On the Outside Looking Indian

by Rupinder Gill

  A fall took her to the doctor’s office, where the diagnosis was given. They told us plainly that she would die, and soon. She went for surgery to slow it down, but it was going to attack again.

  I was in my first year of college and went home to see her one weekend in October. “You aren’t going to come back,” she told me as I said good-bye to her at the end of it. “You won’t come back.” She was implying, like all Indian grandmothers do, that I didn’t visit often enough. But that would be the last time I would ever see her.

  My dad, tasked with the responsibility of decision as the eldest child, boarded a plane to India with her so she could see my uncle and my grandfather, from whom she had lived apart for nearly two decades. My grandfather had tried to adapt to Canada but never took to it, so opted to stay in India. My grandmother adjusted more easily to her adopted home.

  We had joked over the years that Bibi had become Westernized. She never adopted Western dress, but she would only drink Canada Dry Ginger Ale. If you gave her any other brand, she would push the glass away and say that it tasted like pashab (urine). She developed a fondness for gummy candies that were shaped and flavored like oranges and lemons and dotted with sugar, and we would force her to watch Benny Hill, just to entertain ourselves at her disgust when Benny chased nurses around fields. She would always laugh, knowing we were setting her up. She actually spent almost as much of her adult life in Canada as she did in India, but in her heart, India was her home. She was born there, and two months after I last saw her, she died there.

  My dad was devastated by her death. He, and all his siblings, only ever spoke about her with extreme love and reverence. Despite their stories of being chased around the farm by her as she wielded a stick to hit them, they had all been very close to her. My siblings and I were actually closer to her than we were to our own parents, so it was a pretty big blow for everyone.

  The kids at Gilda’s had such a less emotional view of cancer than most adults do. For them, it just existed. It was what it was. When I grabbed Marnie’s hand, she would sometimes say that I had taken her “sick hand,” a hand weakened by her many treatments. That was her explanation; she was simply sick. It was a part of her life, as was school, friends, and loving Hannah Montana.

  The next day was our last and we shepherded the campers to the north of the city to watch Robert Munsch plays performed. We found spots on the floor.

  “I can’t see,” Erin said, jumping into my lap.

  “Okay,” I said. “Now let’s be quiet. It’s starting.”

  I think the play was good, but I could barely watch because my legs were falling asleep. I spent most of the time kneading my thighs to ward off the pins and needles.

  “Let’s get up and dance,” the actors said.

  “Dance time,” I said, pushing Erin off my lap. I did the Hokey Pokey with extreme force to try to revive my legs and found Erin a nice seat in front of me for the rest of the play.

  In the afternoon, we all worked together to make a mural on which we inscribed the Gilda’s Club slogan: “Cancer Sucks.” The kids painted, cut and pasted, and wrote their feelings about cancer all over the canvas, which was later hung up to commemorate our days at the camp.

  At the end of the day, the parents gathered outside to pick up their kids, who were all saying bye to one another. Some of the kids would see each other again in the Tuesday-night group, but they didn’t all attend.

  “Bye!” I said to the twins as they hugged their mom’s legs.

  “Thanks for all the fun at Medieval Times,” I said to Sally as she walked to her car.

  “Bye,” she said, waving.

  “Marnie,” I said, “your mom’s here.”

  Marnie and her pigtailed little sister walked to the car.

  “Good-bye and thank you,” Marnie said. “I hope I see you again in my life.”

  It was I who owed them the thanks. I had a week of fun and laughs. I got to try new things and meet new people and feel like a part of something special. Camp completely exceeded my expectations, which says a lot, considering that they had been building for almost twenty years.

  TWELVE

  gimme a break!

  One thing I was learning about goals was that most people think of them the way they think about abstract notions. They are New Year’s resolutions and weight-loss pledges on sticky notes that peel off the fridge long after the goal has already been abandoned. As long as you don’t attempt to reach a goal, it’s always there hovering in the distance. But I wish I had known so many years ago what it felt like not only to move toward a goal but to actually cross the finish line. It felt amazing. It made the next goal seem attainable and the larger one after that suddenly seem like it was doable. It made huge life dreams seem like just another set of goals that you could actually go out and attain. This realization was having a very profound effect on me.

  It had been only six months but so much can change in six months. Since my birthday, I had been thinking about what I wanted from life, a conversation I had with myself after every birthday. I didn’t know what I wanted but I knew I wanted something more than I currently had. I liked my job, but I always felt like I was a background player supporting people who were making the product that I loved.

  My workplace had begun an unpaid leave-of-absence program, partially due to the company’s financial state. This offered a great opportunity for me to do some real soul-searching.

  My greatest worry was that I would waste the feeling of achievement and satisfaction that I now felt. Each new thing I learned, each skill I crossed off my list of goals, left me energized and anticipating the next challenge. I didn’t want to get to the end of that road and feel like I was back at the same dead end. This had to be part of a bigger picture.

