*** My new mission: Shanti’s Dream ***

On Sunday afternoon as I sat outside by my pool( I live in Florida) soaking in the lukewarm December sun I looked around and realized just how fortunate I truly am that I have clean air to breathe, I have food to eat, I have more than enough love from my husband, daughter, friends and families in America and in India. Even though I have struggled with so many issues I have never been without the basics of life and someone has always come along to help me when I did need necessities. Unlike my family in India, I don’t do without food or clothes or comforts of a home. I can’t wait anymore for the time to be right, for my documentary or book to come out and possibly make some money some way to buy them a much needed house. They rent now and it is basically a government run slum area so they pay rent but do without lights at times and fight for water with other tenants when the truck brings water for them to drink.

Most conversations I have on the phone with my mother Shanti seem to be around her health, her unsafe home and the lack of funds to buy a home. We have sent them hundreds and hundreds of dollars to pay for food, grandchildren’s school and medical emergency bills this year but a house is a little more difficult to do.

I have toiled and stressed over how I was going to buy my mother a much needed house but on this day it became clear how to do it. I will be selling my paintings at an artwalk this week to start the fund for her but I know it will not be nearly enough. I really only need to raise $20,000 which is not a lot of money but it will make such a difference for the entire family and the quality of their life. As you can read in the tab for Shanti’s Dream you will see some of the reasons why I cannot wait anymore!

I believe I came here and was adopted for many reasons, one being so that I can help them now. It is their turn to not suffer and struggle in such dismal and unsafe living quarters. This is the least I can do for my mother who has done without her entire life.

I will soon have a way for people to donate on the blog and it won’t matter if it is only one dollar because every dollar will get me closer to her dream. I hope to raise the money by December 2009.

 © 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.

A reminder…

As I read a post in a group that I am in, an overwhelming sadness pours over me.  This young woman of striking beauty and steadfast determination is feeling the depth of her sadness that dwells in every ounce of her being.  It lurks from within to once again remind her that she is desiring something that cannot be fulfilled in this moment, to go back to India and see and feel her own mother, people and country.  She has such a caverness void that I revisit in myself as I read her words, I too know that canyon of nothingness in my heart.  Not her beautiful almond eyes, cascading hair, smooth skin, house or country she lives in can bring her any peace within.  She yearns for something so deep that nothing can even begin to fill that space.  A look at a mother who looks like her, a country that she can smell and a home that feels loving.  These are all things that are foreign to her and leave this woman in constant pain and suffering.  Yet she graces my eyes with beauty in any photo I have seen.  The yearnings that adoptees have are  just unnoticeable, unthinkable, normalcy’s of  life for so many…mothers, knowledge of your birth, your homeland, your people.

 © 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.

foreigners

Most everyday I feel this yearning for the smells of a country that is so close in my heart but so far in proximity.  I cannot decipher if it is the country or family but the emotions are collected in my stomach.  Daily I am challenged with desiring something that cannot be in my experience.  A glimpse of my mother’s eyes, her tears that pool and flow so easily from her heavy eyes or the giggles that bubble forth so naturally from her when she calls me “naughty”.  Even after all of these years she still says “I see your small face, you naughty girl”.  She has difficulty knowing what my daily life was for the last 40 years and she can only see me as a “small” child when we went together to get ice cream or the times I have visited as an adult.  The years in between are as foreign to her as my house, business and her granddaughter.  The years of elementary school, high school, relationships, friendships, losses, experiences, these are the things that my adoptive mother knew. 

India and her life is also foreign to me but still we both hope and wish everyday for glimpses of each other and sharing moments over a cup of chai…

© 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.

Destiny

My friend and I went for coffee today at the local coffee house and had an extended conversation about her life of moving from a foreign country to move to the USA to be married and have a child.  She adamantly states “it was my destiny.”  I also believe it was my destiny to experience the life that I have lived and continue to live.  Just as all adoptees we have no say so in our lives but there is something bigger that moves us here to a life that is so different than my brother, sister and mother live in India.  There is something about their lives that is so foreign to my existence in a cushy house with a.c./heat and windows to keep the bugs out.  Oh, and food.  They live day to day with giving up food for the tuition to the grand children’s school.  My family lives in about 300 square feet with 10 people and one little bathroom.  Okay, so all of us adults know how tough it is to even share a bathroom with our spouses but how about with our grandchildren, children, their spouses, and your spouse?

