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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.
what third-generation assimilation could look like. How would an individualistic culture affect a fundamentally collective one?
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.
The double doors, framed by iron lanterns on either side, were austere in their cool black lacquer sheen, more intimidating than inviting.
It was as if Neha had gone out to run an errand and never returned. This wasn’t the home of someone who had known she was going to die.
Oddly, there were no photos. No wedding pictures in silver frames or family photos on the fireplace mantel.
Never trust a person who is too lazy to brew tea. The only use for generic tea bags is to reduce puffiness around the eyes. If
She didn’t want to betray the people who had chosen her. She didn’t need to search for something if finding it could take away from the family she’d once had.
left her this place for a reason. Meena had to figure out if she wanted to know what that was.
I write dictionaries. I keep a record of our ever-evolving language. I like knowing that what I document, what I write, can be read long after I’m gone. I have no children. Only words I spend my life defining.
Everything was temporary. She’d learned that from a Buddhist monk in Burma. She’d adopted it as her mantra. When her mind wandered to what had once been, she’d rein it back to the present. For now, she was here, and she had things to do.
constantly seeking happiness. An elusive, subjective, situational concept.
The stranger had found a way to communicate from beyond the grave. Curiosity crashed like a giant wave over Meena. She needed to know more.
almost one hundred years, named by the original residents who lived here while they studied at MIT.”
“You don’t pick battles; you just outlast them.”
Gluggaveður. The last five letters can be inferred to refer to weather. It is an old root. The literal translation, however, is “window weather.”
wasn’t only biological; heritage and legacy came with knowing.
“You haven’t lived if you are not trying to forget.”
“I have scars as my memories. To fear is to torture yourself.”
familiarity in their looks. She was part of a race, a culture. There was a specificity she could acknowledge. It was a blood-and-bone connection.
word regular is that the constant pattern can change,” Sam said. “Can be redefined based on circumstances.”
“I think she was lonely. She wanted to be left alone but didn’t like that she’d been left,
Aloneness was a choice, but loneliness felt different. A disconnection from others that felt more like a condition of how she lived her life.
It wasn’t until she’d had to make her way on her own that Meena had chosen the life she had.
part of a contingent of Indians who came here from the 1920s to the late forties,” Sabina said. “Over a hundred of them came to study at MIT right before the fall of the British Raj in India.
studied engineering at MIT so they could go back and rebuild India. They aspired to remake the country.”
Once you are over the age of 30 you can no longer blame the past or your parents for the way you are. Fix yourself, it’s within your control.
subtext is often more telling than text.
he didn’t push. It was his superpower, really, because it made her want to talk, reveal things she rarely did.
“When we don’t understand the whole, we tend to fill in the missing pieces, like a sentence you can read even when it’s missing all of the vowels.”
Friendship can only work if it’s reciprocated.”
In this house they were just men who came to get an education so they could go back and rebuild their own country after the British pillaged and divided it. I’m a part of something bigger when I live here.”
earlier immigrants had to assimilate because there weren’t enough of us to build a community. That’s why I’m so proud of my grandfather and others who found this house, made it a home for people to feel close to who they were, where they’d come from.”
Staying Indian was important to them, from speaking in their native Gujarati language to religious customs. A way to stay tied to their home country while making a place for themselves here.”
I cannot offer you my home, even though you have lost yours. The only thing I can do is leave you mine when I’m gone. It’s your legacy, after all.
She needed to hold on to the rage for as long as possible because beyond it was a pain so big,
“Like the last shot of a movie. A clutching couple, backlit by the setting sun. We can stand here for hours.”
This apartment wasn’t a gift—it was a minefield, littered with hidden bombs designed to mess with Meena, to torture
“You don’t trust anyone. It’s a way of protecting yourself. I’m not a therapist, so I don’t claim to know why, but once you find a place to land, maybe try a little vulnerability. Your fortress is made of sand, and it looks like it’s collapsing.”
She didn’t want tragedy to be the end place on the map of her life. She wanted to redraw it. A Buddhist monk had once told her that all that exists is impermanent.
The anger had been let out. A sense of control seeped in. She could breathe again. Focus.
“I want that continuity, where every conversation isn’t the first conversation. Inside jokes, memories that you revisit years, decades from now.”
the only child of her mother’s only sister, died in a motorcycle accident, and he was younger than Neha.
She was staring into familiar eyes. Her own.
I never let you be real to me. You were someone else’s, my body was only an incubator,
They sat side by side. One had been born from the other, but they had no connection beyond a casual acquaintance. Two spoons of sugar in her tea. The one time Sabina had braided Meena’s hair. Small acts that could have been meaningful had they known who they were to each other.
“I still take my parents’ call every year, even though it cuts me up inside, even though I know I’ll be useless for a month after the call. When we’re tied to people, we think about them, miss them. Need them. You can run, or you can stay,”
her roots were not just a birth mother and father, but went beyond that for generations, centuries. She’d believed she’d been untethered, yet the invisible strands of genetics would always be here, and she had the opportunity to learn about them, to live in a place they’d built.
respond, not to react.
clear in this moment. Just like that, the anxiety and uncertainty faded. This was hers, by birth and by right. Doubly so.
