Between Two Countries and Me

This is the week when I have the glorious luxury of picking any book up and start reading it from any random chapter, or any random page. The bar exam was last week, and the real slog at work starts after I come back from my vacation. So I shortlisted two books that have been on my mind—and on my table—for long: “Between the World and Me,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates [no brownie points for guessing what the inspiration behind the title of this blog is], and “The Partition of Bengal: Fragile Borders and New Identities,” by Debjani Sengupta. Both are rich not only in their immediate narrative, but in their context also. I did not want to read these as my ‘escape reading’ while I was jamming my head with myriads of rules to be memorized for the bar exam. Now that I have the freedom and mental capacity to read something ‘deeper,’ I found myself faced with a unique problem—which book to read first?

I first picked up “The Partition of Bengal,” mostly because of the fact that the author is a very dear personal friend and relative, whose scholarly work I have always admired. But after reading a chapter on colony fiction, I realize my reality is far removed from the days of India’s partition in 1947. In contrast, with the very current conversation on race in this politically charged election year in America, I felt the urge to enhance my understanding of America's racial history by reading “Between the World.” [I will be honest—the very manageable size of “Between the World” at 152 compact pages with decent sized-font had its lure, compared to the 250 standard-size pages and extremely small font of “The Partition.”] Since then, I have been literally toggling between the two books, and it feels totally natural! I do not think I am disrespecting either book by not reading one continuously from start to finish before reading the other. And in a strange way, this act of toggling explained so much of why I fly off to India twice a year, even though I love being in California.

I have grown comfortable with my hybrid existence as a person who has lived almost exactly half her life in India and the other half in America.

In the last few years, I have traveled to India every six months, the immediate reason being spending time with my aging parents who were becoming increasingly fragile for travel to California. Now that both of them are gone to a different world, I have no immediate necessity to ‘visit’ them in India. I could have chosen a country that I have never visited before for a post-bar pamper-trip. But I am going to India again, to brave the sweltering heat. This time I am going to India not necessarily for the specific people who are related to me, but for the people who make India what India is. Just like I am one of the people who makes America what America is.

And oh yes, I am definitely packing my two books in my carry-on luggage for my in-flight and airport reading.