(Not) Leaving on a Jet Plane

My first season as a ‘patriate’ with the ‘ex’ most definitely left behind. It was busy as well, the family emergency necessitating pretty much the whole of the foreign side of the family being down, cousin K and aunt C being two of my favourite people in the family. N was down as the token member of the boys, with the associated nights drinking and Yala trips ensuing.

And now they’ve all left. It’s a strange feeling I tell you. I woke up on Saturday, the day N was leaving and I felt the keening loss of another friend leaving. D, S, N…everybody leaves and that’s the truth. I wonder how the family, the friends had felt every time I left, the UK, Sri Lanka, San Francisco, Los Angeles, over and over again.

I think it’s easier to leave than be left behind. The former act has an active component, a control component that simply doesn’t exist for the latter. You sort of feel like that dog running along the car as your family leaves you behind, not knowing when you will see them again. I’ve had friends who’ve left and never come back, I’ve left family to lose them. It’s a strange feeling not to be leaving, a good, sad feeling.

Tall Tales

It’s been a strange couple of weeks. Disinfectant and fluorescent lights. Green uniforms and visiting times. The family’s been down in droves, people I haven’t seen in years have been in town and it’s been a mixed bag. The cousins and aunts whom I love to bits, the grandaunts and uncles with whom I’m a lot more guarded.

My relationship with the family, on both sides has never been a simple one. Too many secrets in the past and other skeletons in the closet to have ever resulted in what anybody could term a ‘normal’ situation. It was however quite interesting to hear the old stories, stories I’ve either never bothered to hear or have bothered to remember.

The old house in Negombo, three hundred years old but sold by an irresponsible grand uncle and now torn down. The great grandfather who was brilliant but an inveterate gambler, he apparently got a medical scholarship to Kings College but spent far too much time gambling and got sent back in disgrace. He then promptly won another scholarship in Ceylon (it was a long time ago) and had the dubious honour of being one of the students who had taken the longest time to finish medical school. There were countless more tales of people whose genes I shared but had never really thought about. It was surreal.

I guess family emergencies do have their plus points.

Scour

The trays blurred in front of my face, cheap plastic containers made holy with the most beautiful flower designs being passed hand to hand. The smell of incense curling through me while the drum beat its tattoo. I don’t believe in customs, but I do believe in culture. And I understood the paradoxical need for the two as I partook in the ata visi Buddha pooja. Though I personally prefer a more quiet experience, the pooja did resonate with me. Spending the time with SS, the closest thing to a mother I’ve ever had probably had a calming effect on me as well.

The alienation from my culture and traditions and the life of an pseudo-elitist has made me feel like a foreigner in my own country. Though I am still not and never will be a ‘religious’ person in the strict traditionalist sense, nor for that matter I guess a ‘true’ Sri Lankan I feel less foreign, more with my country now. If even for a bit, I found myself.

Times going by and I’m still wrestling. It’s strange the things that bring me up, a conversation with a friend (who incidentally now knows more about me than most people) brought things I have never talked about to the surface. 21 years is a long time to carry something within myself, getting it out felt good despite the constant fear of the possibility of alienation.

Today brought me closer to my blood, where my roots are and the shell is scouring off, one painful layer by layer.

I just hope the world holds up for me while I return to normality.

Sleepless in Changi

Changi’s eerily quiet at 4am, my fellow transit passengers are variously sleeping in contortionist positions or surfing mindlessly at the stand up kiosks for free internet while I sit here trying to figure out what I’m feeling. I always find the welter of my emotions difficult to decipher. It might have something to do with the trails that my life has led so far, the unending goodbyes to family and friends whom I consider family that prompted me since I was eight to start putting up walls around myself. Now I find myself not at a cross-road, but at the start of a whole new journey. And I cannot figure out what I’m feeling.

Will I miss California? Undoubtedly. For all the crap, the rat race, the heat there were moments of unspeakable beauty, loving family, comfort with friends and spine tingling excitement. The bygone weekend was a microcosm of what I gained from my six year sojourn in the US, Tori Amos at the Greek, alcoholic nights, skydiving and friends and family around.

