The next few days.

After three nights of being awoken by the Muslim chanting at pre-dawn I found myself breaking down emotionally.  There was a depth to the chanting that went right to the core of my being, even though I didn’t understand a word they were saying it was moving me to tears. 

This morning was different.  I lay there crying wondering who am I?  I am really not Indian and fit here in India but then again I have never felt I belonged in America.  The torment was so great I was beside myself in sorrow.  I just could not stop crying.

Just like the last two mornings this morning one of my mother’s friends brought a newspaper in English and breakfast that my mother prepared.  It was delivered to the guest house where I was staying.  There were eggs, toast, and chai for breakfast all nicely enclosed in a unique tin container to keep them warm.  As the men came to the door and knocked, I opened the door and they could see that I was crying, of course they ran right back to my mother and told her that I was crying!

A few hours later my mother showed up to the door with an entourage again of about 9 people.  I could not believe my eyes,  she had the beautiful blue sari on that I had seen her in when I had my visions on the plane of her.  She said with help through  a translator and with broken English “I prayed for you to come back for 25 years and today we go to the Kali temple for thanks.” 

At this point I had stopped crying so that she would not see me like this.  She proceeded to show me a salwar kameez that she bought for me.  I felt awkward, not knowing how to wear this everyday outfit in India.  It is just a two piece dress and pants that match with a scarf to drape over the shoulders.  I had never worn one of these and felt foolish but knew that I must put it on to go with my mother to the temple.  I spent most of my life trying to be American with the jeans and fit in and now I had to get out of that comfort zone to fit in with my mother and India.  She abruptly ushered everyone out of the room and then it was only my sister, me and my mother.  She whisked me into the bathroom and gave me the clothes to put on.  I had to leave my identity in wanting so badly to fit in to be American behind and quickly I began to undress.  She turned her head towards the corner and gave me respect that I had never known in the home that I grew up in(my adoptive mother always stared at me while I changed).  This was so amazing to me that she would give me privacy like this, being the shy person that I was it meant so much to me.  I quickly threw on the clothes so I would not make her wait and as the top went over my head the softness of the material and the feel of it next to my body gave me a peace I had never felt with any clothing I was accustomed to.  This was an outfit that was blue and pink that matched the blue in her sari.  I said “OK” with a giggle, feeling so awkward but yet so comfortable in my own skin.  She turned around and put the scarf around my neck.  I just felt so special, so much more myself than I had ever known. We hugged and I cried. We came back out into the room and opened the door to find everyone rushing back in the room to see me in my new outfit.  Photos were flashed and I found a piece of me that I never knew was missing in these clothes.  A sense of peace, dignity, respect, love and connection to my culture and to my mother.  We swiftly were off to squeeze into two small cars and go to the temple to give thanks!

© 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.

1st time back to India

It’s fast approaching 7a.m…. looking out over the horizon all I can see is what looks like a beautiful sunset but it is actually the sunrise. After traveling this long through so many time changes I have no concept of what time it is. Amsterdam was far behind me now and so was our layover in Amman, Jordan. Now we were within minutes of approaching this moment I had prepared for, for so long. The flight from Amman seemed to be so incredibly different than any other flight I’d ever taken. There were people of all nationalities. This was a flight that originated in New York City and headed for Bangkok, Thailand via Amsterdam, Amman Jordan and Calcutta. People of all types of religions, languages and customs were packed onto this one plane.

This is the last leg of my journey and also the last leg of life, as I know it.

I closed my eyes and imagined what these next few hours would entail and all I could see was a vision of my mother in a beautiful sapphire blue sari. She had her back to me and she was praying. The color of this sari was so vivid that I had never seen any color blue that was quite this beautiful. Every time I would even blink I would always see this same vision. It began when we left Amsterdam and never stopped until a few minutes before we reached Calcutta.

As I looked out the window, I felt so close to what had created all of us, and this beautiful sunrise. We were cruising at 35,000 feet and being at that altitude a person looks at the world and life differently. I thought about all of the turmoil going on down there with Bosnia and Sarajevo and all of the chaos, the misery and suffering everywhere in the world. Why do we have to live like that when the universe is created in harmony? Then I thought my life is itself a mirror image of the world but only smaller with internal wars and pain and suffering that I was unable to explain to others.  I was in hopes that flying all this way would bring me some peace of mind and connection to someone like me! 

The plane was beginning its descent into the most crowded city in the world, Calcutta home to Mother Teresa, and all of a sudden my mind went back 25 years ago to the very first memories I could recall of this place.  The dirty streets, the beggars, being hungry, and very little other than that came to mind.

As we approached the airport, all I could remember were all of the stories of Calcutta I had heard and read. I was prepared for the worst. I had read that as soon as the plane landed there was a horrible, terrible stench in the air; the stench of cow dung that was being burned to cook with. So I braced myself for the worst possible smell, the most poor, miserable people on the streets, a mother I hadn’t seen in 25 years and a brother and sister whom I had never seen. As we landed, all I could think about was my mother and how her arms would feel around me and what it would be like to gaze into her brown eyes.  Because of the lack of communication, only through one aerogramme letter, I was hoping that she really would be at the airport. I wasn’t sure if she would know the day and time of my arrival since she didn’t speak English. 

