On the Outside Looking Indian

by Rupinder Gill

  TWENTY-FOUR

  give my regards

  to broadway

  My last week in New York felt more bittersweet than I had anticipated. I missed people at home, I missed cable, and I missed my stuff—my books, my paintings, my souvenirs from trips, things that expressed my personality. But I wanted to stay. More than anything, I wanted to be able to stay. I was now acclimatized to the city. I could offer people directions with confidence and I loved nothing more than a full afternoon spent reading in Central Park. As the fall sun shone its face on me, I would flip through the pages of everyone from Camus and Woody Allen to Judy Blume and feel instantly at home in my adopted city.

  The thing that really attracted me to the city was the unabashed positivity of everyone I met. Saying “I’d love to write for television” was met with a chorus of “Great idea!” and “Yes, you definitely should do that.” Discussing my year of self-improvement and my last two months of unemployment were always met with encouragement. New York was where people came to make their dreams come true and there was encouragement for a wide variety of dreams.

  I felt as if I had left my job ten years ago. Being in a different city, so far removed from my previous job and life, made that past slip further and further away. It’s not that I thought I would sit in the park reading forever. I knew I needed to work again. In fact, I looked forward to working again. I longed for the very same hyperscheduling and time constraints I had formerly bemoaned. But for the time being, I was relishing my new reality. It had taken me a while to settle into it and now it felt like a warm cocoon from which I didn’t want to emerge.

  I spent my last week being a tourist and wrapping up loose ends. MoMA had a special members-only viewing of portions of Monet’s Water Lilies series. Robert Evans tells a great story in The Kid Stays in the Picture about being offered the chance to buy a painting. He gazes upon it, falls instantly under its spell, and then doesn’t end up buying it. It was one of the Water Lilies. When I ascended the escalator and entered the gallery, there were only four other people in the room, including an old Indian couple. The woman wore a maroon sari and a pair of running shoes and the man ushered her around slowly with his hand on her elbow. I could never imagine my parents making plans to gaze upon a famous piece of art. It was a decadent use of time when there were so many things to be done. Looking at the vast expanses of canvas, I was pulled in.

  I took a seat on the bench, bobbing my head from one painting to the next, staring at the swirls of color, the beautiful muted tones, and the lyrical beauty of natural life in Giverny. I had a list of errands to complete in my pocket, but having lived my whole life as a type A personality with so many demands placed on me by myself, I felt compelled to stay seated.

  I had only one last task to attack before heading home. I really wanted to drive in Manhattan. I was ready to careen through the crowded streets, honking and flailing my arms at my fellow drivers, calling out “Moron!” or “Jackass!” In turn, I would offer a blind eye and ear to the various honks and raised middle fingers on every side of me. This was the delicate dance known as driving in a big city.

  On what must have been the rainiest day since Noah’s maiden voyage, I ran over from Union Square to the driving school on Twenty-third Street. By the time I arrived at the office, I was drenched from the waist down, a result of my umbrella’s annoying practical joke of blowing itself inside out. “Have a seat,” the receptionist instructed. “We’ll call your instructor.” A minute later my cell phone rang and displayed an unknown number. “Rupinder?” the voice asked. “It’s Jin, your instructor. I’m parked on Twenty-second and Park. It’s impossible to find parking in front of the office.”

  How quintessentially New York: a driving school that couldn’t even find parking in front of its own building. I ran back down the street and found Jin sitting in a maroon Toyota. I jumped into the passenger seat and introduced myself, and he said, “Maybe you should try it from over here.” I jumped back out and we played musical chairs while trying to dodge the rain.

  “I haven’t driven a lot,” I warned him. “And I have never driven here. I’m from Canada.”

  “Canada,” he said, smiling. “Quebec City is so beautiful. Okay, start driving.”

  And with that, I put on my turn signal, checked my mirrors, and pulled out onto Twenty-third Street.