  Work had made up too much of my identity for too long. It ate up my week, it woke me up in the middle of the night, and it demanded so much of me, though it was no longer giving me the equivalent in pleasure or fulfillment. Lately, though, I had begun to look at work differently. It was the nine hours before I could dance, the two weeks before I could go to camp. I had moved from living to work to working to live. Although so much had changed for me personally in the past six months, professionally everything droned on as it had the year before and as it would the year after. This was becoming harder for me to accept. Maybe I needed to shake up my life in a bigger way. I could travel, think, and be sure of what I wanted to do, instead of just keeping on doing what I was doing, for no reason but inertia. I had savings enough to last me a few months, and time off would let me take a much-needed pause and digest the past six months, and consider what lay ahead for me in the next few years.

  After mulling it over for weeks, I decided I would ask for a leave, but I was wary of how my request would play out. It was still up to the department head to allow leaves, and hearing that a publicist who covered a fourth of their channels would be missing for three months would not exactly thrill them. But, I reasoned, I deserved this break. I had worked hard and diligently for nearly five years. I was a dedicated and trusted member of the team and I was hopeful that my superiors would be understanding. I looked online at my department head’s calendar for a meeting time. There was hardly one blank space on it for the next two weeks, but I managed to squeeze myself into a slot on a Thursday afternoon.

  I had a few days to try to compose my thoughts, but just couldn’t put them perfectly into words. How do you explain to someone that you simply felt different from the person you used to be? When I started out the year, I had expected to have a few new skills and a few funny stories to share at dinner parties. But I was surprised not only by how much my recent experiences were changing me, but by how important they were becoming to me.

  When Thursday rolled around, I was cool as a cucumber. Sitting in my boss’s office, I readied myself for a discussion about how best to handle things in the office during my months off. I had notes on a few ideas of my own, ideas I thought would impact the department in the most benefi
cial way and offer new opportunities to those who were seeking them.

  “What’s up?” she asked.

  I took this as my cue and went into a spiel so moving it could have been a deleted scene from Steel Magnolias. From childhood dreams of an immigrant’s daughter to realizations reached while wandering in a lush green village in India, I wove a story so beautiful I could already picture Kate Winslet in the lead role of the movie version. The delivery may have been a tad syrupy and thick, but the core of it was sincere. In short, I told her, I really needed to take a leave. I was at a crossroads after embarking on what I thought would be a handful of fun activities, but had now become a journey that was taking me places I had never imagined.

  “I’ve thought this through so many times,” I said, finally getting to the heart of the matter. “If I could have three months off, I’d be so grateful. I know it’s a lot to ask, but I’ve been dedicated to this place since the moment I started and I would return even more dedicated.”

  I took a breath. I had said my piece. I really hoped that she would agree because if I couldn’t get the time off, I might not actually be able to finish all of my goals. I had no vacation time left and still had to do some of the larger activities on my list. I didn’t want to abandon my list of goals and return to my humdrum working-stiff existence without at least one more goal under my belt. This had to be different.

  I don’t recall exactly what my boss said, just that it was not what I wanted to hear. She couldn’t go along with my proposal. Three months was simply too long. I could be spared for a month at the most, preferably December, which was still five months away. She asked me to figure out how I could make it work and let her know.

  “What’re you going to do now?” Jen and Jaclyn asked me at lunch.

  “I haven’t the slightest clue,” I said. “I really don’t see how I could do this all in one month. I have to tell her how I’m going to make this leave of absence work as soon as I can, but I just have no idea.”

  That weekend, I holed up in my apartment with all of my thinking tools: a mountain of junk food to stimulate my brain and a pile of classic seventies horror films for when I needed a break. I was big on thinking important decisions through with the thoroughness of a police detective trying to crack a big case. My living room looked like the conference room at a business convention with charts and pie graphs and to-do lists scattered and posted in every nook and cranny.

  I was so incredibly confused. The company had created this leave-of-absence program, which I was aware that people in other departments had taken advantage of. One girl in another department had been given four months off to go backpacking in Australia. How was that more valid than my request? I guess I had overestimated my importance at the company. It was naive to think that a large corporation had the same regard for me that I held for it for the past five years. A company’s purpose is to make money, not worry about the life plans of its employees. My superiors were looking out for themselves. I had to look out for myself and for my future, which was a difficult task, as I had no idea what I wanted from it.

  I was at an impasse. I needed some counsel.

  Unfortunately, most people I spoke to advised me to do the same thing: quit. This was not on my list of preferred options. It was a leap way too large to contemplate. Yet the more I thought about it, the more I felt there was no other viable option.

  “Just quit,” one sister advised.

  “Definitely don’t quit,” another countered.

  I was beyond confused. “Would you do it?” I would ask those who suggested I leave. After silence, then contemplation, the answer became much grayer for them. Advice is often very black and white until you have to imagine the scenario as being your own. I wanted to stay with the company. I needed to work. But I wanted this leave time more.

  I wanted a chance to slice something extraordinary out of my increasingly ordinary life, but I wasn’t willing to alter the trajectory of my career to get it. I was an ordinary person. I woke up at seven-thirty, wiped the sleep from my eyes, and went to work. I had three weeks of the year that were my own; the rest belonged to whoever signed my check. This was the only life I knew, and although it was routine and at times stifling, it was what was comfortable.

