by Sopan Deb
While I was heartened by the new Deb family member in attendance, I felt the absence of an older member of the lineage who wasn’t. I wished Shyamal was there. He was, of course, still in India. I knew he wouldn’t have understood any of the jokes and would probably have clapped in all the wrong places, but he would have been so excited nonetheless. No, he would have been proud.
My father wasn’t totally absent from the evening, though. I had accidentally given him a taste of my comedic stylings the afternoon before the show. See, I typically write out my set before each show because I like to have notes to go over before I hit the stage. Then I’ll email them to myself.
Except this time, when I walked inside the club, I noticed the email wasn’t in my inbox. Digging around in my sent messages, I found that Shyamal—not Sopan—had received my set notes. Until this point, my father had a minimal idea of what my comedy is all about. Of course, this set featured plenty of material about my parents, including the story about Shyamal finding out about my arrest from newspapers in India.
I was literally sweating. I didn’t know what he’d think. I was worried he’d be offended. I feverishly tapped out a follow-up email.
“Haha baba please ignore this email I was prepping for a show.”
Six hours later, he responded: “I read it and I liked it.”
Phew.
That’s when the pang of longing hit me. I wanted him to be watching in the audience instead of reading a summary thousands of miles away. I’ve missed my father. I don’t know that I’ve ever said that in my life. Because it was never true before. I missed his cackle, the hand gestures and his “No, no, no, no, no.” I even missed standing in the heat wearing a plastered smile while he snapped pictures with his point-and-shoot camera.
But Shyamal won’t be seeing my comedy in person anytime soon. He might come and visit us someday, but he’ll never live in the United States again. I’ve come to terms with the life Shyamal has built in India. He’s at peace. My father has his routines. He has his tennis matches, a cozy flat, his paintings, a thirst for travel, and the security of knowing that he’s lived the last dozen years on his own terms.
And still, I hear the sadness in his voice. My father called me near the start of the New Year to tell me he had taken a trip to Puri, the beach city where Bishakha’s father died. Shyamal excitedly told me about the bird sanctuary he had visited. Even though he seemed like his energetic self in describing his day, I sensed his desire for companionship in the tone of his voice. He was alone. There was the hint of emptiness, as if he was straining to put up a front. My father could only share the experience with me from a distance. But that’s something. He told me he would send me pictures from the trip. I told him I would send him pictures from stand-up.
My mother hasn’t been in the city to see me perform yet either, but both of my parents are more active parts of the life Wesley and I lead. They treat Wesley as if she is another daughter, and she treats them as surrogate parents. My parents seem happier now. After a lifetime of sadness, they are entitled to at least that much. They shouldn’t have the bar set simply to “survival.” In the last year, I’d like to think I’ve raised it just a little.
My brother said it best to me recently: “Ultimately, it’s about forgiveness.” Until Sattik put it that way, I hadn’t consciously considered how deeply bitter and angry I still was about my relationship with my parents before reaching out to them. It wasn’t just that I had become estranged from them; they were genuinely sources of anger. I thought that as I grew older, the anger had passively shifted to ambivalence. But the outward ambivalence was just how my frustration, which had been building since childhood, exhibited itself. Spending time with my mother and father, from the idle chitchat to the structured interviews, revealed their humanity. And learning about the culture that birthed Shyamal and Bishakha allowed for an absolution to take place. I learned the context for their flaws. Their sadness pained me—independent of its impact on my life. And I can’t be angry anymore. I have to let go.
Without the tumult of our past, I am not sure if my parents and I would be in a better place or just a more neutral one. I am not sure if I would be in a better place. The knot of emotion inextricably linked to the fires of my childhood made washing that pain away feel euphoric.
We all failed, in our own way. Draw a line between any two members of the Deb family and you’ll find a long history of could’ve-done-betters. Even now, my parents have failed to forgive each other, and Bishakha and I have found it challenging to find fully solid ground. I still have resentment about my father leaving the country without warning. But this was never supposed to be a one-step process, and I can be grateful nonetheless for how far we’ve come. What is light without darkness? I’m grateful when my phone rings and Shyamal is shouting “BABA!” on the other end, or when an excessively Scotch-taped holiday card arrives from my mother. Wesley and I can be grateful for each other, both having seen the holes that rocky relationships can leave.
And now that both parents are more active parts of my life, I get to say to them: I’ve seen you before. You’ve gotten much better.
Sattik was right: forgiveness was at the core of this. And it wasn’t just my own. The Deb family was like a web with new threads popping up all over the place. That trip my mother took to India where she picked up rubies for Wesley’s engagement ring? Bishakha had a tearful reunion in Kolkata with Siddhartha and Meera, my aunt and uncle, and they are now in semi-regular contact. Somnath and Susmita have welcomed Wesley and me to their home in Connecticut. Ron has even met Wesley’s brother, Ansel, and bonded over a shared fascination with religion. Atish and Sima are back in my life as a welcome second set of parents. The Hindu figurines that my aunt gave us as part of the blessing ceremony in India hold a prominent place in our bedroom.
Somnath has encouraged me to remember that we are all imperfect in our own ways, my mother and father included, and we can’t fully understand each other’s struggles. I never understood the burden my mother carried, keeping a trauma secret while trying to build a life beyond it. Where I only remember my father’s disappearance to India, Somnath remembers the lonely, helpless man he was before he left.
