The uprooted life

As I have gotten older, I have understood a thing or two about the world and the human condition.  It could very well be that I am utterly wrong, but that's how I try to make sense of it all.

One of those results from the tension within me: A global migrant who greatly values the continuity of lives in old cultures.  I cherish the old stories from the old country, whether the stories are personal from Pattamadai and Sengottai, or from history that goes back five thousand years and more.  The migration and travels are about places and peoples that are new, while I have been shedding away from my personal life the traditions of the old.

I feel rooted here in Oregon, but I am not really from here.  This land is not naturally in my blood, but, to continue along with the metaphor, it is like I have had a blood transfusion.  It is not as if I could have stayed back in the old lands with my original blood either.

Of course, such a story is not unique to me.  Most of us have wandered away from the places where we were born and raised.  We may have moved to Oregon from New York or Hawaii, or moved from one corner of the state to another.  In the old country, my classmates in Neyveli have resettled in places far, far away from that industrial town and from their "native" villages.

We are all settlers, not unlike Europeans who moved to the Americas and Australia and New Zealand and southern Africa.  Thankfully, we did not colonize the lands but we came in peace.  But, the settlers that we are, we lack the fierce spirit of the place that a rare few have because they and their peoples have lived on that same land for generations.

The massive mining project and power generation projects in Neyveli required displacing people who had lived there for a long time.  In the name of development and progress, the lands were acquired and people were compensated.  Settlers from different parts of India came to work in the town.  I grew up there, without knowing anything about the people who once lived on those lands.

This is also not a unique story.  It has happened all over the world, and continues on even today.

It is no wonder then that the resistance to modern projects mostly comes from people who have lived for generations in the places where those projects will be located.  Almost always, they are farmers and fishers and indigenous people, to whom their homes are more than mere homes.  An emotional attachment about which most of the rest of us know nothing.  How would we know what that means when we have been wandering, settling, and resettling?

In The Shepherd's Life that I am currently reading, the author, James Rebanks,  describes his people and the way of life that, according to his estimate, has been going on for five thousand years in the landscape in the north of England, in the Lake District.  He writes about the dignity of the people, and the indignities that they have had to face because they value their lands and sheep more than school and urban life.  “Some of the smartest people I’ve ever known are semi-illiterate,” Rebanks writes.

When I was a kid, I had no doubts that being the smartest one in the class was the best thing ever.  To see my name on the blackboard as one of the ranked students was validation beyond compare.  Studying engineering, coming to America, earning a doctorate, were all "progress" along the continuum.  But, like I said, I have understood a thing or two about the human condition.  One of those is simply that such smartness is not a big deal, and is nothing more special than any other skill that others have.

But then, do I want to live a deeply rooted life in the idyllic landscape in the north of England, or in the south of India, where people are skilled very differently from me?

How do you say Tharangambadi in Danish?

I read in the newspaper from India that I grew up with, The Hindu:

Ten early-Pandya period cave temples will be declared protected monuments this year, and the Danish Fort at Tharangambadi, which was damaged during a recent cyclone, will be repaired and restored, Thangam Thennarasu, Minister for Industries, Tamil Official Language and Tamil Culture and Archaeology, said on Thursday.

That news about the Danish Fort at Tharangambadi reminded me of Kris, Kirsten, and Danish-Americans in Bakersfield.

My first newspaper opinion piece--not any short letter to the editor--was when I was a few months away from wrapping up graduate schooling in Los Angeles, which was my port of entry to life in these United States.  The Hindu and The Los Angeles Times had published letters from me, but this was a full-fledged commentary.

One might expect me to cherish that commentary.  But, the op-ed was, in retrospect, a terrible piece.  If I am a work in progress, one can easily imagine that I and my writing sucked big time three decades ago. 

It was published in the Bakersfield Californian--by then I had transitioned to life in Bakersfield.  Soon, it was a second opinion piece in that same paper.  A day after that second opinion essay, when the phone rang at work, it turned out to be the beginning of a productive association and friendship.

