Julie & Kishore (9 page)

Like
most girls I kept notes of important events in my diary. On the fifth month
anniversary of our first date, a Tuesday, I secretly bought a
happy wedding anniversary
card.
Carefully crossing out the word wedding I replaced it with the words
five month
.

With
Kishore having no idea of the occasion, that evening we went to his favourite
place to eat
McDonald’s
. Hindus don’t
eat beef but he loved fries and chicken burgers. He didn’t
even
mind
that
today he would
eat vegetarian as the Hindu worship he chose to follow meant he couldn’t eat
meat or egg
s
on Tuesday’s and Saturday’s.
                                                           
                                              

As
we approached the counter Kishore asked for fries and a hamburger with just
salad, no meat (there was no varied choice of menu in the late 80’s). We were
given our meals and looked around for a table, the restaurant was busy for a
Tuesday but eventually we found a semi-secluded booth near the children’s
playground and sat down.

Regardless
of us being in a public place, we felt anonymity was the best way to be alone.
Nobody here knew us so we could have privacy in our own company, despite a lot
of people being around.

Before
starting our meals I pulled the card from my handbag and presented it to
Kishore. He was a bit surprised, wondering what and why we were celebrating.

As
he read, his expression took five seconds to change from puzzlement to
understanding, a smile spread across his face, “Oh Julie, that’s so sweet,
thank you so much.”

He
began to wrap his hands around his burger but before he could pick it up, I
proclaimed I had something else to tell him. After practicing the little
sentence all day I was relieved to be about to say it. I cleared my throat but
was interrupted by children running past our table heading for the slides, I
cleared my throat again.

“Kishore,
mai tumse pyiar karti hun,” I announced.

Kishore’s
eyes lit up and he beamed, “Ohh…thank you Julie
,
 
I
love you too.” Taking his hands away
from his food he
reached to
put his arm
around
me
, I slid close
r
to him in the booth seat. Cuddling while we ate, children scuttled past us
running to and from the playground.

After
I had said I loved him once, I couldn’t stop saying it, the words bursting from
my mouth again and again like popcorn as it heats and explodes in a pot.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The
Hindi word for year is saal.

Kishore’s
Father was originally from a small village in Punjab. His Father (Kishore’s
Grandfather) was the local bookkeeper and highly respected. He was a meticulous
worker and made all of his calculations by hand on paper. As with any little
country town, life in Punjab was far simpler than in the city. The village
people were a close-knit community and the happy children glowed from a relaxed
life of playing outside with sunshine on their cheeks.

People
who left Punjab to move to a bigger town always referred to it affectionately
as their native place. When they returned for a visit they enjoyed coming back
home to their roots and catching up with family and friends which gave them a
sense of belonging.

The
property Chandra’s Father lived in had been passed down from generation to
generation within the family. It was a big house made with bricks that had been
formed out of mud and had stood the test of time. The furniture was sparse and
the house had no electricity or running water.

Some
years earlier, Chandra’s second eldest sister, Bhamini, had moved to New
Zealand with her husband Harilal. His younger brother had moved to the city
when he married, as had Chandra. Big cities provided people with far more work
opportunities and greater chances of sending children to better quality
schools.

Kalindi,
the eldest child in the family, was the only sibling to remain in the Punjab
family home. She shared the house with her husband, their three children and
Kishore’s Grandparents. Kalindi was a stern woman, the hard life of
being
a farmer’s wife
was
etched
on her face.

The
family’s source of milk was from their cow, named Gauri, she lived in a little
annex next to the house. Kalindi milked her daily. Her other chores included
cooking, sweeping, collecting firewood, pulling water from the well and washing
clothes in the river by beating them against the rocks.

Kishore’s
Mother married his Father when she was just eighteen - Kishore arrived fourteen
months later. When Kishore was three months old his parents travelled with him
on a long and dusty six hour bus journey to the small village in Punjab. They
had been asked to come and visit Kishore’s Grandfather who was terribly sick
with pneumonia.

As
Chandra and Roopa entered the house the mood was sombre. Chandra’s Mother
eagerly took the sleeping baby Kishore from Roopa’s arms and the weary
travelers
slowly
ambled into the next room to
see
Chandra’s ailing
Father.

Kalindi
watched as her Mother cuddled her baby Grandson. For the first time in weeks,
maybe months, she saw a calm and peaceful look on her Mother’s face, at that
moment Kalindi hatched a plan. When Chandra and Roopa
returned from the other room
with furrowed brows, Kalindi tentatively
suggested when they leave they should let Kishore stay in Punjab with his
Grandparents. She proposed the baby would be a distraction for his Grandmother
and with his Grandfather being so ill he would be of comfort to him.

