WEBVTT - An Active Annihilation 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:02.719 Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:07.360 --> 0:00:11.160 Cussing and loud noises terrify me even today. They make 0:00:11.240 --> 0:00:13.360 me feel like I'm picking at a knot above my 0:00:13.400 --> 0:00:16.720 skill level to untangle. Then I feel the knot in 0:00:16.760 --> 0:00:20.239 the back of my neck, Then in my back I 0:00:20.320 --> 0:00:23.920 touch them sometimes these knots and feel two thoughts spring 0:00:23.960 --> 0:00:26.599 from them, as they did that night on the balcony. 0:00:27.720 --> 0:00:31.400 One is a potent mix of fear and anger, wanting 0:00:31.440 --> 0:00:34.800 the person who scares me to die, wishing to transfer 0:00:34.920 --> 0:00:38.040 my pain to someone who deserves it in my churlish mind. 0:00:39.280 --> 0:00:43.320 The other voice is Amas, calmly chanting in my years 0:00:43.440 --> 0:00:45.479 for as long as it takes my breathing to return 0:00:45.479 --> 0:00:49.520 to normal, for the not to release. Where you come 0:00:49.560 --> 0:00:51.840 from does not have to be who you become. 0:00:57.160 --> 0:01:01.840 That's Zarah Chowdry, writer and lucky at the University of Wisconsin, 0:01:02.280 --> 0:01:06.560 an author of the recent memoir The Lucky Ones. Zara's 0:01:06.720 --> 0:01:09.319 is a story of a family's life lived at the 0:01:09.360 --> 0:01:15.000 intersection of political upheaval, violence, racism, and one young woman's 0:01:15.040 --> 0:01:19.120 courage and tenacity in the face of some very rough odds. 0:01:20.080 --> 0:01:23.559 It's also a story of the enduring power of love. 0:01:38.680 --> 0:01:42.280 I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets, the secrets 0:01:42.280 --> 0:01:44.800 that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others, 0:01:45.240 --> 0:01:47.400 and the secrets we keep from ourselves. 0:01:52.640 --> 0:01:55.840 I grew up in the city called Ahmedabad, which is 0:01:56.160 --> 0:01:59.920 the biggest city in the westernmost state of India called Gujad. 0:02:00.600 --> 0:02:03.720 It's a state that borders Pakistan on one side and 0:02:03.760 --> 0:02:07.520 then it has the Arabian Sea to the south. Now, Ahmadabad, 0:02:07.600 --> 0:02:10.320 as the name suggests, was a city that was founded 0:02:10.400 --> 0:02:14.640 by a Muslim sultanate, a Muslim sultan called Ahmed Shahbadsha. 0:02:15.200 --> 0:02:17.919 And that's why it was a city that had these 0:02:18.440 --> 0:02:23.519 foundations literally carved into rock. And I grew up in 0:02:23.800 --> 0:02:28.000 the old part of the city across this river Sabermati 0:02:28.040 --> 0:02:31.399 that ran north to south, and so the eastern part 0:02:31.440 --> 0:02:35.200 of the city of Amdabad was all the old established 0:02:35.320 --> 0:02:38.239 ways of the sultanate. Even as I grew up, you 0:02:38.280 --> 0:02:41.399 could see the remains of the fort. There were these 0:02:41.440 --> 0:02:45.880 incredible giant doors, really ornate and beautifully carved out of 0:02:46.080 --> 0:02:51.680 stone and rock, from which traders and saints and armies 0:02:51.720 --> 0:02:54.840 just marched in and out through the centuries. The space 0:02:54.919 --> 0:02:59.040 was dotted with shrines Sufi shrines that we called Arghas masques. 0:02:59.280 --> 0:03:02.840 And then within this over the centuries, life had just 0:03:02.880 --> 0:03:05.000 sort of sprung and grown in this layered way. So 0:03:05.040 --> 0:03:08.320 you had stores, and you had restaurants, and there was 0:03:08.400 --> 0:03:11.959 the public school and then the little Jesuit convent schools 0:03:12.040 --> 0:03:15.680 and homes that were of every shape and size, and 0:03:15.760 --> 0:03:18.480 it was just this very sort of tightly knit and 0:03:18.680 --> 0:03:22.720 close community that all flourished on one side of the river. 