A Search for Roots Saga: Part 1

by Neneh Kumar (United Kingdom (Great Britain))

A leap into the unknown India

One of my earliest memories was standing up next to Abijith in year four, to the surprise of him and the rest of the class, to declare myself an Indian. It was wear-your-traditional-clothes-to-school-day, a mufti-day spin-off, which was being trialed across South London schools. The concept certainly felt rubbery new. I still carry this element of surprise with me, hidden beneath the afro curly tufts of hair that poke out underneath my bun. In fact, this very hour I managed to alarm the lady at immigration, responding to her accusation “What brought you to India?” with a notably more self-assured tone than that with which I began my travels, “I am from India”. I have felt an overwhelming sense of belonging this past month, a feeling I had not bargained for when asking my grandpa if I could stay with his brother in the home they grew up in. In familial circles or otherwise, I’ve always been either too white or too black, but here, I felt like a foreigner who’d simply returned home for the first time. Home, I soon learnt, existed strictly within the red brick confines of an apartment complex - everything beyond this was no-man’s land. It was four storeys high, with my family name imprinted above the drive. The first floor was for Jayandhi, the second floor was Appapa’s, the third Ammama’s and the fourth was mine. The terrace on the roof belonged to the flowers and the birds. It was on the terrace that I’d begin my day; plucking flowers from rose bushes in the morning for Ammama to offer the God’s by noon. It was relied upon with such cosmic certainty that new flowers would bloom in the place of those uprooted; an intensity of knowing that reflected the inevitability of my return to the town that birthed my grandpa. His brother would join me as I was nearing the end of this morning ritual to feed his caged birds, all 100 of them. With the hoarse voice of a man recovered from throat cancer, he’d lecture me on why his Sri Lankan roots were stronger than his Indian, more worthy and more respectable. He’d re-join the path of his favourite tangent: the legacy of my great great grandfather Kanakasundaram Pillai, as if all streams of conversation before it had been a distraction. As he’d remind me of the significance of the great Tamil scholar, so significant that a date in the Indian calendar was dedicated to him, I’d become lost in the depths of the sea that flowed beneath the balcony and between the streets. The sea was a furious mix of motorbikes, lorries, children and sarees, a sight far beyond the imagination of any Londoner. It took one week for it to dawn on me that that cherished sensation of being immersed in the waves of a foreign land was not something that I would experience this holiday. Indian blood or not, these seas were too dangerous for a Western girl. I felt like the Lady of Shallot, dreaming of civilisation from her enchanted tower. When the time finally came to venture outside – not without the protection of Devi, a family friend whose mother had once nurtured my own, and Ganesh, a driver with fight enough to tackle the roads – I was saddened to leave behind Ammama, who always provided such warm company on the long days spent at home. Dear Ammama had grown too delicate to join us on what Appapa insisted, with cartoon-like wisdom and wit, was a mad, almost unthinkable expedition to the Bay of Bengal. After all, who’d want to leave an enchanted tower? It was on the return journey that I realised what this trip had truly afforded me which, in part, was crystallised by the pangs of hunger that sang aloud for Ammama's cooking. It was a sense of home. The images of children playing in the Bay of Bengal with dampened silk rolled up to their knees will forever flash upon that inward eye, but the blissful sense of home will continue to warm my belly even when Ammama’s dahl is 5000 miles across the waters.