Stare Bears

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Fiji

It was during pre-dinner drinks that Titus Deoki related this story that I love so much and wish to share.

He was in Sydney, Manly, I think, when he saw a couple of Indian women he suspected were from Fiji – something different about them that people from Fiji can usually detect.

Not entirely sure, however, in his head Titus began reciting his query using shud Hindi, the proper Hindi they speak in India, not the bastardized version that has evolved in Fiji over the generations.

Quite nervous, with his formal lines in place, Titus approached the two women. The English translation goes something like this: ‘Excuse me. Please forgive my intrusion, but might I ask, from which country are you esteemed ladies hailing?’

And this is where Titus, with a sudden change of tone and cadence, complete with deadpan expression, delights me into swift giggles. The ladies reply (a rough translation): ‘Yo, dawg, we be hailin’ from Fiji.’

‘All that sweating and painstaking rehearsing,’ Titus laughed, ‘I needn’t have bothered.’

Which brings me to the subject of Indians abroad. What’s up with all that staring? They are a bit like dogs, Indians, in that as soon as one Indian spots another, regardless of age or gender, they stare and stare and stare (did I mention stare?) like they’ve never seen another Indian before, even though there are more than a friggin’ billion of us.

It’s so annoying, sometimes I often (sic) feel like lightly smacking them with a white velvet glove across the face to revive them from their dawgy stupor.

Russell Peters, a Canadian (Vancouver) Indian and one of my all-time favorite comedians, captures the stare bear phenomenon perfectly in just 10 seconds. Please watch from 0:50 secs to the 1:00 minute mark. It’s laughter-inducing.

Of T-Shirts, Rainbows, And Priests

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Fiji

WHAT I SAW OUT MY HOTEL ROOM
A guy strolling around the gardens.
He wasn’t particularly captivating to look at, but his T-shirt read:
‘You could have all this!’
I had to admire his confidence.

Image Credit: Gigi Jaatinen

THEN THAT SAME AFTERNOON
One hour before I’m due to head out to the airport, I take a break from my leisurely and orderly style of packing.

I pour myself a last glass of wine and walk out onto the patio. A rainbow proudly arcs up the sky – look at me, look at all this magnificence, it seems to proclaim, do you really want to leave?

Yes, I think, I do.

I reflect on nature’s beauty for a few more moments, then quickly step inside to retrieve my camera. It only takes a few seconds, but when I return, magically, there are two rainbows! A double rainbow! I’m stunned, and filled with awe and wonder, and, not without humor, think, the rainbow upped the ante. I fire off a couple of shots and then stand still in quiet contemplation.

I appreciate the rainbows’ efforts. I really do. But I still leave.

Image Credit: Gigi Jaatinen

LATER THAT NIGHT
He comes to the airport. Portly, in a saffron T-shirt, with a little stubby ponytail nestled at the base of his neck. He hands me two pouches, one for shakti, strength, the other for prosperity.

‘Put it in your wallet, close to you,’ he instructs, and I do so immediately, in front of him. He blesses me and leaves.

I stand there with my cabin bag and watch him disappear.

Nadi International Airport, Fiji Islands
8 April 2012

Temple In Nadi

Facebook Live

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Fiji

Today I had coffee with Gerald Erbsleben at the Radisson Blu Resort on Denarau Island. We just recently connected on Facebook; you know how it goes, hopscotching from one friend to another.

Image Credit: Gigi Jaatinen

I went to school with Gerry, as he is now known, at Veiuto Primary, and we last saw each other in Class 4! I must have been eight years old at the time. We were then grouped in fours, our desks pressed together in a two-by-two square configuration. There was Gerry, me, and Sal Smith – I have no recollection of who the fourth kid was.

Anyway, these days Gerry is Chief Pilot with Pacific Sun. His life in Fiji sounds nice; satisfying job, great family, and clocking twenty five years in this country now, after living in Mossman, Sydney, for a spell, he is well and truly a local boy, as his accent clearly illustrates.

