Of my family
Kiran Bhat Subrahmanya Bhat Annapurna Bhat
Myself
My father my mother
Appa Amma
Appa Amma
These were the first words I said
Amma, then Appa
Father Mother
The two people who became
My family
My entire world
To describe my family
How does one even start?
Being a son to a set of parents is difficult
To explain how I feel about them is worse yet
If you took out all the thorns of a rose
And held them in your hands
That would be my parents
If you took the time to smell a rose
That scent too
would be my parents
Being a son to my parents has its ups and downs like anything else
But without my parents I wouldn’t be me
And without me my parents wouldn’t be themselves either
The first person I knew in this world was my mother
The umbilical cord
Connected my body to hers
Her soul to mine
My emotions to hers
It was as if the universe said
To these two souls
That you two must be together
That you two must help each other in this world
Together
And that is why I was put in her womb
Then I met my father
Afterwards
Many months after
Without the promise of the Gods
But he held me too
Like we were one in the same
I was born and brought up in the USA
But I was also born in Mangalore
Or that was where my soul came to be
Let me explain
My parents did migrate from India to the USA
But then there was this wedding to attend in Mangalore
So they went back that way
My parents wanted to start a family
But were too busy in New York to do so
My mother was ready to have a child
So during the wedding, they tried harder to make it work
My parents were successful in a way
My mother got pregnant with me
And then eight months later I was born
But my story doesn’t even start there
My story has to begin
All the way with the beginning of my people
About a hundred years back
In order to do poojas for Brahmin kings
My ancestors were brought to the Mangalore coast
Over time we became known as Havyaka Brahmins
Whether this is truly how we came to become a clan
I’ll never know
But the myths behind family genealogy are more powerful than any true tale
That is something life has taught me well
This is also not my story
This is the story of my parents
Let me start over again
For my father to come to the USA
Was a lot of work
He was born in Kasaragod
With the goal and ambition of migrating to another place
He was good at maths and sciences
And was able to study in the USA
My mother
Was born in Coorg
My grandfather was a banker
He was taken all over Karnataka for his work
My mother therefore grew up all around the region
And ended up studying in Manipal
Around which time her parents shifted to Mysore
Just like me
For my mother there wasn’t a fixed place to call home
But unlike me
The place my mother considers home
Is wherever her family lives
My father was arranged to be married to my mother
He started sending letters to my mother to get to know her
She liked how his personality came off in his writing
And so they fell in love
An arranged marriage became a love marriage
A life together and not apart was started
My father did his residency in New York
My mother later found her residency in Georgia
They eventually decided to go to Georgia to find their home
It was all for work
And yet Georgia became our place
Then there was my auntie’s wedding
Then there was my birth
My soul came to reach this body in Mangalore
But I was born in Jonesboro, Georgia
A small town
Of just a bit under a thousand people
Where people are usually white or black
Not really immigrants
Though nowadays there’s a lot of Vietnamese people
But at that time immigrants were hard to find
Jonesboro, GA
A place where the Battle of Jonesboro was fought
Where Gone with the Wind was inspired
Where slavery was etched into the history
And as a result all of the racial tensions that come with it
Being a product of Jonesboro, GA wasn’t the easiest for me
But this isn’t my story
It’s the story of my mother and father
Two immigrants from Karnataka to Georgia
How my mother and father
Feel about being from Georgia
I still don’t think I know
They do like it there
And my father calls Georgia his home
But it’s also been over thirty years
One half of their life in the USA
Another half in India
My parents would have had to have changed
To fit their new environment
Certainly the mother and father who stand before me
And the ones I saw in my childhood
Would be different
I can imagine how they would have been back then
But I don’t think that would have been the truth
Or reality
Of who they truly were
Because every second any second all seconds
I see my parents
And in those seconds in all of them
Those are my parents
My parents learned well to adapt to the USA
They went once in a while to Mysore to see family
Once in a while my grandparents would come to the USA too
My parents were so busy establishing themselves
Learning to become a part of the community
Give back to community
Thrive in the community
That things like maintaining our heritage
Making friends
Going out and seeing things
Those were not really their priority
Now they are different
Now they donate money to people in need
Give scholarships in India and the USA both
Help a lot and ask little
But there were the early years
And they had to do so much to become part of the USA
That was something I never really paid attention to
Because I had my own childhood to deal with
So whatever hardships my parents faced
To make it so that we had enough to survive
To make this place our home
They have to tell
And not me
I only remember the people at Walmart
Telling us to go back home
Or the strange looks people gave us at hotels
When we dressed up in Indian wear
In some ways our immigrant story
Is like any other immigrant story
To go to another place
To survive it
To learn the language
To become part of the culture
To change one’s lifestyle
To make one’s old culture
A part of the new culture
It creates something new
And that becomes your way of being
I don’t think my parents went all the way there
To change
I think they came for work
To give our lives resources and opportunities
To give me a chance
To become something
(And then I went all the way back to India
Despite having everything in the USA
That they worked hard for
I’m sure they think about that a lot)
But once again this isn’t my immigrant story
It’s their immigrant story
Nowadays
My parents remain in the USA
They come once in a while to India
To see me and other loved ones
But to them India isn’t home
That small town of Georgia is their place
It’s not how I can live
I need to be rooted
I don’t like not knowing where I came from
I don’t think I can live away from my heritage
Despite not being born and brought up around it.
But my parents are far from their birthplaces
Yet are satisfied to call
The USA their home
For some people it’s war that causes them to leave their country
For others it is for family or for work
And then for a smaller fraction it’s a chance to adventure or experience something else
Ultimately it’s just what our heart tells us
What destiny divines for us in the cosmic sands
Home is home and we feel it but we cannot control it
We can go anywhere and become a part of any place
So long as we will it
My parents are doctors
And proud members
Of the Indian-American community of Georgia
I don’t think we can call their narrative an immigrant tale
It’s the tale of how two people became Americans
This is the tale of two natives, not two immigrants