0:03:23.600 --> 0:03:26.799 But as we went through the eighties and the nineties 0:03:26.840 --> 0:03:29.519 and the early two thousands, and India I was about 0:03:29.960 --> 0:03:34.720 sixty odd years from its foundation. From its founding, this 0:03:34.880 --> 0:03:39.960 city started to grow westward and across the river towards 0:03:39.960 --> 0:03:43.200 the horizon in some ways. And the folks that tended 0:03:43.200 --> 0:03:47.200 to move that side were mostly the majority Hindo citizens 0:03:47.200 --> 0:03:49.840 of the city. And so by the time I was 0:03:49.880 --> 0:03:51.920 growing up in the city, which was in the nineties, 0:03:52.560 --> 0:03:55.800 and Udabad was already one of the most segregated cities 0:03:55.920 --> 0:03:58.680 in India. Now, I did not understand this word or 0:03:58.680 --> 0:04:01.600 this language at the time, but I do remember the 0:04:01.640 --> 0:04:04.920 feeling of our side of the city, the old sort 0:04:04.920 --> 0:04:08.400 of ancient side growing into a kehetto, and the one 0:04:08.400 --> 0:04:12.280 on the other side sort of springing and coming alive 0:04:12.520 --> 0:04:15.320 in everything that modernity had to offer. So this was 0:04:15.320 --> 0:04:19.119 an India that had just been liberalized economically, which meant 0:04:19.160 --> 0:04:21.320 that there was a free market, and suddenly we had 0:04:21.320 --> 0:04:25.080 important goods flooding in. And so one side of the 0:04:25.200 --> 0:04:29.279 river started to chase after that, and in many ways 0:04:29.279 --> 0:04:31.560 it almost felt like they were willing to leave us behind. 0:04:32.080 --> 0:04:34.400 And so I grew up in this place that had 0:04:34.440 --> 0:04:36.279 really parted along the lines of the river. 0:04:37.480 --> 0:04:42.400 That's fascinating. Did you know or sense as a child, 0:04:42.680 --> 0:04:45.839 I don't imagine that you had the word ghetto. Did 0:04:45.880 --> 0:04:49.960 you have the sense that there was this segregation or 0:04:49.960 --> 0:04:51.159 did that come later? 0:04:52.000 --> 0:04:55.920 I think it became very obvious very early on that 0:04:55.960 --> 0:04:58.680 we were the poorer side of the city, because that's 0:04:58.720 --> 0:05:03.159 where the slums first established themselves along the river. And 0:05:03.400 --> 0:05:05.599 what it meant then to live in these sort of 0:05:05.800 --> 0:05:08.800 even more mixed societies right where you have those who 0:05:08.839 --> 0:05:11.640 are working and living in the slum, those who live 0:05:12.040 --> 0:05:16.080 in cooperative buildings, those who live in small tenement bungalows, 0:05:16.960 --> 0:05:18.800 is that we're all kind of living cheek in general 0:05:18.839 --> 0:05:22.560 in this way that is just tight and suffocating, And 0:05:22.600 --> 0:05:25.000 so I might not have had the word ghetto at 0:05:25.000 --> 0:05:27.760 the time, but I had the word slum. I had 0:05:27.839 --> 0:05:31.480 the word narrow lanes and gullies, and so we were 0:05:31.560 --> 0:05:35.280 very much defined by this very constrained geography. 0:05:36.600 --> 0:05:41.280 So in your home, this Jasmine apartment C eight, there 0:05:41.279 --> 0:05:43.920 are quite a few people living in your family home, 0:05:43.920 --> 0:05:48.080 which was usual right where extended families would live together. 0:05:48.760 --> 0:05:53.960 That's correct, yes, And the same sense of suffocation that 0:05:54.120 --> 0:05:57.960 one could feel emanating from the outside was very much 0:05:58.040 --> 0:06:01.800 how the household also built. We lived in this apartment building, 0:06:01.839 --> 0:06:03.840 ten story stall. We were on the eighth floor. We 0:06:03.880 --> 0:06:06.440 had what some would call a magnificent view of the 0:06:06.520 --> 0:06:09.320 river and the city across and all the bridges across 0:06:09.320 --> 0:06:13.120 of it. But inside the house there were three generations 0:06:13.160 --> 0:06:17.159 again living in this tightly packed unit. There was my grandparents, 0:06:17.240 --> 0:06:20.960 my dad's parents. There was my parents, and then my 0:06:21.080 --> 0:06:23.919 dad's younger sister who was divorced and had moved in 