I recently got a chance to see an excellent documentary called I For India (thanks, Kate!). It’s a kind of family documentary that spans nearly forty years. When Yash Suri moved to England, in 1965, he decided to buy two Super 8 film cameras, two tape recorders, and two projectors. One set he kept, the other he sent to his family in Meerut. He filmed and recorded his family’s life and growth through the 1970s and 80s, his family in India did the same — and they sent each other the tapes, as a way of staying in touch. The result is an amazing archive of what happens to a family when one part of it goes abroad. Yash’s daughter Sandhya Suri assembled and edited the material into a unique 70 minute statement. Here is a brief clip:
(You can also supposedly see a clip from the film at the BBC, though when I tried it I couldn’t get the video to play.) For me, I For India captured a lot of the strangeness of the diasporic experience, including the parents’ constant and nagging sense of displacement, the parent/child generation gap, and above all, the difficulty in returning home — even when “home” might be all you think about. The Suris aren’t the only family to keep planning to return home, only to keep delaying the plan by a few years (my father, for instance, used to say this for years; eventually, he dropped the plan). In the late 1980s, the family actually did try to move back to Meerut; Suri, a doctor, thought he could set up a clinic there, but it didn’t take. (There’s no ruby slippers; home always changes when you leave it.)
On a purely visual register, it’s interesting just to compare what the Suri family in Darlington, England chooses to film against what the Suri family in Meerut films. In the English footage, you see the nuclear family, various tourist excursions, snow, railroads, the Buckingham Palace guards. In Meerut, the footage Sandhya Suri uses is almost entirely of extended family gatherings. The family in England is effectively alone, which means it is sometimes painfully isolated — but that aloneness also enables them to go off and have certain kinds of adventures. The extended family in India has a very different kind of experience.
Often, in diasporic novels like The Namesake, for instance, the center of the story is the part of the family that leaves — usually because the writer comes from that background herself. What’s unique about I For India is the way the old film footage allows the director to in some sense tell both sides of the story at once: we have the point of view of the family that left (and constantly mourned what it had left behind), but also that of the family that stayed behind (and mourned the loss of the ones who left).
I For India has been reviewed positively by virtually everyone who’s seen it, including The New York Times and The Guardian. One company is distributing it on DVD in the U.S., though it’s very expensive (you might be able to track down a copy from Amazon Canada). If anyone knows of other ways to get access to this film, I’m sure readers will be grateful.
Floridian, I hope I didn’t offend you…you’re one of the last people on this site I would want to upset. I respect you a lot. As for the caricature, I have seen people like that many times…I did not hold them up as ‘mainstreamed’ but rather as those who have remained very close to a desi identity despite being born and raised in the UK. And I was just saying that at least on one level it’s not a bad thing, in that they don’t have the identity issues that many folks raised away from desi influences have.
You know, due to the corporate culture in India in the 70s and 80s (not sure if it still happens) of people being ‘transferred’ every few years to a new location while working for a particular (usually governmental) company, a lot of DBDs also were robbed of the cocoon of the extended family. I have cousins (DBDs) who moved from city to city every few years, with new schools, having to make new friends every time, etc. and just seeing the extended family on vacations. Some were stationed in places as diverse as Madras and Baroda. It had a huge (in some ways beneficial) impact on the kids raised that way, but made them a lot less rooted in the specifics of their own particular culture.
Last year I saw the film when it played in the Independent Film Festival of Boston. Loved it.
I was able to interview Sandhya Suri and others, and I wrote an article on it in INDIA New England, which is a printed newspaper. They have a web version of the article on their site, still.
Sudheer, I found this interesting from the article you linked to:
Indeed, in the earliest recordings, one can hear Yash Pal Suri speak Hindi fluently, but after many years go by, he finds himself hunting for the right words for what he wants to say to his mother, and, frustrated, resorts to English.
i came here in the late 60’s when i was still in my teens. i was terribly lonely and missed home like an ache. our daughter was very upset and vehement about our going back when my husband had vague notions of it at one time about 10 years ago. she wanted us here and be grandparents for her kids, and we are very happy to oblige now that we have them. i love the way things are and would miss my close connection to my children and their lives very much if we go back. i feel they too would miss us in their lives, no matter how easy it is to keep in touch. it does not equate to hugs and kisses.
i don’t understand why people our age would want to leave their children and want to go back to india. who is left? my siblings and cousins are busy visiting their children here.
