Leaving India: My Family's Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents (20 page)

Most of the shopkeepers were Gujarati, so Ranchhod's language preference was not much of a barrier. Still, Thakor tried to get him to learn English, mentioning it daily till Ranchhod felt his temper rise. Not wanting it to erupt, he quietly replied one day,—Remember how I went after that man with a pair of scissors? I wish to respect you, Uncle, so please don't speak of this to me again.

Where Uncle Thakor failed, Uncle Magan, with his steady temperament and his gift for really listening to his juniors, finally began to tame the headstrong young man. Telling Ranchhod that the warehouse staff were having problems because of his insistence on writing Gujarati numerals, Magan wrote out the ten English digits on a sheet of paper. He added a few key words:
doz.
for dozen,
yd.
for yard, and the entire alphabet for good measure.

When Ranchhod submitted to learning these, Magan introduced a few phrases that would be handy for dealing with Chinese shopkeepers:
This is good. Very cheap. Shirt, pants.
In this manner Ranchhod picked up a smattering of English, for it seemed to him he was not learning the hated language; he was only learning business.

One afternoon Ranchhod picked up the telephone at work and heard his father's voice telling him to get to his office
right now.
He rushed up the street to Narseys, wondering what could be wrong. When he entered the office, his father started yelling and gesturing at him, so fiercely that Ranchhod feared he would be hit. The object of his anger was, apparently, a letter with a photograph of a white girl.

The letter was meant for Ranchhod, as Magan had signed him up for an international pen-pal program to practice English. Ranchhod's name had appeared on a list. This letter had been addressed simply to R. Narsey, so it landed on Ratanji's desk. The father opened it, saw it was for Ranchhod, and did not pause to read it; his own English might be painstakingly slow, but his temper was quick.

Ranchhod swore he had no idea who the girl was. Ratanji said he must be lying—what kind of girl would send her photograph to a stranger? Finally Magan read the letter and explained to Ratanji that the girl, an American, had sent a photograph by way of introduction. Ranchhod said he'd never wanted a pen pal anyway.

When the air cleared, Ratanji said,—Look, this is confusing, one of us must change our name.

—Why should you change, Ranchhod said,—you've had your name so many years. I'll change.

Among our people, first names are bestowed according to a sort of divine lottery. When a child is born, an astrologer checks the stars and specifies the two or three letters of the Gujarati alphabet with which the child's name may begin. The
raasi,
as this aspect of the child's horoscope is called, is intricately linked with destiny, personality, mood, future mate, luck with money, and so on; to deviate from it is to tempt fate. By chance, Ranchhod and Ratanji had drawn the same initial letter. They might change their first names, but only at their peril.

Last names, though, are held more lightly. My relatives, when confronted with the need for passports and business licenses, resort to various solutions. Some, like the Kapitans in South Africa, invent their own; some use their caste identity, Khatri; others whose names have two parts split them, so Manilal goes by Mr. Lal. Some put down their father's name, as Motiram did; and in this way a last name can become a marker of the moment of encounter, the moment of migration. Narsai the prophet became Narsey the business, and then Narsey the surname, for generations to come. Indeed, Ranchhod's passport listed him as Ranchhod Ratanji; but since the object was to avoid confusion with his father, he decided against Ratanji as a last name.

A surname might also carry a story. While the Fiji relatives used the business name, Narsai's descendants in India were known by his ability to see the future: to
hazrat bhartaa,
in the local idiom.
Hazrat
is an Islamic word for a holy man or prophet; one who glimpsed the future was said to fulfill or flesh out a prophecy, or the spirit of a prophet. It was this name, weighted with destiny and history, that Ranchhod chose for his own.

But Ranchhod Hazrat enjoyed no greater autonomy than had Ranchhod Narsey. The family in those days was a true patriarchy; the fathers ruled, and everyone else obeyed.

