Missed Translations Page 11

  All I could get out of him was this: “A certain turning moment of my life was drastically influenced by his order. By his order. It affected my life seriously.” He added, “So I hated him. It’s the same—I listened to him because of the fact that he’s the one who helped me to go to my education.”

  Shyamal clearly felt wounded by Sudhirendra. But I was struck that he still felt a duty to his eldest brother: to help take care of him in his old age, even while resenting the transactional nature of their relationship.

  I had never even thought about Shyamal in those terms. What if one year ago Shyamal had fallen seriously ill? Would I have flown to India to help nurse my father back to health? In the way Susmita had for Sudhirendra, her father-in-law? What about Bishakha? She lives within driving distance of New York. Would I go to her at a moment’s notice, the way Shyamal did for Sudhirendra?

  The conversation ended, but as we prepared to leave for Sudhirendra’s house, Shyamal asked a question I didn’t expect.

  “Did we disconnect our relationship ever?” Shyamal said.

  The word “relationship” was doing heavy lifting here. It’s hard to disconnect from something that I felt barely existed.

  I said, “Well, let’s talk about that—”

  But Shyamal cut me off with a soliloquy.

  “Maybe from your side,” Shyamal said. “My side, no. No. I always loved my son. I always look at your picture, remember how he’s doing. So did I with Sattik.”

  He continued, “Relationships are very much emotionally guided. Relationships between siblings, parents, children: emotion. No matter where it is, they’re our parents. They’re our fathers. They’re our children. But the degree varies on the relationship. Other types are mechanical. Other types are professional. It’s very difficult to define a relationship quantitatively.”

  I was stuck, though, on his suggesting that I was solely responsible for our disconnecting. I could feel my blood starting to simmer, my journalistic veneer melting away. It wasn’t as if I woke up one morning and decided I didn’t want a relationship with my father. Lest we forget, he was the one who left the country without warning.

  We were running late and were teetering on the edge of a conversation for which I didn’t yet have the energy. I had an uncle to meet.

  Eight

  “I might not be around.”

  Here is an internal conversation I recently had with myself:

  Do I want to get married? Yes.

  Do I want it to be Star Trek–themed? Yes.

  Will it actually be? Well—

  Will there be a band? Yes, what are the Gin Blossoms up to?

  What will be my wedding song? “All I’ve Ever Known” from the Hadestown Broadway soundtrack. But about the Star Trek—

  What about the color scheme? Green, like the Orions in Star Trek.

  It’s never going to happen. That’s rude. Who even are you?

  I am you. Good point.

  Nobody wants to attend a Star Trek–themed wedding. Including your fiancée. Shut up.

  What about a Garfield theme instead? Who are you again?

  I am you. Right.

  Garfield? I’m intrigued.

  Hear me out. You serve lasagna and do it on a Monday. Wow, yes.

  I am you. You are me. We’re doing it.

  This me-on-me conversation is probably why Michelle broke up with me after college. She saw the future. And she wanted to get married on a Saturday.

  I have put a lot of thought into what I want out of a wedding, especially in recent years. I’m at the age where it’s more likely that I attend a wedding on a weekend than go for a jog. Also, the jogs are more painful.

  I started picturing my wedding when I was in middle school. For one thing, I would see weddings quite a bit on television. Any one of my favorite shows—The West Wing, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, WWF SmackDown!, Sesame Street, The Sopranos, you name it—had wedding episodes. More important, they had viewers like me to watch them.

  Most of these weddings seemed so happy. It was as if there was an unwritten television law forbidding families from fighting in the presence of a soon-to-be married couple. Watching these scenes in conjunction with my family’s history instilled a desire in me to have a wife and kids and not have the relationship with them that my parents had with each other and me. This in itself is not unhealthy. What is unhealthy is the way it started manifesting itself in my dating life: When I would get too clingy and marriage-oriented too early on.