The boys and I have seen some amazing groups in the last couple of years and to top it off, SR and I went to see Tori Amos on Friday. Admittedly I may not be her biggest fan unlike my obsessive interest in groups like Death Cab for Cutie or Snow Patrol, but boy can that girl sing and play various keyboards. High on Tori Amos we then proceeded to meet up with P and S and enjoy my dubious Mojito mixing skills. As was proved last July, the summer heat and the refreshment of a sparkling Mojito makes a bad combination, as we dragged ourselves out of bed with mighty headaches at the ungodly hour of 5.30am to make the drive to Lake Elsinore, so D and I could throw ourselves out of a plane.

The thrill of the skydive wiped all the alcohol residues from my system quick time. This being my second jump meant I wasn’t hamming it up for the camera and was bucket loads more confident. Instead I watched in open mouthed wonderment as the Pacific glistened from 12,000 feet up, the slipstream tearing at my goggles as we hit terminal velocity. Pulling on the parachute straps as instructed by Lelloo, my tandem instructor, we spiraled into a 360 degree turn, the parachute disconcertedly at right angles to us. I felt a twinge of regret as we dropped quickly and come in for a rapid landing at the drop zone. I would have loved to have taken the para course and jumped solo while I was in the US though with the constraints of time and money, this was always a bit of an impossibility (especially considering my other hugely expensive hobbies).

The sibling’s engagement party in the evening brought together some of the most important people in my life. Being able to give a toast at the party and say ‘I love you’ to my sister was when the final wall between us, built up during the decade apart and then warily explored when we met as adults was finally torn down. I will miss her most of all though the maternal unit comes in a close second. The last six years will probably be the last time the both of us will spend significant amounts of time in the same country much less with each other. I should be bitter that geography and family considerations have led to us leading such separate lives, but then what would be the point? I am grateful for what I’ve had so far.

All in all as S put it was one of the best nights ever, friends and family coalesced into one wonderful night of merriment with the Old Reserve flowing and the chocolate biscuit pudding being inhaled down. I am going to miss California, CP & RD up north, my boys (& one token girl) to blur the weekends away, the sibling and the maternal unit all made California worthwhile, made the rat race bearable and I am grateful beyond words. I’ll even miss the work team, as crazy as it was they were for the most part an excellent bunch of peeps.

As D would put it, One Love to the past six years and the memories. And I look forward to a new beginning and new aspirations to achieve.

And it begins

The emotional blackmail. Put off for awhile since I made a deal that I wait for the blue book and not abscond back to the promised land prematurely. Now that I am inches from that goal, comes the anecdote,

Aunty N’s friends boyfriend…he went to Australia, got citizenship, came back and didn’t get dual. They refused him
Err….why?
No idea…

Sure….why do I have the feeling more aunties and their mothers are going to have trouble with dual, dealing with the shock of moving back.

What baffles me sometimes is the selfishness of the people who say they love you. All they really want is succor for themselves. So what if living here will crush my soul, destroy my sanity and make me a mindless corporate drone consumer? So long as I’m there in some form, who cares if it’s just the husk left.

All I really wanted to say was fuck off, stop putting doubts, paranoia into my head, into a situation which is already scaring the shit out of me. Self doubt is a specter difficult to fight even without the little whisperings of doubt from people who should know better.

Grey Morning

That early morning light, before the dawn breaks, the house was still grey as I came down the stairs. I remember the feel of the book in my hands, the slightly corrugated feel of the cover. I lay down on the soft cushions in the hall; eagerly opening the pages of the book and watching the words swirl out. It was a book that only a seven year old would be fascinated by, ‘A Giant Collection of Facts’ that Aunty N had gifted me.

Unfortunately even at seven, I wasn’t the best morning person. The next memory I have is the jingle of the phone, the sun still wasn’t up but it had become noticeably lighter. The customary polkicha was whistling its piercing call. There was a hubbub of voices above. Charted. Emotional. Finally a choke of grief and a woman crying.

That’s when I knew. Even though the voices were hushed I understood and it was buried somewhere deep in my subconscious. Even though the truth came out only a decade and maybe more later, from that day I knew. My world had imploded and its shards were spreading across the continents. And my old life was blowing away as the sun rose to chase the grey away.