51 · Amitabh on December 17, 2007 08:23 PM · Direct link “Floridian, I hope I didn’t offend you..”
Not at all, Amitabh. In fact, I was missing you on SM, wondering whatever happened to you. Our little conversation on mainstreaming made me think about the subject a little bit, and I concluded that mainstreaming was as much intellectual as behavioral.
49 · Ruchira on December 17, 2007 07:53 PM · Direct link
“Floridian, do you have children? How do they feel about your impending return to India?”
Ahh, that’s the one thing that could nix the whole deal for us. My 15-year old daughter has no intention of moving to India with us. Although she is highly schooled in Indian culture (can recite the key shlokas from memory), is deeply religious (her Facebook profile flaunts her Hinduism), visits India often, maintains strong ties with her relatives there, but she feels America is her home. My wife and I accept that as something quite natural.
Now, in our own little minds, we have rationalized everything and said to ourselves that when she turns 18 and goes to college, she would be on her own anyway. What difference would it make if we lived in India as opposed to Florida while she lived in Boston or California? Some of my South Florida friends sent their kids to University of Florida, which is 5 hours away, and saw them only a few times a year.
“It’s a small world” might be easier said than done, though. I have this inane fear of her being in an accident (like the 2AM phone call from India in “The Namesake,” except in reverse), or falling terribly ill, and it takes us two days to get to the US. At least if we continued to live in Florida, we could be anywhere in the US within hours.
We’ll see if I can get over this fear when the time comes. In the meantime, I continue with my plans and think of my parents, who were brave enough to let three of their children leave India without having the resources themselves to come to the US anytime they wished. They ended up coming every year but they had to depend on us to pay for the tickets. At least we will have the resources to catch a flight to the US out of IGI anytime. In fact, I intend to keep two open-date tickets in my drawer at all times if we live in Delhi.
Our house in Gurgaon has a name, as is the Indian custom. It is my daughter’s name that the Kolkata orphanage gave her before we adopted her at 6 months.
Not at all, Amitabh. In fact, I was missing you on SM, wondering whatever happened to you.
Yea, I have been wondering about Amitabh too. You see some people here so often that you kind of always expect them to be here and then one day they are gone. I mean what happened to Punjabi Boy, MD, Jai Singh, Siddharth and some other people as well.
Its nice to see that Amitabh is back though 🙂
the uni-brow too
Amitabh @ 8 — YES. I feel this way even more as my extended family grows older and people begin to pass away. I went to a family funeral a few weeks ago and was shocked by how much an “outsider” I felt. We were all related, but none of us (cousins) relate on the same level as our parents. The part that really scares me are all the cousins who I barely recognize or don’t know — I’ve only been to India twice, and only after I turned 18. How many people will I never really know, and what will happen when our parents, effectively our only connection, pass away? It’s true, at least we have the internet, but I think that that makes us lazy, also. I remember writing letters in pidgin Punjabi to cousins far away. I always felt stupid — not only was I too ignorant to compose an adequate letter, I was frustrated by the limitations of my own understanding.
There’s a weird sense of familiarity and complete alienation when I’m in India. I remember my father, every now and again, would speak wistfully (and tentatively) about moving back to India after he retired. When we first went back (I think it was 21 years since the time my parents first went to India), I remember he looked around and began to cry; everything had changed — home was no longer home, and he’s never talked about moving back again. When I asked if he could have changed the result, if he could have gone back, he said he preferred the U.S. and would never in his life ever wish to go back to India for any appreciable period of time. I always wondered how he and my grandparents lived through that disconnection when they chose to immigrate. How did they balance that slow loss of closeness across oceans and continents?
When i first read that Floridian’s returning to India I thought, “Oh, how sad, we’ll never hear from him again.” Then i was like, “wtf”?
Amitabh @54: Re forgetting Hindi.
Yes, I’m glad you noticed that line from the article. I have been fascinated by the whole idea of our many languages, how we use them, and how we start to forget them. It’s a very emotional issue for me and part of the diasporic experience.
brown: I mean no disrespect to anyone but I have a genuine question. To the ABDs that have gone back to their parents’ home country once or never or the last time many years ago, do your parents go back to the respective countries often? I understand that it is an expensive proposition and there are other priorities which one may have. Were your parents insistent that you go back when you were younger and as you grew older the pressure that your parents may have put turned you off? Once again I genuinely mean to ask these questions and mean no disrespect.
