The Faces In The Calendar

I leaf through the pages of a calendar that I bought from a friend, who, on empty weekends, volunteers fora social work organization in Houston that aims to provide education to unprivileged children in India. Eachof its twelve pages features the face of a child, invariably smiling.

Except for the one on the month of June, in which the child’s face is painted, in which the smudgedcircles of kajal below her eyes are whitened and the rough crevasses around her lips are smoothened, by a thinlayer of moist chalk powder. She stares stoically away from the camera. Having battled the daily horrors ofliving, unaware that they could die tomorrow, bloodily, if they belong to a minority community, or day aftertomorrow, quietly from radioactive decays, if they are just Indians, the rest of the faces in the calendarhave been asked to smile for the camera.

They smile, unaware that their smiles are designed to evoke pathos in pseudo-patriotic living rooms ofNorth American desis. The calendar, which has been aesthetically designed by the Dallas branch of theorganization, is meant for that neat rectangle above the fireplace, next to the crystal wares, because it hasUS, Canadian and Indian holidays. "Muslim holidays are subject to change based on the actual visibility ofthe moon", the back cover says.

Each page describes a project that this organization is undertaking, some are new projects, some are oldones of which I have heard when I was in Bangalore, but each is a novel one aimed at educating children invillages. I have closely watched the grit, the sweat and the dream that goes into realizing each project. Ihave seen my friends, some of whom were graduate students at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore,volunteering for the same organization.

They would leave on Saturday mornings for the nearby villages to teach the children and return on Sundayevenings. They never spoke much with the other students about these clandestine trips; they just paid theprice in terms of delayed thesis submissions, sleepless weeknights and by battling advisors, who believe thatthey could make or break their students’ lives.

Lives, the advisors fail to realize, are not so brittle. One such student, who worked in the interfacebetween science and engineering, submitted a stunning PhD thesis and joined the NBA (Narmada Bachaon Andolan, notNational Basketball Association). Another dear friend is struggling as she divides her time between teachingand learning.

My friend in Houston joined the Houston branch of the same organization during the period of alienation andangst that comes between an F1 and H1 visa, a period known as ‘F1 with OPT (Optional Practical Training)’.This period is like a second adolescence in the life of an Indian graduate student in US, when one has todecide whether to return Home or embrace Aloneness, whether to remain Indian or become sub-altern, whether toraise their children as Indians or confused desis.

During this period, one is supposed to convince oneself to do the latter, and thus requires interactionwith people who have made similar journeys. So F1-with-OPTs and even fresh H1s flock to join suchorganizations, and contribute to what is called their ‘floating membership’. They float in search of thenearest shores to anchor - a bachelor in search of a suitable girl, a divorcee in search of a live-in lover, ajob-hopper in search of possible networks, and an H4 wife in search of future openings in H4 circles.

H4 is a dependent visa of H1 and many of the H4 women I have known lead what is known as an H4-life, a lifein which material pleasures are bought at the price of aloneness, a life in which the ancient concepts oflove, marriage or children rot slowly against all attempts of preservation. A newly found noun called ‘Freedom’climbs up their limbs in the form of liquid pleasure as they drive their Toyota Camrys. It glistens like anellipsoidal raindrop on the windshield, and when touched, disintegrates into three vowels and four consonants.

These H4 circles are integral parts of the numerous barbeques, dinner parties and social gatherings thatthe various US chapters of these organizations arrange. In these parties, men and women do not mingle. Theyphase-separate like soured milk. The women discuss delayed pregnancies, newly bought $1500 dinner sets, andhow their kids have learnt to pronounce ‘water’, ‘pig’, or ‘hello’ with a perfect American accent.The men huddle together in a not so remote corner of the room, with gin glasses in hands, discussing cars,fund-raising possibilities for the organization and breasts. (Picture this: Mrs. Chatterjee is serving samosasas a side for the gin, and as her anchal slips from the shoulder, two men with telescopic vision, as ifon cue, comment: ‘36 C, a perfect Bengali’)

The fund raising sources of the US chapters include organizing movie shows, concerts of Bollywoodperformers, beauty pageants and fashion shows. In a recently organized fashion show at Houston, a few thousanddollars were raised for the organization, where the whole show, I was told, was run by the second generationIndian-Americans. It was designed according to the rules of post-modern America: a parade of past and futurecontenders of Miss India-Texas, punctuated by David Letterman-ish jokes and semi-socialist skits. Served likea sampler plate with a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

Diasporic parents clapped as their kids dressed up like Third World village children and begged forliteracy. The children carried books in their hands, perhaps a Webster dictionary or an Indian cookbook, whichthey could not read, and pleaded to be taught. English, I believe. They smiled smiles that exposed theirbraces, smiles that diasporic parents - who are trained at converting memories into nostalgia - captured indigital cameras and camcorders.

Pretty, very pretty Indian-American women, draped in the latest designer clothes from New York, descendedon the stage like First World angels. Some had their hairs colored blonde, some red, their gym-curved, tonedbodies shimmering behind translucent dresses. When they had marched to edge of the ramp, they stuck out theirchiseled legs, turned around, waited for the audience to clap at the curvature of their posterior and returnedto the centre of the stage. They returned to the Third World faces, opened their books and taught them toread. English, I guess.

As the angels marched around, sometimes in extravagant Indian dresses, sometimes shredding to minimalism,unable to bear the bloodiness of battling cultures, the audience cheered like a Mardi Gras crowd, just a shademore sophisticated. And I made a journey Home.

I saw my friend, dressed in that green salwar bought from Maleswaram, waiting outside the main gateof the Institute on a Saturday morning. Bus number 252 would take her to the Majestic station of Bangalore,just in time for the 8:15 local train. Then she would travel another hour to reach those faces in thecalendar, those smiles without braces, smiles with broken teeth, bel garlands hanging from their disheveledhair or butterfly ribbons lacing their intricately woven hair.

She would reach that other face too, the one staring away, with kohl powder below her eyes and chalk powderon her cheeks. She would touch their smiles, feel the air escaping through their broken teeth, tuck theirmisbehaving hair behind their ears, dust their powdered cheeks, love them enough and also teach them how toread Kannada. She would leave them on Sunday evenings and return to combat the flaring tempers of her thesisadvisor.

This Sunday evening. And the next. And the next.

Till someone, somewhere in the train, in the bus or at Majestic, discovers on one revengeful Sunday eveningthat she belongs to the minority community. The angels of the First World can take over then. Not now.

Saikat Chakraborty is a graduate student, department of Chemical Engineering, University of Houston,USA