My Life, as of now By Neeta Chandmuntra
From MemoryArchive
Who: Neeta Chandmuntra What: My life When: December 2, 1961- present Where: All over the world
My entire life, I have been an immigrant. I have the same problem that hundreds of thousands of people have world-wide. If you ask me where I was born, I can answer you, if you ask me where I am from, I have very little idea.
I was born in Bhopal, India a cosmopolitan city in Central India. The city itself was diverse, and there were a large mix of Hindu’s, Jains (I myself was included in this group), Muslims and Christians. My parents, both receiving their college education in Britain, made sure we played with as many of the neighborhood kids as possible. We were probably the only Jains in the town that spoke English, Urdu, and Hindi. We had some idea of the troubles of India politically, but in 1964, I was three years old, and it didn’t really matter much to me.
My brother Anshul, two years my elder, informed me in late August of 1964 that we would be moving to Switzerland. To some extent, I was relieved. Any Indian would tell you that the last place they want to be in August is India. On the other hand, I was terrified as I didn’t speak “Swiss” (I was three, Swiss as a language made sense to me), and could not yet tell time, so their clocks would be no help to me. I had an affinity for English fairy tales, and Anshul had told me that Goldilocks and Hansel and Gretel took place in Switzerland. Swiss people had blonde hair, so I believed him.
Switzerland, for me, was not a place filled with blonde girls with braided pigtails on mountaintops singing songs. The ages of three to five were perhaps the toughest of my life. Both of my parents were doctors, and we lived in a very affluent neighborhood in Zurich. My parents moved to Zurich because of work and were almost never home. My grandmother traveled with us and was our primary caretaker. Grandmother, Anshul and my parents all picked up French very quickly. I, however, could not grasp the complexities of the language. My “unsophisticated French” was not to be tolerated, and I spoke to very few people in my neighborhood. My grandmother was my best friend, and, for a long time, my only friend.
My attempts to go out into the neighborhood in Zurich always turned into a bad idea. People were upset that I wasn’t living in the areas where minorities, particularly Iranians were more prevalent. I had to justify constantly my “Indianness” as people would claim I was from Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Mexico, Morocco, and always my favorite, Vietnam.
Moving out of Zurich, heading towards Holland was one the fourth best day of my life (the best day was the day of my birth, the second was the birth of my son Gauraf, and the third my marriage day). If there are any people I love as a complete whole, it is the Dutch. I was six when I moved to Amsterdam. I was starting to get interested in the fellas and the attractive Dutch boys were more than interested in looking at me. This was good, because my brother fell in love with almost every Dutch girl he met that was under the age of ten, and my grandmother had returned to India, so I was in need of companionship. There was a fairly large Indian population in the area, and we were able to practice our celebrations with people outside my immediate family again. My white friends actually joined us for many of our celebrations and I celebrated the birthday of Jesus Christ in a church where they were still speaking Latin. No one seemed offended when after Christmas Mass, my only conclusions about Christianity and Catholicism is that 1- they say God a lot, 2- You have to stand up and down a lot, 3- Mass takes a really long time and 4- our songs (Indian) were way better.
I loved Holland and everything about Holland and I was sad when five years later, my father once again decided to transfer from his job. This time, we would go to London, England. After Amsterdam, London seemed to me an unimpressive and uninspired city. My grandmother had joked with me as I prepared for my move there that I should “arrive, look at the sky, and I would immediately understand the temperament and composure of the Britons.” To this day, I believe that to be true.
The Indian population in England is great, I still miss my friends there and love them all. I played cricket, football/soccer, and ran track in high school. My third year, I met my husband, a recent immigrant from France and India who spoke as little French as I did. For University, I was accepted into the Vrije University in Amsterdam, and graduated with a degree in Molecular Biology (as it turned out, I actually was Indian). My husband (fiancée at the time) was working in London doing work in computer science, and I moved back to be with him.
My husband’s job eventually transferred him to San Francisco, California. We made the promise to ourselves that America would be the last country we would live in after my son was born. Life kept us in San Francisco proper for 18 years, the longest I have lived in a single place, even staying in the same flat for those 18 years. Because my husband is very cheap, we were able to save up enough money to purchase a home in Boise, Idaho, where we could both retire. We actually haven’t retired in Boise, we both continue to work, me in Social Work and my husband at Hewlett Packard. My son attends University of California Santa Barbara, he is in a rock band. I will say I am proud of him. My son is majoring in Linguistics and Philosophy. He gets the first part from me, the second from his father.
We tried to raise our son with a strong sense of being Indian. We try to go to India, and to my home city of Bhopal as much as possible. As much as I’ve traveled, and lived away from my country, I have never truly felt Indian. The India I knew and loved in the 1960’s is completely different than it is now. I am able to identify myself as Jain, but just barely as Indian. The India that presently exists in my mind is the ones my parents grew up with. In the same extent, I am just as Swiss/Dutch/British/American as I am Indian/American. I was given the world to establish an identity and had many homes. I am grateful for them all.
