Things Untitled

On that particular Wednesday morning Titin did not have any classes. But since she is one of those students who has taken it upon herself to prove to the rest of the world that just-because-I-am-from-Third-World-that-does-not-mean-I-am-any-less-smarter-than-you, the absence of the classes did not exactly mean bidding a goodbye to her books for the morning. So Titin had taken her books, photocopies and notebooks to Starlight Cafe which was literally half a block away from the campus. And happily for Titin, she got her favorite window seat. Titin had sat on her chair looking around for a couple of minutes. Creamy yellow walls with brown borders, photographs and paintings of local artists. The happy-go-lucky Latino with a guitar smiled at her from one of the photographs. A little girl in a green ghaghra and yellow choli stared at her from another.

As she stared at the girl and her little fingers covering the toothy smile, Titin wondered where the girl is from—Rajasthan, Gujarat, outskirts of Delhi...where? Is she from a small town or a village? What’s the name of that place? The title did not say anything suggestive about the girl’s place of origin. Only “Little Girl in India.”Of course for most people who would visit the cafe, the word “India” would be sufficient. A sufficient explanation of where the girl came from. Not for Titin though. As she sat there staring at the little girl in the picture, Titin suddenly wanted to know more about her. What’s her name? Does she go to school? Has she ever been to school? How many brothers and sisters does she have? Was she paid by the photographer? Did the photographer ask her to place her right palm on her mouth? If not, why is she so eager to hide her laugh? Who taught her to hide her smile? The more Titin wanted to know about the girl, the more she became aware of the fact that she was in fact sitting amongst the photographs of several brown men and women. South Asia. South America. Southeast Asia. Central America. The man with the guitar. The woman in a coffee-plantation. Child smiling widely. Man waving to who knows whom. Brown bodies. Smiling. Complacent. Shy. All hostilities erased. Titin decided on her morning drink exactly at that precise moment when she realized there wasn’t a single white face or body hanging from the walls.

Titin needed a cup of coffee. A strong cup of black coffee without any sugar. She got up. Ordered. Came back to her seat with the coffee mug on her right hand and the wallet on the left. As soon as her buttocks touched the surface of the chair, the door of the cafe opened. In walked Prof. Mariani. Prof. Martin Mariani. Titin’s program director. A white woman followed him. Titin did not exactly know whether she was with him or not. Titin stood up—the remnants of her postcolonial education. Even after six whole months, Titin’s body reacted in funny ways around professorial authority. The way it was taught to do during the first twenty-four years of her life. Stand up. Nod your head. Look down. Follow this bodily ritual with a “Good Morning, sir.” Although, Titin’s mind had revolted at the use of the word “sir” to refer to her teachers, she had followed all the other bodily rituals obediently. Because those were the things to do. No-one questioned them. Titin could not afford to do either. As she now stood up almost instinctively, for a split second she also realized that this is not the thing to do here. Prof. Mariani waved at her. With a dismissive gesture of his right hand asked her to seat down and then began to walk towards her table. The white woman followed him.

Titin looked closely at the woman. She was tall—almost 6 feet—something that will be considered “tall” in Kolkata for even men. So she was tall, her long legs wrapped in a pair of well-tailored black trousers. Her hair was long—almost waist length and untied. If Titin’s mother or any of her aunts had seen this woman or her hair, they would have described them as “golden”. But here, the official word is “blond”. Her hair fell in two neat divisions along her square shoulders making her peacock blue dress shirt almost invisible. Her right hand tightly clutched an olive green and pink backpack which now embraced only her right shoulder. As Titin’s eyes met hers, she smiled. It wasn’t the polite smile which people here throw at each other. Rather, her smile seemed to say, “I know you—at least a little bit.” As Titin smiled back—politely, she realized that the woman’s smile is making her uncomfortable. She looked at the woman in her eyes, smiled at her and quickly reverted her gaze to Prof. Mariani.

