Pedder Road

In 2009 my aunt, Aruna Masi, passed away.  When you come from a big family like I do death is not something you are shielded from.  My mom is one of twelve siblings and my dad is one of eight.  I have 42 first cousins and I have never even attempted to count second cousins.  I've got cousins who are older than my parents.  So yes, my grandmother, Samju Ba, was pregnant at the same time as her daughter, Prabha Masi.  It's awesome.  It also means that people get old when you're young.  That cancer and heart disease and tragedy become part of your lexicon at ages four and five and six years old like they did for me.  And so I had dealt with loss; but when Aruna Masi passed, it was the deepest wound my heart has had to heal from.  To me, she was a second mother. 

As a first generation American of Indian descent, India is a funny place to feel your skin.  In some ways it is so empowering.  To be a part of the majority when you have developed a comfort with being other.  Identity and sense of self get thrown up in the air and reevaluated.  And for me it has meant that whenever I am in India I am trying to exert my Indian-ness.  My family says things like, "don't speak in English so we don't get scammed."  I try and walk with less swag in my shoulders and try to fit in.  I try to remember the social norms.  But not at Aruna Masi's house.  At Aruna Masi's house I could always just be, drop the heightened awareness, and not care if my kachu Gujarati dialect was filled with mistakes.  Because Aruna Masi was home.  I haven't been to India since her passing.  It's one of the sacrifices that come with diaspora.  I am used to not seeing my beloved Masi for years at a time, so then when someone passes on, how do you honor, mourn and feel their passing?  How do you accept it's real?

I have gone through the motions of what it would feel like so many times in the last five years.  I suppose that trying to envision the loss in some way was a strategy to deal with it.  I have imagined arriving at the Bombay airport and not seeing Aruna Masi and Pravin's Masa's thick lensed specs.  I have had lucid visions of doing the u-turn on Pedder road and taking a sharp turn up the hill toward their flat.  I have, in my waking dreams, stood at the spot outside the apartment where she sat the last time I saw her.  When she was wrapped in the red shawl I got her.  Waving and crying and smiling until our car became a dot in the distance.  That day when our cries became dry-heaving and irregular gasps as our car rode toward the Bombay airport because we knew it was the last time we would see each other in the physical form because she was so sick.

And today I finally experienced it. Today I arrived at the Bombay airport - just five hours ago at 1 AM.  I came to Pedder Road.  And I am laying on the floor of Aruna Masi's bedroom.  My mom and dad are next to me on her bed, the bed she let out her last exhalation upon.  My cousin brother and Bhabhi picked us up at the airport.  The tears came unexpectedly and I had to look away from Amish and my mom to try and gain my composure.  But the tears didn't come when I got to Pedder Road like I thought they would.  When I stood in that last spot where she sat and said good bye, and when I came in the house, I felt her presence and not her loss.  And so the answer to my fear is starting to reveal itself to me slowly and positively.  I still have a home in India.  I still feel connected.  I feel Aruna Masi in these walls and in the breeze blowing through her bedroom.  I feel her in Amish and Tejal Bhabhi.  And I know my mom feels her sister too.  When we said good night to one another a few moments ago we communicated that to each other through our welled-up eyes and genuine smiles.

Pinky, Aruna Masi and Me on a train to Surat

Neili, Aruna Masi and me on Pedder Road

Aruna Masi, me, and Pravin Masa in Disney World