Swimming in two currents

✒️ Today’s newsletter features an essay by a member of The Grove. The Grove is a small writing collective I created to work with Anya, Rishab and Jess, three extremely intelligent, thoughtful and learned people in their mid-twenties. These pieces are the result of our reading and writing together over four months.

This is a story from the perspective of the mother of my great grandmother, who lived through the turn of the 20th century (1900). It has elements of truth – the basic plot line – and elements of fiction – her ways of understanding and emotionally responding to all that happened. Back then, and now.

Sit down at this table with me, child, this table that I do not recognise, made from a material I do not recognise, in this land that you seem to feel so fervently is lost to you. Let me cook you something, you look too skinny.

I was married to my husband when I was younger than you are now, and had my first child much younger than you are today. We lived in Punjab, in the north western part of India. My husband was a dreamer, in the language of your world. In mine, he was an irresponsible and selfish pissant. He used to go to the docks of the Gujarat province under the pretense of work – he was a chef’s assistant, a trader. Of sweets and spices, if you can imagine.

The whole world was always on his tongue, at his fingertips. He would go away often, sometimes for weeks at a time, to the ports on the other side of the country in Gujarat. I used to gleefully imagine the scorn he might have received, a man from a small world out of place in the vastness of the dock. One day, I myself felt the way that the whole universe spun into place around that dock. I’ll tell you about that later. Suffice to say that eventually the scorn faded, and today it brings me joy to picture Kurpuram walking along old wooden planks over the glittering sea in between fishers and travelers, blown in by wind and ocean currents, soon to be blown out by the same forces of energy. He would have felt at home in the listlessness of his own body, the boundlessness of his imagination, the winds on the dock allowing the wind in his mind to feel at peace.

One day, the wind picked up in his body at the same time as his mind, and he blew onto a boat bound for East Africa. It took me a while to realise that he wasn’t coming home. It took me less than a minute to realise I would be leaving India, likely never to return. What life did a woman have without her husband? My family wouldn’t take me back. There would be no way of providing for myself or my child. No other man would be able to touch me with my consent, though they would all be allowed to touch me without it. It would be a life worse than death. So I packed a bag for myself and my child and went to the dock.

I was furious, I’m sure you can imagine. I stoked the fury carefully, then set it to one side and focused on the journey. I found that myself and my child were protected by watchful eyes as we crossed the country from Punjab to Gujarat. The path across religions and cultures was a treacherous one: the British had done their work well and nurtured the mistrust that we all regard each other with. Yet each day someone fed us and put shelter over our heads. And so each day I grew further from home than I had ever been, and I found that I could not look back. Finally, we arrived at the port in Gujarat.

I saw the sea! Something rose and threatened to break from my chest, though it did not of course. This magnetic thing, the ocean was like my heart. It pushed and pulled with a strength unswayed by love or passion. Glistening and still in the sun, wrathful under stormy skies. I watched my reflection sway on top of its sun dappled depths before melting into the lightness of the sky and the darkness of the sea. I took my own steps on the wooden planks that brought people out to stand on the sea. I held my child close. It took a while to find out where Kurpuram went. East Africa. I found a boat, stepped onto its rocking body, let go of the land, let go of my life, held onto my child, felt new.