“Let me introduce you guys. Tilanjali, this is Carrie. Carrie, this is Tilanjali. I guess you guys have communicated to each other before.”

So this is Carrie? As Titin shook hands and said the customary “Hi”, she looked at the woman more closely. So maybe that’s why this woman, Carrie, had smiled at her knowingly. Oh,no, that can’t be—she didn’t know me! And God knows, this campus has more than one Indian! But maybe, she had looked into your brown skin, black hair and black eyes and had known instantly that you’re one of the kind—you know,the kind she studies—the kind they call “South Asian women” here! Titin didn’t exactly know how to begin the conversation. She was never really good at that. But she knew how to smile and in her experience the ubiquitous smiles often solve lots of problems. As she sat there now, smiling at Carrie, she wondered whether Carrie knew or had understood that she was having this whole silent conversation with her own self—and in that conversation she was silently ripping apart Carrie’s smile.

And as she had hoped, Carrie began the conversation. “Hi, Tilanjali.” Titin couldn’t help noticing that Carrie hasn’t yet learnt to say the soft T’s of the Indian names. But Carrie had continued, “So how do you like this place?” What do you say to a question like that? What is she expected to say? That I love this place because it has three supermarkets, two malls and four multiplexes? Or is she supposed to say, well, I hate this place because everyone keeps looking at me as if I am from another planet and that I am the only person of color in two of my graduate seminars and one of two in the other? Or is she supposed to say, actually I hate this place because it’s intensely racist, but I love the library which is better than what the best universities in India or any other Third World country for that matter, can offer and that’s exactly why I’m here and you should know that? But the truth of the matter is, Titin did not say any of those things. She has learnt in the last six months, that facial expressions can do a lot. She is not yet sure whether they say a lot or not, but they do help you a lot to avoid those questions to which there aren’t any straightforward answers. So Titin screwed up her lips, moved her eyebrows and nose and even said “It’s okay, I guess.” Prof. Mariani chimed in. “I’ll leave you here, Carrie. I guess you two will have a lot to talk about”. He didn’t wait for an answer. He waved at them, turned back, picked up his to-go cup of coffee from the counter and left. Left with Carrie alone, Titin tried to think, why is it that we will have a lot to talk about? Oh yes, Carrie is a South Asianist. Or at least, she is trying to be one.

She remembered, that before coming to this country, before coming to this school. she had exchanged a couple of emails with Carrie. Three, to be precise. Carrie had written that she is working on South Asian Literature and that’s what she is planning to write her dissertation on. Titin had politely written, well, South Asia is a subcontinent with at least six countries and I am not sure that there is one South Asian Literature. At best, you can talk about multiple South Asian literatures. So what are you working on precisely? And as if to prove her political correctness, Carrie had written back that she is learning Hindi and wants to work on a comparative project involving Indian women’s writings in English and Hindi. Then, in her third and last email, she had informed Titin, “Well, for the next year or so, we will be switching our places. I will be in India, learning Hindi and you will be here in New Manchester.” Titin, at that point, did not think about it anymore. After all, there were so much else to pay attention to—formal, informal and official. But now, as she reflected back on their brief email exchanges, she realized that she, after all, had formed a visual image of Carrie even before meeting her. In her mind, Carrie was not this tall, almost professional looking woman in black slacks and dress shirt, but a thin, almost small brown-haired woman who wore glasses and usually dressed in torn jeans and tied-and-dyed shirts.

