RTE No 20 Interior - Road to Emmaus Journal

FROM JAINISM TOORTHODOXY:AN INDIANPASSAGEPilgrimage attracts intriguing people the world over, and it was on a Serbian pilgrim bus thatRoad to Emmaus staff met Indian Rahda (Elesa) Dalal and her American husband, SymeonBranson. Our weeks of travel and shared meals provided opportunities for long miles of conversation,and Elesa, with great candor and warmth, shared her colorful Indian childhoodand her long road to Orthodoxy. The pilgrimage was a break from studies: Elesa is workingon a doctorate in Islamic art and architecture, and Symeon is finishing his philosophy dissertationat Notre Dame.Part IIndian Life and CustomsRTE: Elesa, please tell us about your childhood in India.ELESA: Although I was born in the United States, my parents didn’t want meto grow up there because they felt that I wouldn’t be able to acquire Indian values,so we returned to India when I was six months old. When my father dieda year later, my mother, who is a doctor, went back to the U.S. to work, returningto India when I was six. I grew up in an upper middle-class extendedIndian family until I was sixteen, when I came to the U.S. for medical school.I was raised in the town of Ahmedabad, in the state of Gujarat in northernIndia, surrounded by family. My mother has ten brothers and sisters andeach of my uncles and aunts has two or three children. My paternal grandparentsdied long before I was born, but my maternal grandfather marriedthree times, and his last wife, my “step-grandmother,” was alive through mychildhood, as was my grandfather. My father had three sisters, one of whomRahda (Elesa) Dalal3