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.

Candid Talk with Tahir Gora about Belief

Tahir Gora is a multifaceted personality - he's a political activist who has constantly battled religious prejudices to uphold human rights; he's an outstanding author of prose and poetry, controversial but humane in his approach; he's a sharp journalist, one of the finest in the profession; and a great interviewer, who is able to bring out the best in his subject.

In 2015, he invited me to launch a program on TAG TV that he and his wife Haleema Sadia have been operating for a couple of years. The internet-based television channel is a unique platform that provides avenues of expression for multicultural talent, a major lacuna in the Canadian mainstream media. 

During the last year, I have interviewed several authors, artists, musicians from a diverse ethnic background, who have made Canada their home, and continue to creatively express themselves in idioms that may at times seem strange to mainstream Canada, but nevertheless, have a definite place in the Canadian canon of art and literature.

In this series, I also interviewed Tahir himself, when his novel Rang Mahal, written in Urdu, was published to critical acclaim (globally, wherever Urdu is read) and official opprobrium (in Pakistan). We discussed many aspects of creative writing in a social context. It is an interaction that lasted for nearly an hour, and I;m hopeful that the usually reticent Tahir will eventually put it up on YouTube, and other social media platforms of TAG TV. When he does, I'll add the video to the one below.

Earlier in October, we chatted again. This time on Tahir's show Candid Talk. The focus was multiculturalism, and, of course, my novel Belief. Again, the conversation covered many aspects and I think both of us had a great time. It lasted for nearly 45 minutes, so, if you have the time, please see the video. 

And, of course, if you'd like to buy the book, please do so from Amazon Canada. Here's the link: 

Buy Belief on Amazon

Belief - a novel

Belief, my debut novel, is being published next month. I began writing it soon after I came to Toronto; when I was working as a security guard at a condo in Toronto’s St. Clair West.

Those long and lonely (and cold) night shifts turned me into a fiction writer. The residents of the building supported me in many different ways, and one of them told me about Diaspora Dialogues. Through Diaspora Dialogues I met MG Vassanji, and then began a journey that transformed me as a person.

Writing doesn’t come easily to me, and it became more painful and nearly impossible during the four years I struggled with the manuscript. Many friends helped me in this process. And sometime in 2014, I forced myself to stop revising the manuscript.

Then, I waited for a publisher to publish the novel. Nobody seemed interested. If writing had been hard and painful, looking for a publisher was even more so. Helen Walsh of Diaspora Dialogues suggested I should ask Nurjehan Aziz of Mawenzi House (earlier known as TSAR). I did, and she agreed.

Finally, after a very long time, the novel is ready for its readers.

Here’s the media release from the publisher:

Belief

Mayank Bhatt

TERRORISM: What makes young people give up their secure, sheltered lives and take up causes that are sure to lead to catastrophe, for others as well as themselves? This is a burning question that plagues our times.

Rafiq is a young man whose family fled the 1993 violence against Muslims in Mumbai. His father Abdul is a sceptic in religious matter and a liberal, a former labour activist in India. His mother Ruksana is devout and practicing though also a former activist who worked with poor women. The family was reduced to humble circumstances after arriving in Toronto and with Rafiq working as a web-designer, is only now beginning to look up. They proudly own a house in Mississauga.

One late afternoon Rafiq’s father and his sister discover some files on Rafiq’s computer that strongly indicate that he is part of a Muslim-radical plot to bomb public places in Toronto.

Belief examines the radicalization and alienation among a section of young Muslims living in western societies, the interplay of attitudes on both sides that is leading to an ever-widening chasm.

It does this not polemically but by setting it within the intimacy of a family situation to accentuate the difficult material conditions and the conflicts of belief, values, and hope that immigrants face in a new country.

Mayank Bhatt immigrated to Toronto in 2008 from Mumbai (Bombay), where he worked as a journalist. His short stories have been published in TOK 5: Writing the New Toronto and Canadian Voices II. In Canada he has worked as a security guard, an administrator, and an arts festival organiser. He lives in Toronto with his family.

Contact

Nurjehan Aziz

naziz@mawenzihouse.com

Sabrina Pignataro

marketing@mawenzihouse.com

416-483-7191

You may buy the book from the publisher or Amazon or from me.

Also, visit my new website and the Facebook page for updates

The launch of Indian Voices - 1

Mayank: Old, Fat, Bald, Blind

Andy Warhol declared in 1968 that in future everyone would have his or her 15 minutes of fame.

Thanks to Jasmine D’Costa, I had my 15 minutes of fame on April 7 at the Canadian launch of Indian Voices 1 in Toronto was quite simply the best literary event in Toronto in a long time.  

I was among the four authors who read at the launch, the other three were Shameeda Saffee, Meena Chopra and Farzana Doctor.

Several Toronto-based authors whose stories have been published in the anthology were also present; several friends – all of them who have helped in some way – cheered us on.

