Charismatic Thomas(bio. father)

Thomas, Shanti and Champa '69

The days were long sitting on my floor waiting for my mother and father to come home.  It is not clear if it was only minutes or all day but none the less it seemed like forever.  As an adult, clear images of my home as a toddler still flash as still photos and archaic film imprints in my mind.  The aching is so deep right now that it renders me fearful to even revisit it.  But as a dear person wrote to me and said “the truth will set you free”, this is a truth that must be shared publicly.

My home as a child was a miniscule downstairs room in an apartment building in the heart of the city of Kolkata.  My mother, father and I lived in this one room and shared a meager existence.  My mother being 13 when she birthed me and my father much older, close to 30 years of age, had no other children at this time.  There were no siblings until a month before I left for America at the age of six.  It was the three of us for six years.

These early years were spent sitting on the dirt floor of this room waiting for my parents to come home.  I recall as a two to four year old the torture of being in this place alone.  The floor gritty and earthy, one faded yellow light bulb hung over the room with the only natural light seeping under a large wooden door locked from the outside.  The rustle of others as they walked by and scolded their children or conversed with one another was the connection I had to life outside of this room.  I sat and waited and waited,  stomach twisting and grumbling, mouth dry from thirst but no one came.  A white cotton cloth blemished brown with the dirt of the floor hung around my waist barely covering my body.  My ears fixated on listening and listening for a voice outside that hinted the whispers of my parents.  But nothing.  Only the clanking of life outside was my focus.  What seemed like hours later finally came to a close as off in the distance the familiar voices of my mother and father arguing became closer and closer until they were at the door.  Hearing the unlocking of the door I waited to see them and the daylight that followed them inside.

The argument continued with very little verbal acknowledgement of me as my father scooped me up in his arms.  His big teethy white smile and eyes that penetrated through me as he carried me to a small counter top drew me in.  My mother continuing to argue and grabbing Thomas while he laid me down on the counter and began touching my body, kissing my body and smiling through his black mustache.  She, hitting him and grabbing him while he took one arm and tossed her back against a wall was the last straw.  She sobbed and ran outside.

As I felt my body floating and came outside of it while he poked and prodded and mouthed my tiny frame I no longer felt the sensation of hunger or thirst, just nothing.  All the while the charismatic smile and intense eyes never faded.

Thomas was one who was looked at with respect by the people he worked for and the foreign dignitaries he met through his job at a the nearby tobacco plant.  As the chosen man to serve the dignitaries he had earned accolades of greatness and compliments of his “handsome” looks and charisma.

© Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Slumdog split

My nieces Pinky and Ritu

Saturday I eagerly and proudly proclaimed to my husband “we are going to Slumdog Millionaire  today”.  It is a movie about India and everyone has told me to go see it.  The thought of this movie being so highly acclaimed and up for the Oscars as “best film” gave me a sense of being a part of something big that was from India, It gave me a reason to be proud of my ethnicity, anything related to India that was so wonderful and highly spoken about brings me to a level of feeling better about who I am. 

I myself want to make a film, and to see something of this caliber done and have attention on India gives me inspiration.  

After sitting through the two hours glued to the screen with not a thought about anything outside of the film because it was THAT well done, a shower of relief fell over me as I realized that my story is also worthy of being told.  

Two days later I phone my family who live in the slums of Kolkata India.  Once we get past the usual obligatory formalities in conversation I tell my niece Pinky “I finally saw the movie Slumdog Millionaire”.  I recall that she mentioned several weeks ago “auntie I really want to see that film but it has not yet come to India”.  When I asked “why is it not playing in India?”  She replied with “I don’t know.”  She was so excited when she spoke of it and how badly she wanted to see it  but this time our conversation was so different.  I thought she would be so excited to hear that I had seen it and want to know all about it but instead she commented “you know auntie, they don’t want it to come to India because people here don’t like that they call the children of the slums dogs.”  My mind went reeling to thoughts of oh no had I just turned my back on something so obvious and on my own people and not even realized it?  Had I become one of them?  The ones sitting over here in another country with no clue as to what the millions of people who live in the slums may feel like?  She continued “in India we believe that all people are children of God if they are living in a slum or not.”

This was a moment of realizing that the life I live here is so far from what even my own flesh and blood live like in those slums and my perspective is from a life of being split between two realities.

© Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Dad set the bar

 

adoptive dad and I

Today is my dad’s(adoptive)  birthday.  I can honestly say that he has been the tree that bends in the wind and still keeps standing through all of my escapades of youth and adulthood.  It was he whom I looked to for unconditional love, no matter who I was or what I did he loved me.  It was he who gave me the knowing of respect for intellect and the ability to respect my own child.

Through all of these decades of knowing my father we have not had the slightest argument or disagreement.  He has had his arms embracing me from the moment I came to America.  

Who is my dad?  German in ethnicity.  From a family of “haves” not have nots.  His eyes smaller, intense and a lighter shade of brown than mine.  His hair was black but now is white with the wisdom of 83 years of age.  A strong build with shoulders that held up through time and seemed to be capable of chopping wood to moving a heavy object or anything else that took physical strength.  A heart that always whispered love for me, nature and beauty.  An accomplished intellectual as a physicist for 30 years.

There has been a bond between us that could never die no matter how far and wide the distance between us.  It started at six years of age with him sitting in a black “Naugahyde” recliner with his feet propped up in the evenings while I sat on his lap watching television sitcoms.  Slowly I would turn to him and say “can I comb your hair?”  He didn’t ponder but had an immediate response of “sure Pushpa.”  I eagerly grabbed the black comb from his front “protector” pocket of his shirt and began combing, combing, combing.  He had beautiful black hair that I could connect to because not too many people had hair that color in my world except for me and my dad.  Opening my middle and index fingers like a pair of scissors, I combed  and snipped as I told him in my high pitched British accent “I am cutting your hair.”  Asking “would you like to look in the mirror and see your haircut?”  His reply being the same “oh yes I am sure it looks great Pushpa.”  He let me play like this for a couple of half hour sitcoms and as for me I became increasingly closer due to his patience and ability to play along. 

This man was not my blood but he has always been my dad without question.

During elementary school and middle school we spent summer vacations backpacking in the mountains of Northeastern Oregon.  It was he who stood there while I cried and struggled to make it up the hills carrying my belongings on my back while calmly he breathed the words “you can do it”.  I still to this day recall this vivid memory when I do things that are taxing  and seem beyond my abilities.  While my mother left me on the trail sobbing and with a look of disgust as her piercing blue eyes and pointed nose darted over her shoulder, my father said “oh Shirley, I will stay here and walk with her.”  With a mutttering of “Don you baby her too much” she walked up the dusty trail with her head held high as if she was too good for this nonsense.

He taught me to keep going even when it gets tough and that it was okay to go slow as long as you were moving forward.

The bar was set high for  a man in my life.

© Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Once again life gets in my way

Once again, I am feeling the low side of life.  The only thing that keeps me going is the hope of being able to see my family and do things for them one day but that day just keeps being put off.  I have always been a “spiritual” person but lately I am questioning so much of what I believe because it seems that life doesn’t always get easier and I never get what I need to help my family or to see them.  Something constantly keeps us apart and in place.  I read all of these books on how you create your life through your thoughts and actions but I wonder how much of what our lives become is preordained or destiny rather than us having any control.

How do I keep hoping that one day I can maybe live in India for a while or experience my family and my culture for more than a few days when it seems that life is not heading in that direction?  How do I resolve myself to the idea that my dreams may never come true and maybe my entire life is meant to be without these experiences?  My heart yearns for things that seem so difficult to do and I wonder how many more years I can keep up this facade of hope. 

Life gets in my way of my dreams…

© Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Like me…

 

me as my mother's version of the "real Indian"

The inauguration of Barack Obama yesterday was a day that was so emotional for so many that understand what it is like to be, the different one, the one with roots to a not so glamorous country, the one who has multi-cultural values, the one who melds many facets of themselves to fit in different venues, and the one who must be a master at bringing so many aspects of different cultures together into one.

  

We too as adoptees are adaptable, malleable, and flexible by bringing that which is in ingrained in our souls,the root of who we are, and combining that with which is environmental.  After our president was elected in November I have observed on t.v. and on the Internet that so many times people are crying and talking about how they are so proud now because they can “see someone who is like me”.  

