Chapter 8- The Spinning Wheel
We had been standing in the street of this little Indian village for nearly 20 minutes. "Well, so what happened to dad after his dad died?" I asked, hoping for an upswing to a story that had so far been depressing. But I already knew there would be no upswing.
"Well with the only person who could make money now gone, the family struggled to find food and shelter," said my cousin. My mother continued "at that point, the family needed to move, so they came to my family's house. The one we are staying in now in Kumbakonam." She explained that in hopes of finding a way to make money, they moved to this bigger village, into a section of the bottom floor of a two-story flat. My mother’s family owned the home and occupied the top floor, and three other families occupied various rooms on the first floor. My maternal grandmother as well as her sister-in law- both married off as young girls, had become widowed at a young age and renting rooms in their house was their only source of income.
"It wasn't easy," continued my mother. "They didn't have money and your father's brothers were abusive. And your father's mother had a sharp tongue. Her words could hurt more than your uncle's fists," she stated matter of factly. I looked pointedly at my mother. My father hadn't been much nicer to her than he had to me. She was spared the fists but not the razor sharp words. And yet, she had retained empathy for him, understanding that his childhood was made of misery. I realized that this was the most honest exchange I had ever had with my mother about my father.
My father had given us a little snippets of his life, but then when he would start to talk about the poverty and growing up without food or shoes, tears would come into his eyes and he couldn't speak anymore. And we didn't dare dig. "Your father’s oldest brother dropped out of high school so he could work in a fabric store to make money for the family," my mother continued. I looked over at my sibling who was pretending not to listen or care, but was in fact anxiously listening to every word. We both wanted to understand why my father was the way he was.
Apparently, having my father's brother work at the fabric store helped, but it was not enough to feed a family of five. The family invested in a spinning wheel like the one in Sleeping Beauty, and spun and sold thread to make additional money for food and rent. It barely sustained them, and the family routinely went to sleep with aching stomachs and their souls submerged in pain and hunger. They had no other extended family members who could help them, as their poverty was even more dire. My mother's tone changed. In a hushed voice, she told us there were children in my father’s family who were sent to orphanages because their parents could no longer feed them.
I listened to all of this with disbelief. With shame. With guilt. I remembered the many times my father had yelled at me for leaving a single particle of food uneaten on my plate. Why did I get to be born an American? I was the first in our large family to be born there. Why was I given a chance, so I could become a woman with graduate degrees who was single by choice? How could I come from this horror? I thought about my life in New York. Eating expensive sushi and shopping at Van Cleef...now the thought of my life made me sick. I gulped back a sob. No wonder my father could never tell his story without crying. A story where little girls were being married off to men before they even developed breasts or got their periods. A story where there was so much poverty children were sent to orphanages. A story of abuse that was rampant and ignored and mental health problems that were neither recognized not addressed.
But this guilt I felt- it was nothing new. This happened on all of my previous visits to India. I would learn little remnants of what my family came from and then think about my life in America with absolute horror. How I came from a family that had been starving to death and became a typical wasteful American. Each time I returned home to America, I would tell myself I would try to lead a simpler life, to give any excess money to the poor, but within weeks, I fell back into what was normal for me. While the stories never left my mind, the shame that would touch my heart would slowly dissipate and allow me to continue on with my hedonistic life...until the next time I would return to India.
"I guess we should head to the temple?" I interjected. My sibling shot me an amused look. I didn't want to go to the temple, but I had heard enough for the day about my father's childhood. My mother eagerly nodded and started strutting towards the temple, her colorful sari making swooshing noises. I marveled that she hadn't attracted a parade of insects, given that her sari resembled a bouquet of flowers. She was an ever pious and devoted Hindu. I was not, so any apparent interest I had in going inside a temple delighted her.
We stepped into the meager temple and I stood in the muggy prayer area and watched cockroaches the size of small mice wander around, climbing on the gold decked statue of the Hindu god. The priest loudly chanted in Sanskrit while ringing a ceremonial bell. With his other hand, he held a small metal object with a small ceremonial flame. Both my mother and cousin's eyes were closed as they earnestly prayed. But I was not praying. I was not religious and all I could think about was the backdrop of my family's story. I glanced over at my sibling, who has also clearly pondering our family story.
All I could think was that this was the foreshadowing of what would become my father and mother's stories, and what would eventually be passed on to me and my sibling. The pretext to the years of pain and depression that would continue to haunt us through generations. None of it excused the abuse I would later experience from my dad, but it most certainly did begin to provide an explanation. I thought about my family's spinning wheel. A desperate attempt to get more food. My guess is, if they had been given the option of pricking their finger and falling asleep like Sleeping Beauty, they would have chosen that.
Years later, I would create a painting of the ruins of my father's house to hang in my home (pictured above) to remind myself of what I came from. From a meager village mud hut to an upper east side apartment in Manhattan, I was fortunate, depressed or not. I promised myself I would never forget that.