Awaken

1Roots

In December 1960, my father, a brilliant iconoclast who had overcome every obstacle to attaining a higher education, scraped together the enormous sum of Rs 5,000 rupees (about $700 then) for a one‐way passage from New Delhi to Winnipeg, Canada – leaving behind his fledgling family. Narayan Sisodia was 24. I was two, and my mother, Usha, was 23 and pregnant with my sister, Manjula.

Life Without Papa

Rising from a tiny village in central India, Narayan had flown across the seven seas to Canada, like a bird that miraculously migrates thousands of miles to better climes. He would be gone for four long years getting a doctorate in cytogenetics, or plant breeding, at the University of Manitoba. As the months and years passed, he slowly morphed into a mythical figure.

After he left, my mother, in Indian tradition, retreated to her parents’ house for the birth of my sister. A few months later, she returned to my father's village, Kesur, where she was embedded in a deeply conservative joint family, surrounded by her husband's parents, his brothers and sisters, her sister‐in‐law, and their young children. It was an unhappy and lonely time for her. The women did little to comfort her. Instead, there was much malicious talk of how most men failed to return after leaving for America (which was indistinguishable from Canada in their minds). My aunt would say, “He's not coming back. He's going to find and marry a Mem there [white women were called Memsahibs in colonial days].” Every ...