As an Indian adoptee who rarely sees anyone like me unless I go to the Indian grocery, gas station, or restaurant I understand the longing for this.  We were children who grew up with parents that looked nothing like us and if you are as old as I am there were NO people on television or magazines that had an Indian ethnicity.  I lived years without a glimpse of anyone who looked like me.

As a child, there were no Indian Barbies that looked like me or even any other dolls.  My mother tirelessly looked for dolls that may be similar and wrapped up a Barbie one year that I opened Christmas morning to my dismay to find that it was a black Barbie!  My heart was broken that my mother thought I could relate to this doll.  She didn’t look anything like me in my eyes.  Needless to say that Barbie doll found it’s way to the back of my closet quickly where I didn’t play with it!   Even though I never told my mother how disappointed I was I am sure she knew. Then she began collecting Native American baby dolls and stitched an authentic looking Indian suede outfit with the detail of fringes and matching moccasins.  She thought this would bring me some joy but once again, I was disappointed that it was not a “real” Indian like me.  She endlessly searched toy catalogs and doll stores but never found one that “looked like me”.  I never did own a doll even remotely close to looking like me until I had my own child 25 years later.

My years of school through high school it was rare to see anyone who was Indian.  I had only one other Indian that went to my high school in the whole four years that I attended, middle school and elementary school there were no Indian children.

I pondered on who I would date, marry, look like, be like??  Never having someone “like me” to look up to I’ve spent my adult life searching for myself and building who I am.  Who could I have been with a role model to follow?

We are all shaped by what we see and don’t see. 

© Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

 

India calls

My nieces Pinky and Ritu

Since this New Year started, with everyday that goes by I find myself proclaiming to people that I am going to India this year.  There is no doubt in my mind that this is going to happen, not sure when or any details but I am so excited just at the thought of seeing my family again.  I cannot wait to feel the Indian soil under my feet and the rhythm of a country that seems to beat as smooth as a healthy heart of a newborn.

After teaching classes in the out doors on a VERY cold January morning I phoned my family in Kolkata.  This week has been the longest I have not spoken to them in a while.  Pinky my 12 year old niece has such beautiful English as she speaks to me with a demanding voice , “hello Aunt, how are you?”  We have our usual formalities of  how are you, what are you doing, how is everyone.   She doesn’t waste any time this time and says “when are you coming bua?”  Bua is the affectionate term that she uses in place of Auntie.  I have only met her once when she was seven years old but she stole my heart and has continued to pull me to come back to India and to my family.

Our conversation showed me how simple it would be just to make her happy.  She talked to me about the film Slumdog Millionaire and how excited she was that it won an award.  Proudly she says, “I want to see it when it comes to India.”   I replied with “I am going to see it, my friends are all talking about it.”  She answered with “will you see it at he movie house?”  I replied with “yes.”  Solemnly she said, “I have never been to a movie house to see a film”.   I said “okay, I will take to you to the movie house to see a movie when I come to visit.”  With shock she replied “Are you lying, will you really take me to the movie house?”  I answered with “yes and…”  She dreamily spoke “we can eat popcorn?”

I could see the vision in her mind of us at the “movie house” watching a film and eating popcorn together, something that my daughter and most American kids do often.

This is one of the reasons I can’t wait to go.  Just to do the simple things that we all do with the people we love.  I want to really be her “bua”, not just an Aunt from afar that she never gets to enjoy life’s simple pleasures with.

India calls me to come and eat at my mother’s, see the family friends that still remember me from when I was a child, and share who I am.  In my mother’s words with a giggle “oh my child, you come India, you drive your car my house and eat.”

© Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

American soil

Pushpa@5

December 14th conjured up so many memories of my first few weeks on American soil.  Looking back in my passport, this is the day that immigration stamped “admitted” in Honolulu Hawaii as my entry into this country.  I departed on the 12th from India but started my new life when the plane landed on the mainland of the U.S. the evening of the 14th.  So the 14th marks my 40th anniversary of living in the United States.  Wow, it hardly seems that I could be old enough to have been here this long. 

After arriving in Portland late in the evening and meeting my new family we went to the car.  The car was a brown Valiant station wagon.  The back had a sleeping bag and pillow for me so that as soon as I got in I could lie down and rest.  I don’t remember too  much of the communication at the airport or in the car.  I was now in the back of this station wagon lying down in a sleeping bag and feeling very nauseas.  I covered my head and went to sleep. 

