It is easy to lie once you have studied the truth at close quarters, internalized its contours, its viscera, its very soul. I learnt all this by practicing my lies at the India Travel Tales Club, where people gather to listen to authentic stories about travel to India. Every month I stand in front of the crowd that gathers at this dark, warehouse-themed club in central Melbourne and spin tales about my adventures in India. My truth is this: I have lived all my life in Melbourne; I know India only from the videos I watch on my daily commute to work.
I joined the club after Ma had a mental breakdown where she kept talking of her Indian roots, the village she was brought up in. She would repeat little details for days: the hiss of winter winds, the death-stare of the summer sun, the colour-burst of spring. Her words clotted inside my veins. India. India. India. Sometimes, when she was talking, I could barely breathe. Her nostalgia was killing me.
I was desperate for a way out when I discovered this club. Something stirred in me, as if I had finally found the door to my freedom from Ma’s nostalgia. At first, I based my talks on Ma’s accounts. I made her tales mine. I became Ma for those brief fifteen-minute intervals. “Folks, let me tell you of the time when I visited a Punjabi village that had Japanese washing machines in every home. Not for laundry, mind you, but for churning milk…”
It freed me, all this talking. My stories began to venture into territories completely unknown to me. People clapped, whistled and thumped their chairs. From being a silent daughter, I transformed into a woman with a strong voice, an intrepid traveller, someone with the potential to pitch a travel TV series, host podcasts, write books. All thanks to Ma.
Ma has not been well for many years, all because of my father. My father was a violent man who treated Ma as his personal servant all his life, until his death a few years ago. Ma is a survivor who has barely survived. She can’t even walk; she hobbles. From her bed to the bathroom is a ten-minute journey. From the bathroom to the kitchen is twenty minutes.
My biggest consolation is that I have Jello as a neighbour, who visits Ma twice a day. She is also my closest friend. Once upon a time, we tried to be more than friends, but that didn’t work out. That’s another long story. Jello wasn’t born with this name. She was named after an ancient Japanese goddess, but she renamed herself Jello. She says she likes the sound of it.
We have known each other for two decades, ever since we were ten. She runs a cat-grooming business and stays with her dying grandfather, who has been dying for a long time but refuses to complete the journey.
“I am on the way,” he jokes every single time someone asks him how he is.
My Ma, Jello’s grandfather: this is why we have stuck together, Jello and I. No one else understands what it is to take care of refusing-to-go people.