A decade in Toronto - 9

Becoming Canadian, and showing it!

2010: I return to what is turning out to be a sanitized version of my memoirs, after a long gap of nearly three weeks. I say sanitized because I’ve focused only on the positives of the last decade, and also, I’d rather not dwell upon the many unpleasant experiences that I’ve encountered during that time.

I’m sure all newcomers have such unpleasant experiences that may vary in their content but not much in the form, but when one looks back, one realises that such small irritants don’t amount to anything significant, and shouldn’t be given undue importance. This is because the positives overwhelmingly outweigh the negatives.  

Confidence & contentment

2010 began on a positive note for all the three of us – I finally had a secure job and Mahrukh was doing great at her social worker program at Medix. Che was out of middle school and into high school, having chosen York Memorial at Keele and Eglinton. With a secure job, I focused on my writing, and meeting and making friends with the community of authors and creative people in the Greater Toronto Area.

I began participating in reading sessions in Toronto and Mississauga. My circle of friends grew rapidly and I continued to develop my manuscript. I met Farzana Doctor, who significantly influenced my writing; and a couple of years later, she read my manuscript and recommended substantial modifications. I also participated in Meena Chopra's book launch in Mississauga. Meena is an artist I admire; she's also a poet, Her husband, Bhupinder, has a wry sense of humour, both are family now.

My attempt at writing fiction was turning out to be rather challenging and difficult. To write continuously and to develop a story are not among the easiest of things to do. I’d never done anything like this before and there were many missteps.  I didn’t have a name for the novel – that came four years later when I was rewriting the passages about Rafiq’s religiosity.

All I had was a first chapter, which started as a short story, and then I decided to continue working on it because it seemed adventurous to something that I’d never done before. I was in that sort of a state of mind – to boldly go where I’d never imagined I’d go, and writing fiction was definitely adventurous and challenging. I was elated that Diaspora Dialogues had accepted my short story and it was to be published in the fifth edition of their annual collection TOK: Writing the New Toronto.

But the journey from writing a short story to writing a full-length novel was not a natural progression even if it seemed so. I tried to adapt the story to an earlier attempt at novel writing (A decade in Toronto – 7) but soon realised that my characters were based in Canada and what I’d done earlier could, at best, be a back story and that, too, of just one of the four main characters. I didn’t know how to develop characters, build a narrative, and was too dependent upon dialogues, which tended to dominate the narrative.

I knew I needed guidance and when I learnt that MG Vassanji, who had been my mentor at the Diaspora Dialogues program, was a writing coach at Humber College’s creative writing program, I wrote to Antanas Sileika and started the program to work on my manuscript under Vassanji’s guidance. 

It was not easy working with him. He was painstaking, methodical and thorough. I think I must have worked on my first chapter over two dozen times and yet he remained dissatisfied. In July, when the creative writing program’s term ended, I continued for another six months, preferring Vassanji’s guidance rather than venturing on my own. I learnt the hard way that all writing was rewriting.

There was a slow build up in excitement as the launch of TOK 5 approached. But nothing had prepared me to e invited to participate as a panellist at a discussion during the launch event. I was overwhelmed when I got an email from Julia Chan of Diaspora Dialogues in April 2010 asking me whether I’d be interested in being a panellist and also read from my story at the launch event that was scheduled in May 2010 at the prestigious Bram and Bluma Appel Salon at the Toronto Reference Library.

Marjorie Chan moderated the panel discussion and the panellists included Shyam Selvadurai, Emma Donahue, Marni Van Dyke, Michael Fraser, and me. The discussion was interspersed with five-minute readings from each remaining writer.

Reading at the Toronto Reference Library

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I was overawed to be participating in a panel discussion with such prominent and talented authors and was justifiably nervous. I think I gave adequate responses to the questions Marjorie asked me, generally thanking the Canadian immigration system to be so generous and well attuned as to give a newcomer like me an opportunity to be an author. Shyam who was sitting beside me had a diametrically opposite view and was resolutely critical of the system. I read the first part of my story – from the beginning to the passage from the email that ends with Rafiq’s mentor seeking war on Canada.

Chan, Fraser, Donahue, Van Dyke, Selvadurai and I

Dawn Promislow and Leslie Shimotakahara, who were also featured authors in the volume, were present at the launch. Mahrukh, Che and Durga were excited to be at the venue, as were Joyce and Yoko; others who participated became great friends subsequently – Sanjay and Rizvana, and Pratap (who’d been a mentee in the program). Gavin Barrett was, of course, there. He managed to make it to nearly every public reading that I gave since this one.  

