The actor and comedian was raised in the American South on a diet of spicy curry and fried chicken. Hoping to make sense of his place in the world, he returned to his roots, and let his stomach lead the way.
I DON’T REMEMBER much of my first trip to India. I was a spoiled, restless 6-year-old monster with a litany of complaints: ‘‘I keep getting bitten by mosquitoes!’’ ‘‘There’s no shower?’’ ‘‘It’s so hot!’’ Rather than soaking up the culture of my ancestors, I was mad that there weren’t any Toaster Strudels. My classmates in America imagined I was touring the Taj Mahal and riding elephants, when in reality much of the visit was spent driving in cramped vehicles to the homes of distant relatives and old friends of my parents. And because I’ve only been on a handful of occasions, sometimes with six years between trips, my Indian aunts and uncles have never quite known what to make of me (‘‘Still playing with your Transformers, Aziz?’’ ‘‘Uh, no, not really. I just got a driver’s license.’’)
When I arrived this past December at the hectic airport in Trivandrum, a state capital in the south of India, the first thing I noticed was that everyone — the weary travelers, the surly customs officers, even the chipper billboard models — looked like me. As an American ‘‘minority,’’ it felt strange to suddenly be a part of the majority. But, as I stood at the luggage carousel, admiring an array of enviable mustaches, I noticed something stranger: white people. They seemed a little lost, probably like my family must have looked to all the white people in Bennettsville, S.C., the small town where I was raised and where the Indian community consisted of one family — mine.
Perhaps the best illustration of my split cultural identity was in the food I ate as a child. When my mother wasn’t preparing chicken korma or biryani, I was eating Southern staples cooked by Mrs. Beulah, our African-American housekeeper. One day, it was fish curry and rice, the next it was chicken and dumplings.
The morning of my arrival in Trivandrum, I decided to adopt my standard strategy for traveling: find and consume really good food. Narrowing the focus almost always leads to a deeper understanding of the region. I was sure that this was the key to experiencing India as an adult — at the very least, I’d leave sated.
Jetlagged but hungry, I set off for the Chalai market in the center of Trivandrum, which is jungly and humid. It’s chaotic in the most Indian of ways: small auto rickshaws careening past motorcycles carrying entire families, narrowly missing the rows of vendors selling tea, dried flowers, spices, bongo drums, T-shirts with sassy catchphrases, brightly colored combs and shiny plastic pinwheels.
If people glance twice at me in America, it’s usually because they recognize my work as an actor (or the work of a different Indian actor, or because I remind them of some Indian guy they happen to know). But in India, it was because the locals could tell I wasn’t from around those parts. Sure, I appear Indian, but my clothes and sneakers were clearly American. Even in India, I was kind of an outsider.
I turned a corner off the main strip onto endless rows of fruits, vegetables, meat and fish. I wanted to ask if there were any great nearby restaurants, but my Tamil is a bit shaky. (Although I was fluent as a child, I now use it almost exclusively to have clandestine chats with my family in the company of white people.) I gave it a shot, though, and started asking around — it didn’t hurt that everyone seemed to get what I meant when I said ‘‘tasty.’’ Thanks to a helpful fishmonger, I darted through tiny alleys and up a few flights of an unmarked building to Hotel Mubarak.
In Italy, you know you’ve found a truly authentic restaurant when they don’t have an English menu. In India, it’s when there are no utensils and you must eat with your hands. At Mubarak, there were no forks to be found. As soon as I was seated, a banana leaf was placed in front of me, and the waiter quickly doled out a hefty portion of rice. Other servers came by, offering fried prawns, mackerel and squid with various curries. I nodded when I wanted a serving and because everything looked delicious, I nodded often.
ON THE THIRD DAY of the trip, I headed with my family to my father’s hometown of Tirunelveli about three hours east to visit my grandmother. Due to the language barrier (she doesn’t speak English), our phone calls basically consist of the same exchange every few months:
Amma: ‘‘Hello!’’
Me: ‘‘Hi Amma! How are you?’’
Amma: ‘‘Ahhh . . . Nalla irukkiren. Niinga eppadi irukkireenga?’’ [I’m good. How are you?]
Me: ‘‘I’m good! I’m good!’’ [pause] ‘‘Okay . . . well . . . I’ll put my dad back on!’’
Now at the age of 89, she still lives in the small home where my father was raised, and which was built by her husband — my grandfather — in the 1970s. In honor of our visit, several aunts and uncles and their kids joined us.
I relate to my cousins in wildly different ways. We all get along well, but it’s easier to connect with some more than with others. Three of them grew up in the States; four were born in India, but later moved to New Zealand; and the rest grew up in India and stayed. I’m closest with the American ones, not just because we’ve spent the most time together but because we share a specific set of cultural issues having grown up as Indians in America rather than Indians in India. They know the embarrassment of inviting friends over while your dad wanders around in a lungi, a garment that looks like a dress. They also know the challenge of trying to tell your parents, who likely had an arranged marriage, that you are dating someone — and the equally dicey situation of explaining to your partner why it took so long to share the news. My cousins in India can’t relate to any of this — everyone there is rocking a lungi, and several of them have had their own arranged marriages. They, of course, are dealing with problems that are entirely foreign to me.
Excited to have so many family members together in the same room, and eager to capture the occasion, all the older people grabbed phones and iPads and started snapping away. I posted a photo of them from my perspective on Instagram with the caption, ‘‘GUYS THESE FILES ARE VERY EASILY SHARABLE! YOU DON’T ALL HAVE TO . . . nevermind.’’ The comments that came flooding in suggested that, whether in Tirunelveli or Toledo, families everywhere are needlessly over-documenting their reunions.
My grandmother doesn’t appear to have aged in 20 years, and she has one of two expressions: Sometimes she kind of stares off, the wrinkles in her dark brown skin suggesting a life lived; but as soon as she engages with someone, she lets out a beaming smile and a quick flurry of Tamil. In either case, she is a warm presence. Because we’d often go long spells without seeing her, it would sometimes take Amma a second to tell my brother and me apart. It was different this time. My father leaned in close to Amma and said, ‘‘Do you recognize Aziz?’’ Her memory was going, and yet she replied, ‘‘My grandchildren are my favorite. I’ll never forget them.’’ We ended up having a slightly expanded version of our usual brief rapport, and after a delicious home-cooked meal I drove back to Trivandrum. In the car, I wondered when I’d see her again.
When I flew back to New York later that week, I thought about how strange it was that in total I’d only spent a few months in India over the course of 32 years, never really belonging anywhere. It reminded me of a meal I hadn’t thought to record at the time, which I’d eaten on the fly at a KFC in Trivandrum. I had ventured there, not to sample culinary prowess, but rather to see the Indian interpretation of something quintessentially American. Signs all over the place promoted their new Chizza, which is basically a flat piece of breaded chicken, sliced in four and covered with cheese and marinara sauce. I opted instead for a basmati bowl topped with popcorn chicken, a peculiar hybrid of two vastly different cultures. Kind of like me.
Source: NYTimes
