Tyrannosaurus Rex on my TV screen. Was he drooling ferociously, or was that a girl's arm in his mouth? The fuzzy pictures from a pirated video copy of The Lost World - Jurassic Park 2: eagerly rented for twenty rupees, stir my brain to rewind some twenty years back.
Flashback - Cambridge, Massachusetts 1978: I see myself squint at a grinding Rishi Kapoor merge into the backdrop of a Kashmir landscape - a pirated copy of a Hindi film. The sofa was different, a little hard not black, but were those Mr Kapoor's cheeks or ripe fruit on an apple tree? Fuzzy images from a pirated video tape, eagerly rented for a buck.
Back to Bangalore 1998: so what has changed, I thought? Fuzzy Hindi video in the USA, fuzzy American video in India. I Zapped the snarling mutant of Jurassic into tubular oblivion. Dumb movie anyway, relying on night darkness, scary music and mindless fear of ‘who would have what limb torn off next?' to strike terror. Hitchcock would never approve.
Twenty years ago I went off to Harvard University with so many feelings. Ambition, apprehension, excitement, adventure and quite broke. I missed my Bombay friends, missed bhelpuri, kulfi, kabab... In Cambridge, I relished third rate Indian food near the MIT campus at ‘Indian Pavilion' (every American town by now has an India restaurant by this name), and sought out fuzzy Hindi videos. I wasn't sentimental then, but gleefully reminisced about all things Indian.
In grad school, everyone asked me the same silly questions about the propah English I spoke, my Lucknow Chickan Kurtas, Morarji Desai's urine drinking (Americans were stunned when he revealed his urine therapy theories on national TV during his visit). I once replied to a gawking classmate, "Of course ,we still have elephants in our cities. What do we do with the creatures? See those parking meters on Mass Ave? We have them on all our streets in Bombay. You get off the elephant, you must tie his tail onto the parking meter. It's free you know. You don't have to put in any quarters." Why am I here, I repeatedly asked myself in Cambridge all my two years, and then in New York City for the next seventeen.
Nineteen years in the US and then I moved back to India. Two at Harvard, seventeen after graduation, in case you lost track. Now, sinking deeper into my soft black leather sofa which came with me and my family, I ask myself, why am I here? What has really changed? No fire in my belly like last time, but those feelings are back. All somewhat mellower: ambition, apprehension, excitement, adventure. This time with greenbacks, my three year old son, my wife of eighteen years, a soft black sofa that I may have mentioned before, and a wide-screen-34-inch Sony monitor with picture-in-picture. Minor differences.
I certify I am definitely not a sentimental type, but I cannot help myself. I miss so many things American. A steak at Smith & Wollensky's, on Lex and 49th in New York, filet mignon medium-well was my favourite order. The waiter always gave me that look. ‘Eaten rare or medium, stupid', and began to turn away. I'd snap my finger (waiters hate that) and change my order. ‘Make that well done', I'd say, ‘bozo I'd think. ‘And get me a single malt with a dash of cold water, no ice, Landerblatt please', a non-existent brand of whisky. ‘What, you don't have Landerblatt? All right, get me a Jack Daniels with water and ice. Baked potato with garlic butter only. And no vegetables, please'. Sudden respect in his eyes.
Like every neurotic-body-else in New York, I hated driving to New Jersey, hated talkative cabbies, hated Chinese take-out, eat-in, whatever. Maybe I should see a shrink, but I am missing things I actually detested. I miss my beamer and would give my left arm to drive down the pungent New Jersey Turnpike. In Manhattan, I miss jumping into a cab to take control by not revealing my destination, but simply saying 'quick, go down Second Avenue'. The cabby now had to concentrate. I could ask him to turn suddenly. His irksome yakkety-yak talk would vanish, leaving me a rare New York phenomenon... a quiet cabby. I miss piping hot Chinese food, chunks of chicken or shrimp simmered in that same brownish, starchy Soy sauce, delivered exactly five minutes after ordering. Was one of the three elevators in my building taken over by a Szechwan alien (illegal?) bending over a wok, chopsticks in one hand, cellphone in ear, stir frying all the way up to my condo on the 37th floor?
What I really miss is a hot pastrami sandwich. Victor's near Leonard Street was one of my favourites, until it closed down. There was always a crowd. I would join some twenty hungry ones at lunchtime, in a long line curled outside the shopfront, Fifteen salivating minutes in line, and then I had exactly four seconds to place my order. Anything spoken in the fifth fell on deaf ears. I had learned the hard lesson of rehearsing my order several times over while in line, never starting with an 'Er, let me think' or, ‘Ummm, do you have...' I'd be passed over in a heartbeat. Nobody got a second chance. I never had to repeat my order: ‘Hot pastrami on a hard roll, with mustard, mayo, extra onions, some hot peppers... not too many, tomato, lettuce, and a pickle on the side. And ginger ale, bottle please, no can. To go'. My sandwich was always exactly as ordered, and lusciously so.
I suddenly long for things American, painfully so, when everyone asks me the same questions here. ‘Why did you come back?'
‘For the biryani', I say. ‘Stop those questions, Sweetie', I think.
‘Do you like it here?
‘Yes, but still settling down, these things take time. Things can be so dirty.'
‘Do you think you'll make it here?'
‘I hope so. I really hope so.'
‘You don't sound American, after so many years?'
‘I'm an Indian at heart, you know.' What a birdbrain.
‘What is that Republican Clinton going to do about all these sex cases?'
‘He'll wiggle out... you know he does that well, let me get a refill, I'll be right back. Democrat! There's no Jack Daniels. I'm outa here! Why am I here?'
[From the Bangalore Magzine]
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