0:06:24.000 --> 0:06:28.120 with us with her only child. So her daughter, me 0:06:28.440 --> 0:06:30.760 and then my younger sister, we were the three children 0:06:30.839 --> 0:06:33.040 in the house. And then you had these three generations 0:06:33.560 --> 0:06:37.200 that were all also similarly buying for their little piece 0:06:37.200 --> 0:06:39.320 of the sky. They were all buying for space and 0:06:39.360 --> 0:06:42.800 importance and clarity as to their roles. And so we 0:06:42.920 --> 0:06:45.120 grew up in a place where it was on the 0:06:45.120 --> 0:06:50.080 one hand, incredible to have just constant access to your grandparents, right, 0:06:50.120 --> 0:06:53.080 and they're just bounds of history and wisdom. But at 0:06:53.080 --> 0:06:57.120 the same time there's also biases, and there's constant pettiness, 0:06:57.160 --> 0:07:03.560 and there's constant balancing of deep affection with dense jealousy 0:07:03.560 --> 0:07:04.040 and envy. 0:07:05.040 --> 0:07:06.800 Tell me about Ama, your mother. 0:07:07.640 --> 0:07:11.400 So my mother, Roxana, who I call Ama, she came 0:07:11.600 --> 0:07:13.960 from the southern part of India. She came from a 0:07:14.000 --> 0:07:17.040 coastal city called Madras, which is we now call it Chene. 0:07:17.440 --> 0:07:20.840 And she came from an army family. Her father was 0:07:20.880 --> 0:07:24.480 a major in the Indian Army for all of his career, 0:07:25.280 --> 0:07:28.920 and so she grew up almost this vagabond way where 0:07:29.280 --> 0:07:31.680 they were moved around every two years. And so she 0:07:31.720 --> 0:07:34.360 had lived everywhere from up in the Himaliyas and Kashmi 0:07:34.920 --> 0:07:38.240 to down at the very end of India and Trivandrum 0:07:38.320 --> 0:07:39.800 where you can just see the Bay of Bengal and 0:07:39.800 --> 0:07:42.520 the Indian Ocean. From there, she had lived on the 0:07:42.560 --> 0:07:46.320 Mango coast on the western side. She had lived in 0:07:46.360 --> 0:07:48.960 the center of India where you got great oranges, and 0:07:49.040 --> 0:07:52.840 so she had had this incredible rich life for the 0:07:52.880 --> 0:07:55.400 first few years or early years where she had just 0:07:55.800 --> 0:07:59.480 bounced around and met all these different cultures and languages 0:07:59.600 --> 0:08:02.880 and foods and people in the army. But then she 0:08:02.920 --> 0:08:07.640 also lost her father when she was thirteen, and that 0:08:07.760 --> 0:08:10.960 changed the fortunes of her family. Her mother instantly sort 0:08:11.000 --> 0:08:13.840 of crumbled under widowhood in a way that a lot 0:08:13.840 --> 0:08:16.520 of women in India did, at least in that generation. 0:08:17.560 --> 0:08:21.920 And she took on this burden on her very sort 0:08:21.960 --> 0:08:25.560 of nimble shoulders at the time of becoming the face 0:08:25.600 --> 0:08:28.000 of the family. And what that meant was that she 0:08:28.040 --> 0:08:31.840 suddenly felt like the honor of the family, its pride, 0:08:31.960 --> 0:08:35.000 its sense, and dignity all rested on her. That's a 0:08:35.080 --> 0:08:38.000 huge burden for somebody who's twelve or thirteen to carry 0:08:38.000 --> 0:08:42.200 on their shoulders. And she had decided at a very 0:08:42.240 --> 0:08:46.000 early age that she was going to do everything the 0:08:46.120 --> 0:08:50.480 right way, including go to college for a a sort 0:08:50.480 --> 0:08:53.440 of checklist career that would just get her a good husband, 0:08:53.840 --> 0:08:56.360 should marry into a good family, and that's how she 0:08:56.440 --> 0:08:59.720 ended up meeting my father through a marriage proposal in India, 0:08:59.760 --> 0:09:03.160 we had arranged marriages. A relative or a family friend 0:09:03.240 --> 0:09:05.160 might introduce you to somebody that they think is a 0:09:05.160 --> 0:09:07.640 good match for you. And so this was a relative 0:09:07.720 --> 0:09:11.880 who knew this family in Ahmadabad, Gudrat, thousands of miles 0:09:11.920 --> 0:09:14.120 away from where my mother was living in the south, 0:09:14.160 --> 0:09:16.560 and they just happened to know them and thought that 0:09:16.600 --> 0:09:19.880 they were incredibly suave and sort of you know, this 0:09:20.640 --> 0:09:24.840 liberal educated Muslim family. Everybody served in the government. The 0:09:24.920 --> 0:09:27.720 son had gone to America and had an MBA, and 0:09:27.760 --> 0:09:30.320 he was tall and strapping and handsome, and my mom 0:09:30.440 --> 0:09:34.480 was a very tall woman for Indian culture, and she 0:09:34.600 --> 0:09:37.439 had been told growing up that this was not an advantage. 