When I was a kid, my family would trek across Europe every few years to see our relatives who had migrated there. We would eventually land in India, where my father was from, to see those who had not engaged in the family diaspora.
During one particular trip, we visited Porto, Portugal. Initially, we stayed in the city. I remember meeting people in the streets and how they kissed me on my cheek. I briefly wondered if these were some long-lost relatives. I found out soon enough that this was a Portuguese custom.
After a few days, we left the city of Porto to stay in a fishing village. We took residence in a spare upstairs apartment in a house. The apartment had a stark simplicity, and we subsisted on basic foods. In the morning, when we would leave the apartment, I would look down the street and see men working with large fishing nets on the beach with the ocean in the background.
When we needed something special, we would leave the village and walk along the railway tracks which would lead us to a local town. There would be fields on either side of the track, and once in a while, we would see a woman in traditional dress with a kerchief on her head working. We would wave, and she would wave back.
Part way to the town, we would encounter a little white house, a train stop, made of stucco, and around it someone had planted red flowers. I never saw a train nor a conductor at the railway depot. The entire experience was one of serenity, tranquility. People worked. The sun shone. And, we walked.
One day, when we arrived at the town, we saw a path of flowers about three feet wide running through the middle of the road. We walked the main streets of the entire town, and everywhere we went we found a never-ending path of vibrant, intricate flower petal patterns. I was amazed by the fragile beauty.
I took pictures of the flowers again and again. There were no cars driving. We saw almost no people, until I think we saw the townspeople parade through the streets to the church. But, my memory is foggy.
Eventually, we left Portugal to finish our journey to India, and the flower patterns I saw that day are one of my fondest memories.
When I was very little, I grew up in an Indian city called Simla, and I was an Indian girl. When the British ruled India, Simla was their summer capital. They would leave the summer heat of Delhi to go to Simla in the foothills of the Himalayas to enjoy the cooler temperatures.
While I was still an Indian girl, we would take the same trip, going from Delhi to Simla. We would begin early in the morning. Before boarding the bus, my mother would not allow me to eat because doing so would lead to nausea and possibly vomiting. The roads were carved into the mountain side, and as the bus driver took us upwards, the constant winding back and forth made people sick. Luckily, there were usually no panes in the window, just bars. And, if there was glass, the windows could open. So, those who were ill could lean out.
As I write this, I realize some readers might feel disgusted or horrified. I might feel the same today. When I was a child, I felt none of those things. I felt happy to be going home. And, when we arrived, we would walk to our house.
My time in India was different from my life in America. As a little girl, I told my Jethima (my father’s elder brother’s wife) that I would have 10 children. She would laugh and ask me who would take care of them. I would say, “You will!”
I came to America in first grade, and when I returned to India the next year, I found I was not an Indian girl any longer. I could not return to who I had been.
From the time I was in first grade and learned to read, books have been the love of my life. But, it didn't occur to me that I should be a writer until the day the father of my children told me about his grandfather’s childhood in Mexico.
During the Mexican Revolution, Zapata’s soldiers would raid the village where he lived for food. Out of vindictiveness, the revolutionaries would burn the crops and kill the animals. To survive, the little boy would run to the hills and hide, sustaining himself only on tubers and roots of wild plants.
In his old age, the grandfather wrote his personal history and sent it to a radio station where it won a local prize.
“Where did the story go?” I asked.
The answer: “It's been lost. I don’t know where it went.”
I wanted to find out what happened. So, I wrote a story.
As I wrote, the story that came out was not the tale that had been told to me. I did not know the details of the grandfather’s story. Instead, the characters that emerged took a life of their own. I wrote a 300 page manuscript. When I read it over, I threw away the second half of the book, and wrote it again.
Life continued. I had a baby to care for. We bought a house. I struggled through the third draft trying to find the path. Then, my little girl got sick with leukemia. I stopped writing.
Over the years, other books appeared inside of me. I wrote 50 pages of a book I titled The Necklace. A young adult novel. Life interrupted.
I wrote 50 pages of a novel titled The Epiphany. It got lost in the daily grind.
I learned a difficult truth: when you leave behind a world you have created, you stop breathing life into it, and it withers. A writer can return to their writing again, but it requires a re-acclimatization, a re-orientation, a rejuvenation.
Writing, like life, is ephemeral. If we do not maintain it, sustain it, it blows away. It becomes trampled like flower petals under the feet of daily life.
My daughter recovered. She grew up. My twin sons were born. My love for them gave birth to my picture book series.
And, my Indian father? He passed away in 2020, taking with him part of my connection to the brief, magical time in India.
Yet, I am still here. Trying to write.
Daily, I turn away from writing to direct my attention to children, students, laundry, dishes, and endless dog hair. Days, weeks, even years pass when I forget my writing.
Then, I remember. So, I return to my books and feel like a traveller from an antique land. And the lesson is imprinted upon me once again: life itself is an act of creation, cells replicating, heart beating, blood flowing, until they cannot anymore. The beauty of life is in this moment.
Grasp the moment, dear reader. Every instant is the death of the past.