A couple of hours later we arrived at their house,  they woke me while my father, Don, picked me up and kept me above the jumping and incessantly barking dogs.  Shirley spoke with her sing song inflections and said “Pushpa, we are home.”  I sleepily looked around as my father helped me out of the car as Shirley said “this is our house.”  They walked up the sidewalk while my father carried me through the screen door past the dogs that were excitedly running around us and jumping joyfully to have us there.  Shirley closed the door behind us leaving the dogs outside.  The smell of this house was so pungent, scents that I was unsure of but that made my stomach once again feel queasy, an odiferous waft of dog and dust imbedded inside my nasal passages. Don carried me down the dimly lit, narrow and  long hallway to the bedroom on the right.  As Shirley turned on the lights I sleepily looked at this room.  It had a peppy pink pepto bismol shade on the walls with a beautiful flowered bedspread cascading over the edges.  “This is your room,” said Shirley.  I didn’t remember ever sleeping in a bed like this before.  The beds at the boarding school I attended were metal mesh beds with a mattress and blanket, nothing pretty to look at .  They helped me to get ready for bed and left me to rest lying under a blanket and sheet.  “Good night”  Shirley said.  Followed by Don and my sister.  I covered everything but my eyes, pulling the blanket around my face so I could see what was around me.  It was too dark to see much even though they left the door open a crack.

I laid there glaring at the huge window with the black shadows dancing on the other side.  I was scared, wondering where I was and what was outside of those windows. I could not sleep.  Shortly thereafter, Shirley came in and sat on the edge of the bed, the light just peering around the half opened door.  She then said “you can call me mommy, I am now your mommy.”

“Are you hungry, let’s go in the kitchen and get something to eat.”  She ushered me out of bed and down the hallway and through the door of the kitchen.  The room was large with a round wooden table anchored with a large single pedestal with four chairs just below a large window that was just like the one in my bedroom.  A long counter top ran almost the full length of one wall with many cabinets above and below it,  and an antique wood stove stood proudly in front of a brick section of the wall.  Shirley pulled out a chair and said “here is your chair, go ahead and sit down.”  She then went to get me a banana off of the counter brought it over half peeled and handed it to me.  As I bit into the banana I looked up on the window sill to see that there was a picture of me.  The same black and white one that was in my passport.  I knew I must be in the right place, they had a picture of me.  This brought me peace and once I finished the banana I went back to bed and fell right to sleep.  

The next day I awoke to a rooster call in the early morning.  After getting up and dressing, we all went outside to see their fifty acre farm and meet the cow named Babe,  the horse named Boy, the two dogs, cats, and the chickens who would later become my biggest fear!  As we walked I looked at the beautiful hills surrounding us with the overcast skies above and the muddy ground under my feet while my “mommy” Shirley said “and the animals are yours  too”.  Over night I had acquired a mother, father, sister, dogs, cats, horse, chickens, a house, a bedroom and a new mommy, daddy and sister.  These were my first days of being on American soil.

© Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

No one can breathe for you

New years has started out with a trip to the hospital to see a family friend.  He is a Southern man, 80 years old, hair neatly cut with barely a crack of a wrinkle on his face.  He is  a man of medium stature but the presence of Goliath and a heart that he shares with his crazy stories of his life.  He had an oxygen mask strapped around his mouth to keep him breathing and still he was continually gasping for air.  As we entered the room, I joked “you look ready for Halloween with that mask”.  He somewhat smirked.  I walked to his side and held his finger and he said “I am not going to make it”.  My heart sank as I looked into his light brown eyes and saw that he seemed to accept that he may not make it. 

He is an enduring soul that has seen a life of such extremes.  As a middle aged man his wife left him with his boys to raise on his own, the house emptied of their belongings and a few cents to his name.  He took his devasted heart and the pieces of himself that were left and began a life alone to raise his children.  This one incident left him with the strong desire to never be without money or the staples of life such as food.  His homes and garage are full of paper products, cases of canned drinks, boxes of laundry detergent and more.  It is literally like a warehouse in his garage and his house is cluttered with necessities so that he can never again be without.  Today he is considered to be a wealthy man in most people’s eyes but he lives a life of simplicity.

