An Indian encounter

Having lived for 25 years of my life in India, I immigrated to Canada in 2009, seeking admission to PhD program in English Literature. And when sitting around for two years had catapulted my weight from 54.5 kgs to 65 kgs, I decided that the time to visit the gym had finally arrived.

So one auspicious morning I dressed myself in gym attires and dragged myself reluctantly to the seventh floor, where my destiny was waiting to be chiseled. Climbing up a short flight of stairs I reached a parlor, which was quite evidently used for stretching and toning before venturing into the main course of exercises. On the far right hand side corner, two elderly ladies were occupying two large exercise mats and talking amongst themselves while stretching out the last fibers of tired muscles before calling it a day. And midway between the ladies and me, a skinny man with high and prominent cheekbones was absorbed in doing ball squats. So I took up a spot on the left near the entrance of the weight room, and had just got seated on a big blue exercise ball to attempt abdominal crunches, when the old man came up behind me. “It’s such a windy and damp day outside, eh?” I turned my neck around to catch a glimpse of the speaker who had a rich baritone voice. From the corner of my eyes I could see the tall bearded man in a brick red cap, flipping through the pile of mats on the rack. “So it has been”, I replied.

Spreading his paraphernalia on the ground, he sat down not far from me. “New to the Condo?” he inquired. “Yes, been here for two months now. I was in Oakville before coming here”. We were sitting adjacent to each other, with a gap of two feet between us at the most and I could see his face in the mirror that covered the wall in front of us. He appeared to be in his seventies, had brown (almost oriental) eyes, was at least five feet and ten inches in height, tawny-brown in complexion, had short, scruffy and thin whitish brown beard and wore a cap on his head. “So are you from Toronto?” I heard him ask. “No, I have come to Canada two years ago. I am an Indian”, I replied. “What a coincidence!  Which part of India are you from?” "Calcutta", I replied, "are you from India too?"

"About fifty three years ago," he said, "hoping to save me from police action, my parents sent me to Japan to study industrial machinery”. “Police action?” I spurted out in amazement. “Yes, I was born in Punjab and like many of my friends, I was hot headed and impulsive. India had just passed a bill making Kashmir a part of the Union. And there were frequent riots in our part of the country. I got involved somehow.” He stopped for a while as he sat on his mat, hanging his head between his knees. “I will not deny”, he continued, “that initially I was fascinated with Japan’s positivist spirit of industrialization; but gradually, I became deeply disillusioned by the assembly line method of production. It was inhuman and insensate. As a young boy I was dismayed at how the assembly line workers who had suffered serious accidents were quickly replaced by other workers, without consideration by the factory owners. They were neither given health benefits nor adequate compensation. So one day, I boarded a ship for San Francisco.  For thirty one nights I sailed on a passenger ship; watching at the deck, cleaning and moping I reached San Francisco, a tired and worn out man. In America, I fell in with a number of dirt-poor taxi drivers, while looking for a way to support myself. Gradually I moved to Canada.”

He had begun to gather his keys and bottle of water and was getting up to put his mat away when I said, “What an adventurous and remarkable story! you are the most interesting Indian I have met so far. My grandfather was a freedom fighter and I have heard many of his pre-independence time stories. However, they were handed down to me second hand, as he had died very young and I had never met him in person”. I was still sitting on the exercise ball and shaking my head in amusement. "Yes," said the stranger, as he was about to go out. "There are three extraordinary facts in my story. One is that it should be possible for the Punjabis, a comparatively small community of India to make such a great presence felt in Canada. Another one is that the physical features of the original narrator of the story should bear so close resemblance with mine; we are both bearded, tawny, have brown eyes and high cheek bones- a gift of old age for him I guess. Isn’t it?"  I turned my head in bewilderment. I thought I had misheard. But there he stood at the door with a wide grin, his eyes twinkling with the success of his antic. “I had chanced upon this gentleman at the Art Gallery sometime ago, while visiting the Maharaja exhibition that had come down from the Albert and Victoria museum of London.  He was talking about his grandfather, and how  his grandfather had escaped from the police by running away to Japan in 1910; and how he had this amazingly adventurous journey from India to Canada and I kept thinking what it would be like to live his experience. Finding you here today, I thought of taking my chances. So take no offense my dear, forgive this old man’s mischief.”

“Oh my God!” I said. I could not help but laugh at what had just happened. I could not believe that I had fallen for this. I should have understood that I was being gulled; what kind of an Indian has such an outlandish accent, no matter how long he has stayed out of India? I thought. Yet, I argued in my mind, did not Columbus make the same mistake?  And it is no travesty of truth that very often it is difficult to predict the ancestry of a person judging by the color of the skin.  Like my light brown skin and facial structure often make people mistake me for a Brazilian, Argentinian or even Caribbean.  “So, the third extraordinary thing about your story is obviously that you are not an Indian” I said, still laughing at my foolishness.  "Oh, the third thing," he said, stepping outside the parlor but still holding the door ajar. "The third extraordinary thing about my story is that although I was not born in India, the Canadian Constitution calls me an Indian; we are Katzie. Goodnight, see you tomorrow"