There will soon be more people living in the city of Bombay than on the continent of Australia. It is the biggest city on the planet of a race of city dwellers. Bombay is the future of urban civilization on the planet. God help us.
I left Bombay in 2000 and came back almost every year with an exception of a couple when it had grown up to become Mumbai. It’s been a long time: enough time for a human being to be born, get an education, be eligible to drink, get married, drive, vote, go to war, and kill a man. In all that time, I hadn’t lost my accent. I speak like a Bombay boy; it is how I am identified in Andheri and Parel.
“Where’re you from?”
Searching for an answer — in Bombay, in San Francisco, in London, in Boston, in Toronto, in Los Angeles, In Melbourne — I sometimes end up fall back not on “Bombay” but instead “Navsari”, my mother’s hometown.
Somewhere, buried beneath the wreck of a label being a small town — one of underdeveloped catastrophe — is the little down way down west that has a tight claim on my heart, a quaint little town, an island-state of hope in a very old country. I went back to look for that town with a simple question:
Can you go home again?
In the looking, I found the towns within me.
I am a suburban boy. I was born in a city in Bombay. Then I moved to the United States and lived there for all these years. I started from San Francisco to Los Angeles, Des Moines, Iowa, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Cleveland, Ohio to Boston, MA. A year, on and off, in Melbourne Australia, sometimes in Toronto and scattered over time, another year or so in London and Scotland.
My girls are born in different places, not a single root solid home as traditional American kids do or our Indian kids do too. I live in cities not by choice but by profession, and I’m pretty sure I will die in a city.
I don’t know what to do in the country, but I still harbor ideas of having a small house in a quiet village with a little kitchen garden where I grow my chilies and tomatoes and watch the birds go by. It’s an idea though, something that refuses to leave me even though I exist in these concrete jungles surrounded by people with tight-lipped smiles and even tighter mindsets.
Every year when I get back to India, I cannot wait to go to Navsari with my mother. Just the two of us. We usually head there the day after my daughter’s birthday during the 10-day period that we Parsis call the “Muktaads”. It is a time when it’s said that the souls departed to return to earth to visit us.
I have a small apartment in an area where the Parsis still live or whatever that remains of the dying community. The flat is small compared to American standards but way large compared to my standards where the entire youth was spent in a 457 Sq. ft. of tightly squeezed but very enjoyable childhood.
It’s been a couple of days since we have been in Navsari. I spend my days languishing, getting ready around 7 am and then going to the nearby community hall to pray for the souls departed.
The room is dark, without any electric lights but beautifully decorated and the smell of burning sandalwood and roses permeates the air.
The priest is praying loudly at times and then going down to a murmur depending on the prayers but also his energy level.
I change into my white priest's clothes getting ready to pray. Washing my hands and legs from the well water close by, I get ready.
The hall has a single file of marble tables along with the corners. Each table has a bunch of vases filled with exotic flowers.
Sweet-smelling roses, tulips, carnations depending on the financial capacity of the ones left behind.
Sometimes our vanity can cross over into a sort of competition of how we display our feelings.
It is a time of somber reflection.
There is a beautiful red rose in the vase 20 feet from me that my gaze lands on.
I settle down to pray for my father invoking his name from time to time in chants. The fire burns on the dome ahead of me consuming the sandalwood and incense.
The prayer is mechanical and routine, but done right, slowly ever so slowly one goes deep without even realizing it.
Words cannot describe the process, but the closest resemblance to that feeling is when you are deep underwater in a swimming pool. You can see the world, but there is an array of silence.
There is no “myself” anymore.
There is just a red flower among the dark green leaves and I am that flower and the flower is me. I am the fire and I am the incense and I permeate into every atom of this universe and yet I am still here, sitting.
The movement of the inner has its own action, expressed outwardly, but it is not a reaction of the outer.
Awareness of this whole movement is in itself a wondrous thing and it happens ever so infrequently.
The process goes on mildly.