“Your dad didn’t abandon you,” he told me. “He hung in there and took care of you in his limited and flawed way until you left home and went to college. But he was dying from the inside. There was no medical miracle waiting for him in India. He was emotionally devastated in the United States, but he healed from the inside with his family’s support in India.”
I asked myself repeatedly at the beginning of all this: Is it too late to try this? Is there a point? We are who we are, right? I can now say with resounding force that it was not too late. We are who we are, and now I know who that is.
All it took was the premise of my first-ever joke, that first time I made people laugh from the backseat of a car as a young boy. It was what inspired me to pursue laughter from an audience wherever I could for as long as I could. And it was about my parents getting lost.
I had to turn a shortcut into a long cut.
Epilogue
Both of my parents, in the last year, have begun keeping Wesley and me in the loop about their day-to-day lives. One email I received from Shyamal in the fall detailed a safari trip to Madhya Pradesh, a state in central India. “Though we visited two safaris, all we could see a tiger for was three seconds,” my father wrote. Shyamal’s life was an adventure. I don’t think he’d have it any other way.
And my mother sent her own updates. In the winter, she wrote, “Hi shambo, How did you and wesley survive the weather? In here it was really Very bad. Did you go to work? Stay worm.”
Stay worm. That made me laugh.
I sent both parents early copies of this book in manuscript format. Shyamal’s response was so brilliantly Shyamal.
You have done a wonderful job as a journalist. I am very proud of you. This book may reunite this family and your parents can spend the remaining few years of their l
ives in peace. I shall start writing a book of my own ‘The Untold Story—My life.’ soon. I shall take your help on that.
Of course, Dad. Whatever you need.
The road for my mother and I, on the other hand, has not always been smooth. But that’s okay. I imagine that seeing my feelings about my upbringing in print was difficult for her. But I was lifted by a note she sent while reading an early chapter:
I am getting to know you more. There is so many things in my mind I wanted to tell you. But always remember I love you, no matter what.
Acknowledgments
This has been an intensely personal project that would not have come together if not for the generous support of friends, colleagues, strangers, and family. Nothing has been more difficult and, at the same time, more exhilarating.
My everlasting gratitude goes to the book’s editor, Matthew Daddona, and the team at Dey Street. You doggedly pushed me to be better and never settle, and I am eternally grateful.
To the team at CAA: Jeff Jacobs, David Larabell, and Ali Spiesman, all of whom believed in the project early on, helped shape it, and wholeheartedly encouraged me to pursue it.
To Hasan Minhaj, seeing your Netflix special, Homecoming King, was a seminal moment for me and many other brown people. It inspired me to share my story. Thank you for your support.
To my mother and father, both of whom were so generous with their time and effort in sharing their stories. And to my brother, Sattik, for his warmth and influence throughout my life. Further thanks to my extended family for their magnamity throughout the process: Atish, Sima, Sagnik, Susmita, Somnath, Ron, Trisha, and my aunts and uncles in India—Sudhirendra, Namita, Siddhartha, and Meera.
To Dean Obeidallah and Maysoon Zayid, for creating a space for brown comedians like The Big Brown Comedy Hour—and for booking me.
There are several brown comedians, writers, and actors who are my inspirations and who set the stage for me to tell my story: Kumail Nanjiani, Kal Penn, Aparna Nancherla, Russell Peters, Hari Kondabolu, Aasif Mandvi, Mindy Kaling, Jhumpa Lahiri, and many others. Without the hard work and all you overcame in your respective careers, this book wouldn’t exist.
To Steve Chaggaris, for strenuously fact-checking the book.
To friends like Eli Stokols and Matt Stein, who were not just reliable confidants but excellent early readers.
To Priya Arora, Dr. Haimanti Roy, and Soné Anandpara, for the immensely helpful feedback.
To Manvi Goel and Jayanth Jagalur Mohan, for inviting us to their wedding and providing the nudge I needed for this project.
To Julie LaRue and Myriam Dietrich, for being marvelous proofreaders and raising such a wonderful human.
And, of course, to Wesley: You were a second writer, proofreader, fact-checker, and amazing travel partner. I wouldn’t be here without you.
About the Author
SOPAN DEB is a writer for the New York Times where he has covered culture and basketball. He is also a New York City–based comedian. Before joining the Times, Deb was one of a handful of reporters who covered Donald Trump’s presidential campaign from start to finish as a campaign embed for CBS News. He covered hundreds of rallies in more than forty states for a year and a half and was named a “breakout media star” of the election by Politico.
At the New York Times, Deb has interviewed high-profile subjects such as Denzel Washington, Stephen Colbert, the cast of Arrested Development, Kyrie Irving, and Bill Murray. Deb’s work has previously appeared on NBC, Al Jazeera America, and in the Boston Globe, ranging from examining the trek of endangered manatees to following a class of blind filmmakers in Boston led by the former executive producer of Friends. He won an Edward R. Murrow award for Larger Than Life, a documentary he produced for the Boston Globe, which told the story of NBA Hall of Famer Bill Russell’s complicated relationship with the city of Boston.
He lives in New York City with his fiancée, Wesley.
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Copyright
MISSED TRANSLATIONS. Copyright © 2020 by Sopan Deb. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Cover design by Richard Ljoenes
Cover images © Greens87/Shutterstock (New York); © MuchMania/Shutterstock (India)
FIRST EDITION
Digital Edition APRIL 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-293678-3
Version 03122020
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-293676-9
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