  I sure hope Jin knew what he was doing, because I couldn’t say the same for myself. I was used to parallel parking in empty parking lots and now I was cruising up Park Avenue and checking my mirror for frail socialites who might be in my blind spot.

  “Okay, turn left,” Jin instructed after a few blocks. Checking every mirror possible, I inched into the intersection and turned onto Third Avenue, then back onto a quiet side street where I sat behind an idling mattress delivery truck for two minutes before turning to Jin and asking, “May I?”

  He nodded and I laid on the horn until the truck inched forward.

  “You’re like a native New Yorker!” Jin laughed.

  Driving in Manhattan was actually easier than I thought it would be. This was mostly due to the fact that your car barely moves an inch every minute. We drove around and around the West Village, then back to the East Village. I had never seen Union Square from inside a car before and I took the opportunity to honk and motion at all the jaywalking teenagers that I was powerless to properly judge when I was a pedestrian myself.

  “Thank you so much,” I said to Jin when I turned back onto Twenty-third Street to end the lesson. “How am I as a driver?”

  “You’re very good,” he said. “Definitely above average.”

  Above average. I was more than pleased with that.

  My last swimming lesson was scheduled for the day before I was leaving. As Freddie was busy at his other job during the days now, we were meeting in the evening. I awoke that morning with a monster cold that could not be quelled by any type of cold remedy. It seemed that the whole town had it, as Melissa, Ken, and Madeleine were also ill.

  I spent the day packing up my home for the past few months and tying up loose ends. That evening I ran out into the pouring rain to meet Freddie for the last time. Friday night was very obviously the family swim night at the pool. It was crammed with kids of all ages splashing about.

  “Last lesson!” Freddie said.

  I had progressed well on the previous lesson. I jumped into the deep end whenever Freddie commanded, I stayed under the water for as long as I could stand, and I counted out strokes in my mind to capture the proper rhythm of swimming. When water went up my nose, I jumped back in and tried it again. With my time in New York drawing to a close, I wanted to feel as if I had achieved as much as possible. Whether or not I jumped into the deep end was completely within my control. So I had to make it happen.

  On this fifth and last lesson, my cold was making it difficult to catch a proper breath or have the energy to attempt a lap. Another hindrance was a little girl who may have been a mermaid, swimming in the same lane as me.

  “Zoey,” her mother called out. “Watch the lady!”

  Yes, Zoey. Please watch the lady. The second I would extend an arm for a stroke, it would hit Zoey. When I put my head under the water, there was Zoey coming right at me to retrieve a toy from the bottom of the pool. When I floated on my back, Zoey splashed a downpour of water onto my face.

  “How do you feel about jumping into the deep end?” Freddie asked.

  “Not very good at all,” I said. No doubt Zoey would be lurking there as well.

  I gave up and jumped in. Freddie forced me to tread water and continue attempting laps until we both agreed that the pool had become a danger zone. Kids were now dominating my lane, splashing around with their parents or chasing each other with flutter boards.

  We decided to wrap it up because there was no more space, and because I was one minute from trying to wipe my nose with a pool noodle.

  “Thank you so much for everything,” I said to Freddie. “I promise I’ll keep going. When I can
swim three laps, I’ll call you and let you know.”

  “Good luck with everything,” Freddie said as we shook hands in the water.

  I went to enjoy one last sauna, then called Melissa and Ken to arrange a rendezvous. We all met on the corner and took the bus over to Madeleine’s. I was on my way to my NYC good-bye party.

  “I can’t believe you’re already leaving,” Ken said.

  “Neither can I,” I said.

  Melissa and Ken gave me a lovely going-away gift: a writing book with a photograph of the L train on the cover.

  “I know you’ll miss riding that every day,” Melissa said.

