On the Outside Looking Indian

by Rupinder Gill

  On the fourth lesson, I still could not swim an inch but was gaining popularity because of the excitement that would come with me letting down my hair. “Take it out now,” one tiny blond girl suggested before the lesson. “You’re just going to take them out later.”

  I was like their little Indian mermaid and couldn’t disappoint my fans, so she and I took an elastic each and unfurled both of my braids.

  “Wow,” the whole class said as I walked out onto the deck.

  This was a brilliant strategy for me. To deflect attention from the fact that I could not swim, I would distract everyone with my pretty hair. This worked well for one more lesson until a group of senior citizens swarmed me after their aquacize class.

  “Oh my,” one of the ladies said, eyeing my tresses. “Do they let you into the pool like that?”

  “Um, yeah,” I muttered, unsure of what the correct answer was.

  “It’s not very safe,” one of her cohorts chimed in. “You could get caught in the drain.”

  This drain was not anything I had ever considered when making the decision to undo my braids. Peer pressure was a more powerful motivator than personal safety, but the idea of getting caught in the pool drain and missing our year-end trip to the local water park scared the vanity out of me. After this, I kept my hair tightly wound in its braids and stayed clear of the edges when walking around with my water jugs. Luckily I had a lot of space to maneuver, since the rest of my group was in the deep end with the others. I made it to the water park, where I spent the day standing in the shallow end. That was one of my last times in a public pool.

  Twenty years later, I was finally ready to give it another try. Oprah learned to swim at forty, so I would actually be a decade ahead of her in that achievement. Not to make myself a hero but I’d be learning in a public pool, where my body and numerous screams for help would be exposed to the unsuspecting masses. Oprah, meanwhile, likely learned it in the privacy of her giant pool while Maya Angelou read her inspirational quotes and Stedman fixed them all iced tea. But we both had the goal of learning to swim, and by Gayle I was going to achieve it.

  But first, there was some preparation required. Ten-year-olds don’t have to spend their time planning for swimming by looking up “knee-length swimsuits” for days before. It wasn’t vanity as much as it was a safety issue. The ripple created by my legs hitting the water could startle my fellow novice swimmers. My thighs could be mistaken for floatation devices and cause confusion in rescue simulations. But mostly, I couldn’t stomach being stared at by six-year-olds in water wings when flutter boards got caught in the folds of my flesh. And so what?

  No woman this side of the cast of Baywatch feels good in a bathing suit. So before the swimming could begin, some slimming had to begin.

  I was putting it off anyway. You would never think I was fat to look at me, but if you passed my desk at work and saw my thumb pulling the elastic of my tights off my stomach as I read Variety, you might think twice. Also, shocking even to me, at my last yearly physical, my doctor took my height and weight, did a quick calculation, and kindly let me know that I was indeed a porker.

  “What?!” I said, worried my big-butt jokes had created a self-fulfilling prophecy. I always felt I had a few pounds to lose, but I was nowhere close to doing interviews on Donahue via satellite from my bed. “I must have been slouching during the height check. Let me stand straighter.”

  My doctor gave me a pitying look but agreed to try it again. The two subsequent measurements also revealed the prognosis of plumpness. “Try to lose five or ten pounds,” she said. “That’s all you need to lose.”

  A lifetime of chip bowls had finally caught up with me. I don’t know why I thought I could outrun the effects of junk food as I got winded walking from the kitchen to the sofa. Okay, I thought, why not up the ante on this self-improvement journey? If I was going to relive the past, I might as well improve the present while I was at it.