My parents don’t go very often as it IS quite expensive for them, and with school and the price.. it doesn’t seem like winter vacations are long enough and then in the summer, we all have to work.. 🙁 My dad has been going more recently, he’s gone almost every year for the past 5 or 6 years after not going for 18 years. My mom, however, keeps putting it off. She says she will get save up some money and then go, but she never does. She hasn’t gone for 5 years, her last visit before that was 5 years earlier, and before that, 12 years earlier. She says she doesn’t like to leave us at home, but I’m the only child still going to school in their city and living at home. Hopefully this will change next year when I leave for grad school. I really wish they had the funds to go every year, and I would definitely love to go with them.
60 · Manju on December 17, 2007 10:56 PM · Direct link
“When i first read that Floridian’s returning to India I thought, “Oh, how sad, we’ll never hear from him again.”
Okay, so you think in analog. Do you also dream in sepia?
Cio Cio San,
Thank you for responding, it is fascinating to learn about the compulsions of DBDs that came a generation before my time. Amongst my peers there is a mix, some of us try and go back every year and some of us don’t visit for extended periods of time. I sincerely wanted to understand how ABDs and their parents dealt with this issue. I moved here always with the intention of going back but I absolutely understand how difficult it is to move back after you live here for extended periods of time.
I started to type comments on this topic many times, and backspaced over them.
Thanks for your comments, Floridian.
It was a very different experience when we came here in the 60’s and 70’s, when phone calls had to be “booked”, and the price of an air ticket was 8 times what it is today in real dollar. It made my parents and their generation of immigrants assimilate much more yet retain their identity. My parents were also part of the post-independence generation, who were much more idealistic about thier India.
Recently, when we announced our move back, we started looking for a property for my mom, assuming she would want to come also, to be a part of her grandchildren’s lives and returning to “her” country. She said there was no way that she would be going back. This was her home now, where she has her friends and life. Also she had a lot of disappointment between her idealistic vision of the India of her childhood, and the new globalized India.
Me? I’m used to being “other”, whereever I go. I use the power of being an outsider to my advantage.
yes it does.
but then i believe, “Rarely do members of the same family grow up under the same roof” here’s to great friends who are my family 🙂
Floridian, I get nightmares about not being able to reach in time (to India in my case) when I am required to do so and regret forever about it. I have seen this happen to some other DBD-grads when their one of their parents passed away and they could not get tickets. This is one of the main reason I want to go back to India, but not necessarily in the same city where my parents live. That way I can fly there whenever required. Could you please tell me how do you get these open-date tickets ? How much more expensive are they ?
Amardeep, what a great post! I am thinking of doing some recordings when I go to India this time.
Zuni,
I worry constanly about that as well, due to visa issues I had to miss my elder brother’s wedding two years back and I still feel bad about it.
Al_Chutiya and Floridian, thanks for your nice comments.
PS Call me juvenile but I found it hilarious when Mr. Madia addressed you as Al_Chutiya when responding to your questions.
PS Call me juvenile but I found it hilarious when Mr. Madia addressed you as Al_Chutiya when responding to your questions.
I chuckled as well! I dont think he knows what it means.
I had a conversation about this very topic with a friend two weeks ago. Both of us are the oldest in our families. He has some extended family in the US, but I have only 1 cousin. Every single aunt, uncle, and cousin still lives in India. I have to echo the comments of others which is that its up to you to make your relationships work. I have a huge extended family and I have been fortunate enough to have parents that made it a priority for our family to go to India at least once a year. As I have gotten older [I’m 27 now] and as technology has improved, I find myself talking to my cousins daily — via cell phones, gchat, or video chat. My mother even gave Vonage to my grandmother in India, so now I can call her any morning and get cooking lessons straight from the source! I know my parents aren’t always going to be around, so its up to me to make sure that my children and grandchildren have a relationship with their family in India.
I hope I get the opportunity to see this movie. It seems really thought provoking.