The toughest thing to live without is my mother’s  and families love and attention and bond but who would I be here without my adoptive family and all of the amazing people I have met here in America that I would have never met if I still lived in that slum in Calcutta that my family lives in? 

I came to this land of opportunity and hopefully one day I can bring opportunity to my family.  This is what I live with now…I am privileged and they look to me for so many hopes of a better life one day.  This is my destiny.

© 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.

40 years ago

Today as I ponder on the fact that it is the 40th anniversary of my stepping on a plane to come here to the United States, I wonder what was going through my six year old brain.  Why is it that I remember so little of this trip but yet I can vividly remember so many other times prior to and after those few days?  Tears come to my eyes when I think of any small child leaving one life to come to another.  Did I even know what I was doing?  I have pondered this on so many occasions.  Why do I have such a detailed memory of most of my life but not these few days that I traveled to the U.S.?  It is a space in my recall that is filled with emptiness and only emotional memory embedded in my heart that makes my chest heavy and causes me to break down and tears to stream from my eyes.

© 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.

counseling 101

It was an overcast, damp, drizzly, wintery day in the college town of Corvallis.  The same as it was month after month every year. 

I had a beautiful one bedroom apartment in one of the nicest complexes in the city.  I was living the college life of a kid who had money, not the norm of sharing an apartment with 3-4 others.  It was a nicely decorated place with large potted plants and all new wicker furniture with brown and rust colored tropical leaf designs on the pillows.  My mother bought me the furniture with the stipulation of giving it back to her after school.  I had been living here for several months and felt lonely being all by myself.  I really had not made many friends at this college since I never lived in a dorm here and spent most of my time running, playing tennis, doing aerobics classes, riding my bike on long rides or spending  some time with Mark.

A beautiful apartment, a great boyfriend and free time to do whatever I wanted to.  It still didn’t seem to fill the emptiness in my heart.  In the crevasses in my brain I just fixated on not knowing who I was anymore after my meeting with Rabeya, even months later.  What had I done wrong to become so different than what she thought I should be?  Should I have kept all of my culture and not tried so hard to meld into my environment?  I couldn’t stop feeling that I had let Rabeya down. 

The last few months I exercised like I was training for some special event, anytime that I was not at school or studying I was working out, this seemed to be a release for me mentally.  My kitchen had bare cupboards, no food but maybe some butter or bread in the fridge.  Not because I didn’t have money for food because my parents gave me money for everything as long as I was going to school and I was also working part-time at a restaurant so I never did without for any material things or the basic things that many college students were scraping by to have like food or rent.  From the outside I had a great life and it appeared that I was all together.  People thought I was pretty, smart and had everything going for me.  College boys were asking me out on the way to class, after working out at the gym and even following me home to find out where I lived so that later they could knock on my door and ask me out.  There were no girls that I felt connected to, only girls that liked to go out to parties and dance.  I had no close connections to these young women so I spent most of my time alone and working out to keep myself sane. 

It was just another day, class in the morning and then race home to get my running shoes on so I could jog to the rec center to take an aerobics class, jog back and then ride my bike for 10 miles.  Between class and exercise I would bring out my one thing I had in the cupboard, a piece of glass that I had taken out of a beautiful picture frame.  This was always kept in my cabinet with a razor blade and piles of cocaine.  I had started doing this and it made me feel like anything was possible and that I was not so fragile and delicate but strong and able to endure even the toughest of workouts.  This day like any other, the routine was the same.  Run home about a mile from class with my backpack loaded with books and my tennis racket.  A large umbrella keeping the mist of the day off of me that I shook as I came in and left just inside the door.