  I would. I would miss that sharp turn between Bedford and First Avenue stops that usually sent me flying, once into the lap of a man nearby. I would miss the excitement of heading into the city and getting off on the Upper West Side to wander through the park or downtown for an impromptu dinner. But going home was the best step for me. I needed to get everything in place for a chance to return to NYC once again, and not just as a traveler.

  Until then, I had a lot of work to do. The foray into television was going poorly. In Canada, if you looked up talent agencies, you could eventually find your way to an agent’s name. No matter how sharp my Googling skills had become, I could not find the names of agents at any of the large U.S. talent agencies. There were more than enough sites that generously offered me that information, along with a star map, for the tidy sum of $49.99, but I was wary of their claim that I was just one click away from “lunch with Spielburg [sic] and Scorsese.”

  I knew that if I wanted to finish off my list of goals, I was going to have to ask for some help. On the last episode of Murphy Brown I had watched, Murphy advised Corky to reach for that brass ring and never take her eye off the prize. The advice of a fictitious television journalist was good enough for me.

  One prize fell into my lap on my last day in New York. I was sitting in a coffee shop down the street from my building when my phone rang to display a Canadian number. “Is this Rupinder?” a happy voice inquired on the other end.

  “Hi, this is Angela from Walt Disney World Canada.”

  Wow, I had only written last week. They really did answer those wishes upon stars.

  “I got your request,” Angela said, “and I would love to help you out if I can.”

  Angela and I chatted for a bit.

  “So nobody in your family has ever been?” she said.

  “No,” I said. I offered my rehearsed impassioned plea, to which she could fully relate, having grown up as a child of immigrants herself.

  “I completely understand,” she said. “My parents are Greek.”

  “I can give you guys some passes to go,” she said. “Just let me know when you’re going and who’s going with you. I think you’ll really like it.”

  “That’s so generous of you,” I said. “I can’t say thank you enough!”

  Another life lesson learned: it never ever hurts to ask.

  part three

  TWENTY-FIVE

  let’s make a daal

  Back in Toronto, I was on a mission. I was pleased with what I had accomplished during the year. But now that I had a goal in mind for my life, not just for the year, I had a lot of work to do.

  “So when do you have to go back to work?” my parents asked me when I went to visit them in mid-November.

  “Oh, not for a while,” I replied, anticipating the question.

  They nodded and my mom went back to watching Desperate Housewives. After three decades in North America, she and my father had at last become fans of television.

  “Did you see Becker?” my mom would ask my dad. He would admit that he had and they would laugh about a joke they both loved in a sitcom that had been canceled at least three years prior.

  My mom was making my favorite chicken-and-rice dish. Growing up, I would hide out in the basement when she made it so I wouldn’t have to help in the hours-long process, come upstairs to eat, and then run back down. This time I wanted to learn to make it myself. She pulled out canisters of spices and jars of fresh ginger and garlic, and started piling up all the ingredients on the counter. Indian food has so many deliciously complex flavors because it’s deliciously complex to make.

  “Now you put the ginger into the food processor,” my mom explained in Punjabi as I furiously tried to write the instructions down.

  “How much?” I asked in English.

  “Now you have to add the tomatoes and the garlic and the masala,” my mom continued. I had to turn over the piece of paper to continue writing. I measured out the rice and checked all the salt levels, and one hour later, the meal was made.

  As was customary, I was the one who tested the chicken for salt and flavor, then I was the one who ate first, helping myself to the most tender of the breasts and ladling broth all over the rice. After adding a layer of yogurt on top, I created a messy paste and consumed plate after plate.

  Unfortunately I didn’t fare as well when I attempted to make the dish myself the next week. I had to improvise, as I did not have all of the necessary fresh ingredients. My rice came out sticky and the chicken mildly bland, but I was going to keep at it until I had the recipe down, then I would go back to my mom for another one.

