Heartbeats lead to my many homes

Like Google Earth the idea zooms in from way up high. Western hemisphere, North America, Canada, Western Ontario, Greater Toronto, Markham or Downtown Toronto. Finally at street level, the idea finds me: 5 feet tall, in my 4th decade, woman, Indian by birth, Canadian by passport.

And here I am, walking with people in the dark of the night to enjoy something I had heard about but had not ventured out to explore until this year, 2012.

No more waiting, no more 'next year maybe' thoughts. It is now and I am leaving: with you or without you, I say. My son comes with me, his father does not. Strolling is not something everyone has time for.

I hide behind the permission of the Academy and say that it is for a school project. I do my mothering work and then cajole my son to go with me as leaving him all alone that entire night with his busy father is asking for trouble. Food is a hook and it works. Adventure is another, and that works too: in my favour.

"Are we safe" he wants to know. "I know what I am doing, I am a Mumbai girl" I declare and I see him settle into a comfortable zone. I take refuge in the 'street cred' earned in another urban space, popularised in North American consciousness through films and Bollywood stereotypes.

"I know this bus route", he declares, more confident as we approach the bus stop. My TTC warrior is following in the footsteps of an illustrious sister who has left for greater heights into another urban space, knows about tickets and transfers.

Yonge Street and he is a little boy again, 10 years ago. He recalls those times when he had to sit on my lap then to be able to look out of the window. Now I scramble to the window as he is taller than I am and can block my view. Time flies.

My son has realised that he does not need a male protector to get him to a place far away from his suburban home and back. His mother is enough. More than enough.

Amin, A (2007): Re‐thinking the urban social, City, 11:1, 100-114

Grassroots Canadian

I have always been a Flaneur or shall I say Flaneuse? I just didn't know it then. Until I was given the elite title with the blessings of the Academy, I was just another grassroots observor.  I literally observed grassroots, collected rocks, feather and leaves. I still do.

From years of habit of being told "look here and see that, and what does that remind you of, that strange cloud over there", growing up far away from Mumbai, I developed what Gardner calls the Naturalist Intelligence.

Everywhere around me is data: EQAO, DRA, PM Benchmark. And with it the botanisation of people as 'below grade level, at-risk and level 2'. No one says underserved; I plan to say that at the next staff meeting whenever it happens.

My students walk with the Terry Fox Run flag, taking care to turn themselves so that people and cars on the road can see the writing and pay homage to the memory of a man they know only by name and in books. The kindergartens who think that we are all dressed in red and white as it is Canada Day are laughed about and once again I hear the words " these kids, they lack Canadian experience".

Critical theory guides my path and I am in elite company: Socrates, The Frankfurt School sociologists, and more recently Friere et al.

And as we walk back from the 5k, I see this beautiful little maple leaf, lying in the grass by the side of the road. I am steeped in metaphor, yet I don't write, until now, almost three months later.

Good writing is hard work says a certain thinking dog who sleeps atop his house.

Real writing is soul work, I know. It has to marinade in angst before it can be shared.

As I walk with myself, I ask: "Whose land am I on?" And I tell those stories as I go.

Haig-Brown, C. (2009). Decolonizing diaspora:whose traditional land are we on?. Cultural and pedagogical inquiry, 1(1), 4-21.

Azaan- The call to namaaz

An unfamiliar word
on a blog created
to track my academic routes, you say.
An unfamiliar word
in 'mainstream' Canadian vocabulary,
you remind me.
And I continue to decolonise,
even by refusing to spell my word with a 'z'.

I, whose sister, raised in her father's faith
Was unable to travel freely in the city of her birth
and now the frowns at hijabs and nikaabs, and beautiful souls
labelled "the other"
by the ignorant

the danger of single-story worldviews
is creeping up on many
and the flight continues
as children continue to be raised with their own
and others are asked to transer schools to be with their kind

and I push
and push
with many
one stone at a time
to reduce to rubble, that un-knowledge
that we are all dust, together
sooner or later.

Regan, P. (2012). Unsettling the settler within. (1 ed.). Vancouver: UBC Press

I am human capital

It was Diwali week and I was off to pick up a little this and that for the festival. With each passing year, as the distance from my roots increases and one more family member has either passed on or moved to a distant place, I find myself caught in the middle. Somedays the torrent of memories threatens to wash me away into a space so unfamiliar that it is hard to drag myself back At such times, I don't write, I don't think even. I don't dwell on what was and what is not.

Yet, breathe, I must and with each breathe comes the fragrance of woodsmoke, so dear and precious from a life left behind. Winter in Goa, growing up in quiet, verdant villages has made me appreciate the signs of community kitchens on open fires or flames dying down softly under huge brass pots fo water heated for Diwali's ceremonial baths.

I doggedly shake my head and walk on to the next aisle as I try to pack those memories away for a time when course work will be done, reports written, child fed, kitchen cleaned and I can once again transport myself down the lanes that beckon in my dreams.

Until then, this will have to. 97 cents, that's a deal! I am aware that my memories lead me to buy and my buying behaviour that leads to economic transactions lead to cash flow. So my presence here and that of 'these people' as newcomers are often/sometimes referred to, is essential, nay critical to fuel the economy.

The mothers who work at the coffee shop down the street also pay to run schools and light up streets.

Did anyone do me a favour by opening doors? Something to think about...

McLaren, A. T., & Dyck, I. (2004). Mothering, human capital and the "ideal immigrant". Women's Studies International Forum, 27, 41-53.

Cosmopolitanism, Om and I on Yonge Street

This is supposed to be the holiest of sounds within which reverberates the rhythm of silence and chaos, creation and deconstruction. My Elders started all their journeys by uttering this word and I have this word imprinted in my mind since times gone by.

On Yonge Street, as the Go bus turns in to the Richmond Hill Centre and swings out again on its way to York University, I see this temple: The Vishnu Mandir with its om touching the sky.

Perhaps it wishes me well, perhaps I seek a deep rooted peace. All I know that my eyes seek out this Om, every time I pass that way.

Yet to many on the bus, it is an unfamiliar symbol of something 'out there'. As am I, the silver haired woman, weighed down with bags, who bows her head as the bus turns.

In the land of my birth it is already morning as I make my way to York University.

And one day at a time, I reclaim my Om, as I become another regular sight in a land far away.

Beck, U, & Sznaider, N. (2006). Unpacking cosmopolitanism for the social sciences: a research agenda. The British Journal of Sociology, 57(1), 1-23.

Flaneuse Rashmee

This is my starting point, Dadar station. Countless times have I passed this place. As a young woman of 18 going off on field trips, or as a young mother, 10 years later with a baby on my hip. And in between those two identities, there was the other me: fearless, drug rep for a pharmaceutical company walking through the crowded platforms, armed with an umbrella, weighed down by samples of tonics and appetite stimulants to be sold into slums where my souls twisted at the sight of empty bellies.

No, this is not the setting of Slum Dog Millionaire, I say to those who ask or gawk. This is my home, this is where I still live. In my heart, in my quiet moments.

Noisy, crowded, busy, Dadar. Mumbai Pin Code 400 014

Come see me sometime, I know the best place for chai.

Stehle, M. (2008). Psychogeography as teaching tool: Troubled travels through an experimental first-year seminar. Journal of educational and informational studies, 4(2), 1-25.