My heart raced as I thought about the cocaine that I knew I was going to inhale.  I dropped my books, quickly changed into my track shorts and t-shirt and couldn’t wait to snort a line of cocaine.  Before even finishing tying my shoes I jumped up from the edge of the bed and ran in the kitchen and pulled out my glass with the perfectly straight white lines of powder that I had already prepared that morning.  The bic pen with the inside taken out was the perfect thing to put in the end of my nose and inhale the two lines that I had waiting for me.  As the powder disappeared with my deep inhalations I felt the surge of power, no one could stop me now and no one was better than me anymore.  As many times before I ran to the aerobics class on campus and jogged back.  This time seemed to be different.  On the jog back I began to feel weak, reliving my pain as an adoptee in my mind,  feeling angry, and almost crying from the depth of sadness that was coming to a head in my heart.   I held it in a couple of more blocks until I got back and ran in the door to find myself sobbing uncontrollably from the abyss in my soul.  The realization came that I was a nobody, nothing that mattered in this world.  I spent most of my time alone.  I thought, who really truly cared about me?  My only connection to anyone was Mark and that was just a boy friend.  My thoughts raced to how nice it would be to not be here anymore, not be living anymore, no one would notice if  I wasn’t and the loneliness and pain would all be gone if I just didn’t have to have this life anymore.

On the table laid a pair of small, light orange handled scissors.  So many times I had heard that if you cut the veins in your wrist that you could die, the thought began to grown stronger that if I had the courage to just do it I could end this pain in my heart.  I didn’t have the courage to do it.  Moments later I realized that the cocaine makes me feel like I can do anything so why not do another line of that and get my confidence and courage up?  As quickly as I could I once again pulled out the piece of glass with prepared lines(it was always left with lines already prepared), grabbed the pen and deeply inhaled to get all I could as quickly as possible into my nasal passages.  Now, I thought “I can do this”.  No one will ever know or care that I am gone.  Grabbing the scissors with fervor I sat down and held the scissors to my wrist slowly rubbing them back and forth, studying my veins and wondering how to do it.  Fast or slow?  I could feel the pain slipping from my existence, I would no longer have to be this oddity in life or a person that not even my mother loved.  Deep breaths filled my lungs as I focused on the scissors and how they could just change my life in an instance. 

A knock came at the door and Mark bounded through the door with his usual powerful presence and big smile.  His face changed quickly as he exclaimed “what are you doing?” He saw me sitting at the table with scissors in hand.  I sharply spoke back “no one will notice if I am gone, I just want to die.”  With look of fear and worry he calmly spoke “we need to get you some help.”  “No I don’t need help,” I forcefully replied.  He grabbed the scissors out of my hand and threw them down while grabbing my arm and pulling me up,  “I am taking you to see someone” he bursted out.  I began crying and through my tears I could see a man that was determined and now forceful.  He pulled me out of my apartment, slammed the door behind us and took me to his car.  “You should have just let me do it, no one would have cared or noticed,” I mumbled.

I don’t remember much of the ride in the car but the next thing I knew Mark was pulling me by the arm into the college hospital and I was yelling at the nurses.  Telling them that I was not crazy and that I didn’t want to be in a rubber room.  The nurse calmly spoke to us, mostly Mark and said “we want her to spend the night here tonight”.  I adamantly said “No, I am not sleeping here in some rubber room.  I am not some crazy lunatic.”  She and Mark spoke and they decided for me that I could go home if he could stay with me all night and make sure that I was okay.  I agreed.  I also had to sign something stating that I go to a counselor the next day at 10:00a.m., I half heartedly agreed. 

All night Mark slept next to my bed on my floor while I tossed and turned.

The next day he drove me to the counseling appointment.  My body felt limp and lifeless, not the sure, strong, confident runner and workout fanatic.

He stayed outside as I went to meet my counselor.  I had counseling in the eighth grade once so I knew what to expect.  The doctor, a shorter man with dark hair and upright posture, came to the waiting room and ushered me into his office.  We sat down and he asked me to tell him about myself.  I began telling him my life story and never stopped for 45 minutes.  He barely uttered a word, mostly listened.  I looked up at the clock to see the time and we had only  five minutes left, he finally spoke.  “You were adopted at six from India, you are not close to your family and you feel very lonely and that you don’t matter”, “yes” I proclaimed.  “You have no foundation and now you must realize that you are the only one that can build a foundation” he said.  I couldn’t believe it!  Someone actually understood me for once, something so basic but yet so profound.  I came out of my session feeling like I knew what I was up against in my life and that it was not going to be easy.

© 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.

