Altered foreigner

It was in the sixties that I came to the US, killing two birds with one stone: one, as a student for a master’s degree programme at a charming east coast university, and second, to get married to a math professor freshly hired at the same university. My father had cried when I took off that night from Bombay, even as I baked in the cotswol underwear I was wearing from top to toe. I had taken that mid-winter cold warning in New England a little too seriously.

What I never realised was how I would change—unplanned, unnoticed, unthought—to evolve into a different person. Outwardly, with things I could control, I remained unchanged. But what went on in that mysterious thing called the soul was another matter; I arrived at this realisation only during this visit to my hometown.

When I recently went to a hardware store in Gandhi Bazaar, the teen-age store boy asked, “Are you from foreign?” “Why do you ask?” I answered. “I have not cut my hair; I still wear a kumkum and wear a sari like everybody else here.” “But you never bargain,” he said knowingly.

Actually, it was only after this incident that I looked back over my shoulder to view my past and found changes that must have taken place in my personality all along.

Recently, I bought some fresh
chapparadaverekai, my favourite vegetable. As I got into the auto, I decided it would be much more fun to go to my sister’s apartment and cook it there so both of us could eat it. Once there, I went straight into the kitchen and saw her cook busy cooking. “I won’t bother you,” I announced over the blaring cooker whistle. “I will cook this veggie with my recipe.”

My sister entered the kitchen
and asked indignantly, “What are
you doing here?” When I told her my plan, she walked out cold and silent. Later, I learned from our third sister that she was very angry that I had barged in to disrupt her cook’s
routine and that I should have called
first. And she doesn’t even like
chapparadavarekai!

What was this all about? I wondered. I was used to friends dropping in and walking straight into the kitchen and even tasting what was on the stove. Or the way I dropped into friends’ houses to do the same. In some of those houses, the kitchen comes side by side
with the living room! You can walk in either direction!

So now if someone looks at me and says, “You have been there for 60 years? You haven’t changed one bit.” I feel like answering, “Wait a minute. May not be in my Kannada or appearance, but here I may have changed a lot.” I touch my forehead. That looks like a kind of salute, too.