We spent an hour over coffee, catching up and then talking about Fiji, its past and its present. Amidst all the political dramas and other bits and pieces, I found this particular story typical of Fiji.

Gerry told me that there had been a tsunami warning early last year (I had heard about it in relation to Hawai’i and my then impending visit). The majority of people immediately headed for higher ground, but a lot of Fijians flocked to the sea shore. They wanted to wait and see what a tsunami looked like, said Gerry.

I burst out laughing. Only in Fiji, eh! And he, grinning broadly, agreed.

Image Credit: Gigi Jaatinen

Six Feet Over

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Fiji

I remember in downtown Suva there used to be this funeral director’s sign next to a church – the one diagonally opposite Hare Rama Hare Krishna, was that Butt Street? Anyway, it innocently boasted: ‘We specialize in home packaging and monumental erections.’

During all those months of driving past and chuckling, I failed to have the foresight to stop and take a picture. And then one day the sign was no longer there.

British Bulldog

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Fiji

It’s been a long time since I saw the game of British Bulldog being played. The last time was back in Suva Grammar, under the trees at one end of our school grounds before the staff quarters began.

In that shady natural playing field, we kids, around fourteen years of age, would run each other down amidst spirited competition, but not without joy and laughter. There would be that churning fear as you began to run through the middle, dodging the bulldogs, and the elation as you reached the other side, free.

This afternoon, strolling barefooted across the undulating lawns of the Sheraton Resort, I stop dead in my tracks. There, supervised by a female resort staff, are about a dozen white kids, all visitors, engaged in that long-forgotten game of British Bulldog. I stand and watch for a long while, immersed in the game being played now, and when I eventually turn and head back to my quarters, I am swaddled in the warm soft memories of a childhood I was lucky to have.

Once Was Light Blue

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Fiji

This odd thing occurred when I landed in Fiji.

My flight from Brisbane arrived in Nadi very early in the morning and at pretty much the same time as a 747 flight from Los Angeles. As I stood in the foreign passport holders’ queue in immigration, I recognized an American couple, old expat friends of mine from back in the days of Pacific Harbour living. They stood in the Fiji passport holders’ queue – obviously in the intervening years they had gotten the ‘light blue,’ which is what the Fiji passport is often referred to as.

Me, fourth generation born and bred in Fiji, a foreigner; them, Americans, locals now. The irony of it isn’t lost on me.

Island-Hopping

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Fiji

I look out the porthole. Below lie islands dotted with blue green opals of water so brilliantly clear it is enough to break my heart. How beautiful is my country? I think to myself, and like a sissy feel as if I’m about to cry.

Life Without A Coat

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Fiji, Love

I have most of my life strapped to my back; my work goes with me – files on my computer, words in my head – my heart refueling love and courage; journeying at night, arriving in a new old home at dawn.

Departing      Brisbane 23.40PM
Arriving         Nadi 5.15AM

Prelude

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Fiji

OUT OF THE PAST
Picture this. Eight people around our mahogany dining table, old friends of my parents’, with my mother and I at the head of each end.

The guests are resplendent in formal wear; table laden with platters of food ranging from tandoori chicken fresh off the outdoor grill, goat curry, dahl, rice, vegetable dishes, raita and puffy puris. In a thinking-outside-the-box spell, I’ve used one of my mom’s old saris as a tablecloth. The rich royal blue silk, flecked with hundreds of gold bindis, introduces a casual elegance to the room that surpasses even my expectations. Tea candles in crystal goblets line the middle of the rectangular table, their golden almond-shaped flames creating an intimate ambiance.

As wine is imbibed, food is consumed and I’ve heralded mom with a ‘compliments to the chef’ toast (a ritual I’ve enacted for every dinner party she and I have hosted since my father passed away), stories begin unfolding about Fiji, about politics, about life in a foreign country,* and about who is where now. The usual.