The clash of my past

This is continued from the last post…

Looking out the window and knowing that every building, house, parked car, business we passed meant that I was one step closer to my destination caused my stomach to churn acid, my palms to profusely perspire and breath to become deep with large distraught sighs. “Are you going to be okay, are you sure you want to do this? questioned Mark.   I shrugged my shoulders as I kept looking out the window so that he could not see the fear and tears welling up in my eyes.

I was fearful of even being seen with this woman.  I wore my Levi’s 501 jeans and my college sweatshirt of course so that no one could ever suspect that while I was at lunch with this Indian woman that I wasn’t anything but American.  I shuttered to think that she may wear a sari and everyone in the restaurant would see right through me and think that I may be related to her.  My thoughts were racing through my head hoping that since she was a world traveller and had stayed for months at a time in England and Africa that she may be keen to the likes of wearing a pantsuit or a dress.

Mark again asked “are you going to be okay, are you sure you want to do this?”  I responded with “no, not really but I have to.” 

He was a a sweet guy with a generous heart, always there supporting my emotional ups and downs while he worked two jobs and attended college. His big blue eyes were imbedded with red jagged lines of no sleep and stress but he still had the enegy to flash me that big teethy smile.  His face was like that of the full moon; big, bold and filled with promise of an expansive life. He was a man on a mission in his life with every beat of his heart.  Never tiring, he seemed to want to be all things to all people.  With weeks of minimal sleep he still took the time to go and spend afternoons with his grandparents and help them with odd jobs at their home.  With his strong presence by my side I knew I could get through this, he would be there as soon as I finished lunch to pick me up and I could go on with my day.

Driving into the parking lot of the Riverside Hotel I noticed the attached chinese restaurant.  In front of the restaurant I saw that my father was already parked in his dark blue Nissan king cab pick-up truck.  There was a tiny woman on the passengers side just barely big enough to see out the window.  “There is my dad” I exclaimed.  Mark slowly pulled into the parking space next to them and all I could see was the small head peering through the window while my dad was obviously explaining to her that it was me in the car next to them.

They both got out of the car as we got out to introduce ourselves.  She had a sari on, my worst fears had come true, she was dressed like an Indian.  I thought to myself “oh my god, this is so embarrassing!”  As we exchanged introductions I was very hesitant to hug her.  I didn’t want people to think we were from the same culture or even more humiliating that she may be my mother!  I was embarrassed and ashamed of where I came from and who I was in the past.  Just a poor girl from the poorest city in the world, Calcutta.

My father quickly departed after telling me that he would be back in one hour as did Mark.  I walked into the restaurant with this sari-clad woman with her heavy Indian accent and bangles jingling as we entered.  The hostess greeted us “will there just be the two of you today?”  I replied quickly with yes so that we could hurry into our seats before everyone could see us standing there.  It was too late, there were not many Indian women let alone women with saris on in this town of only 35,000.  EVERYONE was looking at us, so with a frantic need to sit down I exclaimed “could we please have a booth?”  Anything so that I could hide and not make a scene in this place.  The hostess said “yes, I have one booth left.”  She shuffled us back to the booth and we sat while she handed us the menu.

As I slid into the red shiny booth the hostess left and softly said “your waitress will be right with you.”  Rabeya took her sweater off and I browsed the menu.  She questioned me with that heavy Indian accent “Pushpa, why you not wearing Indian clothing?”  I looked at her with disbelief and thought to myself was she really asking me this?  Anger began to rage, my mind raced with thoughts of how dare she, how could she expect me to be anything Indian after sending me here, where in the world did she think I was living?  I replied with “What is wrong with my clothes, I am an American you know.”  How did she expect me to wear Indian clothes when I had not even had anything other than American clothing for 13 years?  Since I was adopted I had not seen many Indian people, I had not eaten Indian food, I had not worn Indian clothes.  I was American! I submerged my anger and just went on to say “okay so are you ready to order?” 

Just then the waitress came up and said “can I get you something to drink?”  I abruptly answered with “I think we are ready to order, I am sort of in a hurry.”  Rabeya looked at me like she did not know what I was talking about, she had barely sat down and looked at the menu.  I on the other hand was already angry at her and holding it in so I knew I needed to eat and get out of there before I lost my temper.  We ordered and the kind waitress said as she walked away, “I will let them know that you are in a hurry.”  “Thank you,” I replied. 

