Yes, My Accent Is Real (6 page)

“I'm giving you and your brother a key,” he told me. “The key to this gun cabinet. If anything happens, open the cabinet, and get ready to defend your home.”

I was scared shitless. My father, as always, was a rock. He might speak softly and smile with dimples and patiently discuss both sides of every issue, but when the chips were down and the tide of violence was upon us, this was a man who owned seven rifles and was willing to use them to protect his family.

At the dinner table, sometimes we talked about death.
What does it mean to mourn?
In India, when someone close to you dies, you drop everything and you go to their house. You show up to support the
family as much as to show respect for the person who has died. You see this in nature, too: if a monkey dies in the forest, the other monkeys congregate and sit in silence.

I was eight when one of my uncles died. It was the first time I can remember knowing someone who had died. On the way to my uncle's house I said, “Dad, I feel scared to see a dead body.”

“Kunal, it's okay. In your life you will see a lot of dead bodies. All you have to do is accept death and just show up during the family's time of grief.”

“But what do I say? What do I do?”

“You don't have to say anything. By showing up you are reassuring them that they are not alone. Just
being there
is enough.”

One night Dad wanted to take us all out to dinner. There was an air of excitement since this restaurant had come highly recommended as the new hot spot in town, and to top it off, it was also my favorite cuisine, Indian-Chinese. Which is basically Chinese food that tastes like curry. A very fat and fancy maître d' seated us at our table and as we waited for the waiter, we mused over the menu. I was damn near drooling looking at the other tables filled with spicy goodness. We waited five minutes for a waiter to arrive . . . then ten minutes . . . then fifteen . . . Nothing. We were being completely ignored by all of the staff.

Then, at an adjacent table, we watched as a white family was brought over and seated. Out of nowhere, three waiters immediately showed up to take their order.

Incensed, my father stood up in the middle of the restaurant and asked loudly, “Where is the manager of this restaurant?”

Fat, fancy maître d'
waddled in, mumbling and fumbling.

“What country do we live in?” my dad asked him.

“Excuse me, sir?”

“What. Country. Do. We. Live. In.”

“Sir, we live in India.”

“Is India a democracy?”

“Yes.”

“Then why am I being treated like a third-class citizen in my own country? I have been sitting here for fifteen minutes with my family, not one person has served us, but as soon as a table of foreigners sits down, the entire restaurant shows up to take their order.”

Silence. Then Dad says, “Come, children, we are not eating here. We will never come here again.” We left. I could see the anger in Dad's eyes, and the shame on the maître d's face.

My father always had a lot of pride, but he also had a sense of proportion. In the infamous Archie's Gallery Valentine's Day Card Showdown, my father didn't think I had truly been wronged, which is why he paid the clerk the price of the card. In the restaurant, he felt like his basic right to be treated without prejudice had been violated. He stood up when it mattered.

That night in the restaurant, it occurred to me that I'm the kind of person who, in a similar situation, might have noticed what was happening but probably would not have done anything about it. I would have quietly devoured every last bite of that Indian-Chinese meal (if and when it was finally delivered), paid the bill, and gone home. Looking back at it now, I wonder if perhaps when my dad was a boy, he saw his dad standing up to some injustice and wondered about his own ability to do the same. Over time he grew into a man and stepped into that role, teaching his children right from wrong. As I write this, I
can feel myself changing, maturing, growing into a man, someone who will stand up for everything he believes in. At least, I really hope so.

This says it all.

This advice was passed down to my father from his father. It's part of living with a big heart. Surround yourself with people that you love. Give freely. Don't expect it back.

When I was eighteen, it was time for me to leave for America. A large crowd of friends and cousins had gathered at the airport to send me on my way, but once I had hugged all of them good-bye and kissed and cried with my mother, and once I had checked all of my luggage, finally, it was just me and my dad.

“I'll walk Kunal to the gate,” he said.

The two of us walked all the way to where they collected tickets and you boarded the plane—you could do that back then—not saying much. At the counter he smiled his deep-dimpled smile and charmed the pretty flight attendant, saying, “My son is finally leaving the house to become a man. He's going to America today to study.”

“That's lovely, sir,” she said. “I have a two-year-old myself. I look forward to the day when I can walk him to the plane as you are doing.”

“It's a very proud moment,” my father said.

“It is,” I
mumbled, trying to add something memorable and appropriate and failing miserably.

The flight attendant looked at me. “You know what, Mr. Nayyar, to help you on your journey, I'm going to upgrade you to first class, so you can fly in comfort for your first big trip alone.”

Yes!

And finally it was time to say good-bye to my father. We could not put it off any longer. I didn't know how he was going to react, whether he would be heroic and strong, give me a pat on the back and gruffly say something like
You got this
, or if he would dissolve into tears.

“I have something for you,” he said instead.