 
Against Roopa’s will, the decision was made
that
Kishore would stay. Roopa was only twenty years old
and an obedient young Indian wife and as such extremely subservient. A young
married woman did not speak against her husband’s decisions or her in-laws
wants. She was taught from a very young age to do as she was told without
comment.

 
Silent tears slipped down Roopa’s cheeks as
she cuddled Kishore to say good-bye. She nuzzled her face to his chubby neck
and
deeply
breathed in, determined to ingrain into
her memory that unique baby smell of her son. Reluctantly, she handed him over
to her Mother-in-law. She was upset but she was also proud her son would be of
comfort to them. It would be discourteous for her to weep openly, after all her
Father-in-law was awfully sick and it was only right to consider his feelings.

 
Chandra did not want to leave Kishore either
but he was powerless. He could not challenge the wishes of his eldest sister or
his Mother. He could not disrespect his dying Father nor could he argue with
any of them. He was helpless knowing he was upsetting his wife by leaving their
baby son behind. He instinctively knew he would never see his Father again but
what about his first born son?

Chandra
and Roopa’s hearts felt empty as they boarded the bus for the return journey to
Delhi. Roopa sat heavily in a seat and looked down at her empty arms, her arms
that had just one hour ago held her dear Kishore. Maternally, she smelt them,
tears fell as she breathed in the
lingering
familiar baby aroma. She realised her chest was wet but it wasn’t from her
tears. Her milk filled breasts were overflowing, more than ready to be suckled
by her baby, the moisture seeping through her top. But, unknown to Roopa, baby
Kishore was
to
never suckle from her again. She took a deep breath
and
adjusted her dupatta (shawl) to cover her chest,
finding a corner of it to wipe her eyes. Chandra, sitting next to his wife had
been watching her without comment, presently he took his neatly ironed
handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at his own eyes. The six hour
return
bus ride was a long, sad and mostly
silent journey with Chandra and Roopa
having
little to say as they were
both lost in their own thoughts. They were quietly
wondering when they would see their little boy again.

 
This situation resulted in traumatic
circumstances for Roopa. After all, she was a young teenage bride with an arranged
marriage and a first time Mother. She had nurtured and bonded with her baby for
three months and to have him taken away from her was tremendously upsetting.
Financially, they were less well off as her husband was obliged to send some of
his wages each month to Punjab to help with the care of his son.

 
Kishore ended up staying in the village for
six years
with his Grandmother. During
this time his parents tried, money allowing, to visit as often as they could.
Each time they came, Roopa’s sister-in-law kept a vigilant eye over Kishore.
The family treasured the growing little boy and did not want him to go back
with his Mother and Father. Kalindi by now had five children of her own but the
relationship her Mother had with Kishore was extraordinary - none of her own
children had created that unique bond with their Grandmother. After the passing
of her husband
,
Kalindi’s Mother took solace in caring for Kishore,
taking him under her wing. She cherished him dearly and in return
he
became especially close to her.

She
was the only loving figure Kishore had ever known. She was always there for
him, nurturing him, singing him sweet lullabies and looking out for him. It was
Kishore’s Grandmother, not his Mother, who was the first to see him crawl, walk
and speak his first words.

Finally
when it was time for him to start school his parents were able to convince the
family he should go back with them to Delhi.

Returning to his
family home as the age of six, Kishore hardly knew his Mother or his family. He
was sent to school with children he didn’t know. He found living in the big
city was completely different to the untroubled life of the country. The simple
ways of the village and the kindness his elderly Grandmother had showered upon
him were now gone. Even his own brother and sister were strangers and his
Mother had another baby on the way.

 
Kishore treasured the loving memories of the
time he lived with his Grandmother. He missed snuggling next to her at night,
feeling her protective hand on his shoulder and knowing he could always go to
her for a cuddle when he felt sad or just wanted to be held. His Grandmother
had been so devoted to him.

 
In years to come he often wondered if his
desire to move to New Zealand was partly because he never felt like he belonged
with his family as much as his brother and sisters did. He had not bonded with
his parents for the first six years of his life and had always felt out of
place.

 
Despite this, when Kishore finally came to
understand the anguish his Mother had suffered when giving him up, he realised
the importance of his relationship with her, he knew he must always show his
love for her and felt a need to protect her.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The
Hindi word for yes is haan.

I
had heard the saying, ‘love is blind,’ but a girl from New Zealand falling for
a boy from India? I knew
that
love had blinded
our senses. As far as I was aware the only inter-racial marriages that existed
were between two people who were the same colour. To marry someone outside your
race or culture, to visually stand out - to look different from your spouse -
was not a known
occurrence
in New Zealand.