Following the release of the book, Diaspora Dialogues arranged for a joint reading by all the emerging authors featured in TOK 5 at the rock at Yorkville. It was an unusual experience, more of a photo-op than a real reading, but a few bystanders did come forward to hear us read. 

Niranjana Iyer reviewed TOK 5 on her blog (Brown Paper) and found my story “well-written but predictable.” I wrote to her protesting slightly, but she became a good friend and subsequently invited me to the Karma Reading series where I heard and met Rohinton Mistry (the only time I saw and heard the reclusive author read a short story).

All the emerging authors of TOK 5 with Nala Hopkinson

Jasmine D’Costa, whom I’d met in 2009, now announced the launch of Canadian Voices Volume II that she’d be editing and Robert Morgan’s BookLand Press would publish in 2010. I submitted a chapter on Ruksana, the mother, in my work in progress. She accepted it and even accepted another chapter for Indian Voices that she was editing and that CP Thomas, a former colleague turned publisher would publish under the 42 Bookz banner. 

Jasmine continued to play a significant role in my efforts to build my profile as an author. She published my work and also introduced me to authors and editors, among them  Fraser Sutherland, who edited my work initially and with whom I'd spiritedly argue over small and big issues. As an editor, he was softspoken but firm and generally succeeded in convincing me to come around to his point of view.

Canadian Voices Volume II was launched in September 2010 and Indian Voices was launched in 2011. I had the honour of having MG Vassanji and Nurjehan Aziz participate in the launch.

A decade in Toronto - 1

2018 is a milestone in our lives – it’s our tenth year in Toronto.

Applying for immigration - March 2002

In 2001, we decided to immigrate to Canada. In March 2002, we signed up with an immigration agent. We were promised that we’d be in Canada in 18 months. Mahrukh, with her Master’s degree, had a better score, so she became the main applicant, and I became her accompanying spouse. Che, who was all of five-years-old, was excited as all children are when they see their parents are happy doing stuff together that keeps them excited and smiling.

However, after 18 months when nothing happened, we decided to change the agent. Another 18 months went by and nothing happened, and it seemed like nothing would happen forever. You can’t live in a limbo or stop living. Our hope of ever leaving India receded and we reconciled to our life in Bombay. 

At the Pearson Airport 12 July 2008, just after landing.
Our first photo in Canada

The wait continued, and by 2008, we'd all but given up hope of ever coming to Canada. By then, we'd set our roots in our new home in Powai, where Mahrukh and Che made new friends. Then in March 2008, six long years after we'd applied, we got our landing papers, and by July we were all ready to permanently leave India.

But, leaving India permanently is impossible. An Indian can never leave India. As they rightly say, you can take an Indian out of India, but you can’t take India out of an Indian. As it turned out, while we physically left India, spiritually we never could. Emotionally, we remain in India even today. Paradoxically, our bond with India is stronger now, after being outside for ten years, than it was when we were in India.  

First grocery bill
12-07-08

I have often asked myself why I wanted to leave India. The answer is straightforward and therefore complex. I wanted to live in a world where our son would be able to decide what he wanted to be without any pressure or unnecessary influence. I wanted to live in a world where I could start afresh in my relationship with Mahrukh. When we applied to immigrate, our marriage was young. Today, we are a few years away from celebrating our 25th anniversary.

Did I achieve my objectives? I believe so.

Toronto has changed our lives for the better. There are obvious and tangible benefits of living in a developed city that is looking at the future without being shackled by the past. It is fun to be in Toronto at a time when it is firmly anchored to the future and is investing all its resources to ensure that it will continue to be among the best places in the world.

As everyone who knows me knows I don’t own a car (and never have and never will). While in Bombay, I dreaded the commute from home to work and back on the city’s famous suburban trains. The experience of using public transit in Toronto and across the GTA is so much more pleasant, and it promises to get better.

But I don’t want to make this into a comparison about my former and present home. This about my decade in Toronto. I refrain from calling it my decade in Canada because I've not been anywhere outside of the GTA in the last decade, except on a short five-day tour of Montreal, Ottawa, and Quebec City.