My thoughts were on her, would she know that I was coming today, maybe tomorrow.  Oh my god, what if she thinks it is tomorrow and I won’t know how to find her! 

Once we arrived and landed and the doors were opened to the tarmac I looked and immediately felt a peace that I never felt before.  As we walked down the stairs and onto the ground I realized there is no smell except maybe some smog and already I felt comfortable and that I had gone home, rather than to “India”. As we went through immigration and customs, I looked around at the airport which was very small and thought this can’t be all there is to an airport in a city that has over 11 million people. I realized that everyone that was waiting for arriving passengers was standing through a set of double doors that were open to the outside. There was a fcyclone fence outside to keep all of the people out of the airport. As I was waiting to get through customs I looked out and spotted a tiny little woman that looked just like the pictures I had of my mother and then I could see a boy standing to the side that looked just like the pictures of my brother. The anticipation was enough to drive me over the edge. It took over an hour to get through customs but he whole time I could see that tiny little woman outside that I was sure was my mother. 

Twenty-five years I had waited for this moment and here it was staring me in the face. As we walked out she was within a few feet of me. We never spoke a word. We just walked straight to each other, put our arms around each other and cried. I felt almost as if I was once again a child and my whole life since I had left her was a blur. Nothing else mattered now but being with my own flesh and blood mother. After we stopped our embrace, my mother put a lei around my neck (similar to what Hawaiians do) then my sister hugged me and put a lei on me and than my brother also did the same.  Then all 9 of us(the family and friends) and our gigantic overseas hardsided trunks (luggage) were put into two cars and off we went.

As we drove to her house I felt as if I was right at home and that I belonged here, Looking outside as we drove I did not ever feel like that this was not my home. I felt as if I were finally home. Living in America since I was six I still never felt it was my home. But 20 minutes in Calcutta and my heart had already begun to heal. Here I was with my mother and my new family.

All I could do was keep looking at her she was such a sight for my sullen eyes. She sat in the front seat while I sat in the back, she would turn around and just look at me, and we would just look at each other not saying a word.

We all went to her home and she made me breakfast for the first time. Her home being about 8 ft. by 8 ft. and located where Mother Teresa walks everyday. By American standards this looks like the poorest of the poor but in Calcutta this was middle class. The people in her neighborhood (all 40 or so) came out and looked at us, they were all like her family, all looking to see if I had really come. So many people told her I would never come back but there I was, so everyone had to have a look. So many of the people in this community were absolutely beautiful, the children with their white teeth and large smiles had a beauty about them never seen in America.  They gawked with wonderment and were always smiling.  More to come on this first visit…

© 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.

giving it up

This weekend I hit a big wall.  I am so beyond being patient anymore with what it is that I want to accomplish.  The reason I wanted to get my story out there was to help others and also to open the eyes of many who would never know the pain and suffering that many adoptees go through but also just as important the plight of the mothers who are living in poverty with no power in their culture for recourse .  But now I am so ready to give it up.  It seems that this has been much more difficult than what I thought.  The constant obsession of working on this in one form or another is draining me to no end.  This is the first time in 16 years that I have wanted to just give it up, walk away and know what it is like to have the freedom of just being me without all of this pressure to make a difference in my world.

© 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.

i miss her

I miss my mommy. I want to feel her to touch her to see her but once again things stand in our way of seeing each other. In the photo I look at her, she stands in a field of big yellow sunflowers with all five other sari-clad women.

What is it like to be a woman in India? What is it like to be my mother in India? Who cares. The real truth is that my blood that is rushing to my heart, the snot that comes down my nose, the quivers in my breath, the drumming head, the weight of the world in my heart all goes back to this woman who is in the photo standing in a field of sunflowers, my mother. The big fresh flower faces seem to be looking at me with eyes that pierce right through me. They speak to me, “see the beauties of India.” The photo mesmerizes me even though I’ve seen it dozens of times. I look at the ladies as if to find something of myself. “There it is, she kind of looks like me when I was young. She looks like my mother when she was young.” The young woman in the photo is a memory of me but also a memory of my young mother. Her face is so serious, as if she has never smiled. Her skin is smooth, supple and has no imperfections. I see me ten years ago. There it is in the skin. Or is it that I never like to smile in front of the camera either? I search to find a minute little similarity that can put me in the same ethnic race as these women.

The problem is that I’ve never worn a sari, how would I stand in a field with this beautiful dress that is luxurious and regal? I don’t know what it is like to be an Indian woman in India. I am not at all like these women in the photo.

My mommy, she is in my heart. Her sadness reads like a wilting flower, she stands out with her pain amongst these women. Her pain is a deep, dark, looming layer that is attached to her field of existence.