 
We were aware our love would have to be
strong, not just boy-girl relationship strong but strong enough to survive all
that would be thrown at us. If we were going to be together as a couple
,
despite what anybody said we could not let anybody
or anything break our bond apart. The problem was to convince everybody else
our love was as strong as we knew it was.

 
Was it fate that threw us together? Could our
love alone endure all that we were to face?

 
The pressure on me at times became great, I
was being prodded, urged and pushed to end our relationship. When I was alone
in my room, I continuously worried our love would not weather the storm. I
cried into my constant comforting friend, my pillow, asking why my devotion for
a man depended on race and colour, I just didn’t understand.

I
met up with Sarah at the gym - at least she supported me. She listened as I
vented my anger. In the dressing rooms as we changed into our fluorescent pink
and yellow
lycra
leotards, complete with stripy
legwarmers, I wailed, “Sarah, people just don’t understand, how would they know
how I feel?”

We
did our warm up exercises, stretching in front of our impatiently waiting
instructor, Marc-with-a-c. He had quite clearly spelt out his name the first
time we met him, he was extremely good-looking but I instinctively knew he
wasn’t interested in girls. He had an infectious, overzealous way about him
that would have made Richard Simmons proud.
        

With,
‘Like a virgin’
and ‘
1984
’ bellowing from the speakers with a contagious beat, Sarah and
I, along with about twenty other men and women
followed Marc-with-a-c’s lead. We tried to copy and keep up with his
vigorous exercise moves and
were encouraged as he yelled instructions from the
stage.

As
we left, red-faced, sweaty and exhausted, Marc-with-a-c gave us a
thumbs up
, Sarah waved and smiled at him
while mumbling under her breath, "Thanks for the workout…but…I hate
you.”
    

We
walked back to our cars with my ears still ringing from the thrill of the
music. It could have been Madonna and the Eurhythmics themselves at the front
of the class telling us to ‘move it’ and ‘come on, you can do it!’ instead of
Marc-with-a-c.
 

Approaching
our cars Sarah put her arm around me, consoling me, telling me the words of
reassurance only a sister can give, “Julie, don’t worry about what anyone says,
you should only listen to one thing and that is your heart.”

Once
I was home and showered and in the quiet of my room I mulled over my thoughts.
I wondered if listening to my heart was enough, could our devotion toward
s
one another endure the criticism, disapproval and
conflict placed upon us?
As
I brushed my
hair in front of the mirror, I decided it was immediately apparent
that
the survival of our dedication to each other
depended on the strength of our relationship. Many people had told me we were
not meant to be together, that it wasn’t right. I even said it myself countless
times.

With
a look of defiance at my reflection, I
put my brush down and
decided that despite what anybody said, the fact is
two people from totally different countries, backgrounds and cultures did meet
and fall in love. As I stood and stepped towards
my
bed,
I was certain that if our relationship was going to have any chance, I could
not let those who stood in our way break our bond apart.

We
both knew, Kishore and myself that fate had thrown us together. The dilemma and
it was a huge one was to convince everybody else of our love.

                                                     
*

Kishore
told me he was mischievous as a child and regaled me with stories of his
antics. When he was eight or nine years old his junior school had one of those
old hand bells and a student was selected each week to walk around the school
ringing the bell at the appropriate times. One particular day Kishore had been
caught by the headmaster running out of the school gates five minutes before
the three o’clock bell as he was eager to be the first child home in his
neighbourhood. The headmaster let Kishore go but the next day called him in to
his office and sternly told him, “Kishore, as your punishment for leaving
school early yesterday, you will be bell ringer for the next week.” This, the
headmaster was sure, would make Kishore stay until three o’clock. But, as he
was never one to listen to rules Kishore decided to ring the bell at ten
minutes to three. He then ran out of the school hoping no one would see him. By
the time he was half-way home, the rest of the school crowd had only just left
their classes and he arrived home well before his neighbouring school friends.
Subsequently, the next day he was again called to the headmaster’s office and
sternly questioned.

“Why
didn’t you ring the school bell yesterday?”
 

“I
did, Sir,” said Kishore.

“Well,”
said the headmaster. “Nobody heard it at three o’clock and at five minutes past
I had to ring it myself.”

In
Kishore’s haste to leave school he had rung the bell too quickly and not loud
enough. No one had heard it.
 
The
headmaster decided Kishore was to continue to ring the bell but his extra
punishment this time was to keep his school bag in the headmaster’s office. He
could only collect it from him once he had finished his duty. At three o’clock
that afternoon Kishore
,
with extreme
vigour loudly walked around the school ringing the bell, he then headed off
towards the headmaster’s office to collect his school bag. Slinging his bag
over his shoulder, he sheepishly returned the school bell, which was now in two
pieces. In his enthusiasm, he had rung it so hard he had broken it.