Titin also thought of the email Carrie had sent three months ago in the program’s list-serve. From India. Meant for everybody to read. Titin had felt a strange sensation as she read through Carrie’s email. Written from India. Probably from a small internet cafe somewhere in New Delhi. Or Jaipur. The connection probably was slow. Very very slow. Places Titin knew kind of well. Places from where Titin had completed her on-line applications to American PhD programs . Titin had taken a print-out of the email—just for curiosity’s sake. It was a cultural artifact after all. She and her friend Gloria had sat in this very cafe and giggled over Carrie’s email. Meanwhile reading it in the same way they read other literary texts. Titin had met Gloria in her “Class and Nineteenth Century American Women Writers” graduate seminar. Gloria generally does not talk much. She has other ways of reacting to things. Whenever anyone says anything in the class which she does not like, Gloria stops scribbling in her notebook, looks up for a second, frowns and then goes back to her scribbles. It’s not that Titin especially likes or thinks much of Gloria’s way of reacting to things, but it is specifically the fact that normally she herself does not like the things Gloria does not like. So what began as a mutual nod has now turned into a somewhat deep bond of affection— as deep as it can get in six months. Titin and Gloria try to pitch in at least two coffees every week. Even when their schedules get a little crazy. And if that becomes totally impossible, they at least try to call each other once in every two days.

Gloria had told Titin about her childhood spent in a really really small town in Vermont. “Really, really small” were the words Gloria had herself used. A place she was only too glad to leave, she also informed Titin. Gloria had sipped her cappuccino, looked up at Titin and had said, “Girl, there is no place in this country which is not a racial hell. In fact, hell-itude in most places in this country is combination of race and corporations. But at least, this town is not a corporate hell.” Gloria had stopped abruptly and looked at Titin. Titin admired Gloria’s ability to coin new words. For example, “hellitude.” Titin is sure that this is not a word, which exists in any English language dictionary anywhere in the world. In normal circumastances, Titin would have pointed that out and they would have laughed together some even more. But on that day, Titin did not say anything. Because she knew it was her own hometown that Gloria was talking about. The town where Gloria was the only black student all through her high school days.

So when Titin had laid down before Gloria a printout of Carrie’s email, she did not have to explain much. Gloria had lifted up the three pages, pushed her glasses down her nose and had begun to read aloud. Modulating her voice as she thought fit all the while. Carrie had written,
Dear friends,

Once again I apologize for the group email. Please forgive the lack of personalization on my part. I’ve really enjoyed your emails and I want to (shamelessly) encourage you all to continue writing to me when you can.

[Titin: “Oh, come on. This is just the introduction. Read ahead.”

Gloria: Wait. Learn some patience.]
I’m mostly writing to let you know that I am ecstatic to be moving to a new apartment in Jaipur with another woman on the program in search of some much needed privacy. We have managed to find an apartment directly off a house so we have a family nearby for emergencies and safety but the apartment is our own space. It’s light and clean and I am very happy to move into a more hygenic situation than I currently have.

[Gloria did not stop reading, but looked at Titin with raised eyebrows. Titin pursed up her lips, rolled her eyes and said, “ The real fun hasn’t begun yet.”]
Now that I’m moving I can admit that I lived in a cockroach infested room with an occasional rat visitor. I was surprised by the conditions given the level of education of the family and their income level. Apparently this is acceptable to them (but definitely not most Indian families).
[Gloria: Look here, she’s politically correct.

Titin: It’s not about stereotyping at all! It’s just one Indian family she happened to meet.

Gloria: Ye-ah-ah. Little traces of the tropics here and there—very threatening (with raised eyebrows).

They had made a high five and Gloria had continued with her reading.]

I realized that I’ve tried to fill my emails with charming tidbits and managed to delete a number of the daily realities. I’ve started taking pictures with garbage in them rather than finding the one spot that doesn’t have any in it. So I’m going to add some of the grimy reality to the colorful picture.

[Gloria: Girl, this woman really calls herself an intellectual?

Titin: Apparently. She is a post-colonialist. To be specific, a South Asianist.

Gloria: Whatever.

Titin: There’s more to the story. Go ahead and read it and you’ll see.]