Those who lived under Ratanji's reign remember, above all, his strictness. No one went to the movies, to the swimming hole, to the ice cream shop without permission—and permission was usually denied. Well into their twenties, Ranchhod and his brothers and cousins had to sneak alcohol if they wanted to drink.

Some, like Jayanti, now in Fiji as well, took this authoritarianism in stride. Some rebelled outright: one of Ranchhod's uncles left the company with all of his sons, amid a storm of ill will. Ranchhod, watching the drama, must have seen that there was no easy way for him to strike out on his own. Though he chafed under the restrictions, he contented himself with minor acts of subversion: bribing the cook to buy oranges at the Saturday market, then hiding the rare treats till after 10
P.M.
, when the older men were safely asleep and would not catch a whiff.

Their eldest brother, Chiman, seemed to step easily into his natural slot as their father's protégé. In 1954 the company issued new shares, and all three brothers were given one hundred each.

—Does this mean I can come to the meetings? Ranchhod asked his father.

—Come, but don't say anything, Ratanji told him.

It was Chiman who was learning the inner workings of the company's management at their father's right hand: Chiman whom their father had sent to bookkeeping classes, Chiman who had been allowed to start his own division dealing in electronic goods, and Chiman who had just been made secretary of the company, his father's obvious heir.

In truth Ranchhod did not mind the wholesale work, and had even come to enjoy the travel. But he was restless. Would he forever be a junior member of the company, bound to bow to the will of others? Fiji was a
damn jungle,
he thought, and he didn't like being in a British colony, whites strutting around as if they owned the place, which they did. Work was constant. If he put in just as much labor in his beloved India, he reasoned, he would get ahead on his own and be out from under the thumb of the family. He resolved that if he ever found himself home, he would not come back.

When he turned twenty-one, his chance came. His father had decided it was time to take Ranchhod home to get married. Ratanji went ahead on a bride-scouting mission.

Before undertaking the journey himself, Ranchhod wrote his father a letter spelling out his conditions: First, the girl should be more than twenty years old. Second, she would live wherever he lived, not be left to stay with his mother for months or years on end, as was the common practice. Third, he wrote,
Selection is yours, choice mine.
He had seen his elder brothers and sisters marry young without any say in the matter, and the troubles that had resulted. His mother was constantly fighting with her two daughters-in-law, both teenagers, one of whom was "running away from home" every other week—which meant going down the street to her relative's house crying and tearing at her hair, embarrassing both families. One of his sisters, scandalously, had fled her marriage and was living at home; eventually, hers would be one of the few divorces approved by the community's five-member council of elders in India. Though Ranchhod knew his marriage would be arranged, he wanted at least to have veto power.

Ratanji agreed. He had a few girls from good families in mind and had already ordered their horoscopes; all that remained was for the groom to arrive.

Ranchhod traveled by boat to Australia and then Sri Lanka, caught a plane to Bombay, and took the Flying Rani train with his father back to their home village, Navsari. On the train Ratanji struck up a conversation with a Khatri man from a neighboring town, who learned of their purpose and asked them to promise to visit him once before making a decision. He would, he said, show them some girls from good families.

They arrived in Navsari, and within a few days Ratanji went to meet the man. He returned with the horoscopes of two sisters, both of whose charts turned out to be compatible with Ranchhod's. Kaashi went to visit the girls and their family; then Ranchhod's eldest sister, Kamu, went. Ranchhod inquired,—All of you have seen the girls; perhaps I should go see them and choose?

—Absolutely not, came Ratanji's reply.

—Well then, at least tell me what are the names?

— Manjula and Lalita.

— I like Manjula, Ranchhod decided, and his father looked at him suspiciously. Had he somehow met the girl, or heard some gossip? Manjula was also the choice of Kaashi and Kamu, and Ratanji thought they had told. But Ranchhod was simply remembering a childhood playmate, a sweet girl who lived near his grandmother's house, who had the same name. On the strength of that association he chose a wife.