  Going to the gym regularly makes you feel like a million dollars. Returning to the gym after months of absence makes you feel like a sumo wrestler in a biathlon. Walking to the gym that first time back, I was proud of myself for making the pledge for a better me, but once I got there, I grew worried that someone I knew, a mortal enemy from my past, would see me in my “before” stage. Adding to my anxiety was the fact that I chose to return to fitness at unequivocally the worst time of the year—January. I stared over at the cardio room, bursting at the seams with sweaty masses in their new Christmas workout clothes, and shook my head, scoffing at the New Year’s resolution crowd. The fact that I was one of them was beside the point.*

  Hopping onto the stair climber, I looked over my shoulder and covered the keypad while punching in my weight, the way banks advise you to do when using the ATM. I set the timer for forty minutes, pressed play on my GET SKINNY! playlist, and climbed like I was James Bond trying to beat an Eastern European villain to the top of the CN Tower. After what seemed like an eternity, my legs near collapse and my heart three pumps short of a coronary, I looked down at the timer. Six minutes. This was going to be a long road to the pool.

  * * *

  *Any facts that make me seem common, stupid, or hypocritical will hereby be considered to be beside the point.

  THREE

  perfect strangers

  (me and rhythm)

  At our junior high talent shows, all of the beautiful dancers would dazzle the crowd by doing splits in the air and prancing around in their glittery bodysuits. I just sat watching enviously and waiting for the inevitable Salt-N-Pepa airband, where kids would advise us to “push it.” I begged to take dance lessons several times, but was never allowed. Indian girls don’t wear leotards and entertain crowds.

  Navroop and Navjit refused to muzzle their rhythm and decided to open their own dance studio in the basement. The studio had exactly two students, who also happened to be the two instructors.

  They practiced routines in the basement for hours and hours. Whenever Gurpreet and I tried to go downstairs, their fingers would hit the PAUSE button on their boom box.

  “We have to practice!” Navjit would say. “We have a show next week!”

  The show in question was for Gurpreet and me, and the next week we sat on one of the sofas in the basement, ready for the big debut. The other sofa had been pulled in front of the TV to create a stage of sorts. The dancers, wearing their normal sweatsuits that they had jazzed up with beaded necklaces, came out from behind the sofa and took center stage.

  “Thank you for coming,” Navjit said. “We hope you enjoy the show.” She signaled over to Navroop, who hit PLAY on their music and the sweet sounds of New Kids on the Block filled the room. They were thirty seconds into “The Right Stuff” when Navjit turned the wrong way on a spin.

  “Other way!” Navroop said.

  They recovered, but at the beginning of the Jordan Knight solo dance, Navroop took a false step and knocked into Navjit.

  “Watch it!” Navjit said.

  The performers took a brief break behind their sofa curtain and soon began arguing.

  “You’re Danny!” Navroop said.

  “No, you’re Danny!” Navjit replied.

  The show had to end its run that night when the principal dancers started choking each other behind their curtain. I doubted this ever happened in the Alvin Ailey dance company.

  Still, my desire to dance survived the Basement Dance Company debacle. After some recommendations from my work friends, I sent a quick note to a downtown studio asking when their winter schedule would be released. Five minutes later, my in-box dinged with a response sent from Esther.

  “Hi, Rupinder! Thank you for your interest! Our new class schedule is now posted! Let me know if you need anything!” Wow, I thought, that is quite a lot of exclamation points. Perhaps her other options for punctuation were all gummed on the keyboard, leaving her only with the option of exclaiming everything, in a tone that could only be created in a face-to-face conversation by punching someone in
the mouth after each sentence. When I responded to say I was interested, Esther proclaimed, “Awesome! I put you on the list! Have a great day!”

  Finally, I was going to be a dancer. I imagined myself smiling all the time, kicking my heels up high when I walked, and calling everything “fantabulous.” My fellow dancers and I would compete against one another for chorus-line roles while dealing with the pressures of being young and taut gazelles. I would collapse on the floor in a cascade of tears after a fight with my boyfriend/dance partner. And in my greatest triumph, through the pain of a swollen ankle, I would dance flawlessly in the finals of the dance competition while my friends pumped their fists in the air for support. Pushing his way through a cheering crowd, a Billy Hufsey type would hoist me on his shoulders while Debbie Allen glided through the air in a celebratory split. I wrote Esther back, “Thanks! I can’t wait!”