I've become a Torontonian, or so I’d like to believe. I know some parts of the city through its public transit, and through TTC’s extensive network of bus routes. I say some parts because it’s impossible to know a city completely in geographical terms. But one can live in a city and become one with its ethos. Toronto’s philosophy is acceptance. 

A new home - March 2013

Yes, there is a glaring absence of equality in terms of opportunity, and there is unacknowledged but evident racism in many spheres. But, by and large, I live in a city where a majority of its inhabitants try to warmly embrace the new and the unfamiliar, despite stray incidents of intolerance. In these ten years, I'd like to believe that I've attempted to become more accepting of differences than before, less prejudiced, less intolerant and less bigoted. 

It's also the tenth year of this blog. I launched the blog in December 2008 just to create an avenue for myself to write. In the last decade, I've blogged every week and never felt that it was a chore.  

We're Canadian citizens - August 2014

Today, I also want to acknowledge a few friends who made our lives easier in Toronto. They are: MG Vassanji, Nurjehan Aziz, Puneet S. Kohli, Asha Luthra, Satish Thakkar, Helen Walsh, Jasmine D’Costa, Joyce Wayne, Gavin Barrett, Tahir Gora. There are many more, and I’ll acknowledge them in 2018 as I’ll be writing about my decade in Toronto frequently this year.

Visit to Niagara

When you are face the enormity of nature, in its exquisite beauty, there’s nothing that you can do but stand dumbstruck and gape in wonder.

You do that when you are at the Niagara Falls.

There couldn’t have been a better way to celebrate my 47^th birthday – first in Canada – than at the Niagara Falls.

The journey was impromptu – as most things are in my family. We decided to take the Via Train because Che was keen to go by train. Unfortunately, it turned out to be an Amtrack train and Che was distinctly displeased because it, as he said, looked like Mumbai’s local trains from outside.

The journey wasn’t too long – just a little over an hour-and-a-half. Then a quick taxi ride and we were at the falls. 

I had expected many people. Any tourist place in India would have at least a few hundred thousand tourists from both across India and across the world. At Niagara, there weren’t. Half the shops at the shopping mall near the falls were closed. The reason: It was bitterly cold even though March 20 was the first official day of spring.

The first impression I got of Niagara at the railroad station was that I was in a small town in Uttar Pradesh. Mahrukh felt the station resembled Lucknow railway station; except that there weren’t any people present. Lucknow's railway station is grand. 

Niagara's railroad station, I felt, resembled Bahedi, a small town on the foothills of Nainital that I visited twice in the early 1980s when I was trying to fulfill my father’s unfulfilled ambition of becoming a chartered accountant.

Thankfully, after a few years I gave up trying to do something I didn’t want to, and to his credit, Meghnad supported me wholeheartedly as I became a journalist.

I’m sure Bahedi must be a much bigger and bustling town today. But in the early 1980s it was a sleepy one-train town that probably grew near a sugar factory.

Sorry for that digression. I'm getting old and I reminiscence more than I should. 

The falls are the force and fury of nature in all its untamed violence. We had seen nothing like this before. 

The closest that I can think of are the the Dhaundhar falls on the Narmada. Mahrukh quickly pointed out that I was merely being India-obsessed and not real. She’s right. Niagara is incomparably amazing.

You’ve seen the video along with this blog entry.  Even in an amateur video the magnificence of the fall is all too evident.

Then we sat in a 50-meter high Ferris wheel, which got Mahrukh all excited and then we went a few miles out of Niagara Falls into the US territory – not crossing the border – but the cell phone service switched over to the US and reached the butterfly conservatory. 

I’ve already put some of the photographs on the blog (the right panel). This was an unexpectedly wonderous experience. Tropical butterflies from across the world in a climate-controlled transparent dome - a sort of a hothouse.

Our barometer of whether a place is good or not is how Che reacts to the place; and after initial diffidence, he got involved and loved every moment we were there.

A cab driver – from Newfoundland – took us to the conservatory and brought us back to the railroad station. He found my fascination for our apartment at the intersection of two of Toronto’s busiest streets – Keele and Lawrence Avenue West – quite odd. That's not surprising. Most Canadians prefer quieter areas to live. 

We spoke about the Sikorsky helicopter tragedy last week that killed 18 Newfoundlanders.

The return journey was also by Amtrack. We’re already planning a trip to Montreal. Che says Amtrack can’t be going there! He’s keen we do the Toronto-Vancouver trip. Maybe in a couple of years.