0:09:37.559 --> 0:09:40.480 She was also dark for somebody in a culture that 0:09:40.640 --> 0:09:45.800 really values light skinness, and so this became a burden 0:09:45.840 --> 0:09:48.560 that she was already silently caring. And so when this 0:09:49.000 --> 0:09:52.840 marriage proposal came of this fair, tall, handsome foreign educated 0:09:53.600 --> 0:09:56.920 government servant, it seemed like the perfect match for someone 0:09:56.960 --> 0:10:04.440 like her. My dad was the most quirky human that 0:10:04.920 --> 0:10:08.280 I will ever know in my life. And it is 0:10:08.360 --> 0:10:11.679 strange to say that now in retrospect, because at the time, 0:10:11.800 --> 0:10:15.280 growing up in his shadow, it felt like my father 0:10:15.400 --> 0:10:19.600 was a monster. My dad was the oldest child of 0:10:20.360 --> 0:10:24.200 a public servant. His mother came from a sort of 0:10:24.320 --> 0:10:27.600 almost aristocratic family in Amadabad who had sort of old 0:10:27.640 --> 0:10:32.760 money and had a very wide social network, and so 0:10:32.840 --> 0:10:35.480 he had grown up essentially with a silver spoon in 0:10:35.520 --> 0:10:38.320 the fifties and sixties, which is many people think of 0:10:38.320 --> 0:10:40.600 that as India's golden period in terms of, you know, 0:10:40.640 --> 0:10:43.439 we had great cinema happening, There was so much social 0:10:43.559 --> 0:10:46.960 upliftment for people. We had all these big projects going 0:10:46.960 --> 0:10:49.040 on that were going to really transform the country. It 0:10:49.080 --> 0:10:50.680 was a time of a lot of hope. And my 0:10:50.760 --> 0:10:53.120 dad was growing up in that time, and he was 0:10:53.200 --> 0:10:55.480 growing up with that silver spoon, knowing that as the 0:10:55.480 --> 0:10:58.400 only son in the household, he could ask and he 0:10:58.440 --> 0:11:02.800 would receive. He straight out of college and he wasn't 0:11:02.800 --> 0:11:07.040 the brightest student his sister was, but he was offered 0:11:07.200 --> 0:11:09.960 the opportunity to go study in America, and so he 0:11:10.000 --> 0:11:13.480 comes to California in the seventies, has the time of 0:11:13.520 --> 0:11:17.320 his life for three years and meets some incredible other 0:11:17.360 --> 0:11:19.560 Indian students who are also here at the same time, 0:11:20.160 --> 0:11:22.600 forges these friendships that last him for the rest of 0:11:22.600 --> 0:11:27.000 his life. But he's also just not what's the word, 0:11:27.280 --> 0:11:31.000 he's not practical enough in the way of thinking of 0:11:31.040 --> 0:11:34.440 his future. He's thought that being here, being in America, 0:11:34.480 --> 0:11:36.800 he's already set that this is it, and he's made it. 0:11:37.400 --> 0:11:40.960 And he doesn't go back on time the way his 0:11:41.120 --> 0:11:45.800 visa stipulated he had to. And so he's brought into 0:11:45.840 --> 0:11:49.600 court in California and the judge gives him two options. 