Now the pain grows. Her desire to come to America reigns in her voice in our exchanges on the phone. My desire to have her visit propagates in my soul.

© 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.

unwanted/unloved

Yesterday I had a meeting with a friend and one of her friends.  Somehow we got into the conversation about my story.  As I told the story I once again relived the pain and the sorrow of being that six year old.  When I told the friend the story of how my adoptive mother told me that my bio mother didn’t want me and didn’t love me my eyes began to well up with tears.  I held it in and continued the story.  Twenty five years I spent thinking that my mother didn’t love me and feeling like I wasn’t worthy of much because if my mother didn’t want me then I must really be unlovable and undeserving of anything.  I was suicidal, severely depressed, and sorrowful most of my life.  My adoptive mother laid a heavy burden on me by telling me this and I believed it for all of those years…until I went back for the first time.

© 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.

you try it on…

As the lady at the Walgreens came up to me and said “wow you have such a great tan…”  I thought to myself how many times have I heard this?  I know she was just being sweet and complimentary but living in an environment of always being one of the only ones in the room with a different skin color makes you always feel like a bit of an oddity.  You try it on is what I tell so many people… just imagine yourself at six being taken from the United States and sent to India where everyone looks nothing like you and you are the odd one out.  Your skin is lighter than everyone(they all want lighter skin, just the reverse of here) and people always look at you as different and ask you where you are from.  Picture yourself living your life without people who look like you at all.  You never see anyone that you can see similarites with your eyes or your hands because no one on the continent you are living on is blood related to you…it is hard to imagine but this is what children who are adopted deal with from the moment they know they are not like everyone else.  Remember, you can look at your mom, dad, sister or whomever and see similarities and find your identity in that but we adoptees are often looking at parents and sometimes siblings who look absolutely the opposite of us and also a world of people who look nothing like us!

© 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.

will it ever happen?

For the last 16 years I have wanted to get a film out there to tell my story.  It started out as a book and then a film about my mother and me and our grueling story of separation since the time I was six.  Now in the last five years I have  connected with so many adoptees from all over the world and read their stories and now I want to include as many stories that are similar to mine as possible.  Everyone has continually told me to write my story and get it out there but I run up against wall after wall with getting it out there. I am frustrated and feel it physically taking a toll on me to keep wanting something that doesn’t seem to be moving in any direction.  I question myself on a daily basis and wonder how long I can keep this dream and desire going for something that doesn’t seem to be manifesting.  Thousands have heard my story and continue to ask when will it be out there but I am not sure how to do that anymore.  A really good friend recently asked me “who will you be once you do get done with this?” and after a brief moment of thoughts flooding into my head I said “I will be free to live my life.”  I do not understand the power that this holds over me but it is what I feel I am here to do.  I must tell the story of my adoption and the pain and triumphs of a family who had no choice in  my life’s path.  But also the story of the family that had so much power in my life that they brought me such valuable things in this country such as citizenship, wealth, change of identity, change of social status, experiences beyond compare, and the list goes on.  As for myself I am a body and soul divided.  One Indian and one American, loving and loathing many aspects of both.  At times one culture denying the other, one half of me denigrating the other half of me, boasting one half to ignore the other…who am I? the soul divided with two vastly different cultures so deeply ingrained but neither being who I am.  I need to tell my story to bring out the two and meld them together.  My body can no longer handle the heaviness in me that needs to be purged through sharing.  When will it ever happen?

© 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.

Introduction

I have started this as a log of my journey from this day forward.  So many things happen daily that I have difficulty keeping up with it all.  As an adoptee from India I am in constant search of my identity.  Simple things as where I got my name, my actual birthday, stories of my biological family, stories of my adoptive family, the making of the documentary on my story and others, the communication with my family and many other things will be part of what I will journal as desired.

Yesterday was the first time I found the city, Tajpur,  that I was born in on a wikipedia map.  It is a small village in Northern India that was once home of a raja(royal) family.  My grandfather came to this place, called the Raja Ka Tajpur, from England and taught English to the Queen.  I only just learned of this yesterday in a conversation with my mother in Kolkata, India.  My 12 year old niece knows English and translated this bit of information from my mother as we were on the phone.  So now I have some insight into my paternal grandfather that is of interest in knowing a bit more of my identity. 

Also another bit of enlightening information that I learned in this conversation was how I got my name.  My name means the flower that the  hindus take to the temple for the gods as and offering.  My mother named me this because after giving birth to me in this village of Tajpur an elderly woman told her that she should name me “Pushpa” because then I would grow up to be beautiful and intelligent.  Well, I am not sure about living up to all of that but it is an interesting thought!  Also, I asked my niece “why would my mother listen to this lady?” and my niece replied “because she was an elder.”  So this is how I got my name that I struggled so much with my entire life to get people to pronounce properly and I have had to spell with every introduction to get people to understand what I was saying!  I will post more later…

© 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.