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Changing of the Guard

A Whole New World

Proud, somewhat stunned owners of brand-new passports, my mother, my sister, and I packed up our belongings to leave India in the summer of 1965. I had just turned seven. We made our way to Palam International Airport in New Delhi for our flight to Aden and then to London. We were beside ourselves with excitement as we boarded the plane. We gripped the armrests tightly as the plane rumbled down the runway and ascended into the dark night.

In those days, international flights were luxurious experiences. My parents dressed formally, and Mummy had cleaned us kids up as much as she could. Soon, the glamorous flight attendants arrived with an array of exotic drinks and foods. Everything I put into my mouth was a brand-new sensation.

It was cold and rainy when we landed in London, so our first stop was at Harrods department store. I emerged transformed, in a stylish trench coat, baggy trousers, and shiny black shoes. We then went to see one of the iconic sights of London: the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. This was an apt metaphor for what was happening in my family: a new regime, my father replacing my mother as the dominant influence in my life.

Bewildered in Barbados

After a few magical days in London, we boarded a flight to Bridgetown, Barbados. We spent the first couple of weeks at the Hilton Hotel on the beach - the first time I saw the ocean. My mother and I sat on chaise lounges on the sand, being served drinks with little umbrellas in them and fried flying fish, a uniquely Barbadian delicacy.

Barbados is a tiny speck of an island in the South Caribbean, just 21 miles north to south and 11 miles east to west. With just over 235,000 people, it was a far cry from colorful, chaotic, crowded India.

We moved into a big colonial-style house, acquired a black Labrador we named Bello, and slowly adjusted to our drastically different new lives. Mummy and I were "innocents abroad" in this unfamiliar environment. We had always been extremely close, but now we were joined in this adventure together. Manju was too young to experience much culture shock, and my father was deeply engrossed in his work. I helped my mother cook, and we figured things out together as best we could.

One day, an old man stopped by the house and offered to transform our garden for a small amount of money.?The trusting souls we were, my mother and I hired him. He took our money, and we never saw him again. When we sheepishly confessed to my father, he shook his head. "You two are the same - too bhola" (meaning innocent or gullible).

My school was called Holy Family, and I found it utterly delightful. I had never been in a school with girls. I soon had a crush on a little girl with curly blonde hair. This was a Catholic school and Bible study was required. I won a prize for being the best student in Bible class, having virtually memorized the children's version we were using! My glowing report card was filled with As and included the comment "Raj is an ambitious young student." I wonder what the teacher saw in me at age eight to come to that conclusion.

I thought my father would be proud, but he seemed unimpressed by my grades and the teacher's comment. He remained a distant, intimidating figure to me. It did not help that soon after arriving in Barbados, he grew a beard. It came in thick and bushy, making him appear even more formidable than he already did.

Papa had been diagnosed with asthma some years earlier and used an inhaler to treat it when an attack came on. One Sunday afternoon, he and I were in our large living room at opposite ends. An asthma attack came on, and he needed his inhaler, which was lying on a table close to where I was playing. Struggling to breathe, he gestured to me to bring him the inhaler. Not understanding what he wanted, I picked up the inhaler and started mimicking the way he used it. To get my attention, my father took off his slipper and threw it across the room. I was not looking his way, and the slipper hit me squarely on the side of my head. I was stunned. Being struck by a shoe is considered a grave insult in our culture. I already didn't feel worthy of being his son. Now the thought arose in me, "Oh God, he hates me."

That framing of the episode stayed with me for decades. Eventually, I understood that this was just a story I had made up, since I was so afraid and unsure around this man. I realized that desperate people do desperate things. I asked him about the episode decades later; he couldn't recollect it. What stood out as a defining moment in my childhood was a nonevent for him.

But it certainly affected me. I felt I needed to reinvent myself. That meant rejecting Pappu, the nickname my mother had lovingly given me. I needed to become Raj, the person my second-grade teacher described as ambitious. Perhaps then I could eventually win my father's approval.

Meanwhile, my parents were learning to live with each other. My mother started wearing Western clothes for the first time in her life. She experienced her greatest freedom and joy in the water, venturing far out into the ocean until she was a tiny speck to us. But mostly she remained sweet, simple, unsophisticated Usha - a wonderful homemaker unequipped to manage more sophisticated household affairs.

Determined to make her a woman of the world, Papa decided to teach her how to drive our little British Hillman Imp. We drove to an open field. Manju and I sat on the grass and watched the lesson. A sloping ridge ran along one edge of the field; my mother steered parallel to it but then drifted toward it. Soon both right wheels were on the steep incline. Suddenly, the car flipped onto its left side, its wheels slowly spinning. Somehow, our parents clambered out of the car. A few passersby helped tip the car back onto its wheels. Neither of my parents was hurt, and the car was fine too. But it left Usha deeply shaken and effectively ended her driving aspirations.

My father started to express something about her that would become a frequent refrain for the next 53 years of their lives together: "Why are you so helpless? I can't count on you for anything." He was trying to mold her into something she wasn't. She developed a deep sense of insecurity and inferiority. Since I identified so closely with her, every one of his criticisms of her stung deeply and felt like a rebuke of me as well.

Serene in Salinas

Nearly two years after we arrived in Barbados, my father came home with a glossy brochure of a place in California called Salinas. It had a picture of a man and a dog sitting on a hill overlooking a city surrounded by lush green agricultural fields. He told us that he had just accepted a job there to work on wheat research with a company called World Seeds, Inc.

Narayan always valued the journey as much as the destination. He loved creating new and interesting experiences for himself and the family. As it would take a couple of months for us to receive our green cards for the United States, we flew first to Winnipeg, Canada, to meet my father's friends from his doctoral days. A few weeks later, we flew to Montréal, which was hosting a six-month-long World's Fair called Expo 67. We spent a month there, staying with a warm French-Canadian family and soaking in the culture of that beautiful city. We enjoyed the many attractions of the fair, which featured pavilions from 62 countries. We then flew to New York City for a few days. We climbed the Empire State Building and toured the United Nations before finally boarding a plane for San Francisco.

A city of 50,000 people, Salinas was the center of an incredibly fertile valley known as the "lettuce bowl" of America. John Steinbeck was born there and had made the little city famous through his writings. It was 50 miles from San Jose and about 100 miles from San Francisco. We were the only Indians in Salinas and considered quite exotic.

We settled into an apartment on a cul-de-sac next to a golf course, just a couple of blocks from Los Padres Elementary School, my home away from home for the next two years. This is where I truly blossomed. School was sheer delight for me. I was successful and popular, and my confidence grew rapidly. I brought home report cards filled with straight A-plusses. Though I was never particularly athletic, I excelled at a schoolyard game called Four Square. Instead of just throwing the ball straight on, I applied all kinds of spin to it so that it took off in unexpected ways after it bounced. The kids marveled at my mysterious Eastern wizardry. My teachers, Mr. Walton and Mr. Roman, put me in charge of the classroom when they had to step away. The atmosphere was lighthearted and fun. At the end of the school day, we learned square dancing in the playground, getting to touch actual girls. How good could life get?

My best friend was Jay Peterson, a pint-sized freckled kid with curly red hair who lived in the same complex. We were at each other's homes or on the phone every evening, as I helped him with his homework. Jay and I were free-range kids, exploring every corner of the little city on our banana-seat Sting-ray bicycles with high handlebars. We sneaked into convenience stores and nervously flipped through the Playboy magazines they kept in the back. Because my father had not adopted the American practice of giving kids an allowance, I had no money at all....