  On the day of my first tap class, a woman met me in the parking lot beside my office. I handed her ten dollars and she handed me a package. A man getting out of his minivan eyed me suspiciously, so I opened the package to show that the goods inside were a lightly worn pair of old tap shoes. I took them upstairs, put them on, and performed an impromptu dance for my coworkers in our kitchen. Only one shoe had a shoelace but I still put on a decent performance while humming “Tea for Two” to myself.

  “Good luck!” everyone yelled as I ran out of the office that night. Our department was 90 percent women, which provided a Ya-Ya Sisterhood of sorts.

  “Thanks,” I said, throwing a pile of DVDs onto my colleague’s desk. “Watch those,” I yelled to her as I ran for the elevator. “We can talk about story angles in our meeting tomorrow.” But tonight, the story was me.

  Arriving at my first class, I started to feel the reality of my grand experiment and it was exciting. I was going to learn to dance. The first thing I noticed was that everyone had black standard tap shoes with laces, whereas mine were cream Mary Janes with pink ribbon laces. Note to self: Spend more than ten dollars on equipment next time.

  The style made my love of loud festive socks difficult to hide. I tried to put one foot atop the other, but that only made the pink socks with penguins on them more visible. I saw a girl beside me looking at them curiously and I laughed nervously and pretended to be doing some stretches, one of which almost punctured the eye of the girl to my right.

  Perhaps because I am not very worldly, I was surprised that there were two men in the class, and not two men in spandex. They both looked to be in their midtwenties and as if they had just finished their shifts as IT specialists and just wanted to tap before going home and devouring a porterhouse.

  “Hi,” I said to one of the guys, “I’m Rupinder.”

  “Hi,” he said. “Is this your first time in the class?”

  “Yes,” I said, worried. “Isn’t it just starting tonight?”

  “Oh yes,” he said. “I just took some of the classes in the fall, then had to stop after the accident.”

  He paused dramatically after saying “the accident” like Victor Newman would have done in The Young and the Restless.

  “Oh, okay,” I said, deciding to deny my curiosity the chance to ask more. “I hope it’s fun.”

  Two girls walked in and stood directly in front of me. One was tiny and looked as if her outfit choice had taken her the full day preceding the class. The spandex pants were cuffed in the same color of green as her tight tank top and she had clipped her hair off her face, revealing a pair of dangling earrings. I felt suddenly self-conscious about my loose sweatpants and bulky sweatshirt embroidered with the logo for the Food Network.

  “Hi,” I said to them while they laced up their shoes. The small one looked up. The other one looked away. I took it personally for exactly three seconds before I saw that the instructor had just walked in, tall, dark, and handsome. He looked like Taye Diggs, and the faces of my classmates revealed that many of the ladies were looking to get their groove back.

  “Hi, everyone, I’m Jerry,” he said, tapping out a simple rhythm. “Everyone ready to tap into their inner Fred Astaire?” Jerry looked as if he was five years younger than I was and danced so gracefully that you could imagine him dancing his way out of the birth canal while “Fly Me to the Moon” played in the delivery room. “This is a basic tap,” he instructed, striking his foot on the floor. I followed along and loved the sound. Tap. Tap. Tappity Tap. Tap. Tap. It was intoxicatingly melodic.

  Oh, the joy of learning something new—exhilaration and humiliation all rolled into one. As the class progressed, I stared intently at myself in the mirror as I shuffled to the right and tapped to the left. With each click and clack of my shoes, I was beginning to feel like a real certified dancer instead of just a woman in sweatpants dancing in a basement.

  FOUR

  no animal house

  Navroop, who was determined to be a dog owner or at least a dog aunt, was solely focused on helping me cross the goal of pet ownership off my list.

  “Okay,” she began when I picked up the phone one night. “I e-mailed three breeders for you. One has a litter of Westies due in two months and one has Japanese Chins that were born three weeks ago. One boy is left.”

  “Oh, thanks,” I said. “But I don’t know if I can do this that fast. I really want to think about it.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “The last one has a litter of some sort of doodle that they’re expecting in four months. Then you have more time.”

