ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS

13. BOMBAY MEMORY

❤︎ Anjali ❤︎

I didn't know why my parents left India to come to America until recently. When my Uncle Deepak visited us from Bombay, he told me what actually happened to them in India. He didn't tell me a secret. My uncle didn't know that neither of my parents had told me the truth. He thought I already knew about what happened.

My father was a very good embroiderer. In general, all the embroidery works in India are done by men who have been working for many years in that profession. He was young, but he had a special talent for it. His hands were exact and impeccable.

When you look at the embroidery, it expresses the character of each individual who is embroidered. It is just like a painting or a dance. My maternal grandfather noticed his talent and hired him to work in his factory.

My grandfather had many connections with various designer brands all over the world. His embroideries were shown on runways in Paris, Milan, and New York every six months. My father was a very hard worker and trustworthy. He always respected the people he worked with and the deadline schedule, so my grandfather always trusted him.

Something that my grandfather didn't consider was my father's youth and attractive allure. He was quite a beautiful man, and girls were often attracted to him.

My mother usually didn't come to the factory because it was far from their house. One autumn day, she happened to stop by to drop off my grandfather's forgotten lunch box. My mother was about to walk into my grandfather's office when my father happened to come out with an armful of embroidery he had gotten approved.

They bumped into each other at the doorstep. My mother fell on the floor, and my father excused himself. Then he held out his hand to help her up. When my mother looked up at his face, she almost lost herself because he was so good-looking.

She fell in love at first sight. She didn't know what hit her, as it never happened to her before. My father held her hand gently, helped her get to her feet, and cordially excused himself again. Then he walked back to the factory, leaving her behind. This is how my parents met.

Since then, she couldn't forget him and waited for the chance to revisit the factory. She tried to find every excuse to see him. But my grandfather didn't forget his lunch box that often. She finally came up with a brilliant idea.

She asked my grandfather if she could help communicate with his clients abroad for free since she was sufficient in her English. My grandfather always needed some help in the office. Of course, my grandfather never suspected the real motive behind her proposal.

The following week, she began to go to work with him in the office. After cleaning up the office in the morning, she began to answer questions from abroad through fax. There were many questions to be answered.

First, she submitted requests to my grandfather, and he went down to the factory to talk to the workers. Then he would come back to the office and relay messages to her. She was hardly able to see my father that way.

Days went by when she couldn't see my father at all. My mother was so frustrated. She needed to come up with a new idea. So she asked my grandfather if she could go to the factory and submit the requests directly to the workers to be more efficient.

So he didn't need to be bothered by going back and forth. That made his life so much easier, and he gave her permission to do so. Of course, he didn't know her real motive then.

Now she was able to see my father whenever she wanted to. She went to the factory many times a day to see him and chat with him. My grandfather was content because my mother was so eager to work and appeared to be working hard. Above all, he didn't need to pay a penny for it.

On the other hand, my father wasn't that interested in my mother because she was the daughter of the owner—a different class in the old society. In the beginning, he didn't pay much attention to her. My mother was such a charmer that she tried every way to attract my father's attention. She wasn't the most beautiful girl on the street, but she had an exuberant smile.

Sooner or later, my father began to pay attention to her. Before anyone knew it, they were in love. Everything seemed fantastic, but there was one thing that came between them: the Hindu caste system. Three thousand years of unfair tradition. They were in a different caste. She was a Vaishya, and he was a Shudra.

India's caste system is among the world's oldest forms of surviving social stratification. This system divides Hindus into rigid hierarchical groups based on their karma (work) and dharma (duty). Manusmriti, the most authoritative book on Hindu law, acknowledges and justifies the caste system as the basis of order and regulation of society. The caste system divides Hindus into four main categories: Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and Shudras.

At the top of the hierarchy were the Brahmins, who were priests and teachers. Then came the Kshatriyas, warriors, and rulers. The third caste is the Vaishyas, farmers, traders, and merchants. At the bottom of the heap were the Shudras, laborers.

The main caste was further divided into about three thousand castes and twenty-five thousand subcastes, each based on their specific occupation. Outside of this Hindu caste system were the Dalits—street sweepers and latrine cleaners—who were the untouchables.

At first, they asked my grandfather for permission for their marriage, but he never accepted it. My grandfather liked my father very much, but he knew that my mother would be treated very differently in Indian society if she married a man in a lower caste. He just wanted to protect his daughter from social hardship.

My father and mother were young. They didn't think about what could happen in the future. They only thought about how they could stay together. They felt that the rigid Indian caste system would eventually crush their love. The only way for them to keep their hope alive was to leave the country.

When they found out that my Uncle Raj was moving to New York, they decided to leave with him, even though they didn't have a legal visa to stay longer than three months. They applied for tourist visas and bought their tickets to New York.

One evening, they left for the airport without saying goodbye to my grandfather. Once they arrived in New York, they lived with uncle Raj until they found their own place to live. The first thing they did was to get married officially.

My mother converted from Hinduism to Sikhism because my grandfather never gave her his blessing for the marriage. After they married, they found out that my mother was pregnant with me.

After three months, their legal tourist visas expired, and they kept living illegally in Jackson Heights.

Seven months later, I was born as an American, the only American in our family.