Ruksana's Journey in Indian Voices 1

The audience comprised some A listers

• Preeti Saran, Consul General of India in Toronto (quotable quote: “Not only does the Empire Writes Back, it even plays back,” – a reference to India’s World Cup victory and the audience went wild)
• R. Venkatesan, Commercial Consul
• MG Vassanji, eminent , multiple award-winning writer
• Pankaj Mehra, Director, Scotiabank
• Nurjehan Aziz, publisher TSAR Books
• Gavin Barrett, Poet and Partner, Creative Director of Barrett & Walsh
• Sunil Rao, Editor, South Asian Focus
• Binoy Thomas, Editor-in-chief, Weekly Voice
• Dawn Promislow, author
• Nonica Datta, historian
•  Bhupinder Virdi, publisher Starbuzz Weekly
• Niranjana Iyer, literary critic, blogger

... and many others...the list is endless...if I've forgotten to mention someone, my sincere apologies.

A strong contingent of Brazilians was also present thanks to the simultaneous launch of Hearts & Souls, a collection of poems by Leo Paradela. 

GAB is One

About a year ago last December I decided that the best way I could get around the problem of being published in Canada was to start a blog.

Writing a blog had been on my mind even in India. However, a combination of factors – primarily being hooked to television – prevented me from writing regularly. Some friends did encourage me to write, but those attempts were few and far between.

My reading hadn’t stopped. I read as if my life depended upon it; indiscriminately. Although for many years, I had ceased to read fiction. That changed in Toronto thanks to an easy access to a public library within walking distance from home. I began to read Canadian fiction and discovered so many great writers. Also got to know a couple of them personally.

I wrote my first short story and then began to develop it into a novel. It’ll be a while before the novel is anywhere near being completed. I was a bit foolhardy to enter a half-finished manuscript in a competition. Not surprisingly, I was nowhere near the winners.

I’ve enrolled at Humber to work on my manuscript with MG Vassanji. He helped me work on my short story thanks to Diaspora Dialogues’ mentoring program. Diaspora Dialogues has accepted the short story for publication. The fifth edition of TOK: Writing the New Toronto will have The New Canadians.

All this would have seemed like a dream last year when I started Generally About Books. As I assess my last year, I’d say the single biggest achievement has been getting a job that acknowledges my talent and utilises my experience.

However, my achievements in the writing sphere are no less noteworthy, and my apologies for being so openly immodest.

I wouldn’t have believed anyone telling me that I’d win two scholarships within a year; get a blog and a column in Canadian Immigrant. Moreover, get to know a whole host of people who have something to do with writing.

I attribute my transformation to the seriousness with which I approached writing my blog. It proved to be cathartic. Fortunately, I met so many people during the last 12 months who didn’t discourage me.

As I approach the first anniversary of my blog this week, I realise how serious the exercise has become for me. I have turned into a serious and compulsive reader and a writer. Until a couple of months ago, I managed to complete at least a book a week. Now the pace has slackened because I’ve started writing my own book.

I’m reading Empire of Illusion by Chris Hedges, a book that is ominous and disturbing. I plan to write about it next week. It sort of echoes the observation I made when I started this blog.

Before I conclude, I must congratulate myself for another reason, too. This is the first year – after many, many years – that I made more friends than enemies.

Personally speaking

On occasions, I’m going to talk personally in this space…You have the choice of going to the next blog.

Immigrating to Canada has done two things to me:1. Reading, writing. 2. Rediscovering life

I have taken myself – willingly – out of the rat race, and have created some time for myself to do things that I always wanted to do, and never really had the time to do these things, or watched television ceaselessly when I did. Read, write.

On occasions, I admit, I have this angst that my life’s turned out to be irredeemable failure, especially when I hear about or see my acquaintances in Mumbai getting awards or getting promoted. 

I'm reading voraciously. I have started this blog. Both reading and writing are genuinely therapeutic. I’m sure all those who enjoy reading also enjoy writing. I certainly do. But not too many readers write, mainly because they don’t have the courage. To develop that courage is to free you from the fear of criticism. It’s such an enlivening experience.  

The other, and far more interesting thing that has happened, is the thrill of rediscovering life and living. I’ve quit smoking after nearly two-and-a-half decades. It won’t help me keep cancer at bay, but it sure makes me immensely proud of myself.

There’s more to life and living. Now, what do I mean by this? Quite simply, it’s the unburdening of the baggage that preoccupies our mind and changes (mutates) us to become something that we are not. For many years now, there is a section of people – my well wishers – have devoted an inordinate (not to say unconscionable) time keeping a track of my life (Sting: Every breath you take…I’ll be watching you). 

It bothered me that people I have considered my own – friends, colleagues, neighbours, relatives, family – should do this, and it angered me to an extent where I begun to change as a person. You wonder whether all this really is worth the trouble. The answer is always a comprehensive no. 

Other people’s opinion always matters, but not to the extent where it undermines your values. You cannot control how others behave. You can how you do. In a serious attempt to be the change I wanted to see others (Mahatma Gandhi: Be the change you want to see in the world), I have begun to reexamine myself and challenge the reality that I have constructed around myself. 

It’s a hard choice. Harder than anything I’ve ever attempted before. I don’t know whether I will succeed. But if I fail, it won’t be for the lack of trying.