Once again it was just us looking at each other across the table.  I was sort of intrigued with looking at her face close up and seeing some of myself.  Does she look like me?  Do I look like her?  This was my first time looking at another Indian face so closely.  I was examining her in detail.  There was not much conversation and then she said to me, “was that your boyfriend that drove the car?”  I answered with “yes that was my boyfriend.  We have been dating for about six months now.”  Rabeya asked “why are you dating an American boy, why not an Indian boy?”  “You should be dating an Indian boy.”

I once again raged inwardly with anger, ignoring her questions I stopped the waitress and begged “is our food almost ready?”  I was afraid of my own anger, this woman had brought a side out in me that had to defend who I was, who I had worked so hard to become and my country that I was so proud to be a citizen of. 

The food came and I ate a few bites but then couldn’t eat anymore.  Not many words were spoken, I was watching the clock and dying to get out of the restaurant.  My entire upbringing I held in every bit of anger, rarely showing any emotions.

Finally, the time came and I left hurriedly when Mark came into the parking lot.  I couldn’t take another minute of it.  To spend all of those years diligently working to fit myself into the society and life that I was handed without choice and then to suddenly be confronted with who I had become was my last straw.

Begrudgingly at my mother’s wishes I spoke to this lady only one more time to say goodbye when she left to go back to India. 

This one incident took me over the edge, I was really lost as to my identity now.  Within months I was suicidal and found myself at the college hospital.

© 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.

Fear of Rabeya(adoption maker)

Rabeya and I before America

She is a woman of very small stature, short but a power pack of passion and energy.  Her coconut-oiled ,shiny, blackish brown hair parted straight above the center of her nose pulled back tightly into a single braid fell down her lower back.  She wore a soft flowing sari with threads of brightly colored pinks and gold sprinkled on a sky blue background.  Her red dot worn proudly on her forehead and many jingly bangles inlaid with sparkly clear diamond-like false stones wrapped around both of her tiny wrists.

This was Rabeya, the lady who sent me to the United States.  At the age of 19, I met this woman for the first time in 13 years since I left India.  I was attending college at this time and living within a twenty minute drive from my parents.  My adoptive mother notified me that Rabeya had come to visit and see me but I was very adamant about not seeing her. 

I didn’t want to have anything to do with my Indian life that now seemed like another lifetime ago.  I spent the last 13 years trying to put it all behind me, working so diligently to become American.  Working on getting my last little nuances of an Indian/British accent expelled from my mouth, putting the final touches on learning American slang, wearing the Levi jeans that made me a true American, going to frat parties like all of the other girls, dating blond haired light-eyed boys, not looking too smart, going to all of the football games and partying with my friends.  I had really made it, I was living the life of all the other white American girls and I felt somewhat accepted by them even though I looked different.  The only reminder was the mirror now.  I didn’t want some old lady that knew me as a poor child in Calcutta to mess up my image of being American. 

After several weeks of Rabeya staying with my parents my adoptive mother Shirley phoned me and said “Pushpa, don’t you think you ought to see Rabeya?  After all she did help us get you.”  I replied ferociously with “NO, I don’t want to see that woman.  What do I need to see her for?”  She replied back with an underlying note of guilt “she came all the way from India and has been here for a while and she doesn’t understand why you have not come to see her.  I can’t keep making up excuses for you.”

I realized I had put Shirley in a predicament and felt guilty and dutifully said “okay, I will meet her for lunch.”  We made the arrangements for the next day.  I would meet her at a Chinese restaurant and eat lunch with her.  I couldn’t believe that my past was going to be sitting across a table from me.  The past years were all about being someone that fit this new life and now I had to see someone that knew me before.  It terrified me.  No one I knew had ever been to India, no one in my family really knew what my life was before being adopted.  I was the girl that knew four languages, that independently ran the streets in tattered dirty clothes and bare feet, starved, admired her handsome father, played poker with men, watched a man die, looked like everyone else, never thought about “fitting in” had now become a fake.  No longer an Indian but a real American.  I was proud of the hard work I had done through the constant studying of Americans and metamorphosing myself into the person I thought could blend and become a fabric of this culture.

I fretted through the whole night and next morning wondering how this meeting was going to be that I never in my craziest imagination thought would happen.