0:11:50.000 --> 0:11:52.280 One that he was not going to be able to 0:11:52.320 --> 0:11:54.360 come back to the US for at least a decade, 0:11:54.679 --> 0:11:58.120 because that's usually how long those things last. The other 0:11:58.160 --> 0:12:01.480 thing it really meant was that this star son, this 0:12:01.720 --> 0:12:06.320 prince of the family, had terribly and desperately failed. He 0:12:06.400 --> 0:12:07.960 was supposed to go there and make a name for 0:12:08.080 --> 0:12:11.160 himself and do something, and everybody else was you know, 0:12:11.200 --> 0:12:13.400 this was the time of that brain drained, the first 0:12:13.640 --> 0:12:15.720 round of it, when all of our doctors and engineers 0:12:15.720 --> 0:12:18.600 came to the US. He was supposed to be one 0:12:18.640 --> 0:12:21.520 of them. And instead he comes back with his tail 0:12:21.559 --> 0:12:24.920 between his legs and he's not sure if he's going 0:12:24.960 --> 0:12:27.960 to ever be able to go abroad anywhere and establish 0:12:27.960 --> 0:12:31.680 a life for himself. But also he didn't come from wealth. 0:12:32.240 --> 0:12:34.680 He came from social status, but he didn't come from wealth. 0:12:35.120 --> 0:12:37.720 And to come back to a father who was retiring, 0:12:37.800 --> 0:12:41.120 who had just bought this apartment in Jasmine, had put 0:12:41.200 --> 0:12:44.480 most of his retirement savings into his young son. This 0:12:44.559 --> 0:12:49.120 also meant that he had failed that investment in many ways. 0:12:49.440 --> 0:12:52.679 And so by the time I came along and our 0:12:52.760 --> 0:12:55.320 life in the nineties sort of is the memory that 0:12:55.400 --> 0:12:58.760 I have. This before time, from what I understand, became 0:12:59.400 --> 0:13:02.760 really a time when that guilt and that shame became 0:13:02.800 --> 0:13:05.960 weaponized against him in his own household, and he was 0:13:06.000 --> 0:13:10.120 constantly reminded every time everybody drank and got tipsy and 0:13:10.160 --> 0:13:13.240 then started to fight in the house. This was always 0:13:13.320 --> 0:13:16.679 a story that came out the fact that they put 0:13:16.720 --> 0:13:19.120 all their money in my dad, and my dad was 0:13:19.160 --> 0:13:22.000 still back here, still working for the government, and that 0:13:22.600 --> 0:13:24.360 nothing came out of that whole episode. 0:13:25.960 --> 0:13:30.640 When your parents met, was this something that your mother 0:13:31.440 --> 0:13:34.080 sort of knew and signed on for or do you 0:13:34.080 --> 0:13:38.720 think it became something that she came to realize. And 0:13:38.760 --> 0:13:41.720 also how long were they married before you were born. 0:13:42.679 --> 0:13:45.560 They were married in nineteen eighty four and I was 0:13:45.600 --> 0:13:49.440 born in nineteen eighty six. My mother also liked me, 0:13:49.840 --> 0:13:53.160 and I guess before me really had pieced the story 0:13:53.200 --> 0:13:57.320 together through these drunken outbursts in our household, because the 0:13:57.320 --> 0:13:59.760 story she was told when the proposal came to her 0:13:59.880 --> 0:14:04.280 was here as this wonderful man who's handsome and educated, 0:14:04.360 --> 0:14:07.160 and he has a foreign degree and he's working in 0:14:07.160 --> 0:14:10.239 the government. He will rise and will have job security. 0:14:10.760 --> 0:14:13.000 This family seemed to have roots in this city. It's 0:14:13.000 --> 0:14:15.320 a beautiful city with a great culture. You'll have a 0:14:15.320 --> 0:14:19.920 wonderful life. And it's only when she moved to Amzabad 0:14:20.400 --> 0:14:24.400 and she started to live within this household, and also 0:14:24.600 --> 0:14:29.000 as she realized her place in the household, that she 0:14:29.000 --> 0:14:32.880 really started to dig for this information and understand that 0:14:33.320 --> 0:14:36.280 this man who was almost a decade older than her, 0:14:36.480 --> 0:14:38.880 whom she had married because he looked so great on paper, 0:14:40.040 --> 0:14:43.800 had all of these hidden failures and pockets of secrets 0:14:43.800 --> 0:14:45.800 that nobody had bothered to tell her. 0:14:49.600 --> 0:14:53.160 Sarah and her younger sister Misha absorb a great deal 0:14:53.200 --> 0:14:56.640 of tension in the close quarters of their very crowded home. 0:14:58.520 --> 0:15:01.800 So you know, looking back now, I had this memory 0:15:01.960 --> 0:15:06.720 of always feeling just fear in my body, and not 0:15:06.800 --> 0:15:09.360 