The caller was a professor at the local university.  He was pleased that the opinion author was from India and wanted to contact me right away.  He was also from India, and chose to go with a short version of his multi-syllable Indian name.  At the end of the brief phone conversation, he invited me and my family over to his home for dinner with him and his wife.

I was impressed at two levels.  For one, he tracked down the phone number of the agency where I worked--newspapers always include a note about commentary writers--and called me right away.  More than that, without having ever met me in the real world, he invited us over for dinner.  He was carrying on with the tradition in the old country, where inviting people over for dinner was the way to build a relationship, and which is sorely lacking in this country where people casually say, "let's do coffee sometime."

We had plenty of dinners with Kris and Kirsten.  He was only a few years younger than my father.  Kirsten was from Denmark.  They met when he was a graduate student in Copenhagen.  From there, the couple came to the US, which is where Kris earned his doctorate.

Soon after, Kris invited us to join them at the local Danish association's potluck gathering.  In his uniquely funny manner, Kris added that he was the president of the Danish Association.  Only in America can an Indian be the president of a Danish association!

It was a small gathering.  Most of them were even older than Kris.  They were globally informed, and were familiar with India.  One of them, a very old woman, quizzed me about the Danish connection with India.  Yes, she quizzed me, as if I was a child who had just started going to school.  She asked me if I knew about the Danish colonies in India.  Of course, I knew about Tranquebar--it was the European name for Tharangambadi.  The town is not far from Neyveli, which is the industrial town of my childhood. 

As angry as I have always been about Europeans going to far, far away places to colonize lands and people, I don't hold that against individuals from those countries, unless they make condescending or racist remarks.  The old woman was genuinely interested in India, and I was delighted to engage her.  She was happy that I knew about Tranquebar.  She talked about how in their schooling they had learnt about the Danish East India Company, and the Nicobar Islands.  One of her biggest regrets was not having been to India. 

Had I not come to the US and had instead continued living in India, my life would have been like that of many of my classmates with their comfortably rich lives.  More than those comforts, I would have had pooris and vadais anytime I felt the urge, instead of drooling for them in a remote Oregon.  But, I would never have had interesting and serendipitous encounters with people from different corners of the world, including from a tiny country that is a long, long way from Tharangambadi.

Thoughts on a rainy day

"I stay away from anything about which I know nothing," I said.

"Good idea.  So, what's your thing?"

What's my thing?

Most people always have something as theirs.  When engaged in their careers, their response might be about what they do.  A doctor.  Landscaper.  Pilot.  Ditch digger.  Whatever it is that they do. 

Of course, increasingly what people, especially the younger ones, say as their thing comes across as mumbo jumbo.  "I help clients maximize their productivity in their customer-interface" is a kind of thing that we just nod along to and remind ourselves not to ask that person anything ever again!

On quite a number of occasions, my father has expressed his surprise at how people earn money these days, in contrast to the old days when he was an active participant in the labor economy.  He was a civil engineer who built things.  Farmers grew crops. Miners dug stuff. Workers made widgets. One didn't need much explanation.  If we talked about so-and-so who is a medical sales rep, everyone immediately knew what that meant.

Not anymore.

Now, it is a different world.  Nobody seems to offer a simple description of the thing that they do.

So, what's my thing?

In my first job, I was a computer engineer.  That, however, was not my thing.  It didn't last even three months.

In my second job, I was a hotel engineering manager.  The three weeks on the job was solid evidence that it was not my thing.

In my third job, I was a biomedical sales engineer.  Nope, that was not my thing either.

Day in and day out for the six years that I worked as a transportation planner after graduate school, I knew it was not my thing.

I taught for two decades.  So, is teaching my thing?

Now that I have prematurely retired, is being retired my thing?

So, when he asked me "what's your thing?" I had to quickly think about a response. 

Pointing my finger at him to suggest that he had a good point in the conversation, I chuckled.

He too laughed.

Laughing might be just about my thing!