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The author's parents at their wedding; their poojari is in the center
Shuah Khan, the author, was born a year after her parents married.
Grounded in family and culture, Finding an Ocean is the compelling story of a young girl with a strong sense of belonging despite a constantly changing environment.
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In her vividly recalled childhood, Shuah Khan weaves memories of growing up across southeast India with stories handed down through generations. She was surrounded by adults who never passed up an opportunity to share their wisdom through storytelling. This rich oral tradition included the frequent use of proverbs, known as sametas in the Telugu language of southeast India. Stories based on proverbs teach important life lessons, interpersonal skills, and survival know-how. As one sameta says:
"Speech devoid of proverbs is like a house without a feast."
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Paradoxically, it is those strong family and cultural bonds that infuse the author with the confidence, security, and love to explore beyond her small villages and eventually cross the ocean.
Chapter 4: A small bird makes a lot of noise
"I met your mother before she got married," a woman said as soon as I sat down next to her to cool my feet. I had tagged along with my parents to a wedding and they were chatting with family and friends. I could only take so many formal conversations before I needed a break. So I turned towards the man and nodded politely.
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"Your mother was a feisty young woman when I met her," she continued. "She reminded me of the saying, 'A small bird makes a lot of noise.'"
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Now the woman had by full attention; I was eager to learn what my mother was like when she was younger. The lady went on to say that she visit my mother and her family to see if my mom would make a good match for her brother-in-law.
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The majority of marriages in India are arranged by parents. Even when a couple picks each other, they still work with their parents to facilitate the marriage for them. The difference is in how they find each other. Indian parents finding a suitable partner who belongs to their caste for their sons and daughters has been practiced for ages. A pelli chuupulu is when parents and their son visit a prospective bride and her parents to assess if there is a good match between the families.
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Pelli chuupulu translates literally to "marriage looks." Even before this formal visit, families find out about each other to see if a visit is worth their while -- the prospective bride and groom will see photographs of each other, and before the advent of photography, this happened by arranging to steal a glance in passing in public. Parents would talk up their daughter's cook, sewing, knitting, and household management skills, and the other side talked up their son's employment status. In many cases, the bride and groom saw each other in person for the first time at the altar, as my parents did.
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"Your mother didn't like my brother-in-law and made it very clear that he wasn't tall enough for her," the woman said. This would have been a shock for the prospective groom's family as it was the norm for a prospective bride to keep her head down the whole time during the visit and speak only when spoken to. I smiled as I imagined my mother speaking her mind and then the dead silence that would have followed, not to mention the fact that my mother was only 4' 10" tall and complaining about the prospective groom's height. I couldn't tell if this lady was upset with my mother of found it amusing but I wasn't going to ask, and instead I nodded politely again and moved to another empty seat next to my cousin.
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The conversation got me to thinking about what I had heard about my parents' lives when they were children. My father, the firstborn in his family, was sent to live with his maternal grandparents when he was ten or eleven years old. One story says he was sent there to be educated in a good school. Another story says that my grandmother had her hands full with six or seven younger children and she turned to her parents for help, as my grandfather was busy establishing his law practice.
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Either way, my father was shipped off to his grandparents' house. He always had a brooding look when he talked about his childhood and school years. I don't know if he came back home for summer breaks and holidays; I don't know if he missed growing up with his siblings. He did say that he was well cared for by his grandparents and that his older uncles were nice to him, but the younger ones, who were about his age, picked on him. He grew up feeling like he didn't have a place he could call home.
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Once he completed his schooling, my father went to veterinary college and started his career right after graduation. He wanted to come to the U.S. to continue his education and get an advanced degree, but his parents didn't have the money to support him and asked him to find a job in India instead. So, he started working for the Government of Andhra Pradesh as a verterinary doctor.
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After he started working and was established, it was time to find a bride for him. According the family lore, my grandmother got mad at my father for rejecting every single marriage proposal she put forward for his consideration. He found something wrong with everyone, such as a prospective bride not having enough education, or him not liking how she did her hair, and so on. When my grandmother gave up, my grandfather took up the mission to find someone for his son. Soon after, my grandmother's relatives introduced the two families, and my grandfather traveled five hours by train north to my mother's house in Tadepalligudem to see her and meet the family.
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When that visit went well, my maternal grandmother took the train south to Ongole to meet my father and his parents. She went by herself because my maternal grandfather was bedridden; they also considered it to be improper for the prospective bride to go to the prospective groom's place to see him. My mother, true to her independent spirit, had her mother ask how much money my father earned each month to assess if they could make ends meet without relying on family. And my father, for his part, wanted a wife who was educated and was concerned if the dowry he would receive was enough to pay for the dowry of his younger sister. My father and his sister ended up marrying a few months apart, with my mother's dowry money going from her family to my father's, and then from my father's to his sister's husband's family.
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My parents didn't meet face-to-face until their wedding day at the altar. The ceremony took place in the wee hours of the morning and there is not one picture in which both of them had their eyes open. They would smile sheepishly whenever we teased them about getting married while snoozing. It was a perfect blind-wedding story: my mother and father began by only seeing a black and white picture of each other and started their marriage with their eyes closed. After making fun of the short men who tried to marry her, my mother married someone who was over a foot taller than her.
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A year later I came along; I was named Udaya, in honor of my great-grandmother, Udayamma. A year and a half later my sister was born.