just fear of people, but I used to feel fear 0:15:09.480 --> 0:15:12.960 of the space of the apartment itself. I would not 0:15:13.040 --> 0:15:16.240 want to go out into the balcony after dark. There 0:15:16.280 --> 0:15:19.040 were certain darker corners of the house, but the light 0:15:19.360 --> 0:15:21.680 from the lamp would just not reach, and I wouldn't 0:15:21.680 --> 0:15:24.120 want to go in there. And I would just constantly 0:15:24.160 --> 0:15:26.960 have these nightmares, if you know, all kinds of gnarly 0:15:27.040 --> 0:15:30.200 things coming out of the walls to get me. It's 0:15:30.240 --> 0:15:32.200 taken many years for me to look back at that 0:15:32.320 --> 0:15:35.960 and realize that I was constantly feeling the tension of 0:15:36.000 --> 0:15:40.160 the house. I knew, for instance, that at seven o'clock 0:15:40.360 --> 0:15:44.280 my house transformed in the evening. And you know, you 0:15:44.320 --> 0:15:47.160 would think that, oh, sundown in a Muslim household means 0:15:47.160 --> 0:15:50.280 everybody will get together and pray their sundown prayers, their nammas, 0:15:50.760 --> 0:15:53.200 and it's a time for piety in some ways, but 0:15:53.320 --> 0:15:56.960 not in my household. In my household, the bottle opened 0:15:57.320 --> 0:15:59.360 and my dad would start to pour himself a drink, 0:15:59.400 --> 0:16:02.000 and then another and another, and my grandfather would drink 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:03.920 with him, and the women of the family would sit 0:16:03.960 --> 0:16:07.800 around and it would all start with jovial chatting, and 0:16:07.840 --> 0:16:11.080 then as my dad would drink more and more and 0:16:11.160 --> 0:16:13.600 my grandfather would stop and try to slow him down. 0:16:14.240 --> 0:16:17.680 Things would just get more belligerent, and I would see 0:16:17.680 --> 0:16:19.680 my mom trying to sort of recede into the kitchen 0:16:19.920 --> 0:16:23.600 and watch from there. We would usually be asked to 0:16:23.880 --> 0:16:26.800 go into the bedroom and play there, but we would 0:16:26.880 --> 0:16:30.600 know that voices are rising, temperatures are rising outside. At 0:16:30.600 --> 0:16:33.600 some point, we would hear a plate crash into the wall, 0:16:34.240 --> 0:16:36.640 or we'd hear somebody take off their slipper and throw 0:16:36.640 --> 0:16:39.360 it across the room, and that's when we would know 0:16:39.920 --> 0:16:43.880 things had been set on fire, that we're just now 0:16:43.960 --> 0:16:46.560 in the middle of a terrible dinner, that we're all 0:16:46.600 --> 0:16:49.520 going to have to sit and endure and eat and 0:16:49.560 --> 0:16:56.160 swallow even when everybody's see them. 0:16:56.400 --> 0:17:00.360 In India, indeed across South Asia, families who are able 0:17:00.400 --> 0:17:04.600 to send children to convent schools. Being educated in a 0:17:04.680 --> 0:17:08.359 convent school brings with it a social status because it 0:17:08.440 --> 0:17:12.280 usually means students will learn British English and know how 0:17:12.320 --> 0:17:17.200 to comport themselves in society. For girls, this is particularly 0:17:17.240 --> 0:17:20.400 the case. Coming out of a convent school means they'll 0:17:20.440 --> 0:17:24.960 come out finished, polished in ways that make them valuable 0:17:25.000 --> 0:17:29.320 for marriage. In fact, it is not uncommon for matrimonial 0:17:29.359 --> 0:17:33.080 columns in Indian newspapers even today to refer to a 0:17:33.119 --> 0:17:38.960 potential bride as fair, slim and convent educated. And so 0:17:39.200 --> 0:17:42.000 it is a stroke of luck that Zara's family has 0:17:42.119 --> 0:17:46.000 roots in Ahmedabad and three generations have been educated at 0:17:46.040 --> 0:17:48.040 the only convent school in town. 0:17:49.960 --> 0:17:53.639 My grandmother, my dad's mother, my aunt, and then my 0:17:53.720 --> 0:17:56.080 sister and I and my cousin, all of us had 0:17:56.119 --> 0:17:59.080 studied in this one convent school of Montgomery and the 