  The dream wedding itself has gone through various iterations in my mind throughout the decades. At first, because I was in middle school, I was totally on board with a theme wedding. After all, so many of my classmates had elementary school birthday parties at Chuck E. Cheese. I figured weddings were the same thing. Also, Will and Lisa had one in Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

  In high school, my vision changed after my parents’ divorce. A lavish ceremony celebrating nuptials became unattractive. I knew for sure I didn’t want a traditional Indian ceremony. And what if my marriage ended up the way my parents’ did? You’d have all those toasters to return. Instead, I pictured a quiet ceremony. My fiancée and me, walking down the aisle to Dave Matthews playing “Crash into Me.”

  Sattik got married my sophomore year of college. It was my first time attending a wedding of someone with whom I had a personal relationship. All the past ceremonies I had been to were for friends of my parents. My brother’s wedding was going to be my first up-close experience with the vision I had for my own life.

  He had met Erica, an outgoing and caring woman from Toms River, a nearby New Jersey suburb, a few years prior. I was happy for him. It felt like a jailbreak for my brother, an opportunity for him to outwardly give and receive something with which we had little experience: healthy, unconditional love. I was nineteen at the time, and he asked me to be his best man. With all the television shows I watched growing up, I felt prepared. Although it was a bit difficult to plan a bachelor party, since Sattik didn’t drink and I was only nineteen. This wasn’t going to be American Pie.

  We planned a night out in Manhattan with a few of his friends: dinner in Little Italy, followed by a show at Gotham Comedy Club, one of the city’s biggest stand-up venues. It wasn’t exactly a romp in Las Vegas, but it was very much suited to Sattik, which is what matters after all. (Sattik, if he ever has to return the favor and plan my bachelor party, is in for it, since I’d like mine to be in space.)

  We are very different people. He was a quiet nerd in high school and college, whereas I’ve always had a boisterous side. Sattik’s work ethic is unmatched. He puts the same effort into changing the light bulb that he does into his career. Me? Let’s put it this way: How many Sopans does it take to screw in that light bulb? It depends on how distracted the Sopans are by the balloon that just flew by the window.

  Growing up, Sattik filled some of that father-figure gap when he could. He was my hero. Until he moved out, he made sure I was cared for when my parents weren’t parenting. I played catch with him. He taught me the importance of Billy Joel’s contributions to the American cultural catalog. He was also a disciplinarian. One summer when I was in elementary school, Sattik grounded me and made me write lines for an entire month, just like Bishakha would, because he caught me watching Judge Judy. What can I say? I had strong feelings about the judicial system, whereas he wanted to be the judicial system. Other times, he’d make me do push-ups as a form of punishment. I got the last laugh, though. Sattik is a results-oriented guy, and, well, my arms remained twigs.

  My brother didn’t really care what kind of wedding he had. Erica wanted a traditional Christian ceremony, and Sattik, in his good judgment, was willing to do whatever his bride-to-be wanted. They picked a church on the campus of Rutgers University, where they both went to school.

  Shyamal wasn’t at the ceremony, which lasted roughly an hour, because he had left for India by this point and my brother had had his own rift with him. There was, however, a brown side of the aisle,
featuring my mother, my uncle Atish, his wife, Sima, and their son, Sagnik, who is a few years younger than me; and a white side of the aisle, where Erica’s family sat. It wasn’t intentionally segregated, mind you, nor was this a big deal. It was still an unintentionally amusing visual.

  And the thing about this Christian wedding: My family had never been to church before. They didn’t know what to do. They knew Sister Act. I think they were expecting a gospel service. And they were used to Indian weddings, which are a slightly tamer version of Burning Man. If Indian ceremonies are Burning Man, Christian weddings are a night at the New York Philharmonic. The brown side of the aisle didn’t know when to sit, stand, or sing hymns. And they were wondering when the action would take off. Where was the fire? Where are the appetizers? How come everybody showed up on time? It was like how I feel watching a Wes Anderson film: This is beautiful. Looks amazing. When does this thing get going? Oh. It’s over. Huh.

  As I was standing on the dais, I thought to myself: This is not what I want. Getting married in a church without being religious myself didn’t seem authentic, no matter who my fiancée is. Not that I wanted Burning Man either. Frankly, I wanted Chuck E. Cheese.

