On a humid, monsoon evening last year, on August 5, I was standing outside the domestic terminal of the India Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, waiting for my dad’s plane to land.
When I first heard that my dad would visit us during his short trip to India, I wasn’t sure about the timing. We were going to be just settling in, the kids’ school was going to start the next week, and we would just be adjusting. Not the best time for a visitor.
But as I stood there munching on some Kurkure, I realized how thrilled I was, and how great it would be to see a familiar face. Things had gotten pretty tough. For one, the apartment had decided to fall apart (the tube light over the bed fell down and smashed; once water was gushing out of the electrical sockets in the back room; a mouse had been making our home his/hers, etc.). But more important than that, we had received some serious bad news of the previous day.
As required for all foreign visitors planning to stay in India for more than six months, we had tried to register with the Foreign Resident Registration Office (FRRO) the day before—but we failed and had to endure a horrible experience.
Here’s what I wrote about the FRRO in a blog post last year: “I had the pleasure of spending four hours or so at the FRRO office — which were ultimately fruitless Though it was eye-opening to see that this office–where all foreign nationals staying for more than six months need to register–had a separate line just for Afghan nationals. Leaving aside the larger question of how Afghan nationals are treated once they’re here, seeing their faces reminded me of how removed we in the US are from the people who are impacted by the wars that our government wages around the world.”
Pretty accurate. An educational experience. But it skips over the bad parts.
The worst thing about the FRRO office was not the multiple lines, the long waits in each line, the lack of clarity on procedure, the filthy bathrooms, the mosquitoes, the lack of access to a photo copier, etc. These were troublesome, but bearable, even when dealing with the kids.
The absolute worst thing was the complete uncertainty about whether, after all that waiting, the work we had come to finish would be finished at all. There was an arbitrariness about the procedure, and no way to tell which form would set off which officer.
In other words, it was like going to the DMV.
Our application was denied, finally, because it wasn’t printed on the appropriate “stamp paper.” (When we finally got the FRRO permits several weeks later, it was because we prevailed over an officer trying to find fault with a form that another had already approved. No one even looked twice at the lease.)
And then there was a politics of it all. When one of the officers and I got into an altercation about the procedure, she immediately pulled out the nationalist card: “You people come from America and think that you can do whatever you like. But you must show some respect for the laws of this country.”
For a number of reasons I can’t go into, the FRRO debacle made us wonder whether we would have to move to another flat, a daunting task on many levels.
And so it was fantastic to see my dad as he walked through those doors. It was nice to see the scenarios reversed – the immigrant was returning to India in order to visit his son. And yet I felt myself reverting to childhood, trying to show my dad how much I had learned about India now, how happy my kids were here, how Indian I had become. It was like I was seeking his approval, to say yes, it’s worked out. You’ve lived in the US but kept your Indianness, and instilled it in your kids, too.
Little did any one of us know how much we would need him, and how quickly all other questions would shrink into insignificance.
The next day, August 6, started out smoothly enough.
We all piled into Mohan’s car and went to visit Rajghat, the place where Mahatma Gandhi was cremated. It was a blazing hot day, and the Rajghat pilgrimage is full of long, oshadeless walks, made all the worse when you have to walk the final stretch without shoes. But it was all overshadowed by the beautiful and serene black slab memorial, recalling the long and torturous road to an independence that was itself quite incomplete.
A wonderful lunch at Sharavana Bhavan on Jan Path followed, and by chance we came at the best time to get there: right before the 1:30 hour when the place is absolutely packed with customers. This was the first of many visits to this restaurant, head and shoulders above any other South Indian place around. Just thinking of those dosais and utthapams and chutneys make my mouth water.
Stuffed but ready to continue the trip (my dad had to leave again on August 8), we decided to continue our Gandhi theme with a visit to the “Gandhi Smriti” at Birla House. That’s where Gandhi was fatally shot by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu fundamentalist, who felt Gandhi was too soft on Muslims. Gandhi Smriti (on Tees Janvari Marg) features some excellent multi-media exhibits that bring the time period to life, representing an amazing collaboration between historians, curators, and technicians.
And then it hit me. I had been going around with the others, feeling a little head-achy and tired, but at one point I just sat myself down and told the others we needed to either get home or to a hospital right away. My temperature was soaring, and I could barely sit up.
We dropped the kids off home (with my dad) and went to Max Saket to get a test for Dengue fever. At the office, the doctor took me through a long list of symptoms, and I happily replied to all them in the negative. With each question I felt I was closer and closer to a simpler, manageable, diagnosis.
But at the end of the questions the doctor said: “We’ll take the test, but I’m sure it will come out positive. You clearly have Dengue.” What? “You see,” he explained, “Dengue strikes without giving any other symptoms; when I saw you had no other ones, I knew it was Dengue.”
The results proved the doctor right. I had Dengue fever. And I had not a single clue about what it was, what it did, and how to cure it. But illnesses don’t wait for you to figure them out, and I started getting weaker as the thermometer remained stuck on 104 and above.
How fortunate we were to have another adult in the house at this time, when we had such a crisis right at the beginning of our trip? To have someone who spoke Hindi well and could help get things done? And who already knew our kids? My dad promptly cleared his whole schedule, to be there as long as necessary.
And so, as it turned out, we weren’t just reverting back to the parent-child relationship, we were just experiencing another iteration of it. As I learned, a parent’s responsibility is as long-lasting as their love.