0:17:59.119 --> 0:18:02.280 school was across the So each morning there would be 0:18:02.280 --> 0:18:04.680 an auto rickshaw that would stop, drive up and stop 0:18:04.720 --> 0:18:06.840 at the base of our building. You would run down, 0:18:06.920 --> 0:18:09.560 get into it and it would go across the bridge 0:18:09.680 --> 0:18:11.600 and take us to school. And so we would go 0:18:11.600 --> 0:18:13.960 in this very packed auto rick show with you know, 0:18:14.000 --> 0:18:17.399 little water services and bags hanging outside of it, and 0:18:17.400 --> 0:18:19.680 it was all very funny even as we were doing 0:18:19.680 --> 0:18:22.440 it as children. And then we would go to school 0:18:22.480 --> 0:18:26.320 where you had all of these different classes of the 0:18:26.359 --> 0:18:28.800 city and it was like watching a cross section of 0:18:28.840 --> 0:18:34.439 our society, but in awkward teenage bodies and pre previous 0:18:34.480 --> 0:18:37.960 and bodies and in great pinafore uniforms. So you had 0:18:38.000 --> 0:18:40.840 the girls who came in the fancy sort of imported cars. 0:18:40.920 --> 0:18:43.280 You had the click that came in the bus. You 0:18:43.320 --> 0:18:45.959 had the ones whose parents dropped them off on a scooter, 0:18:46.480 --> 0:18:48.440 and then you had us who came in the auto 0:18:48.560 --> 0:18:51.680 rickshaw from the other side of town. And even how 0:18:51.760 --> 0:18:54.520 we sat and ate at lunch was very clearly marked 0:18:54.720 --> 0:18:58.200 by that class. And so as much as you would 0:18:58.200 --> 0:19:00.679 think that, you know, going to school been an escape 0:19:00.680 --> 0:19:02.240 for these kids, you know, they could go there and 0:19:02.280 --> 0:19:05.560 just be themselves and have fun and run around, school 0:19:05.680 --> 0:19:08.240 was also very clearly a place that was that had 0:19:08.280 --> 0:19:12.360 this hierarchy of class. We didn't know this at the time, 0:19:12.400 --> 0:19:15.879 but there was also hints of that sort of bigotry 0:19:15.960 --> 0:19:20.960 towards minorities. Even within a convent, a Catholic institution, you 0:19:21.000 --> 0:19:23.960 would have teachers who would sort of point you out 0:19:24.000 --> 0:19:27.040 and say, oh, aren't you that Mazzi girl from a 0:19:27.080 --> 0:19:30.879 cross down and Mazzi would be Muslim. But school was 0:19:30.880 --> 0:19:34.080 still a place where we did the things that really 0:19:34.080 --> 0:19:36.920 brought us joy to some degree. So I wrote from 0:19:36.960 --> 0:19:39.240 when I was really young, and so I would just 0:19:39.280 --> 0:19:41.840 stand up and read the things I wrote in class. 0:19:42.040 --> 0:19:44.560 I was always the English teacher's better than nobody else's. 0:19:45.080 --> 0:19:48.199 My sister loved to dance, and so she would just 0:19:48.480 --> 0:19:50.760 break into dance in the hallways, and you know, the 0:19:50.800 --> 0:19:52.320 teachers would point at her and be like, oh, that 0:19:52.400 --> 0:19:54.879 kid needs to be on our stage at the end 0:19:54.920 --> 0:19:57.359 of the year. So it was a place for us 0:19:57.400 --> 0:19:59.760 to also show ourselves in a way that we just 0:20:00.080 --> 0:20:04.040 be seen within our household. But school still had its 0:20:04.080 --> 0:20:07.400 own sort of micro tensions, and we were working our 0:20:07.440 --> 0:20:09.679 way through it and in a way that is not 0:20:09.840 --> 0:20:12.320 unique to us. It's not a story that is only 0:20:12.359 --> 0:20:14.760 this by and mind. It's the story of every single 0:20:14.880 --> 0:20:18.320 human in South Asia who goes to this sort of 0:20:18.400 --> 0:20:26.800 diverse and complicated school in a diverse and complicated society. 0:20:28.040 --> 0:20:45.080 We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets. 0:20:46.880 --> 0:20:51.080 It's February twenty seventh, two thousand and two. Zara is sixteen. 