I secretly hoped it was an envelope of money, but he instead pulled out a small book with a green cover:
The Prophet
, by Kahlil Gibran, the Lebanese poet and philosopher.

“Read this book, Kunal. Refer to it whenever you have to answer any of the difficult questions life will ask you.”

And then he didn't say good-bye. He didn't say he would miss me. Instead he pulled me in close and said, “I love you, and I believe in you wholeheartedly. You will make a great life for yourself.”

Tears began to well up in my eyes (as they do again, even now, as I write this).

He continued. “This is not good-bye, my son. This is many more opportunities to say hello.”

We hugged. As I walked to the Jetway, I turned back to look at him one last time. He said, “Kunal, when you've settled in on the flight, turn to the chapter on children.”

I waved again, boarded the plane, and immediately tore the book open and read the chapter on children. Which is a complete lie,
because first I geeked out over my free first-class seat with all the cool buttons and stuff! I had no idea how to work anything. I kept trying to turn on the TV but was instead just pushing the dinner tray open. The Indian businessman next to me, looking relaxed after a swirl of very important meetings, I presumed, was working his TV just fine. I figured he probably thought that having an overexcitable nitwit next to him would ruin his journey in first class. He probably hated me. He was probably about to demand a seat change for one of us. I was going to get demoted back to coach before takeoff.

“Hey, son, let me show you how to do that,” he said. I noticed his sleek reading glasses and his gentle face.

Okay. This is all going to work out okay.

I sank into my leather easy chair and began to peruse many of the astounding number of horrible movies that are available on airplanes. I believe my first choice of the evening was
Tarzan.
Hours later, unable to sleep, I finally opened
The Prophet
and turned to the chapter on children.

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, “Speak to us of Children.” And he said:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts.

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;

For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

I
. Of course, it's beds that really know what's what.

II
. Note: Should you choose to follow any or all of this advice, the author and publisher are not responsible for the consequences.

III
. To this day, I still wish (just a little bit) that he hadn't smiled and had kicked their asses. But that's not the point of the story.

IV
. It's a peculiar sensation when your parents apologize to you. It humanizes them. I feel that's the hardest thing about growing up—watching your parents become more and more human.

I SHOWED UP TO COLLEGE
a few days earlier than most of my classmates.
There was an additional orientation specifically for international students before the rest of the local students showed up, so the dorms were almost completely empty. This was 1999, my freshman year at the University of Portland, and I had just arrived from India. I really had no idea what to expect of college, except what I had seen in the movie
American Pie
. You know, the movie where everyone's getting laid? Yeah, this was not like that. The resident assistant, a friendly chap with bright blue eyes called Kaiden (great name), showed me to my room, gave me some paperwork to fill out, closed the door, and left.

I stared at the bunk beds and the barren walls and the gray carpet and suddenly realized I was absolutely alone. It was finally sinking in that I was eight thousand miles away from home. That I didn't know anyone. I looked at the empty room and realized that I didn't even know what to do for the next ten minutes—should I unpack, brush my teeth, wash my face, take a quick nap, fill out Kaiden's forms?

Aimless, I headed downstairs to explore the campus. I found Kaiden talking to an enormous black guy sitting on the floor with his legs crossed Indian-style.
^I
He looked like a giant kid as he sat
there twirling his giant dreadlocks. Even sitting down, he appeared to be three times my size.

“This is Dziko; he's from France,” Kaiden told me.

Dziko smiled. One of those smiles like a baby, the ones that force you to smile along, too, because it comes from a place of pure happiness. This was Dziko's smile. Everything about him was serene.

Then he stood up.

Dziko rose and kept rising, until it seemed like he would block out the sun. I was awestruck and made the dumb joke that I'm sure every human being had told him his entire life: “Wow, you're so tall. Do you play basketball?”

“No,” he mumbled in a gentle French accent.
Sarcasm?
I thought. Then he smiled and nodded his head. He was making a joke. He, in fact, did play basketball, and at six foot ten with the dreadlocks—he would be our school's starting power forward. He was 250 pounds of pure, ripped muscle. A giant with the face of an innocent child.

“This is your new roommate, Kunal,” said Kaiden.

Roommate? Did I hear that correctly? In that tiny dorm room? Do I get top bunk or bottom? I was both excited and terrified, and probably a little jet-lagged. Kaiden pointed us in the direction of the international students' orientation and we strolled off together, him in shorts and flip-flops, me in my long-sleeve shirt and corduroy pants, and I could tell right away that we were going to become friends. The rapport was instant. Or at least I thought so, because I basically spent the next several hours just asking him questions about basketball.
^II
He
patiently answered in his French accent—I later learned he spoke five languages—and even though he was a man of few words, his calm demeanor and kind smile told me,
This is okay; he's also far away from home, you need each other, you've found a friend, this new life can work.