A Park Called Home
A pink flower with six petals is what I remember. I plucked it from a tree with not many other options, though I can’t be sure since my eyes were still mostly asleep. I showed it to my grandmother who inspected it with care and deemed it worthy as part of her daily prayer offering. She brought me down and we walked out of the metal park doors, hand in hand.
For nearly a century, my father’s family lived in a row of bungalows in Indore, an increasingly bustling city in central India (which, like central New Jersey, does exist). These bungalows saw generations of weddings, graduations, and funerals – but I never saw them. In 2000 (a year after I was born in the U.S.), my family sold the land and nearby helped built a five-story residential building named Ramashraya (home of the mythical Lord Rama), with a small park of untamed grass ahead.
Six years later, my brother and I moved to Indore to live with our grandmother, ostensibly to learn our language and culture. What I remember learning was how to hit a cricket ball so it (usually) wouldn’t shatter a window. When we would get back from school and change out of our uniforms, we would look outside to see who else from the neighborhood had gathered in the park, and what activity we would get scolded for. The narrow park lent itself well to cricket, but our uncontrolled and over-dramatic shots rarely stayed within its quite limited boundaries.
Inside its metal doors, the park became my practice room for the culture I was beginning to learn. During Diwali, it was our stage of firecracker displays that sounded late into the night. In the festival of Holi, we would all gather in the park’s well to fill our colored water balloons while strategically guarding ourselves against someone else’s arsenal. I learned Hindi words I probably shouldn’t say inside the building, and the rituals we perform when a family member passes away.
We moved back stateside in 2009 but visited nearly yearly. As our car would turn into the neighborhood, the park would be my first sight of home – and my first snapshot to guess how the past year(s) had gone. In the first few years after leaving, the park slowly fell into disarray. The grass seemed browner every visit, and eventually gave way to hard dirt. The two swings became too rusty to operate, and the trash became a part of the landscape. I would amuse myself by exaggerating my role in keeping the park alive, and how my move away had left it lonely.
A few years ago, our car turned in and I braced myself, only to see a new park sign with our neighbor’s last name. The litter and dirt had given way to pavement, a series of benches and swings, and lampposts so that sunset didn’t mean the end of daily fun. Instead of stray dogs, children were playing in the park once again. Maybe someone was learning a new word today.
When I visited two months ago, I checked Google Maps out of curiosity. 5 reviews, and a 4-star rating.