BRAMPTON
I had never heard of the Canadian town, Brampton, but now I have. It is the town in Canada, outside Toronto, where Niddhi and her husband moved to after their wedding five years ago. Her husband, Herin, was sent there by TATA, a giant Indian including the production of trucks and buses, and, I believe, train cars as well as a huge IT business. Herin, works from home on-line, day shift in Toronto are the night shift in India, Tata runs day and night. Come to think of it when I was trying to get Lufthansa to compensate me for a ticket that they had cancelled, it was someone in a Tata office in Mumbai who refused to do it, not Lufthansa.
I’ve learned that Brampton is a town of about 800,000 of whom 600,000 are Indian. Meet, Niddhi‘s brother‘s wife, Aditi, is leaving for Brampton in August to go to nursing school after receiving a nursing degree here in India. Her Canadian visa was just granted. Meet spent the day today going through the paperwork to get his own visa to be able to join her. He is going to train to be a driver of an 18 wheeler. Herrin‘s brother in law whom I met last night has his Canadian visa and is leaving for Brampton in April.
Herin showed me a video of the same type of garbha dancing that I have been videoing at the wedding filling the street in Brampton, I will include it here. When we went to visit Niddhi’s new family yesterday we sat in a tight circle in the living room as one family after another with relatives in Brampton came by to wish Niddhi and Herin well when they return to Canada today and to send something to a relative in Brampton, for example medicines which are much cheaper in India.
What I didn‘t realize is how much my visit to Gujarat was going to be a family visit, a visit to a number of families who had gathered from around the world for this wedding. I‘ve been told that at least 50% of the 450 people here for the first musical night of dancing at the wedding have come from overseas, from New York and San Francisco and Tennessee and Brampton, Canada for a grand family reunion as well as the wedding.
But a very good part of this visit, and partly because I am alone, is that I’ve been completely absorbed into Indian family life. For example, for the days that I’ve been with the Vaishnav family here in Ahmedabad we have all slept in one big room with six beds side by side and shared a bathroom. We also ate all our non wedding meals together in the canteen of the building where we are staying, good Indian food with chilies. And they made sure that I had a daily bucket bath, noting when I did, because an Indian day starts with a bath and they became anxious when I started the day wrong, feeling I must be uncomfortable. They watched over me carefully making sure that I didn’t slip and fall, just as if I were an Indian grandfather. Yesterday evening we all went together to first one remote temple and then a huge ISCON temple worship and to ensure that Niddhi and Herin have a good trip back.
And I am certainly seeing the immigration to Canada or USA experience from the perspective of people who are dreaming of a new life and new freedoms but are doing it within the context of an immigrant community, in this case Brampton, where they will be well supported by friends from back home. They will go to one of several large temples in Brampton, will eat only Indian food bought in the large number of Indian grocery stores and celebrate Hindu festivals just as they would here at home.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 