  But what if I was meant for something different from this? If I wasn’t, it was okay, I was happy enough with my life, but I could no longer be happy to not try. I met Jaclyn and Maggie because we had all studied TV writing and production together. We had dreams of being creative, but then after a year of dead-end jobs, I was so happy to get my foot in the door at my present job that I settled into a backseat role, writing and producing press materials to celebrate other people’s creativity. Who knows, maybe during those three months I could finally try to delve into it myself? Maybe it wouldn’t be for me, but I wanted to try. Swimming and dancing and catching up with the other kids were my yearlong goals. This was my lifelong goal.

  I was raised to be realistic. Indian women aren’t dreamers. They are encouraged to pursue three lines of work: medicine, accounting, or baby making. Anything else is considered a waste of time. Pursuing a move to real television production wasn’t realistic, but the fact that I’d even get around to pursuing it was also unrealistic. Even I thought it was a bit of a dreamer’s dream, but who knew what I was supposed to be doing in life? If the last six months had taught me anything, it was that I was the only one who could make my life what I wanted it to be, and I was the one who would live with the consequences of it not being fulfilling.

  But—and there’s always a but—I liked my job and had struggled to get there. With so many people out of work, I was more than grateful to have a job at all. Businessmen were working part-time as janitors, ex-accountants were making deliveries. It wasn’t the time to take risks. I still had to pay off my student loan. I wanted to put more money into my retirement account. I hadn’t been on a proper, relaxing vacation for years. Walking away meant the end of financial security, which at my salary was still more of a monetary aspiration than a reality.

  On Monday morning, I walked into my boss’s office and said the two words I had been agonizing over for the past week: “I quit.” As they came out of my mouth, it was as if I was having an out-of-body experience. I couldn’t believe it but it was done. I offered over a month’s notice. I would stay until the end of August and then I would be cast out into the world, jobless, clueless, and full of hope and excitement. I was ready. In fact, I couldn’t wait.

  THIRTEEN

  (leaving) the office

  For the next week I felt like hurling myself at my boss’s feet to beg for mercy, but I stuck to my guns. I had been cautious and practical my whole life and it was time to take the opposite approach. Don’t underestimate how much you change once you achieve a goal. With every swing of the racquet, every tap step, and every minute behind the wheel, I was becoming more confident and ready to tackle the next step.

  Sure, my goals were not as grand as trying to climb a mountain, but that is what made the victory that much sweeter to me. These were things I had simply ruled out as experiences that I had simply missed, with no chance of recovery. I had defined myself as that person who couldn’t swim and had never been to Disney World, but now I was beginning to understand that I could still create those memories and redefine myself. It was a snowball effect of my newfound confidence that gave me the sheer audacity to walk away from my job into total uncertainty.

  I told my parents that I had taken a leave of absence because Indians cannot leave paying work unless they have been dead at least a week and even that can be considered a flimsy excuse. I knew I was doing the best thing for myself, but thirty years of experience told me that my parents weren’t the type of people who would chuck responsibility for adventure and personal growth. Had they been students in Robin Williams’s class in Dead Poets Society, the second the kids jumped up onto their desks to “Seize the Day!” my parents would have sprinted out of the room to get the headmaster.

  Al
so, old habits die hard and I guess a part of me still felt a bit guilty admitting that I had thrown away stability and responsibility to indulge a whim. This had never been an option in my parents’ lives. No doubt my father would have loved to continue the classes he took at the University of Toronto and become a professor in Canada, as he had been planning to do in India. But he had to work to make money for his family, so it wasn’t an option. My mother and father never went on vacations, they didn’t have expensive cars or jewelry, and I could count on one hand the number of times they had ever eaten in a restaurant in their lives. One meal with my father drinking gravy like soup would substantiate this claim for any nonbelievers.

  On their meager salaries, they saved to have enough money to help their children out with their college expenses. And here I was spitting on their very belief system by putting a fantasy before reality and responsibility. But in the end, I knew it was the right thing to do, for myself. My parents would have to make peace with my decision.

  Taking a leap of faith had a wonderful effect on me. The month of August felt as if the earth had been reprogrammed especially for my enjoyment. The sun shone brighter. The birds chirped more melodically and the breeze always smelled like lilacs and lilies.

  I was enthused. It was the shake-up my tired life sorely needed.

  “What will you do?” people asked me.

  “You know, I’m not sure yet.” I would smile. “But I have some ideas.”

  In actuality, I had one incredibly crazy idea. An idea so far-fetched that I tried to push it out of my mind. It was preposterous, juvenile, and likely shared by every teenager who has ever seen a local production of Rent.

  I wanted to move to New York. I’d wanted to move to the city since I had traveled there for my senior-class high school trip. I had saved up for that trip for months, working in the high-stakes world of cashiering at Walmart to ensure I had the proper spending money for all the black-and-white cookies my heart desired. We drove down on a giant school bus, a twelve-hour ride that breezed by because of the promise of what lay at the end. The second we exited onto the bustling Manhattan street, I was in love. Deeply, madly in love. It was March, a month normally dreary, but the lights twinkling in front of the department stores and the distinct luminescence of the snow were so magically New York that it felt like living in a snow globe.