This article originally featured in gal-dem magzine’s “Secrets” Issue. You can buy the magazine here.
In a last ditch effort to become one with my roots, I interviewed my grandma about her immigration story. I thought it would be a perfect setup; she would recount the traditional narrative of immigration from her perspective. We’d bond like never before and I would come out of the interview adorned head to toe in a glamorous sari and magically speaking Urdu.
Turns out it’s really hard to interview your grandma when she’s just not that interested in speaking to you (I’m grandchild number 31 – I’m not even sure she knows who I am). It’s especially hard when you don’t speak the same language.
Every question was a painful process of asking a question, my mother interpreting, and my grandmother responding with something quite vague or completely off topic. At one point I asked her about her trip to England and somewhere amidst the layers of translation, I gathered she was talking about how many times she had been to Hajj.
The next time I asked a question she replied with “have you eaten”? and proceeded to tell my mum to make me some food. The answers because increasingly confusing. Dates, especially, were up for debate. Like my grandma’s birthday; she’s 82 – give or take five years.
I was keen to find out how my grandma had been able to navigate life in a new country. I asked her how she got her children to school in England. She replied by saying her children didn’t go to school. Turns out they had all been to school, they just walked there and grandma wasn’t very involved in the process.
Soon the notion of translating was lost altogether – it became a chat about my grandma between me and my mum while my grandma looked out of the window like a bored, silent witness.
In the rare moments that my mum left the room, I was paralysed by fear. My grandma would say something to me in Urdu, I wouldn’t understand. She’d repeat again in a more exasperated tone. I still wouldn’t understand. I wished so badly in those moments that repeating something in a different language three times would magically make you understand, but instead, I’d jump off the bed and run to find my mum.
At one point, I thought we might be getting somewhere as my grandmother kept urgently repeating the same phrase. Turns out she was telling me to shut the door behind me.
I did get one quote from her though, and it’s a pretty great one: “People told me that England would be so full of marble that you would be slipping everywhere. And I did slip, on all the dog shit!”.
The final blow happened when I had spent hours cobbling together a workable piece. I sent it over to my mother who promptly responded “You cannot print this”. Turns out no one had clocked this was an interview that would be published in print.
My mother proceeded to write up her very own version of events. She sent me through a voice note detailing my grandmother’s story, written entirely by my mother. It began as I imagine any Bollywood movie does, a story “of a couple who loved each other very much and went on to have seven children together and remain very much in love”.
So despite my noble efforts to become at one with my heritage, it turns out my grandmother is just not that interested in sharing her story. Especially to a grandchild she barely knows and who can’t even speak her language. Her immigration story remains a mystery. But who knows, maybe one day I will finally learn Urdu, have some epic bonding experience with her, and learn the real story.
Probably wouldn’t be allowed to print it though.