  Not having seen some of my friends for months, I figured this was the perfect time to take another crack at a sleepover. Jen, Jaclyn, and Maggie came over on a Friday night. I was prepared with copies of The Lost Boys and the original Fame, as well as bags of chips and pints of ice cream. We had decided to order dinner out, but we all knew it would not be a large pepperoni pizza. Maggie was a vegetarian who ate only low-fat food. Jen didn’t eat red meat and Jaclyn didn’t eat fast food.

  “Um…I’ll get the tofu bowl,” I said when Jaclyn called to take my dinner order. If I was going to ask three grown women to come over for a sleepover in my downtown apartment, I had to concede on some issues. Besides, I loved the tofu bowl.

  Jen had brought a Sweet Valley High puzzle over and we discussed what sleepover-related activities to conquer.

  “We could egg a house!” Jen said.

  We all ruled that out because we were too old to risk being arrested and I only had six organic free-range eggs in the fridge. We ruled out summoning Bloody Mary in the washroom because that’s the kind of sleepover activity that girls did after about three bottles of smuggled-from-home alcohol.

  We were old enough to buy our own alcohol but of an age when the bottle of wine remained half full halfway through the night.

  We did, however, decide to do drugs. Over-the-counter acid-reflux drugs, that is.

  The three of them would not believe me when I told them how I had purchased a medication that started foaming in your mouth as you ingested it, giving you the feeling of having your throat coated in cement.

  “It couldn’t be that bad,” Maggie said.

  “I tell you, I almost threw up at my desk,” I said. “It was the most disgusting feeling ever.”

  Wanting to prove my point, I went to the bathroom and came back with three caplets.

  “Go ahead,” I coaxed. “Everybody’s doing it.”

  They took my challenge and each popped a pill into their mouths.

  “Start chewing!” I commanded, knowing what would soon be happening in their mouths.

  Soon their faces all contorted and they started making gagging sounds.

  “I can’t breathe,” Jen whispered.

  “Water, water,” Jaclyn begged.

  Attempting to ram the foam farther down their throats, they kept chewing and swallowing while holding their hands in front of their faces to suppress their gag reflexes.

  Enjoying this far too much, I pulled out my camera and started snapping away at them miming their death throes.

  “Not too bad, is it?” I teased. “Anybody for another?”

  After they all ran to the kitchen to get glasses of water, they were silent.

  “Okay,” they said, “we believe you.”

  After th
is torture, we thought it was time for a treat, so I ripped open a bag of chips and put The Lost Boys on. I had never seen the film but rented it on Jen’s suggestion, as it had kept her up all night at a third-grade sleepover.

  Jen watched half of it with her hands over her eyes, but the rest of us didn’t find it all that scary. The most frightening thing about it was that Corey Haim managed to slip a pair of shoulder pads into every silk shirt and floor-length pastel jacket he wore.

  Michael, Corey’s brother in the film, played by a handsome young Jason Patric, was a terrible role model to kids in the area of peer pressure. In one scene, he literally jumped off a bridge because his friends did. While we watched the film, my three guests entertained me with stories from their childhood sleepovers.

  “We did a lot of dance routines. Anything to stay awake. You NEVER wanted to go to sleep first,” Jaclyn said. “If you did, people did things to you.”

  “Once we put a girl’s hand into a bowl of water,” Maggie said. “She totally peed herself. It was terrible.”

  “There’s also always a point in the sleepover,” Jaclyn said, “where you just want to leave.”

  What was she hinting at? Perhaps I needed to refill the chip bowl. Surely she couldn’t be insinuating that sleeping on my floor was not going to be as comfortable as being at home, sleeping on her pillow-top mattress?

  “If everybody was afraid to fall asleep or always wanted to leave the sleepovers at one point, why did anybody go?” I asked.

  As I looked at them all sprawled out across my living room, wearing their pajamas, I realized that some things were definitely best experienced as a kid. We weren’t going to egg a house, talk about our crushes, or put someone’s hand in water while they slept, causing them to pee and leaving me to sop up a mess from my white rug, so I thought I would let them off the hook.