  “Even that seems fast to me,” I explained. “I was thinking more like six or eight months.”

  “Oh, fine.” Navroop relented. “But then I don’t think I can help anymore. I get too attached. Just call me when you have a dog.”

  I knew Navroop thought I was indecisive, but this was not a skirt I could return the next day. This was a living, breathing, drooling decision that was going to live with me for the next fifteen years. We had to be right for each other. Would a small dog fit best in my life? It would be happiest in apartment living, not need as much food, and fit in my bike basket as I jaunted through the South of France, holding baguettes and waving at men named Jacques. But a big dog has always been more my style. With small dogs, there is always the chance that I will turn into one of those crazy women who buys her Yorkie drop earrings or ends up on a talk-show intervention after being seen sharing a milk shake with two straws with her Chihuahua.

  A big dog always felt right to me. Old Spot or Rover or Mr. Furr-ley would lie at my feet calmly while I lounged on the sofa watching a Perfect Strangers marathon. I would put one of those barrels around its neck like in cough-syrup commercials and train it to go into the kitchen, grab me a Pepsi, and shove a pawful of Doritos into the barrel. With a decision this big, I decided that small steps were the best route, especially considering the Gill history of pet ownership.

  When I was growing up, every two months or so over a five-year stretch, an opportunity would arise to bring up the subject of getting a dog. No matter how small the window, my sisters and I could get on all fours and attempt to squeeze through it.

  The attempts went from timid:

  A dog appears on a television commercial. Mom either grimaces or smiles.

  Kid: “Wow, that is a cute dog. I would love to have one too.” Gap-toothed smile.

  To ridiculous:

  Mom: “Someone dry the dishes!”

  Kid: “You know, I just watched a news program that showed how they taught dogs in Japan to do housework. It really helped with household chores.”

  To desperate:

  Mom: “Go check on your brother.”

  Kid: “He is gone! We had better go get a search-and-rescue dog so we can always know where he is. It is imperative for his safety!”

  It never worked. When I was twelve years old, my pocket burning with ten dollars saved from ten weeks of allowance, I decided to take matters into my own hands. My parents would not allow a dog, but after some convincing, they agreed to a fish. My dad drove me down to the neighborhood Walmart, where I
sprinted to the pet department, pressed my face against the aquariums, and after much deliberation chose two goldfish. I took them home, christened them Moby Dick and Cleo, put my elbows up on my dresser, and stared at them for hours.

  “Let me see!” Navjit squealed in her shrill four-year-old’s voice.

  “Don’t touch them!” I screamed, pulling Navjit’s fingers out of the bowl. “You can’t pet fish.”

  “Then what do they do?” she asked earnestly.

  “They swim, dummy,” know-it-all Navroop said.

  My dad walked by on his way to his own room and saw the commotion.

  “Don’t forget to feed them,” he said in the tone he later used for such “don’t” expressions as “Don’t forget to lock the door” after I had lived in the city for nearly five years, and his oft-repeated “Don’t trust the banks, they are all crooks.”

  “Yes, I know,” I said as Navjit continued to try to brush her fingers against the fish’s fins. “I wrote it all down. Now everyone get out of here. I have work to do.”

  The work I had to do was staring at the fish. In those subsequent hours, I realized something critical: fish do very little. And by very little I mean nothing. But that gave us a kinship of sorts. I lived in a slightly bigger bowl but had about the same level of excitement in my day that they did.

  Nonetheless, as boring as their lives were, those fish were mine, all mine. It turned out that I wasn’t the only one in my family who was enamored with them. Although my dad refused to ever let me have a pet that could survive outside a bowl, he came into my room every hour that night to see that the fish were okay. He also thought that the incredibly complicated daily needs of a fish (feed once) were too taxing for a ten-year-old, so despite my assurances that I had it covered, he kindly fed them their fish food without telling me. Straight out of a Three’s Company story line, I fed them again myself later that same day.