And about parents moving back to India… My father moved to the US in ’72 and my mother came in ’77 right after they got married. She still hopes they’ll move back and that the house they built in Delhi will get lived in at some point. While my father now has his trips to India cut so short that he manages to get his whole trip done in a crazed week — where he sees his family for 2 days and then goes to Kashmir to do surgeries on burn victims. I think their perceptions of India and their respective desires [or lack there of] to move back to India are directly related to how they grew up and their relationships with their families. My mom has a strong relationship with her 6 sisters and 2 brothers. While my dad only calls his family when my mom makes him.
Thanks for sharing this Amardeep, especially for a indie film fan that’s written a lot about the history of Indian doctors in the UK. I will certainly try to find this.
Floridian, very articulate comments. I found it especially interesting that you expect to go back to India in 3 years, even though your daughter will still be here and considers America home. I was also curious about another point: I recall your mentioning in some comments that your wife is Indo-Caribbean – am I mistaken? Does she feel comfortable enough with living her life in India, even if her family is closer to where you are now? Apologies if this is too personal a question.
FWIW, the DVD is available from Netflix (though it shows up as “not yet released”). I’ve just put it at the top of my queue.
Thanks for the tip; I likely wouldn’t have known about this movie if not for this post.
Floridian, your comments were thought-provoking and interesting.
I came to the US over 36 years ago and over the years wrestled with the idea of returning to India. This is all the more remarkable since I left India when I was three years old and lived in Kenya through high school, went to college in England and then moved to the US in 1971. So the idea of “returning” to India is almost a little incongruous given my limited contact with the country. I did spend a year in India in the late sixties when my the company I was then working for sent me to their subsidiary in India to help establish a new division.
We are at this very moment in Cochin, Kerala for three months getting away from the cold of the Northern Virginian winter. We did this last year as well – and at the end of that sojourn we bought a flat in Cochin. The notion of actually moving to India is something that we could not consider given the our children and grand-children, quite apart from siblings who are in the US. I know of an increasing number of Indians in the US who are doing – or contemplating doing the very same thing that we are.
I am sometimes asked why we like coming to Kerala given the very limited contacts we have here not having been raised in India. I don’t know that I have a good answer. Certainly, one of the reasons is to get away from the cold but then there are lots of other places one could achieve that result. I have to say that at a basic level – which some on this forum may not be able to comprehend – I like the aspect of being one among a mass of brown faces. Perhaps this is unique to my situation because my entire life has been spent in countries where I was an identifiable minority. It seems an almost primal instinct – but I would be less than honest if I did not acknowledge this to be the case.
In 1994, we seriously contemplated moving to India. The company I worked for was bought out and I received a severance package that enabled me to retire at a relatively young age. I have been retired ever since. At the time when my job came to an end, I was very interested in setting up a hospital management company, in India, similar to the one I used to work for in the US – providing health care similar to what one is used to receiving in the US. I was able to access venture capital for this purpose through contacts I had developed in my years working in a corporate environment. For a combination of reasons, this idea never came to fruition, mostly having to do with our ambivalence about the impact such a move would have on our children – and it is one of my lasting regrets. It is something that India needed very much at that time – and still needs today though that void has been partly filled with other similar ventures that started around that time.
For those who have Time Warner Digital Cable in New York, the documentary is being shown until 1/29/08 on channel 1008, the free movies on demand channel. Look for Sundance tab. Kudos to Sandhya Suri for such a moving and thought provoking documentary.
I love this film. I felt joy, but sadness at the same time watching this film, because you got to see the Suri family roll with the waves of immigrating to a new country, assimilating to new culture and returning to a place they know as home. I would imagine it was diffiuclt reassimilating back into India. I was born in a foreign country and migrated to the United States to go to school. I was in my late teens and finished in my mid 20’s, so I feel like a “grew” up here. I returned home because my family persauded me, but I was very unhappy and barely socialized with anyone. After a year, I decided to return to the States for further educated, and hopefully be able to settle.
i saw this film today and really liked it.
However, its got to be said the old bloke had no control on his daughters. i mean one married a gorra and the other left for australia to experience the sun and blonde golden bodies; when she should have been working her butt off in the kitchen to take care of her mum and dad in their old age.
if there is anything you learn from this documentary is that family is precious and you should appreciate each day that goes by with them, and not doss around in australia in search of your own happiness…..jay