Far

 

F is for...Find

One of the things an expat must be good at is finding…When you live far away from home, you have to find ways to recreate the textures and meanings of it. Independent of geographical coordinates or familiar landmarks, smells, tastes, visual and emotional cues.  The farther you go, the more difficult it is to do that. 

Exactly fifty years ago, in April 1972 my father took a huge leap of faith and a Pan Am flight to Beirut and then onward to a small town on the fringes of the Sahara called Maiduguri in North Eastern Nigeria. Maiduguri has since become famous, or rather infamous, due to religious fundamentalist groups, but back then no-one in my large, extended family had even heard of the place. And Africa wasn't exactly a dream destination for middle class Indian professionals, they were far more drawn to UK and USA, the Mecca people flocked to for opportunities. Nigeria?! Africa?! Omg!

My father was forthright - don't know what we're going to find there, don't expect pucca houses, proper sanitation or taps in the toilet. My mother prepared me accordingly beforehand and packed two Bengali classics - a collection of fiction and another of poetry. All the raised eyebrows and headshaking of various relatives notwithstanding, we landed up there. And indeed, though the houses were concrete bungalows, sure enough there was no tap in the toilet. My mother calmly set up a large metal beaker there and kept it filled from the basin outside. She also discovered turmeric in the local departmental store and proceeded to teach her house help, a guy from neighbouring Cameroun who spoke not a word of English, to cook fish with it, Bengali style. 

My father got me subscriptions to Bengali and Hindi children's magazines. Over the years there he slowly built up a stack of Bengali music - records and cassettes which were copied and circulated among the Indian and Bangladeshi expats. In time my mother too grew her own bitter gourds and Indian squashes and cauliflowers and eggplants. And she got the must-have Bengali kitchen implements and cookpots on home leave and took them back. She also sewed me an elephant motif bedspread, 'oh that looks very Indian,' the fabric picked out from the local shops. And so - though the texture of my outer environment changed utterly and delightfully; in my inner world, the conversations, the stories, the food, the music, life generally remained tethered to Bengal. 

The first time I moved out of India as an adult in the mid nineties, the world had become much smaller. Communications had changed - mobile phones, internet, banking systems, budget airlines  -  all of them had combined to shrink perceived distances. The actual distance itself was much less of course. My father had travelled 8000 km from home to a different continent,  I'd gone to Bahrain, less than half that and within Asia. Nigeria was both geographically and culturally remote for us, whereas India and the Arablands have been dealing with each other for millennia. Apples and oranges. It wasn't difficult to feel at home in the Middle East.

But this time, it's truly far away, nearly 11,000 km. To Fiji. To a different continent in a different hemisphere. On the one hand, I'm super excited - whole different constellations, flipped seasons, water draining anticlockwise, all the things I've read about but never lived with at close quarters. (And gosh, Fiji's so beautiful!) On the other, I am super apprehensive - even though I know Fiji has a sizeable community of people of Indian origin. I am going to be 11,000 km away from home, and also 12,000 km away from my son in the USA. India is 61/2 hours behind Fiji, USA East Coast is 16 hours behind. Sixteen hours! The whole time difference management issue is seriously freaking me out. Will I ever be able to get all of us onto a video call?! But I also know this from previous experience, fear of a challenge is worse than actually facing it. Things will fall into place. They always do.

A-Z Challenge 2022