I have to admit that things have been very up and down here lately—many of the women on the program are very frustrated (including myself) by the lifestyle we are forced to adopt here—essentially you have to be home by dark (6 pm now) and you face constant sexual harassment on the streets mostly in the form of lewd comments and gestures and the eternal “hello...where are you from?” it’s amazing how quickly you learn to walk with your head down and eyes averted rather than grab the guy and punch him which is my general inclination.
Carrie’s email had lots of other things—the description of her attending two weddings her complains about the programs, the accounts of the touristy things she had done, places she had been to. But Titin and Gloria could not read anymore. They sat there, silent for a long time. Gloria had said, at last, “It still lives on.”

“What?”

“Scottsboro Boys—the tradition of Scottsboro boys.”

“Or, that of Passage to India.”

Later, that day Gloria had accompanied Titin to her small apartment and as they cooked, they had talked –about history, violence, race and colonialism. When Gloria had left Titin’s apartment, they had stood in Titin’s doorway and Gloria had said, “Girl, they haven’t learnt. All these years, so much writing and talking and doing, white folks still haven’t learnt.” As Titin hugged Gloria, she wished that it’s not true, what Gloria had said just now is not true, but they both knew it is—if not fully, at least largely.

Right now, as Titin looked at Carrie and remembered it all, she could not help a dizziness taking over. In the streets of Jaipur, India Carrie didn’t complain. Even though she had the power and privilege of her skin, currency, passport and embassy. She didn’t go official about it. Instead she chose to represent. To describe. To write. To represent. To people who have never been to Jaipur or any other parts of India. Many of them, never will. And even if they do, they will carry with them the eyes that could replace Carrie’s without the displacement of a single blink, alphabet or punctuation mark.

Titin never looked down in India. Not in Jaipur though. In Calcutta. Neither of Titin’s girlfriends—Tania, Indrani, Joyita or Rimi had ever looked down. They cursed, they used their elbows. Or their bags. Or in the very least, they sent out angry glances.

Carrie chose not to see resistance. Not to represent resistance. Not to write about resistance. Carrie chose to represent subservience instead. The layers and layers of sweat, blood and puke which have interwoven the thick net of everyday realities all through the sub-continent became a tourist guidebook picture in Carrie’s writings. A picture, which only provokes anger and nausea for someone like Titin.

Meanwhile, here, in the last six months, Titin had to look down more than once. And what is more, the downward glance seemed to be the only relief she could have. The only respite. Make yourself invisible.

Thursday 9:15 P.M., October 26, 2003

Tilanjali Basu a.k.a Titin stood at the town bus-station all alone. One of her not so late night trips from the University Library to the one roomed apartment she calls home. The fairly emptied bus station. Except for Titin herself. Except for the middle-aged woman who was busy solving a crossword puzzle. Their eyes met . The woman was considerably well-dressed and informed Titin that she works as a teacher in an elementary school. She also provided Titin with the information that although there are lots of people in this country who hate Hispanics, she is not among them. Titin did not say to the woman that she is not a “Hispanic” and besides, “Hispanic” is a term that’s not exactly favored by the population in question. What’s exactly the use? It wouldn’t have made any difference. Besides Titin must admit she felt frightened—isn’t this supposed to be a polite way of pointing out that she really does not belong here? Titin chose to keep her glance downwards until No. 27 came at 9.42.

Then there was Titin’s student. Eighteen. Tall. White. With a baseball cap. Smiled rarely. Inside 101 Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies class. In this country, they have something called “multicultural requirement” in the colleges. Titin is not exactly sure what’s that supposed to mean, or what function that’s supposed to perform. Titin had translated the “multicultural requirement” as the presence of a vast number of reluctant students in her introductory Gender Studies class. Students who are training to be managers and businessmen. Students who are training to be physicists. Students who have signed up for the class because they thought that a class on Gender Studies will be easier than one on Homer. As it is, Titin hated teaching. She would have loved to have the luxury of a full-time graduate student-researcher, but then Titin wasn’t born during a time when the American or British universities handed out full fellowships to Third World students. Titin knew very well that if she didn’t teach, she wouldn’t be here. So, she had accepted the fact that she will have to drag herself to a classroom full of 18-20 year olds twice a week, she will have to meet her students regularly outside of the classroom, she will have to grade 30 papers every two weeks. And all this on top of her own coursework and research. Whatever!