As we sat and watched him gasp for air I thought “will this be his last few days on this planet?”  For selfish reasons, I certainly hope not.

He didn’t want the tv on and the only sound was the machine that was forcing oxygen into his nose to help him breathe.  Watching him and wondering about what he may be thinking I knew he must be pondering his life.  As I looked at his intense stare forward I realized that we all walk our path in life alone.  There was not a thing that all of his money, my worries, or hand holding could do to help him from  feeling alone.  He faced his own challenges that no one could take away for him.

Now I face going back to see him in critical care today, he has been moved as his lungs are still not responding. 

I am realizing that as all of us have our journey in life and that it is truly always alone.  No one can feel your pain or sorrows.  No one can take those things away so that you can have a perfect life. No one can breathe for you…something we take for granted all of our lives.

 © Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

“How did you find your mother?”

People often ask me “how did you find your mother?”  I reply with “I always knew that she was in Calcutta”, in fact we avidly sent her my photos from elementary school and my letters about my life that my adoptive mother, Shirley penned to her. The letters were filled with my escapades of riding horses, feeding the chickens and school events.  These letters were being mailed to Rabeya(the adoption maker) to share with my mother(Shanti).  

I never cared much for sending my mother things because I found it futile to be communicating with a woman who “didn’t want me or love me”.  My six year old child heart was broken and it was painful to even think about her nor care to communicate with her. 

Rabeya lived on the flat above my parents, she was perceived as having money and being better than us because she had money.  My parents were her servants; often making her baths, cleaning, cooking, and running errands.  They came here from the village to work and were sent to her through a relative of hers.  My father also worked in the tobacco plant with Rabeya as a “bearer”, often meeting many of the foreignors that came on business.  My mother played the role of the primary servant to Rabeya.

They trusted her because she was helping them to have income and a place to live.  After I left to what my mother was told by Rabeya “to go to boarding school in Southern India”, my mother continued serving her on the notion that I was getting my schooling paid for and I would have a good education but that I would also return on holidays and school breaks.  As time grew on year after year my mother kept asking Rabeya “where is my daughter, why she not come home?”  Rabeya’s reply was full of promise of me coming back but after three years my mother finally grew so angry she sold her dowry and went to the South to find me.  She ended up broke, empty handed and desperate and returned to Calcutta interrogating Rabeya with “you tell me where she is or I will call the police”, Rabeya’s reply was “she is in America now, she has a rich family and she wants nothing to do with you.”  

My mother didn’t know what America was, even in 1993 she thought the world was flat.  How can you have an education when you are married off at 13?  Life has been her education.

After she knew that I was gone and she had no way of finding me she still continued to  work for Rabeya.  While cleaning one day she found buried under some piles of other papers a school photo of me.  She cried and ran to Rabeya and asked her about it.  Rabeya had no explanation but raised a raucous about her “snooping”.  She did get the photos and letters but held them from her all of this time.

At the age of 31 I wrote Rabeya a letter stating that I was coming to India and asking if she could tell me how I could find my mother.  This time Rabeya actually relayed the message and the connection began.

 © Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog, 2008-2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Ignorant me…

daughter Kaliyani and I

In the last few weeks I have joined several Indian groups on line to understand more of the opinions of Indians on my adoption story and perspective on life.  Today was a day that I read a comment from an Indian man that made me realize even more so just how ignorant I actually am about the country that my family lives in and that I hold so dear to my heart.  The photo of my daughter and I with the flag behind us is what he commented on…the flag is upside down!  I cannot believe that I know so little about a country that I was born in and have family residing in.  I don’t know the national anthem either…

I ache for a better understanding of where I came from but a place with such deep roots and thousands of years of history cannot even begin to be something I know first hand.  This shows me that just the simple things like knowing how to show respect for the flag is so important…I know about the American flag but know very little about the Indian flag.  I just fell in love with the Indian flag when it was given to me as a gift from my husband a couple of years ago and didn’t even stop to think how I was supposed to display it! 

Ignorance is not bliss…it is only showing me how little I have been there or how little my country has been a part of my life.  This is what saddens me.  Once again the things we take for granted like knowing what our U.S. flag stands for and our national anthem is another thing I have to teach myself about the country of my origin.

 © Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog, 2008-2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pushpa Duncklee and Pushpa’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.