  In the lead-up to the ceremony, Bishakha took me aside and sternly said, “Shambo, I want you to have an Indian wedding.” I half expected her to follow that up with, “That’s an order, Lieutenant.” I didn’t take it seriously. We were distant at this point. I had thought a lot about my dream wedding and I knew that wasn’t it. Why lie to the many Hindu gods about my commitment to the cause?

  Now I’m not so sure I need a wedding at all. A party is fine. Or nothing. A life partner is cool with me too. Except when I got to India, it wasn’t totally left up to me. Some family members wanted to speed up the process, whether we wanted to or not.

  Sudhirendra’s house was a fifteen-minute drive from Shyamal’s flat. It was one of the rare treks through Kolkata during which the streets weren’t packed with cars. I snapped pictures out my passenger-side window with a DSLR camera I had brought with me on the trip. For the first time, I noticed the amount of lush greenery complementing the quaint little shops cramming the sidewalks. Some of the towering tree branches hovering over the street looked like they were emerging from the buildings themselves.

  “The last few days have been so hot. I was concerned,” Shyamal said, from the front of the car. He didn’t have to shout for once. “Today, at least, it is a little mild.” It was a minimum ninety degrees and humid outside.

  Sudhirendra’s wife, Namita, was there to greet us, along with my cousin Susmita. She offered us tea. Minutes later, Sudhirendra shuffled in with the help of a cane and we all settled into chairs in the cozy living room with light blue walls and a shuttered window that barely filtered the streaming light. My father’s eldest sibling couldn’t speak much—“perhaps old age,” as Shyamal might have said. But he was an imposing figure, six feet tall and with more hair than I had. Judging from the way the energy in the room shifted toward him when he walked in, my father’s description of him as the one-time patriarch of the family hit home.

  I would do the lion’s share of conversing, mostly in Bengali, while Wesley sat nearby not understanding a word. But every now and then Sudhirendra would beckon me over to mutter one phrase repeatedly in English: “You should go visit Japan.”

  There was no explanation. No one else in the room heard his suggestion. “You should go to Japan.” I didn’t know if this was genuine advice, code for a hidden treasure, or a signal that he was being held against his will. What could I say? I told him we would go someday.

  Sudhirendra asked if I recalled his visit from my childhood.

  “I remember a little bit,” I lied.

  “You can speak Bengali also?” Sudhirendra said.

  “He can speak clean Bengali,” Shyamal chimed in. “Wesley graduated from Harvard Law School.”

  Sudhirendra couldn’t hear well.

  “Harvard! HARVARD GRADUATE!” Shyamal said, this time louder.

  My aunt looked at Wesley and said in Bengali, “Bishon mishti.” (“She’s very sweet.”)

  But Namita was drowned out because my father was still saying, “Harvard! Harvard!”

  “Kamon aacho, Dadhu?” I said to Sudhirendra, which translates to “How are you?” Dadhu typically refers to an elder.

  “I am the age of ninety-two,” Sudhirendra said. “I have lots of complaints. When did you learn to speak Bengali?”

  “I’ve been speaking it since I was little,” I said, slowly and deliberately.

  “He can sing too!” Shyamal added. I can’t, of course. Not really. But we didn’t need to get bogged down in petty details like that.

  “Really, though, I don’t speak it much anymore. But here, I’ve been speaking it again,” I said. My aunt concurred with Sudhirendra that my Bengali was top-notch. I kept trying to translate on the fly for Wesley, but she stopped me and said, “Don’t worry about me.”

  When the conversation found a lull, Sudhirendra threw in another, “Go visit Japan!” for good measure.

  After about an hour, my aunt called Wesley and me into another room, which I assumed meant we were getting the tour of the place.

  Instead, Namita gathered us in a corner next to a makeshift shrine, placed on a dresser covered in pieces of red silk cloth and featuring several religious emblems. There were multiple silver plates with flowers on them, along with framed pictures, across from a bed with a green sheet neatly enveloping it. Another striking window perpendicular to the shrine filled the room with light from outside.