As noon approached I became nervous, worried that I was going to lose a piece of myself by seeing Rabeya.  She was the one who did my adoption, arranged everything, did all of the legal paperwork needed in India, communicated with my adoptive parents and sent me to the airport in a cab to get on a plane to come to America.  She had come for this visit to meet my parents for the first time and to see me.  She only corresponded through letters all of these years and through the adoption so they wanted to meet each other in person.

Now I was going to meet this woman.  As I rode in the green toyota corolla while my boyfriend Mark drove, I feared for my life.  Why?  I wasn’t sure.  I was just scared, my past was coming to slap me in the face and I had no idea what was ahead of me.  Rabeya, the lady who sent me here.  What was it that she wanted from meeting me?

© 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.

Remembering my adoptive mother, Shirley

Shirley, adoptive mother

As I am changing and moving things in my house in preparation for installation of new floors in my house tomorrow I pick up a an 8×10 wooden framed photo of the South Sister with Sparks Lake in the forefront, a spectacularly majestic mountain in Oregon, I turn it over to see that on the back in Shirley’s cursive she had  written with a black marker “Pushpa-Always remember Oregon’s Mountains.  Love, Mother.”  I gave this to her when I was 13 years old as a gift knowing that she loved this place.  The last time I saw her before she passed she gave this photo to me and said “I know you love this picture.”    

My adoptive mother is someone I think about often.  She left a mark on my life that is impressed with multiple layers of extremes.  The lines of intellect, the power to learn, the power to think freely, anger towards the power of the elitists, respect for cultures, sadness for all who lose themselves, pity for those who have no way out, an un-ending love and respect for children, desire for giving to all in need, anger at ignorance, hope for goodness in mankind, appreciation for nature…especially the beauty  of Oregon.

This woman was from a hearty lineage of Scottish descent.  Her light blue eyes sparkling with life even at the age of 86, her walk with purpose and the sharp mind that she had her entire life endured up until the very end.  She wore her heart on her sleeve to share with all in the world whether it be a drug addict, mentally ill person, an elderly person in need of help, her grandsons who had very little hope in life, a stranger who was being mistreated and also for the likes of me, a “starving child from India.”

She passed with ease in March of 2007 in her bed at her home.  That morning I was flying back from India on a flight that was 16 hours direct from Delhi to Chicago.  Upon landing in Chicago I  phoned my parents in Oregon knowing that it was about 7am there and they would be up having their breakfast at this time.  My father answered the phone “hello”, I in return said “Hi this is Pushpa”, he immediately replied “your mother is not up, for all I know she may be dead in there.”  I didn’t know what to say and he wanted to get me off the phone so I said ” I will call you when I get into Jacksonville.”  We then said goodbye and I took my flight back to Jacksonville. After getting our luggage and car I turned on my phone to notice that I had a voice mail from my niece, she left a message saying “I have some bad news, can you call me when you get this message.”  I knew in that moment that my father was just in shock and did not want to tell me yet or maybe he could not yet accept it himself.  I phoned my niece to find out from her that indeed Shirley had passed away that morning.

I knew for at least a year she appeared to be prepping herself for death, she was reading spiritual texts  from the Koran to books on Buddhism and talking to me about them.  She was not living a life in a nursing home or dying of some disease so it was not that we “knew” but to me it seemed that she was preparing.  

The last year we talked at great lengths about so many things, we created a bond that we never had in the previous 38 years.  We buried our past pains between each other, my anger no longer was present and we became what she called “friends.”  In her last six months she told me that she had decided that the religion that worked for her was Buddhism.  Buddhists prepare for death.  She also said “Pushpa I am so happy that we have become friends.”  This was an amazing life with her.  Many lessons I learned over 37 years of my bitterness, anger, rage, hatred, blame, contempt for this woman and only the last year of her life had I gotten beyond it. When she died I felt a relief for her because in so many ways she suffered continually throughout her life through multiple physical ailments and emotional issues from her upbringing.  I cried with happiness knowing she died with peace between us. I had told her numerous times how much I appreciated and loved all that she did for me.  She brought so much help to so many people, as for me my life would have definitely been so different without her.  Not that it is better or worse, because truly we can not judge the destiny that our lives become.

© 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.

