Missed Translations - Sopan Deb Page 0,94

my arrest from newspapers in India.

I was literally sweating. I didn’t know what he’d think. I was worried he’d be offended. I feverishly tapped out a follow-up email.

“Haha baba please ignore this email I was prepping for a show.”

Six hours later, he responded: “I read it and I liked it.”

Phew.

That’s when the pang of longing hit me. I wanted him to be watching in the audience instead of reading a summary thousands of miles away. I’ve missed my father. I don’t know that I’ve ever said that in my life. Because it was never true before. I missed his cackle, the hand gestures and his “No, no, no, no, no.” I even missed standing in the heat wearing a plastered smile while he snapped pictures with his point-and-shoot camera.

But Shyamal won’t be seeing my comedy in person anytime soon. He might come and visit us someday, but he’ll never live in the United States again. I’ve come to terms with the life Shyamal has built in India. He’s at peace. My father has his routines. He has his tennis matches, a cozy flat, his paintings, a thirst for travel, and the security of knowing that he’s lived the last dozen years on his own terms.

And still, I hear the sadness in his voice. My father called me near the start of the New Year to tell me he had taken a trip to Puri, the beach city where Bishakha’s father died. Shyamal excitedly told me about the bird sanctuary he had visited. Even though he seemed like his energetic self in describing his day, I sensed his desire for companionship in the tone of his voice. He was alone. There was the hint of emptiness, as if he was straining to put up a front. My father could only share the experience with me from a distance. But that’s something. He told me he would send me pictures from the trip. I told him I would send him pictures from stand-up.

My mother hasn’t been in the city to see me perform yet either, but both of my parents are more active parts of the life Wesley and I lead. They treat Wesley as if she is another daughter, and she treats them as surrogate parents. My parents seem happier now. After a lifetime of sadness, they are entitled to at least that much. They shouldn’t have the bar set simply to “survival.” In the last year, I’d like to think I’ve raised it just a little.

My brother said it best to me recently: “Ultimately, it’s about forgiveness.” Until Sattik put it that way, I hadn’t consciously considered how deeply bitter and angry I still was about my relationship with my parents before reaching out to them. It wasn’t just that I had become estranged from them; they were genuinely sources of anger. I thought that as I grew older, the anger had passively shifted to ambivalence. But the outward ambivalence was just how my frustration, which had been building since childhood, exhibited itself. Spending time with my mother and father, from the idle chitchat to the structured interviews, revealed their humanity. And learning about the culture that birthed Shyamal and Bishakha allowed for an absolution to take place. I learned the context for their flaws. Their sadness pained me—independent of its impact on my life. And I can’t be angry anymore. I have to let go.

Without the tumult of our past, I am not sure if my parents and I would be in a better place or just a more neutral one. I am not sure if I would be in a better place. The knot of emotion inextricably linked to the fires of my childhood made washing that pain away feel euphoric.

We all failed, in our own way. Draw a line between any two members of the Deb family and you’ll find a long history of could’ve-done-betters. Even now, my parents have failed to forgive each other, and Bishakha and I have found it challenging to find fully solid ground. I still have resentment about my father leaving the country without warning. But this was never supposed to be a one-step process, and I can be grateful nonetheless for how far we’ve come. What is light without darkness? I’m grateful when my phone rings and Shyamal is shouting “BABA!” on the other end, or when an excessively Scotch-taped holiday card arrives from my mother. Wesley and I can be grateful for each other, both having seen the holes that rocky relationships can leave.

And now that both parents are more active parts of my life, I get to say to them: I’ve seen you before. You’ve gotten much better.

Sattik was right: forgiveness was at the core of this. And it wasn’t just my own. The Deb family was like a web with new threads popping up all over the place. That trip my mother took to India where she picked up rubies for Wesley’s engagement ring? Bishakha had a tearful reunion in Kolkata with Siddhartha and Meera, my aunt and uncle, and they are now in semi-regular contact. Somnath and Susmita have welcomed Wesley and me to their home in Connecticut. Ron has even met Wesley’s brother, Ansel, and bonded over a shared fascination with religion. Atish and Sima are back in my life as a welcome second set of parents. The Hindu figurines that my aunt gave us as part of the blessing ceremony in India hold a prominent place in our bedroom.

Somnath has encouraged me to remember that we are all imperfect in our own ways, my mother and father included, and we can’t fully understand each other’s struggles. I never understood the burden my mother carried, keeping a trauma secret while trying to build a life beyond it. Where I only remember my father’s disappearance to India, Somnath remembers the lonely, helpless man he was before he left.

“Your dad didn’t abandon you,” he told me. “He hung in there and took care of you in his limited and flawed way until you left home and went to college. But he was dying from the inside. There was no medical miracle waiting for him in India. He was emotionally devastated in the United States, but he healed from the inside with his family’s support in India.”

I asked myself repeatedly at the beginning of all this: Is it too late to try this? Is there a point? We are who we are, right? I can now say with resounding force that it was not too late. We are who we are, and now I know who that is.

All it took was the premise of my first-ever joke, that first time I made people laugh from the backseat of a car as a young boy. It was what inspired me to pursue laughter from an audience wherever I could for as long as I could. And it was about my parents getting lost.

I had to turn a shortcut into a long cut.

Epilogue

Both of my parents, in the last year, have begun keeping Wesley and me in the loop about their day-to-day lives. One email I received from Shyamal in the fall detailed a safari trip to Madhya Pradesh, a state in central India. “Though we visited two safaris, all we could see a tiger for was three seconds,” my father wrote. Shyamal’s life was an adventure. I don’t think he’d have it any other way.

And my mother sent her own updates. In the winter, she wrote, “Hi shambo, How did you and wesley survive the weather? In here it was really Very bad. Did you go to work? Stay worm.”

Stay worm. That made me laugh.

I sent both parents early copies of this book in manuscript format. Shyamal’s response was so brilliantly Shyamal.

You have done a wonderful job as a journalist. I am very proud of you. This book may reunite this family and your parents can spend the remaining few years of their lives in peace. I shall start writing a book of my own ‘The Untold Story—My life.’ soon. I shall take your help on that.

Of course, Dad. Whatever you need.

The road for my mother and I, on the other hand, has not always been smooth. But that’s okay. I imagine that seeing my feelings about my upbringing in print was difficult for her. But I was lifted by a note she sent while reading an early chapter:

I am getting to know you more. There is so many things in my mind I wanted to tell you. But always remember I love you, no matter what.