That time when she left home for the homeland
What Leela Did [1]
Leela was a typical twelve-year-old, Midwestern American girl. She popped wheelies, ate Oreos, roller skated, did diving board cannonballs, explored the woods, played Truth or Dare, hung out at the mall, sang Christmas carols, kept a diary, and slept in her very own French Provincial canopy bed. She enjoyed all the stuff that suburban childhood memories are made of. There was one thing that made her different from all of her friends though.
She was non-affluent brown. The only Indian kid who wasn’t the child of a rich doctor, engineer or business owner. And the only Indian kid who felt more kinship with her middle-class white friends than with anything remotely from her family’s culture.
Leela’s mom and dad never got along. While not formally diagnosed, her dad was on the autism spectrum. Her mom, needing to belong to her community, craved ways to lead an upwardly mobile life. The opportunity presented itself when the economy tumbled and Leela’s dad lost his job. Rather than continue a hand-to-mouth existence, her mom persuaded them to pack up and head back to the homeland.
It was decided to move to New Delhi to “live like kings” and be closer to the extended family.
It was 1986. India was a government-regulated, young democracy teetering towards a socialist ideology. Leela was a product of the MTV generation. She didn’t speak any Hindi. She couldn’t even pronounce the names of people or cities let alone identify with India. When she boarded that Air India flight to leave her happy place, she was frightened. Nothing would ever be the same again.
They began their new life in New Delhi in April, just as the summer began its heat wave. Their new home was a small two-bedroom market flat above a raucous roadside restaurant.
To approach the main entrance, one had to hop over an unpleasant open drain. The flat was awkward. Leela shared a windowless bedroom with her younger brother. There was no telephone, no air conditioning, often no electricity, and when it rained, water poured through window cracks to flood the hallway. Yet while everything around her was so far behind the West, Indian academic standards were very far ahead.
The school year had recently begun and Leela, a straight-A student, had to get admission as soon as possible. She was far from prepared for those seventh grade entrance exams. She failed miserably.
Only one school would admit her but on the condition that she repeat sixth grade. All the adults agreed that this was for her own good. After all, Leela had to step back to learn not science but physics, chemistry, and biology. Not long division but algebra. Not only Hindi but Sanskrit too. She had to sing in Hindi, learn how to march military-style, and catch up on Indian history and geography. She had to adjust to wearing a headband, ironing a uniform, trimming her nails, polishing her shoes, covering her notebooks in brown paper, even sharpening her pencil with a razor blade. Her backpack was overloaded, her playground a field of dust, and the heat so intense, she could feel it searing through the soles of her shoes. Yes, this was her new life. It was crushing.
The first day that Leela walked into class, she could tell that the students were fascinated by her.
She carried a shiny red water bottle unlike theirs and wore a spanking white Swatch watch with no numbers on the dial. When she opened her mouth, her American accent took everyone by surprise. A few of her teachers baselessly classified her as spoiled. She was an alien being just asking to be analyzed by all. Every day was torture.
One day, because she couldn’t handle the prospect of Sanskrit class, Leela willed herself to fall ill. She pressed into her temples hoping to bring on a headache and quietly dared to ask the Vice Principal to let her go home. “Little girls don’t get headaches,” he quipped. But he let her go. Then the next morning, her mom brought her right back to school.
They sat together in the Principal’s office. Leela explained how she felt. The Principal explained that lying was wrong. Leela clutched her mother’s arm.
She cried and begged her mom to stay with her. But to no avail. “You have no choice. You have to be strong,” insisted her mother as she broke free and walked away.
The Principal was kind but strict. She offered up a challenge to help Leela along. “Study hard over the summer holidays. Catch up,” she said. “Take the exams again and if you pass, I’ll double promote you up to seventh-grade. I’ll also exempt you from Sanskrit for six months so that you can manage.”
For the first time in her life, Leela knew what adversity felt like.
She knew that unless she rose to the occasion and proved to everyone that she was as good as the best in the school, she would have failed her own sense of self.
That morning, during an all-school assembly where students lined up in ascending order of height on that dusty field for the day’s announcements, she sang with the choir. The song was We Shall Overcome. She vowed that she would. After all, she had no choice. She had to be strong.
