India Just Happened

Jenna and I on the beach in Calicut. What is not in this picture are the small crowd of Indians snapping pictures of us with their cellphones.



Jenna and I have created a shorthand expression for the unpredictability of this country. We say, “India just happened.” Like the time a random stranger introduced himself to us on the streets of Kolkata and then proceeded to take us on a guided tour of the Mullik Ghat Flower Market underneath the famed Howrah Bridge. “India just happened,” we said at the time.

Or the time we bumped into some Germans on the train from Kurseong to Darjeeling and ended up spending the next four days with them, eating, touring, and having beers. “India just happened,” we said.

Or Friday night in Calicut: a man named Joy who lives in Staten Island but is originally from Kerala bought us dinner and drinks worth more than Rs. 2000.

Jenna and I had come to Calicut to get away for the weekend and also to see Summer and Colleen, two Americans we had met while training in Kolkata. They had found jobs at a Montessori school in Kannur, a town in the far north of Kerala. Calicut—a mid-sized city of a little less than one million people—lies just about halfway between Kannur and Tirur, so that is where we decided to meet.

Summer and Colleen had booked two rooms at a hotel that had a vague resemblance to a Best Western from the 1970s. It stood on a quiet back road a couple of kilometers from the city’s bustling center. Jenna and I checked in around nine in the evening after a short train ride from Tirur then we met Summer and Colleen in the hotel bar.

We hugged, ordered some beers, and began exchanging stories about our two schools. Then, India happened.

“I know you are Americans,” a voice said over my right shoulder. We turned to see a portly man with a thick black mustache, dressed in the typical Keralan man’s uniform: a button-up shirt and dhoti. “I could tell by your accents,” the man continued, four sets of American eyes now staring at him.

“I am an American too.” And to prove it he whipped out a small billfold from his shirt’s chest pocket, opened it up and slapped it proudly on the table. He pointed to a New York state driver’s license.

“You are from America,” Summer said, conceding the point. With that, the man pulled up a chair.

Nearly three months in India have made me lose my American surliness towards unwanted intrusions. It is a fact of life here that, as an outsider, you will get probed and questioned and pulled aside and eagerly interrogated by pretty much anybody. And if they do not have the chutzpah to actually come over and talk to you, they will simply stare at you.

Our new guest certainly did not lack chutzpah. As soon as he sat down, he ordered us another beer and a scotch for himself. He explained that his name was Joy (“I know I know. In America they tease me: people think it is my wife’s name.”) He was originally from a small town outside Kochi, where his father operated a rubber plantation. He had gone to America 18 years ago with his wife and two young children. They had settled on Staten Island, and he now worked as a contractor for the New York City Port Authority doing electrical repairs on docked ships.

The scotch came. Joy poured a bit of carbonated soda water into the glass and downed the mixture in two quick gulps. “We should have dinner, nahn? You are American. I am American. We meet in Kerala. Fate, nahn? It will be on me,” he said with a gusto that revealed his evident pride. Joy had found natives of his adopted land in his native land. He was not going away until he had shown us a good time.

We entered the hotel’s restaurant, an interior room adjacent to the patio bar. The restaurant was overly air-conditioned and its décor reminded me of a cheap Chinese buffet in America—complete with a backlit fish tank.

They did not serve alcohol in the restaurant, so Joy ordered another scotch and downed it before leaving the bar. “It is a family restaurant,” he said, a little derisively.

We sat down—and like a regal maharajah setting out a luxurious repast for a group of foreign dignitaries—Joy proceeded to order half the menu. Beef curry. Fish masala. Fish curry. Chicken curry. Paneer masala. Naan. Parathas. Rice. “What do you want?” he asked each of us in turn. We would say what we were thinking of ordering, then Joy would order that and then another dish. The food came in three waves of trays carried by bowtie-clad orderlies straining under the weight of the dishes.

“Look at my elephant,” Joy said during dinner, as we all passed around the dishes and began to get full—our once-expandable American stomachs shrunken by our Indian eating habits. Joy passed around his iPhone. The phone displayed a picture of an Indian elephant standing anachronistically next to a small car in the cobblestoned driveway of a modern house.

“His name is Ganesh, of course. My family has owned him for years,” Joy said.

“Why does your family have an elephant?” I asked.

“He helps on the rubber plantation,” he scanned to another picture, this one of Ganesh in what appeared to be a more natural setting for him: a forest clearing dappled in sunlight. In the picture, Ganesh was pulling a felled rubber tree with his trunk.

“My father bought him a long time ago. You know, almost everyone in our town used to have an elephant. It was the only way you could get work done back then—carrying heavy things, riding through the forest, helping on the plantation. Now, machines can do all these things. Having an elephant now is actually quite a burden,” Joy said.

I asked what the going rate for an elephant was these days.

“A cheap one costs about 15 lakh (or about Rs. 150,000, which is a little more than $3,200). But then maintenance, oh my gosh…” Joy trailed off, putting his hand on his forehead in a sign of exasperation. “I spend Rs. 1,500 per day feeding him.” He shook his head.

“Will your father sell it?” I asked innocently.

Joy looked down. “My father just passed last month. That is why I am here. I came back to see him before he passed. And now I am dealing with the estate.”

The four of us looked at Joy sympathetically, but he promptly snapped back into host mode. “He was eighty. A good life.” He gestured to the beef curry. “Spicy, huh?”

Joy then talked of his family in America. His daughter was a doctor and had just been married the previous year. His son was an electrical engineer. “My son went to Rutgers. My daughter went to St. John’s in New York. The American Dream, nahn? That is why I went so long ago when they were young. I wanted them to have a better life.”

As the dinner wound on, Joy definitely gave the impression of a man caught in two worlds. He spoke brazenly of American society and politics. (“This Obama…I am disappointed.”) He grumbled in the American tradition (“New York City is terrible now. You know, when Giuliani was mayor…no crime.”) But he also had firm roots in Kerala, a connection that would never be severed.

“I want to move back here with my wife when we retire. She is a nurse in the States now. But we both want to come back. It is quiet here. The people are friendly. And, of course, this is home,” he shrugged.

He studied the clothes he was wearing. “In America, I wear jeans. But when I come back: always a dhoti. You know what they say, ‘When in Rome…’ Well, I say, ‘When in Kerala, wear a dhoti!’”

With only half the food eaten, Summer, Colleen, Jenna and I sat back in our chairs languidly.

“This was our Thanksgiving,” Summer said. We all chuckled, but Joy laughed heartily, a habit of his I had noticed whenever one of us made a joke. He was playing the good host to the end.

We exchanged phone numbers and emails with Joy and then hugged to say goodbye. “Have a good time in Kerala. I hope you remember me,” he said, somewhat sadly, as we walked out of the restaurant. It was after eleven: the latest I had been up in weeks.

Jenna and I began walking towards our room, Summer and Colleen behind us. We all looked at each other and shook our heads. The look said it all: India just happened.