0:20:52.080 --> 0:20:55.639 In the nearby town of Gujarat, a train appears to 0:20:55.680 --> 0:20:59.600 have been set on fire. There are many casualties. At 0:20:59.720 --> 0:21:04.120 least fifty eight people have died. The state's chief minister, 0:21:04.680 --> 0:21:08.800 Narendra Modi immediately labels this as an act of terror. 0:21:11.000 --> 0:21:14.320 Remember where we are in time, February two thousand and two, 0:21:15.200 --> 0:21:17.800 Just months after the attacks on the World Trade Center 0:21:18.160 --> 0:21:20.040 on September eleventh, two thousand and one. 0:21:22.040 --> 0:21:25.399 To have grown up in India in the eighties and 0:21:25.480 --> 0:21:30.400 nineties is to have known violence. There has been sectarian 0:21:30.520 --> 0:21:36.040 violence and ethnic violence in sports throughout our nation's independent history. 0:21:36.680 --> 0:21:39.560 And so even as I was four or five or 0:21:39.600 --> 0:21:42.760 six growing up in Ambalabad, I remember for something as 0:21:42.760 --> 0:21:44.960 silly as if, you know, India and Pakistan had a 0:21:44.960 --> 0:21:48.640 cricket match and Pakistan won and India lost. Everybody would 0:21:48.640 --> 0:21:50.560 get upset about it and then go out and burn 0:21:50.600 --> 0:21:53.920 somebody's bike and you know, start burning tires. And so 0:21:54.080 --> 0:21:56.080 for me to stand on the balcony of my building 0:21:56.080 --> 0:21:58.280 and look down and see people burning things because they're 0:21:58.280 --> 0:22:02.280 mad because of you know, cricket match was not unusual. 0:22:03.240 --> 0:22:06.160 This was a place where children were already kind of 0:22:06.600 --> 0:22:10.440 accustomed in some strange way to this sort of minimized 0:22:10.520 --> 0:22:15.679 and normalized violence. But what happened in two thousand and 0:22:15.680 --> 0:22:19.320 two is that there was a train coming into Gujrat 0:22:19.440 --> 0:22:22.479 to a station close to Ahmadabad from a city in 0:22:22.480 --> 0:22:26.200 central India called Ayodya. It's a city that people now 0:22:26.280 --> 0:22:28.359 recognize because it's been back in the news for a 0:22:28.400 --> 0:22:33.439 while with the resurgence of modin India. But Ayodya in 0:22:33.520 --> 0:22:37.840 central India is known for a lot of Hindus in 0:22:37.880 --> 0:22:41.639 their sort of mythological and faith imagination as the birthplace 0:22:41.640 --> 0:22:44.080 of law Dram, who was one of the biggest deities 0:22:44.160 --> 0:22:48.040 in the Hindu faith. In nineteen ninety two, a mob 0:22:48.119 --> 0:22:54.639 of almost one hundred thousand Hindu religious workers slash volunteers 0:22:54.880 --> 0:22:59.879 vigilantes had been brought there by the BJP, which is 0:23:00.240 --> 0:23:03.560 the big Hindu right party in India and its many 0:23:03.560 --> 0:23:07.360 affiliated parties, had brought this mob of one hundred thousand 0:23:07.720 --> 0:23:11.639 angry people to a mosque that was in Ayudia, and 0:23:11.680 --> 0:23:15.440 the mosque itself was about five hundred years old from 0:23:15.480 --> 0:23:20.000 the Mughal dynasty. And they were so enraged because they 0:23:20.000 --> 0:23:22.440 had been told the story for decades by the Hindu 0:23:22.600 --> 0:23:25.920 right that this place used to be the birthplace of 0:23:26.000 --> 0:23:29.359 Laudram and this mosque was built on it by desecrating 0:23:29.440 --> 0:23:32.320 that holy place. And so this mob of one hundred 0:23:32.359 --> 0:23:36.600 thousand charges at this building and with pick axes and 0:23:36.720 --> 0:23:39.960 knives and stones and rocks and hammers, they bring this 0:23:40.080 --> 0:23:44.920 whole ancient monument crashing down. And as they do it. 0:23:45.640 --> 0:23:48.040 This new starts to spread across India, and this is 0:23:48.080 --> 0:23:50.200 in the early nineties when we don't yet have live 0:23:50.280 --> 0:23:53.800 news and live televisions, certainly no Internet. But it starts 0:23:53.840 --> 0:23:56.560 to trickle down into cities like mine in Mderbagh, and 0:23:57.080 --> 0:24:00.640 there's rioting, there's looting, there's burning in all of these places. 0:24:01.600 --> 0:24:06.399