The Candid Life of Meena Dave
Namrata Patel
For my parents, Arvind and Pushpa, and my sister, Amy.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The immigrant experience lies on a continuum from those who immigrated recently to those who arrived hundreds of years ago. Yet often, in America, we think of historical immigration as western European to the exclusion of others who came to the US in smaller numbers.
My perception of Indian immigration was shaped by what I lived, not what I learned about in school. It wasn’t until graduate school that I discovered stories of those who came generations before me, particularly in academic spaces.
I learned that there were Indians in America as early as 1790, when captains who worked for the East India Company brought them to the eastern United States as their servants. There have been other pockets here and there of a few hundred Indians who came seeking opportunity, including the Sikhs in the 1900s. A few years ago I came across an academic paper by Ross Bassett, who catalogued every Indian graduate from MIT from its founding to the year 2000. In MIT-Trained Swadeshis: MIT and Indian Nationalism, 1880–1947, he writes about the hundred Indian men who came to Boston to study at MIT for the singular purpose of rebuilding India postcolonization. They were, for the most part, from elite families; some were followers of Gandhi; and they influenced the technological future of independent India.
I thought about how little I knew about Indian immigration, how few stories show Indians in America beyond the first or second generation. I live in Boston. I walk along the same paths that they might have. Yet I never knew this part of my cultural history. I imagined how lonely it might have been for them to be so far away and in an unfamiliar place. Yet they came in groups, possibly finding their own community. I wanted to examine those themes along with what third-generation assimilation could look like. How would an individualistic culture affect a fundamentally collective one?
I wrote The Candid Life of Meena Dave not only to give an example of Indian American history but also to touch on what it could mean to build community in isolation. That I wrote this during the recent pandemic allowed me to explore these themes as an individual and as part of a shared experience.
Identity is something most of us examine at some point in our lives. It is universal to feel comfortable or uncomfortable in our bodies, our skins, our commonness, and our otherness.
It is Meena’s story; however, I believe it resonates with all of us who found ourselves untethered and discovered our anchors.
CHAPTER ONE
Meena Dave was tired, and not just from thirty-six hours of travel. She’d expected a trinket, a ring of some sort, when she’d learned about an inheritance. It should have been easy, a quick stop in Boston on her way to New York from Auckland.
“If you had responded to our initial inquiries.”
Meena heard judgment in the husky voice of the woman who sat on the other side of the large mahogany desk. The tall woman in the black, fitted pantsuit belonged in this corner office with oversize windows.
“I was in New Zealand,” Meena said. And Tasmania, Tokyo, and Nova Scotia before that. She sat taller to fight the weight of fatigue in her body. Besides, most of her communication happened via email or text. She didn’t check her actual mail for months at a time.
“As I mentioned,” Sandhya Shah continued, “you’ve wasted half of the allotted one year, but at least you’ve managed to make it within the window.”
Meena reread the paperwork. “Are you sure you have the right person? I didn’t know Neha Patel.” Another reason she hadn’t prioritized this when she’d picked up her mail from her Manhattan PO box three months earlier on her way from Portugal to the Pacific.
“We’ve verified your identity, and we don’t make careless mistakes at Menon and Shah.”
Meena glanced at the index card in her hand. It was like the ones she’d made herself in high school when studying for the SAT. This had a single word and its definition.
engineer (noun)
1 a.: a designer or builder of engines
b.: a person who is trained in or follows as a profession a branch of engineering
c.: a person who carries through an enterprise by skillful or artful contrivance
engineer (verb)
2 a.: to contrive or plan out usually with more or less subtle skill and craft
b.: to guide the course of
“And what is this?” Meena held it up to the lawyer.
“It was part of the packet to be turned over to you along with the keys.” Sandhya tapped a manicured nail on the stack in front of Meena. “As soon as you sign the paperwork, you can take possession.”
Meena skimmed the few paragraphs she could understand and glossed over the legalese.
“To review the terms . . .”
“I have to wait out the full year—well, six months now—before I can sell it,” Meena cut off the lawyer.
“And it can only be sold to one of the other four owners of the building,” Sandhya said. “No outside buyers.”
Meena resisted the urge to take her long hair out of its messy bun and braid the edges. A habit her mom had never approved of. Hannah Dave, the only mother who counted. She stared out the large windows. The sky was thick with clouds. Leaf-diving sky, her dad had called it. They’d go out in the backyard and rake the fallen leaves into heaping piles. Then Meena would take a running start and jump in, belly-first. This was why she’d avoided the state of Massachusetts since she’d left it right after high school. Too many memories.
“What if I don’t want it?” Not that Meena was reckless. An apartment in the historic area of Back Bay wasn’t something she could turn down when she supported herself as a freelance photojournalist.
“Do you not?” The lawyer knew Meena’s hesitation was a bluff.