  I pointed at one of the emblems I recognized.

  “That’s Ganesha?” I said, remembering the Hindu deity with an elephant head.

  “You forgot Ganesha?” my aunt said.

  I hadn’t. Forgetting Ganesha—one of the most worshipped gods in Hinduism—would be like a Christian not remembering Jesus Christ. There was also a picture of Ramakrishna, the influential Indian spiritual leader from the 1800s.

  Wordlessly, Namita arranged for Wesley and me to face the shrine at the foot of the bed. I had a brief second of panic, afraid that perhaps my aunt was about to request that we say a prayer. I wasn’t prepared for that. The gods up there weren’t prepared for that. I’d need an instruction manual of some sort.

  The room itself was of a moderate size, and as I turned toward the door, I noticed Shyamal and Susmita observing the proceedings with some bemusement.

  My aunt revealed her true intentions: This was an ashirwad, she said.

  I had to plumb the depths of my memories to recall what that was. The word sounded familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on where I’d heard it.

  Of course: a blessing ceremony.

  I remembered because my mother had thrown one for Sattik and Erica before they officially got married. It was Sattik’s way of throwing Bishakha a bone since they planned on a Christian wedding. How it worked was that family and friends lined up in front of the seated couple to touch their foreheads with a mixture of rice and grass blades. It is usually reserved for engaged or married couples and signifies a family’s acceptance of the bride and groom by the elders. Wesley and I were not engaged, not that it made a difference in Namita’s eyes.

  “Take this,” my aunt said.

  She had Wesley and me clasp our hands and hold some of the pieces she picked up off the shrine. She followed up by wrapping one of the red cloths around our hands and whispering a quick blessing. Then my aunt pinched each of our cheeks and turned to my waiting father and Susmita, who were eagerly snapping pictures.

  “When they come here again next time, I might not be around,” Namita said. “So I gave them this.” In English, she added: “Souvenirs!”

  The amazing thing about this is that Wesley had no idea what was going on because my aunt spoke the whole time in Bengali. Everything happened so fast that I didn’t have a chance to explain it to her. I was having trouble keeping up. In the pictures my father and Susmita took, Wesley looks like a hos
tage. All she knew was that we were suddenly in another room, with cloth being wrapped around our hands and pictures being taken of us. If she had doubts about marrying me sometime in the future, she had to keep them suppressed. As far as my aunt and uncle were concerned, Wesley and I were married.

  After the ceremony, we said our goodbyes. Namita gave us the pieces we’d clasped in our hands to take home with us. Wesley and I touched the feet of my aunt and uncle as a show of respect before we climbed into the car. I told Wesley we would have to go to Japan at some point. We were quasi-married now anyway, I told her, so another hop across the world seemed like a normal step. And while the ashirwad wasn’t the Chuck E. Cheese ceremony I pictured, and Dave Matthews was nowhere to be found, I felt strangely comfortable with what Namita had put us through. It was odd, I thought. Usually, I find rituals like that excruciating. But for this one, I had Wesley with me. And even after realizing what had just taken place, she was comfortable too. And maybe that’s all I needed.

  Around the time I first started writing material for stand-up, I wrote this joke:

  Lots of people complain about having to do online dating. They say it’s forced, inorganic matchmaking for the eventual purpose of procreation. You know what my parents called that? The good old days.

  It was one of those cracks with a false premise: Of course, I didn’t think my parents would have called them the good old days, given how their marriage turned out.

  I’ve always been baffled by the concept of arranged marriage. I spent many hours in my first couple of years writing comedy trying to come up with material on the topic. I didn’t get very far, in part, because it’s a very cliché thing for brown comics to joke about. But, more important, nothing ever came to me. At least I had nothing funny to say, perhaps owing to my negative experience, and nothing interesting to tell audiences that they hadn’t heard already.

  This was why I found my next conversation with Susmita simultaneously perplexing and illuminating. For my cousin, arranged marriage not only made sense, it worked—the result of which was a stable, well-adjusted American family.