Ranchhod was told that he could see Manjula once, to fulfill the terms of his letter and give his consent, before the engagement was made final. So he found himself one morning sitting on a bench in a stranger's house, feeling awkward in his best set of clothes and dusty from the long bus ride into town, his hair oiled neatly back from his face. On one side sat his father, on the other the matchmaker from the train; across the way were an uncle and an aunt. Nervously Ranchhod took tea, barely noticing who offered it, and waited. The men talked casually as they drank the milky chaa, aromatic with cardamom, black pepper, cloves. They finished, and stood.

—OK, said the matchmaker,—let's go, what do you think?

—What? Ranchhod was confused.

—Well, did you see her or not?

—No, I didn't see anyone.

—That girl who brought tea, didn't you see?

He had thought they would be introduced, sit, perhaps talk a little. Instead, he was meant to glimpse her out of the corner of one eye, and get to know her by the gesture of her hand as she lifted each cup from the tray. Even this minimal meeting was a liberalization, a nod toward changing times, and Ranchhod knew he was pressing his luck; but truly, he said, he did not see the girl.

Exasperated, the matchmaker agreed to set it up again, that very afternoon. This time he sat next to Ranchhod and nudged him when the girl appeared in the doorway.

She came in with the tea.

She kept her eyes to the floor.

She wore a sari, modestly wrapped, in a modest color.

She walked around the room. She set a cup down near each man.

She did not speak, and no one spoke to her.

She left.

There was nothing wrong with her that he could see in such a short encounter. It was a formality, in any case, his elders having already approved the match; for him to back out now would be a matter of shame.

When they reached home, Ranchhod's father wrote a postcard to the matchmaker:—Everything is all right. Let's plan the wedding.

Even in a culture rich with stories, not everything can be said. Underlying the network of
gupshup
and legend is another skin, a myofascia of silence—and it is this, as much as the spoken word, that holds the society together. A shared notion of what can be spoken and what cannot, and in what context, gives each story and each storyteller a framework, a set of rules under which to function. A generation ago, on that day and place, and in that family, this layer of silence encompassed not only sexuality but everything near to it: women's health and illness, pregnancy, marriage itself.

So it was that Manjula did not know to whom she served tea twice that day. Guests were frequent, and if they came with an agenda, it was not for her to know or ask. Modesty demanded that she not look up, for curiosity or any other reason, and certainly not at a strange young man—whether or not she sensed his intensity, whether or not she felt the hands of destiny rubbing together. One day she was a girl in her parents' house, serving tea. And the next she was to be married; would travel to another village, then abroad. Serving tea, staying out of things, was a skill that would serve her well in her in-laws' home.

A few months after the wedding, Manjula was pregnant, and Ranchhod was scheming about how to avoid going back to Fiji. The whole family went on holiday to Pune, a pleasant hill town about a day's journey from Navsari. Far enough that a man could live independently, but close enough to stay in touch, it seemed to Ranchhod a perfect place to look for work.

Discreetly he began making inquiries. A distant relative told him about a large wholesaler of household goods that was hiring. Ranchhod met with the owner, who explained the job. A train compartment would be his home for two years. The train would travel throughout India delivering and picking up goods, everything from spoons to tablecloths. In each town it would rest a few days. A cook would travel with him, and he could either take his wife along or visit her with a free train ticket every few months. The pay was five hundred rupees a month, a large sum, especially when he would have no rent or food expenses.

Ranchhod decided to take the job. He expected resistance: his father always wanted all hands in the family firm.

But instead of a tongue-lashing from Ratanji, Ranchhod was surprised to receive a letter from Uncle Magan, accompanied by a bank draft of £150: Come back to Fiji, we are opening a business in your name.

Hazrat Trading Company. His own firm. It had a nice ring to it. Once again, Uncle Magan had figured out how to persuade him, gently, that what the family wanted was also in Ranchhod's own interests.