My earliest birthday memory is waking up to a wind-up monkey pulling a rickshaw resting on the table by my bed. As an excited little kid, I twisted the lever so many times that by the end of the day, the mechanism had already started wearing out.
For breakfast that morning, I walked into the dining room to find two bouquets of red roses— one with five flowers to signify that I’d just turned five, and another with eight flowers for my cousin so she wouldn’t feel left out. After picking these presents up from the market, my grandpa took the time to cut each thorn off, and my grandma placed them in a purple vase that might have been a water bottle at some point. The room was chaotic and bustling, but everything fit perfectly into place.
I’ve lived nearly all of my life in the U.S., but I spent a year and nine months in India from 2013 to 2015 and still return for my yearly visits. Buildings reach closer to the sky and familiar faces disappear, but my grandparents’ wide smiles remain, and I’ll always risk rolling a suitcase past the overzealous stray dogs in our alleyway if it means seeing them again.
From them, I’ve learned about trees, flowers, animals, different types of firecrackers, how to kill a spider (by calling for help), and whether strawberry or mango custard tastes better. They’ve accompanied me to school, driven me to the doctor’s office late at night on a motorcycle, taken me to the bakery to pick out the cake with the least icky frosting, and bought me countless books from book fairs.
My grandpa might be the coolest man ever. Every time I talk to him, I learn something far more unbelievable than the last. He has collected stamps from all over the world, and thanks to his dad’s important position as a police chief, he never ran out of mail to sift through. With a burst of inspiration, I started my own stamp collection, but that soon diverged off into rocks as I realized that digging through pebbles was a lot more fun than digging through envelopes from the bank.
He has spent time jumping into freezing lakes, learning how to fly an airplane, practicing targets with an airgun, and getting into mischief I could only begin to imagine. My favorite stories to hear about, however, are the scary ones. If I start listing every spooky, unexplainable experience he’s ever had, the contents would fill up several books, all of which I would read.
From him, I’ve gained a wealth of knowledge and a curiosity for the unknown. Despite his affinity for physical adventure, at the end of the day, he’s a reader just like me. He’s scarfed down thousands of books and read the morning newspaper daily for nearly forty years. When I was little, I’d sit with him and read the Calvin and Hobbes comics while he summarized the news articles written in Bengali that I still cannot read.
My grandma can recount much less of her youth, but the bits I’ve heard are still incredibly impressive. She’s passed down her love for the arts to me, and her detailed embroidery works are only a fraction of the talent she encompasses. She could spin thread into magical landscapes with boats, deer, and colorful trees, and while many of these works have been lost, my mom’s favorite two hang in our living room today.
She is an exceptional singer, and when she was a teenager, she got scouted for an international singing competition, which she (regrettably) declined. One of her favorite games is Antakshari, which is basically Atlas but for songs. Whether it be a trip to India or a video call overseas, she brings it up and encourages me to play. While I’m reluctant most of the time, it always ends in us making silly voices and laughing at nothing. It’s thanks to her enthusiasm that I took piano and voice lessons for such a large part of my life, and music will always remind me of her.
Every time I feel hopeless, I call my grandparents, and their stories are a reminder that life is still full of mysteries to solve. Sometimes I regret the time I’ve lost, but I see their vast experience as a benchmark that I may surpass someday. This is a competition they would want me to win.
The wind-up monkey still lies in my box of old toys. The lever has broken off, and the rickshaw is stained with marker and poor attempts to patch up the cracks with tape, but it’s a beautiful, imperfect reflection of the beautiful, imperfect people who made me who I am.
