and not be seen until I cease to exist

maisnon was amused that I pulled a weekend update a week late, and later than her own, but I can be even less logical about recounting events, and I am about to prove it. Apropos of nothing, let me also add that maisnon always says something to make me lurve her even more every time we talk- last night’s gem was “I really think she might be too dumb to live.” Just try and tell me you don’t lurve her too.

My cousin M mentioned, during my visit to Brooklyn, that when we were very young, we thought being Indian was the same thing as being Gujarati. We did not know that anyone from India spoke anything other than Gujarati. I nodded along absent-mindedly at the time.

But when I recollect my youth, I know it was blatantly the opposite for me. M had spent her formative years in Queens. Since my parents chose EBF as their place to plant roots, they found it hard in the early days to meet anyone Indian, much less Gujarati. My mother would spot any Indian man walking into a bank, and she would tug on my father’s sleeve, urging him to stop the car, to go make the man’s acquaintance. I blame that conditioning for my father’s current tendency to strike up conversations of inappropriate intimacy with complete strangers. But I also contrast that to my guardedness about people, and have to admire their inclination to give anyone Indian the benefit of the doubt. Xenophobia aside, there is something innocent and hopeful about it that I completely lack.

In those early days, before they found all the Gujus in the greater New England area, my parents had a variety of friends. They befriended a bachelor. To this day, I do not know what part of India he is from. He lived with his girlfriend (!) and his girlfriend was not desi (double !). He had a collection of motorcycles, and an affection for antique clocks: eccentric, impractical things that were unthinkable to my parents. He used to sit me on his lap, when I was but six or seven, and say, “Listen carefully. I have a lot of education, but do you know what really gets you somewhere in life? Bullsh*t.” My father would laugh nervously, shaking his head. Y uncle would insist on it again. “Bullsh*t. I am telling you, *****. Remember it.” It was the first curse word I had ever heard an adult utter, and I somehow felt special, because Y uncle deemed me mature enough to hear it. Little did I know that it was the wisest thing anyone would ever tell me about the corporate world.

It was through Y uncle that my parents met a South Indian couple who went on to become their most steadfast friends. These were the first South Indian people I had met, and I knew that they were not like us, for a number of reasons. They only spoke in English with my parents. Their accent had a different lilt. They both had PhDs. A auntie did not wear flashy saris, and G uncle was more interested in carpentry than Camrys.

This couple had two sons, one just younger than my brother, one just older than me. Both were straight-A students. But it was not like our other family friends. Their parents did not harass them, demand of them those perfect grades. Whereas most of my Guju friends who were overachievers toiled and shut themselves in their room to do well enough, these two seemed to just glide through high school. While my Guju friends would compare grades competitively, these two would not even mention grades. We would only find out later, after they had graduated as valedictorians or spanked the latest standardized test they had attempted. Not only that, they also had hobbies, were well-balanced. And that was how I came to develop an inferiority complex in relation to South Indians.

If you are going to develop an inferiority complex in life, this was not a bad one to have. Instead of trying to out-brag the competition, I was always trying to quiet down about grades, about status, about economics. Most of my ideas about women, education, and identity are tied up with A auntie, who was always my champion. And most of my determination to be okay with roughing it is related to G uncle and his sons, who seemed to have a zero tolerance policy for high maintenance women.

I have since managed to set aside such sweeping generalizations about Gujus, South Indians, and any other group of people, but the things we carry with us are hard to discard. In many ways, I have never shaken the feeling that those two sons, specifically, were just superior to my brother and me, that we could never equal their accomplishments or talent. Over time, that feeling became irrelevant, except for the occasional reports we would get about them- U had just been awarded a prestigious fellowship, S had just traveled through Southeast Asia for three months. Things like that would reassert how we could never measure up.

Even then, none of it would have mattered, until an afternoon in DC a few weeks ago. My work obligations had completed such that I had a free afternoon to waste time in H&M and Barnes & Nobles. On my way back, at a crosswalk on Wisconsin, I saw S across the street. We were both waiting for the walk signal. From my periphery, I sensed that he had glanced at me a few times. But I still was not sure it was him. It had been at least five years since we had seen each other. The walk signal lit. When we crossed each other, I looked straight at him and recognized him immediately. He looked away, and kept walking.

The moment brought back a flood of memories. He was the older of the two sons, always the more aloof, the more disdainful. It was one thing to feel inferior to those sons. It was another thing to have it confirmed by the way S would look down upon us. And yet, he was always doing things I found immensely cool. He drove across the country in a dilapidated Subaru, sleeping in his tent at campsites along the way. He spent a summer in the Florida Keys, after which, he convinced himself he could sail around the world. He ran out of money one quarter of the way through. He would get frustrated with his work, and quit to get one degree after another.

My cousin M observed, since moving to Brooklyn, that there are a lot of people doing neat things, like working a daily grind and writing screenplays at night. But she also observed something I have been trying to articulate for a long time: “Just because you are doing something outwardly interesting, it doesn’t mean you are an interesting person.” It is always the biggest disappointment to meet people who are doing what I find noteworthy, only to discover that they are incapable of carrying a conversation for longer than ten seconds.

I do not mean to imply that S cannot carry a conversation. Maybe he can; I do not know. I do wonder if we would ever have anything to talk about, if we actually did meet today. But I think the encounter that afternoon cured me of the last case of awe I have ever held for anyone. I was trying to live up to someone who does not actually exist. What is more- the entire premise is flawed. Trying to be more or less than S should have never been the goal.