They met in a tiny shop, much like my own, that was owned by my mother’s grandmother. She was only sixteen at the time and lived under the watchful eye of her overbearing parents. How my mother and father managed to even see one another is still a mystery considering the strict atmosphere my father often described. But see each other they did. My coming into the world was not planned, but I was always assured by my father that I was a gift meant to be, as I was the only thing he had to remind me of the only woman he ever truly loved.
The night I was born, my father would tell me, my maternal grandmother took me from my mother’s arms and instructed her to say goodbye to me forever. A child born out of wedlock was a reason for great shame in their community and my grandmother planned to rid my mother of the shame and burden of such a child. She must have had a sliver of humanity in her, as she could have given me up to an orphanage, but rather wrapped me in swaddling and gave me to my father under the sole condition that he never return to India.
So it came that my father named me India after the very country from which he had been banished. I was blessed with my mother’s raven black hair and petite frame, but not the beautiful dark complexion of the Indian people. In contrast to my mother’s features, I inherited my father’s fair skin and turquoise eyes. An odd combination some would say, but as my father always reminded me, I was a perfect blend of two sides of the world, a result of love that knew no continental boundaries.
In my twentieth year, my father traveled to India for the first time since my birth. He had held hope in his heart that my mother had waited for him and he wanted nothing more than to find her again. He learned the day he arrived that my mother had died mere hours after my birth. He died that very day, in my mind, I’m sure of a broken heart.
My love for the Indian culture came from the trip that I took there to bury my father near my mother. It was my need to surround myself with all things from that beautiful country that prompted me to open my little shop. In the small trinkets and intricately embroidered textiles were reminders of my parents, and in sharing those items with whomever fancied them as well, I was able to share a bit of the spirit of my parent’s love for one another.
It was a Thursday afternoon and I sat in my tiny, quiet little shop as the world busily swarmed by outside my windows. An inconspicuous little gem, my shop sat nestled between the massive corporate five star hotels that housed the elite visitors to Park Avenue. I had lost track long ago of the number of times I’d been approached at selling my shop. I had put my heart and soul into it over the years and simply could not bear the thought of seeing it turned into a Bagel Express or yet another high end tourist shop. So it was that I went about my days, opening my shop with the knowledge that I was sharing a piece of myself with those who ventured in. It was that Thursday afternoon that one of the many people hustling by opened the door to my shop and changed my life forever.