So the topic of the day was Racial and Gender Stereotypes. A group of all-white students. A female teacher of color. From the Third World. Without the security of the right passport. Right accent. One of the potent ironies of a postcolonial world. One of the predicaments of a neo-colonial hybrid. Every time Titin opened her mouth to speak she felt that irony in her bones. One just needs to walk back a little bit—would this have been ever possible fifty years ago? As Titin began to lecture on how race and gender are intersectional categories, she began acutely conscious of her responsibility. She is responsible for the political indoctrination of these kids, the sahebchhanas, as she preferred to call them when she talked about her students to her friends back home. Titin began to say to her class, “So long we have been talking about the importance of the category of “gender” in our everyday lives. But we must remember that the “woman” as a homogenous category does not exist. So what does that mean? It means that while I am a woman it also means that I belong to a specific class, I have a specific racial identity, I belong to a particular nation. That is, the category of gender is fractured by such other categories as class, race and nationality.” Titin stopped and looked around. Some of her students were busy writing down whatever she had said in the last two minutes. A few of them sat with a non-chalant expression on their faces. A boy was happily reading his newspaper. Another girl was yawning. Titin always felt a little confused in front of her students’ reactions to her lectures. So instead of pondering upon how and why her students are reacting the way they are, she decided to continue with her lecture. “So when we talk about gender oppression, we also need to remember that different women face oppression differently. The oppression which a working-class woman faces is never going to be the same as the oppression faced by an upper-class elite woman. Similarly, the ways in which women of color are oppressed are markedly different from that of a white woman. In these cases, we need to keep in mind not only gender, but also class and race…”

Titin hadn’t finished what she was saying. Baseball cap, who is majoring in accountancy, roared, “Do you think you have more chances of getting raped in the streets because you are colored?” Silence. The class waited for an answer. Titin looked at each and every one of the fifteen faces in front of her. Twelve girls. Three boys. “Do you think you have more chances of getting raped than any of these white girls?” The voice roars again. The white girls in question remained ubiquitously silent. Titin looked down. To feel the pain. And the irritation. Looking down gave her the chance to feel them moving slowly down her body—from the tongue through the throat to her intestine. Titin could not remain looking down for ever. A decision had to be reached. Soon. Within ten seconds. Count ten. One, two, three...Objectivity had to be feigned and performed. Keep your face straight. Don’t twitch your nose muscles. Are you going to cite the statistics? I know they would be in my favor, but I didn’t know them by heart. I won’t be able to cite them. (Re) cite them. So play the personal card. Quick. “Yes. Yes, I do.” No surprise. The answer was greeted with a shrug. Titin wanted to look down again. Desperately look down. Make herself invisible. Did Carrie ever want to make herself invisible in India in the same way ?

Titin tried to imagine Carrie within the landscape of an Indian city. She tried to remember what she had thought when she had seen white-skinned, golden-haired foreigners streaming down the footpaths of Esplanade, the area which once marked the downtown of the colonial Kolkata. White skin, golden hair, blue eyes—things she had learnt to identify as the markers of the ex-colonizers. White skin, golden hair, blue eyes—going around the globe in search of who-knows-what. White skin, golden hair, blue eyes—people who can board the planes and the ships all too easily. White skin, golden hair, blue eyes—people who can buy things. White skin, golden hair, blue eyes—people who possess money which are at least thirty times your own currency. White skin, golden hair, blue eyes—right passport, right kinds of accents, right kinds of looks, right kinds of money. Really, no matter what, Carrie represents all of that. Titin wanted to ask Carrie at that point, so what was your problem in being asked where you’re from? I have to answer that question here everyday! Did you want to be invisible? Or for you was it a struggle to make yourself more visible? What? Are you that eager to create impressure? Why?