I
soon learnt Kishore was never one to follow the rules or go with the crowd. It
had been his decision to leave India by himself and immigrate to New Zealand
and it was also his decision to fall in love with an English girl.

My
parents outwardly supported my choice to go out with a man that wasn’t the
conventional boyfriend a good Pakeha girl went out with. The underlying tension
was evident. In the 1980’s even a relationship between Maori and Pakeha was
strange and practically unheard of.

My
family would mutter comments sometimes in front me and at times behind my back.
I heard snippets of conversations from behind closed doors. ‘How could she,
it’s not right’ and ‘What if she marries him, what sort of children will they
have?’
 

I
was most surprised when I first told my parents I was going out with Kishore. I
hadn’t even told them what he did for a living. Dad was under the impression
Indian men were only capable of owning diaries and he stated, “If you marry
that man, you know you will spend the rest of your life behind a shop counter.”

Ignorance
was evident as my Dad told our neighbour, Mr Foster about my new boyfriend. Mr
Foster chuckled and asked if this boy’s name was Rambuka. Mr Foster did not
know my boyfriend was from India not Fiji. Mr Sitiveni Rambuka was a colonel in
the Fijian army.
With a rumbling of tension within the Fijian
government and an imminent coup, the name Rambuka had been in the newspaper
recently, so this was of course the first ‘Indian’ name Mr Foster could think
of.

I
decided it was high time to invite Kishore to my house so they could see him
for themselves.

The
next Sunday evening I answered a knock on the front door of my family home to
find Kishore
standing
anxiously on the other side. He
whispered, “Julie, I am really worried they won’t like me.”

With
a dismissive wave of my hand I pulled him inside, trying to sound convincing I
said, “Don’t worry, they will love you, just be yourself.” It didn’t appease
the apprehension both
of us
felt in our
stomachs. As we walked from the front door
and
down
the hallway, Kishore stopped as his eyes were drawn to the collection of family
photos exhibited on the wall of Andrew, Sarah and I at different ages at various
family occasions.
 
He smiled as he looked
at a photo of me
at five years of age
beaming at the
camera. My nose had a sprinkling of freckles and my ginger hair was in two pig
tails that stuck out from each side of my head.

Andrew
was the first person to greet Kishore as we entered the lounge room. He was
wary and over protective of his baby sister’s choice of boyfriend.

The
two men shook hands, Andrew tilted up his chin in a manly way
while
saying, “How’s it goin’ bro.”

Kishore
had learnt the Kiwi way to reply, “Yep, good thanks mate.”

Mum
and Tanya, my rather pregnant sister-in-law, sashayed towards him and Kishore
shook their hands. After shy hellos, they both quickly scampered
, as fast as a very pregnant woman can scamper, back
to the kitchen
in the guise of finishing dinner.

Sarah
had moved with her husband Brett to their home in a small town called Leigh,
about an hour out of Auckland so they were unable to come to this first dinner.
We were a close-knit family and although I was the only child left living at
home, we often got together for family gatherings especially when Sarah came
for a visit.

Kishore
awkwardly positioned himself on the couch until he saw my Father entering the
lounge
room
. Standing bolt upright almost
to
military attention he extended his hand, "Hello, Sir, nice to meet you.”

Dad
, taking Kishore’s hand
replied gruffly “Hmmm, oh yes,
Kishore isn’t it? How are you
?...
Helen! How long
until we eat?”
 

The
three men sat
,
behaving civilly, making rigid small talk until
Tanya entered from the kitchen. She tried to ease the tension by announcing,
“Grubs up!” then
,
“Just joking,
could everyone please come to the table, dinner is ready.”

Mum
, with Tanya’s help,
had done herself proud
,
cooking a traditional Sunday lamb roast with all
the trimmings; mint peas, roast potatoes, kumara, pumpkin and a thick gravy. As
the family sat to eat Kishore felt shy as he had never tasted this type of food
before but between bites made polite conversation. My family found it hard to
understand his accent. Whenever he spoke, Mum, Dad, Andrew and Tanya blankly
stared at him then simultaneously swivel
l
ed
their heads to look at me. Rolling my eyes, I repeated, word for word, whatever
Kishore had just said.
  

For dessert,
Mum’s homemade lemon cheesecake went
down a treat, Kishore had two pieces.
 

We
all soon relaxed as Dad’s frosty exterior melted and much to Kishore’s and my
relief, they thought he was wonderful. It wasn’t long before he became a part
of our Sunday roast dinner tradition.

          
                                   
*