I’m cozy at my end, flanked by Noel, an ex-Colonial Sugar Refinery executive and Fay Deoki who, remarkably, used to be my math teacher at Suva Grammar.Then, quite suddenly, Titus, Fay’s husband (we have two Fays tonight; Noel’s wife is also a Fay), begins saying, singing really, Oh, Gigi!, long and drawn out in a French accent. I begin to giggle. From his position in the middle, Titus looks over at me, a beam on his round jovial face making it look even rounder.

You know, says Titus, when I met you last year, all those memories about Gigi came rushing back. I hadn’t thought about that movie for years. Leslie Caron, so young, so innocent. And the song, the song, he exclaims. I remember the song, I say to him, and then address the table, Dad had a record of the movie. And he would play Gigi over and over again, and each time the part Oh, Gigi would come on, he would really ham it up, accompanying it with great gusto, tilted head and moony eyes directed towards me, while I, in my mid-teens, awkward and self-conscious, would cringe, palms covering my ears, imploring, Stop it, daddy, stop!

Daddy

My father’s friends, and my mother, chuckle. But my protestations spurred him on even more, I say, my teenage discomfort delighting him. Everyone laughs.

Oh, but I can just imagine why, as he watched you grow, says Titus, and in a rich baritone begins to sing. He could really sing, this Titus, and we’re all totally captivated. Noel leans towards me and whispers, He could be on stage. I know, I say, we’re very privileged with this private performance.

When Titus is finished, he looks across at me and beams again. Oh, Gigi, he croons, and I clap my hands over my ears and mockingly yelp, Stop! Stop it!

Other conversations rise and ebb and the evening progresses, but Titus’ words remain with me. I had never really paid much attention to the lyrics to Gigi, back then nor in the intervening years, but now, after what Titus had said about my father, the song and me, I want to know what those words are.

So the next day, after my mom and I have accomplished the mammoth task of hand-washing all the real gold-rimmed plates and dishes and glasses, and packed away the leftovers, folded the sari, and I’d reset my workstation on the dining table, I log onto the internet.

It is with a funny feeling in my heart that I see again, after so many years, the movie poster that had been the record cover of Gigi, the one we had, the one my dad loved to play. I suddenly feel overwhelmed by an ache of love for my father, a nostalgia for my lost paradise of a country and its glorious past, and the strangeness of life and our time and relationships on this earth.

I never saw the movie Gigi, but I recall that Leslie Caron was Gigi, and Louis Jordan and Maurice Chevalier were in it. What I didn’t know, and now discover, is that Gigi, based on Colette’s 1944 novella of the same name, is one of the most honored movies of all time, garnering nine Oscars and winning every category in which it was nominated.

I click onto YouTube next. I can’t locate the original movie soundtrack – I’m in too much of a hurry now, I guess – and the closest I come is Dean Martin’s version. And then I find it – hoorah!

I listen closely to the lyrics, and lines like these find their mark:

Oh, Gigi
Why you’ve been growing up before my very eyes
Gigi
You’re not at all that funny awkward little girl I knew
Oh, no
Overnight there’s been a breathless change in you …
Oh Gigi, have I been standing up too close or back too far
When did your sparkle turn to fire …
Oh, what miracle has made you the way you are …

and what Titus had been getting at last night begins to make fresh sense to me. A wave of understanding, what he, my father, was seeing and feeling washes over me, and the tears come spilling through. And I miss him and miss him and miss him.

But most of the time I’m okay. Really.
.. .. ..

* migrating from paradise
Rushing like thin windswept rain
away from isolation, discrimination, a weak constitution,
away from contorted thoughts,
from desperation, fury,
from the soft worn fabric of old friendships
to a flaring hope
that the forces of fate
will be weakened by the hardness of a new country.
Canadians, Americans, New Zealanders, Australians now,
and yet, resembling each other even more deeply
in their common histories of fled-from pain.
– No Crying Aloud by Gigi Jaatinen