In the 2004 movie Swades, Shahrukh Khan, the ‘King of Bollywood’, stars as the handsome map-loving scientist who returns to India to reunite with his childhood maid.  He rents a comically large camper and follows her trail, eventually leading to two women, the object of the original quest and a romantic interest who sings in a very high voice.

My story is totally different – I’m going to take the bus.

Late tonight I will be leaving to spend the Diwali long weekend in Panchgani, the small hill station my family lived in for nearly a year in 1996-1997, eleven years ago.  Here is the premise of my story:

The Rushdys were a family that used to live near my own in the Baha’i community of Aylmer, Quebec when my sister and I were toddlers with their kids.  When my family moved to Chelsea, Quebec the Rushdys ended up using our then-empty basement as storage as they were off to India to serve at a Baha’i NGO.  For years after they left India, Sherif Rushdy continued to play an active role in the development of the Baha’i-inspired and CIDA funded New Era Development Institute (NEDI).  In 1996, Sherif asked my father if he could imagine taking the family over there so that he could lend his skills as a project manager to the construction of some new residence buildings for NEDI’s vocational college.   My parents agreed and we began to pack up our Chelsea home into the basement.  One of my mother’s Baha’i friends in Ottawa sent his daughter Marjan with us – who after the three of us had gotten in trouble together enough times, was basically already our sister.  Passing through England and Israel, the five of us were in India by September.

It is common knowledge among our friends from that time that India and I did not take well to eachother.  At twelve years old, I was scheduled for a growth spurt but all I did was lose weight, I hated the food and was sick most all the time.  While my sister made friends with a number of American kids older than her, I couldn’t relate to Marathi-speaking, animal-torturing Indian boys my age I was expected to make friends with.  I hated the school, and eventually Marjan and I stopped showing up.  I ended up spending most of my time as a volunteer employee at Lucky’s Snacks, the tea shop and bakery in town.  And that is the story of how I became a grade six dropout.

Out of concern for my health and schooling, my parents eventually gave in to my constant requests to take me home and after eight months of living in Panchgani, my mother and I came home.  My sister joined us two months later, and after another two months my father came too.

The Search for Sureka

Sureka is the woman who served as a maid for us and the Rushdys before us, and who became a part of both of our families.  On the morning my mother and I left, Sureka was the most emotional.  Whether she even heard me or not is irrelevant, but the 12-year-old-me told her that I would see her again in six years.  I figured that I would be done high school by then and I could return to India to do a Baha’i youth year of service.  About seven years later I did do a year of service, but it ended up being in Macau and Thailand.  Now here we are eleven years and a university degree later and I happened to land a job one state away from Panchgani. This weekend, as my camera and are walking down memory lane I will also following Sureka’s trail.  At this point all I have is a list of names of people who may be able to locate her via e-mails from the Rushdys that are spread across the globe.  I have no phone number, no last name and no clue where she is.  Come back in a few days to see how I did and to see how a small town and a small boy can change in eleven years.    As to the love interest Khan found in Swades… well, I didn’t write the movie.

Click here to read part two of this story.