But she didn’t. These are the kinds of questions that never get asked in polite companies. So instead Titin prepared herself to cast a fuller look at the tall, pencil-thin life form standing in front of her. It would make a wonderful film-shot, Titin could not help smiling to herself. A tall white woman standing over a frail brown one. How it would look like if it was reversed? Not very different I guess. A brown woman standing in front of a white seated one. Without an invitation to sit down. Almost like a meeting with the high school principal. Unidirectional. Non-reciprocating. But Carrie had already moved to a different set of questions.

“Do you know how to make Malai Kofta?”

“What’s that?”

“What, you don’t know what’s Malai Kofta and you’re an Indian? You must be kidding! All women I met in India are such wonderful cooks. Hey, can’t we plan in a cook-in at your or my place?”

[But I didn’t invite you...I haven’t yet asked you anything... We are not friends yet...I am not sure that I would like to be so familiar with you…Why are you being so familiar?]

“I learnt to cook after I came here. I never cooked at home.”

Carrie seemed undaunted.

“Did your mother cook for you? Or did you have servants?”

“We didn’t have any servants. And both my parents cooked.”

“Oh my God, that’s so uncommon for Indian families.”

Titin didn’t really know how to answer the last one. She wanted to tell Carrie, well, my mother hates to cook, although she does cook most of the time. My father loves to cook but uses too many pots and pans when he does. But we get by somehow—we cook easy stuff at home and sometimes we just bring in cheap prepared food from the streets and eat them. And yeah, that’s uncommon for Indian families. But it’s uncommon for not just Indian families, but all families. My mother who is hyper-conscious of the fact that I am a girl told me when I was six that, “Look, cooking is not that hard—you’ll learn it somehow when you grow up. But it’s lot harder to learn other things. For example, learning how to paint, how to read, how to sing ...you know...so try to learn as many of those things as you can now...while there is still time…you’ll learn how to cook when you need to.” My father who had stood behind my Ma during that whole time had eventually smiled and winked at me. Approving his wife’s comment. Performing his assent to his daughter. I didn’t understand what she was trying to say at that time. But I didn’t cook at home. And although I haven’t learnt to do all the things she listed during that conversation, I did learn to do a couple and that too, considerably well. But telling Carrie this story will also need several footnotes—a brief introduction to the history of feminist movements in India, its relationship to other leftist movements, how her parents’ generation in India was politicized...long story. Stories like that cannot be trusted to anyone. People about whom you don’t know much. People whom you have just met.

“It’s so easy to get spoiled when you’re in India,” Carrie had said. It wasn’t exactly a change of topic, but a slight tweaking of her previous one.

“Really?” Titin had thought that it’s much easier to get spoiled when you’re living in America. But what was so interesting to her was the authority in Carrie’s voice. The authority which wrapped her entire body. Academic authority. Which gave her the right to reach conclusions. To comment.

“ I still miss the dhobi coming down to my house every morning, washing and ironing my clothes.” Titin really wanted to think that she hadn’t heard it right. But she knew Carrie had said exactly what she had heard. Once again, she really wanted to say--Carrie, you’re right on. What most white folks miss about brown people is their labor. Of course Titin did not utter those words. One does not utter such words in polite company. And polite academic company at that. She smiled instead. Feebly. The exhaustion showed. She yawned. Perhaps there was a muted expression of disgust in that yawn which led Carrie to utter the polite niceties and leave the table.

Titin sighed. Out of relief. Out of exhaustion. She relaxed the clenched muscles of her jaws. Picked up the cards on which she was jotting down her notes. Time to go back to her model-minoritying. But at the end of the day, she was really glad that she did not tell Carrie the complete story behind her not learning to cook. You cannot entrust everyone with all the stories.