Watching Mississippi Masala on Pahela Baishakh

Celebrating Pahela Baishakh in Washington, DC sounds impossibly exotic. Doesn't it? Not really! The first day of Bengali New Year came and went without much exhilaration for most Bengalis here, since it was a weekday. Most of us didn't get to celebrate the day by eating Padmar Ilish and pantabhat, as the ritual these days calls for it, except a very few.
My friend Ruby, a schoolmate from teenage years who lives in another state, was one of them. She sent me a text message around 4 PM that read, Shuvo Nabobarsha to you. I asked some of the Bengali friends let's go into the woods and have some Ilish/bhat. Here, we have real Ilish available only during Easter, and they call it Shad, and it is fresh, not stale like the imported kind. But this community here is like frogs in a well. Some of them think everything related to Bangla culture is un-Islamic, and scared to speak up when it is important to have an honest conversation. They will come if you cook polau/korma and biryani, any day of the week. So, the two of us sat under our bura bot gach (old banyan tree) and had Ilish/bhat in celebration of Pahela Baishakh.
At the time instead of sharing sentimental memories with anyone, I was home having a sweet attack of nostalgia. I couldn't go for my usual stroll late in the warm afternoon because it was drizzling. After reading Ruby's SMS, I was trying to imagine how the streets of Dhaka must have been beaming with people who were under the effect of spring fever. I was thinking of a place of magic - from long ago, never to be known again. It felt to me I lost a world, a paradise, but somehow still hanging onto the remnants of its past.
Since my last visit to Bangladesh, so much has altered there! As I remember, back in the days, Pahela Baishakh used to be a family celebration. No one went all-out in welcoming the day. A lot of the young women used to wear white sari with red border which was a classic look for the day. We used to enjoy good food, and after that sometimes we went to the cinema with family members or visited close friends.
Now, from so far away from home, such celebrations seem very distant to me, I feel detached and at the same time I cannot let go of my wistful memories. At times, I feel like a baffled young child, in trying to make sense as to what went down since my long absence.
There will be, of course, belated festivities that the Bengali communities across Washington, DC will be celebrating in welcoming the spring. Such events will take place this weekend, and the one after. There will be assortments of cultural functions that are associated with the first day of Baishakh. Bangladesh embassy in Washington, DC will most probably host a cultural programme in rejoicing the occasion. Celebrating some events after a few days do not have the same effect; you simply don't sense the vibrating pulse of the event past. Instead, we feel more longing and homesickness for our old and unforgotten home.
Without any mysterious, fuzzy and warm feelings of Pahela Baishakh, I settled down with a heavy heart to watch an old movie titled 'Mississippi Masala' on YouTube, directed by acclaimed film maker Mira Nair. Though I saw the movie previously, I had forgotten the chronology of events that had occurred in the film. Very quickly, I got into it since the movie primarily deals with displacement, and people's sense of lost identity. The movie made one analyse the same burning question: why are we so enthralled in the foreign land which never feels like home? We tell ourselves we do not really belong here, we belong nowhere. We sort of live in a limbo.
The very aptly written screenplay deals with people's fundamental longing to fit in a place that they can really call home. The movie opens with the Asian Indians being ordered out of Uganda in 1972, after notorious Idi Amin assumed power, as he wanted Africa to be 'Black Africa.' Before sending them to exile he confiscated their homes, businesses and land. They were brought there by the British to build railroads. By then the Indians had put down roots for three generations. That is the only home that they knew of. A lot of them never ever set foot in India.
The story mainly focuses on Jay, a lawyer and his family in Kampala. After Jay gave an anti-Idi Amin interview on BBC, he became a target. Throughout the movie Jay remained fiercely loyal to his homeland Uganda. When the evacuation process was well underway, he refused to leave his beautiful home, which he had built. He didn't want to immigrate to Britain. He failed to understand why he is not welcome in Uganda any more - a place of his birth, where he grew up speaking the language, breathing its air, playing and swimming in the same pond with his African friends.
His wife Kinnu thought it was pointless to argue with the regime, and prepares to live an exiled life away from Kampala. Knowing how stubborn Jay could be, and how imperative it was for him to leave the place he called home, his childhood African friend broke it down to him in a language that he would understand. He said, 'Jay, this is not your home any more. Uganda is now for Africans, only black Africans. You are not one of us, so you must leave.'
Visibly stunned, after his friend's crude pronouncement, a broken hearted Jay boarded an airbus with his wife and young daughter Mina, without saying goodbye to his friend, who came to bid farewell. Jay's friend only had tried to protect him, but to Jay, it appeared as some kind of betrayal of their close friendship.
Fast forward…the family ends up in Greenwood, Mississippi, USA, an ethnic enclave for the Asian Indians. There in the Deep South, many Indian immigrants are in the motel business. Jay helped to manage a grungy motel for his nephew Anil. Kinnu ran a liquor store in the neighbourhood. After finishing high school, Mina couldn't go to college, for her parents were unable to afford the cost. She also worked at the motel, cleaning the bathrooms, and preparing the rooms for the guests.
Kinnu told her dark-skinned daughter that she wants her to marry someone within their extended community of Indian exiles in Greenwood. She reminded Mina of the century-old Indian adage: 'You can be dark and rich, or light and poor, but not dark and poor.'
24 year-old Mina didn't understand her mother's eastern values, living in a community where most people are blacks and whites. Finding herself in a minority community, she felt totally isolated.
Mina ended up falling in love with Demetrius, a black boy, a carpet cleaner in the area. Demetrius was a proud boy who had worked very hard to own his cleaning business. The transplanted version of Romeo/Juliet story began. When their romance became public, they found everyone was thinking in stereotypes, and no one had any real interest or curiosity in knowing the other race, except the young couple who were in love. Prejudice and racism showed its ugly face on all sides. It became a huge barrier in giving the romance further chance to blossom.
Mina's parents and other Indian families banded together in breaking them up. The black community was outraged as the Indians refused to call Demetrius for his services in their motels. He defaulted on his bank loans, and was about to lose his business.
I don't want to give away the ending.
The movie was an eye-opener in portraying how Asian Indians and blacks in America view one another in a majority white culture. The heated argument between Jay and Demetrius about why Mina couldn't see him is something significant. The colour of Demetrius' skin was the underlying problem for the young couple to be together, as Jay gave him a subtle hint. Demetrius refused to accept it, and told Jay that he of all people should understand that he was only a few shades lighter than his black skin. He also reminded Jay that he by no means was white. A dispirited Demetrius told Jay that, after the way he had left Uganda, he should be more tolerant of another race instead of acting like a white master.
Demetrius voiced something profound to Mina as well, on their first outing. In the scene Mina was telling him about different masalas (spices) and their colours, and the allure they create in making a flawless dish to spice up Indian food. Amused Demetrius conveyed to Mina that the spices in a way are like metaphors to all diverse people living in America, who are of different shades and colours.
How very well we all immigrants fit that profile!
However, the irony is: in making a perfect dish, all the different masalas blend in together; whereas people of different colours don't get along so well in living side by side. Each race is different in their happiness, sadness, distrusts, rivalry and discontentment. At a first glance, all different races may seem like different colours of Mississippi masala, which has the potential to create a perfect balance. In reality, however, they are disconnected by culture and race. They differ in million ways about the way they perceive one another.
Happy 1422!
Zeeant Khan is a fiction writer and a columnist.
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