When my parents moved from India to the US, old videos kept the generations tied together
When I was a kid, we filmed everything. My parents had moved to the US, but the rest of our extended family was still inBeing so far away, my parents wanted to document every movement we made, just in case we needed it. Just in case suddenly, out of nowhere, I became interesting.
In India, my parents grew up in joint families – which technically means there were three or more generations under one roof. Everyone had eyes on you, you shared a bed with siblings, you couldn’t slam your bedroom door because that wasn’t just your bedroom – it was maybe five other kids’ bedroom, too. For the introvert this was hell, but for the seeker in hide and seek, it was really convenient.
During those months, we were watching home movies a lot. It was a sentimental time, and he asked my parents if they could find one video in particular that he remembered every beat of. In it, I am a toddler, singing to my mom, while clutching a little stuffed bunny. My sister says my name in a sing-songy way, and for some reason I think she’s mocking me. I turn and look away, and a single tear rolls down my face. No one sees it but my dad, filming.
Though my grandparents were here for months at a time whenever they would visit, they were mostly not in my life. None of my extended family was. As much as these videos were to fill them in on what was going on with us, they were also to re-create the joint family-ness of my parents’ childhoods. They were to immortalize those moments for us kids so we could look back at running around with 15 cousins and feel like they and my grandparents were with us.