Sharodiya Anjali 2005 - Pujari

__________________________________________________________________Durga Puja 2005
Geeta Chadha Yadav, Chennai
Chennai based Geeta Chadha Yadav is a freelance journalist and Reiki Teacher. She focuses mainly on adolescence
issues and has numerous columns in Times of India and Indian Express to her credit. She has been working closely with
Politics India and other journals writing various human interest stories. Her book was published by student aid
publications and was reviewed by Times of India and the Hindu.
Making a home
away from home, this is how I
describe the plight of people
who have to adapt themselves to
a foreign land, an alien culture
and discrimination at various
levels. But most of them who
decide to make it their home opt
for the easier option and
embrace the foreign culture in
totality. The physical and
psychological self is
transformed beyond recognition
but the desi soul is simply
ignored and left to suffocate in a
phirang body. This is exactly
what happened with my cousin
who had come for a brief
vacation from the US. She is
married and has two children
aged 14 and 9. We met after a
long gap of eight years. I still
remember, we last met each
other during the winters of
1996. I was not married then,
still inexperienced in so many
ways but still I could make out
that she was treading the
confused path. As regards her
children, the elder son Sandy,
introduced himself as an
American, could not speak a
word in Hindi, was busy
miming for every thing, called
her by name as Americans did, spoke
in the same accent giving little regard
to the alphabet u, and the younger one
Paddy was by God’s grace, too young
to differentiate between Americans
and Asian. My brother- in-law, born
and brought up in Allahabad, an
engineer from IIT Kharagpur, was
and still is one of the most well
settled Indian there. From Om
Prakash he became OP and my
sister’s metamorphosis from Sangeeta
to Sangi was mind blowing. From a
simple, educated young girl, her
transformation was painful and her
body language so distraught. In a
matter of few years they had found
the Indian psyche non- progressive
and unchanging. The Indians
remained the backward lot, spending
most of the time in the kitchen,
feeding their children and making
them dependent from day one.
“You should have a life of
your own. See I enjoy life, I love the
American way of life, progressive and
rich. Sunny and Paddy stay at the day
care centre, I am working full time, I
grab a hamburger for lunch and that’s
it. On the other hand, had I been here
I would have wasted my youth in
preparing khichdi for the little ones
and performing those mundane duties
of a dutiful bahu. It is so damn
suffocating. Here in India, in the garb
of culture and tradition “you” are still
so primitive in so many ways
and the worst thing is “you”
people are not ready to change.
In a span of few years
she had become “we” and we
had been assigned the substandard
category of ‘you
people’.
We were out of touch
for some time, but last year on
hearing of my father’s death
she had called up. Few days
ago she told me that she
wanted to see me urgently
even if it meant just for a day
or two.
Something in her
voice made me anxious and I
decided to see her and be with
her for a couple of days. I was
waiting to see my sis but a
look in her direction told me
that something was terribly
wrong. But it was at night that
we got the opportunity to talk.
She broke down, cried her
heart out because Sandy aged
16 yrs wanted to move out and
live in with an American girl
who was another four years
senior to him. He had dropped
out of school two years ago.
“We have the money to
sponsor his higher studies but
he is not inclined, he’s into
wrong company, he is
excitedly curious about sex
matters, I can’t tell you what
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Sharodiya Anjali 2005 64 n¡lc£u¡ A”m£ 1412