The temple

 The trip to the temple was serene even though the driver was playing Michael Jackson’s Thriller.  My body felt so different in these clothes sitting in the car, I felt more confident and self assured and like I had shed a layer of protective armor just by changing my clothes.  As we rode to the temple I kept looking at my mother and then outside to this smog-filled city that seemed to go on forever.  The closer we got to the temple the more all I could do was keeping looking at people out the window between glances of my mother.  They were everywhere the eye could see.  In them I could see me.  The poor little girl standing on the sidewalk with a tattered dirty dress and no shoes, the man with brown eyes that pierced through me through the window, the hungry emaciated woman that stared with emptiness at me as she made a gesture to her mouth and to the sky as if she were pointing to God, and my mother sitting so comfortably and relaxed staring out the window. In each of them I saw myself and connected with that part of me that seemed to be in hiding all of these years.  My Indian blood.  This was me, my people, we shared similarities.  I had not seen this many Indian people in 25 years, I was surrounded by them, everywhere I looked.  I could not get my fill of it.  The nearer we got to the temple the more crowded it became.

I began to feel fear realizing that we were parking and about to get out of the car.  I was not sure what to do, how to behave or what NOT to do!  I grew up in a home with no religion.  I had been to a few different Christian churches in my adult life to try to figure out what was comfortable for me but I had no recollection of a Hindu temple and what it would be like at all.

After squeezing a parking spot between crowds of people and tiny small cars I began to get out of the car.  It felt so glamorous, so sophisticated to be dressed like this and so comfortable.  Looking up as I got out of the car I saw two small girls possibly ages 6 and 8 that were in tattered dirty brown dresses with little tin pans.  They were begging.  The eldest looked at me, then hid behind somebody and looked and smiled again.  Everywhere I turned I would see her hiding and smiling.  She looked angelic with her beautiful white teeth and flawless skin.  I could not stop looking at her and she kept hiding behind different people and smiling.  The little one stayed and begged for money while the older one seemed to be attached to me and my family.

There were hundreds of people clammoring about the parking area.  I followed my mother with very little conversation, she lead all of us like a lion, fierce in her quest to get to the temple.  Never turning back with only one thing on her mind, the temple and giving thanks.

She approached a smartly dressed man with leather sandals, a loosely fitting pair of khaki pants and matching long-sleeved button up shirt.  He wore them like a comfortable second skin. She spoke with him as I glanced around, she turned to me nodded with that nod that Indians do to one side and waved me over to take my shoes off.  There was a wooden bench that we placed our shoes under.  I was a bit scared to walk around without shoes, with all of the dirt and people I was having flashbacks of everything I read about getting disease in third world countries.

She aggressively began walking and once again all of us in tow to her calm but ambitious gait but this time we were barefoot.  I carefully stepped worrying about my every step and what I might step on.  I looked up to see a crowd of people all calmly forging their way to the top of a set of stairs to the entrance of what was the temple.  The building was a blue color once again like her sari and my clothing.  As we got closer to the crowd I glanced up to see the little angelic begging girl hiding behind someone else staring right at me.

I couldn’t get over her beauty and the fact that she seemed to be everywhere.  As we started up the wide stairs we all grabbed one another’s hands so that we would not lose each other.  We were a chain of about 9 people all linked together moving like a mighty wave through the sea of people.  I had no idea what we were doing, I was just following along but it was scary to be in such a crowd and realize that I was not somewhere that if I got lost I could find my way out of!  I clenched my hands even tighter to the hands on both sides of me.  We slowly moved through and came to the front where the priest was, he wore all orange looked at me, said some things in Bengali and then put his finger to my the middle of my forehead.  I was so amazed at the crowd and how everyone was working their way to the front and for what?  I finally realized as I looked up that everyone was trying to get  a glimpse of the huge statue behind a wall that was the statue of Kali(the goddess of death and rebirth) .  I saw it!  Then we all quickly went out the other side of the temple and the first thing I saw was that little girl again laughing at me and pointing from behind someone. She never once asked me for money but only watched me from afar.

My mind was blown, I could not really quite grasp what I had just done because it was so quick.   This was nothing like I had ever experienced at the Methodist or Presbyterian churches I had visited.  I spent the day in somewhat of a stupor as my mind was grasping all that had happened since this morning when I awoke to the sounds of the Muslims chanting and myself crying.

© 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.