THE PEN PALS

By the end of October 1975, I had completed my thesis work and had finished the first draft of my Ph.D. dissertation. I spoke to Prof. Cross about my desire to go to Trinidad to see my girlfriend; he promptly agreed that I deserved some time off from my three years long extremely hectic and demanding study and research schedule. He and Mrs. Cross were aware of my friendship with Manisha. Now my five Ph.D. program committee members had to read my dissertation and offer their comments. That would take around two weeks, so I was free to go out during this period.

On Thursday October 30, 1975, in the morning my MSU buddy Krishnam Raju and his wife Udaya drove me from East Lansing to Detroit’s international airport. I flew Eastern Airlines to Port-of-Spain from Detroit via San Juan, Puerto Rico and Bridgetown, Barbados, and spent the first week of November 1975, with Manisha and her family at their beautiful home in San Fernando. My flight got delayed for a couple hours in San Juan due to some technical snag in the plane and I reached Port-of-Spain at 11.00 p.m. instead of scheduled 9.00 p.m. I was a bit anxious during this delayed flight but felt incredibly happy when I arrived at the Piarco International Airport. I came out of the aircraft, down the steps and set foot on Trinidadian soil. As I walked inside the airport, I looked up on the visitor’s balcony and saw many people who looked like me, i.e., the Indo-Trinidadians, but one particular group of people were looking and pointing at me, smiling, and chatting among themselves. I proceeded through the immigration and customs, came out to the public area and there I met Manisha and her family who had been patiently waiting for me for over four hours. I was warmly welcomed; smiles were exchanged, especially with Manisha. She appeared extremely happy, on ‘cloud nine’ as her cousin Tara later told me, and hands were shaken. We were then driven by Rajesh in his car, and we reached their home by midnight. Although I was tired after my long journey, I was feeling joyous in the company of Manisha and the midnight tropical fresh air of Trinidad.

Manisha’s parents and grandmother were waiting for me as well. They welcomed me and we chatted for a while about my journey. My conversations with Manisha’s grandmother in Bhojpuri became the center of attraction. She was the only living member of the family at that time who had migrated from India to Trinidad. She spoke Bhojpuri, a Hindi dialect spoken in eastern Uttar Pradesh (UP) and western Bihar, in modern India. Manisha’s ancestors came from a village in district Ayodhya, in eastern UP, and the neighboring district Jaunpur happens to be my ancestral town. These districts are part of eastern UP where Bhojpuri is widely spoken. When I was talking with grandmother in Bhojpuri, Manisha and her brothers were carefully listening, but not understanding a word about our conversation. Her grandmother was extremely happy to see me and talk in Bhojpuri. Manisha and her brothers kept smiling as they watched me converse with their grandmother with such an ease. Unfortunately, modern Indo-Trinidadians have lost the language of their ancestors. After a while I went to bed and slept.

Every morning began breakfast with a special glass of freshly made orange juice. In all honesty I must admit that they were the sweetest glasses of orange juice that I had ever drank. Every morning Manisha picked fresh oranges from her back garden and made juice especially for me. I am certain that she mixed a lot of her love for me in those juice glasses; that sweetness I cannot forget even now and would always remember. By around 9.00 a.m. she, Rajesh, his wife Dolly, and I would be ready with packed lunches and fruit juices to go for day long picnics to the beautiful beaches, mountains, cities, and towns of this wonderful Caribbean Island country. I remember the first day we went to Port-of-Spain, the nation’s capital city and visited their gardens, museums, and other places of tourist interest. We went to a big Hindu temple on the Ethel Street in the St. James locality where major roads are named after cities in India. There was a Lucknow (my hometown in India) Street where Rajesh took a photograph of mine along with Manisha. During this week we went to see the world famous La Brea Pitch Lake which is the world’s largest lake of natural tar. I collected samples of tar to carry out a palynological investigation on the origin of the lake. The research outcome was later published. On November 3, 1975, we visited the home of my friend from MSU, Alwyn in Fyzabad, where this family hosted us for lunch. I vividly remember sharing a few loving and romantic moments here with Manisha about which she later wrote to me were beautiful and that she would always remember. We also went to Manisha’s uncle home and spent a few hours with him and his family. During the week we drove around the island and visited all over; we also swam in the beautiful beaches and the Maracas Beach on the north coast was my favorite. It is a semicircular beach surrounded by mountains and thousands of tall coconut palm trees. It looked supernatural to me. On November 1, 1975, we watched two Hindi films Jheel Ke Us Paar (Dharmendra and Mumtaz) and Double Cross (Vijay Anand and Rekha) at Hilite drive-in cinema in Chaguanas.

I was treated with a variety of delicious Trinidadian food. Everyday something fresh and new was offered including the Chana Dhal Puri; a favorite food of Indo-Trinidadians made for special occasions. I was treated with this food as well. Ramcharans ate food that is similar to the food of the people of eastern UP. One day Manisha made and treated me with Trinidadian cassava pone, a delicious sweet, which was soft and smooth.

Diwali was celebrated on November 2, 1975, four days before my departure for the USA. Trinidad has a unique and wonderful tradition of the communal celebration of Diwali in parks where people of various races and religions also participate. Trinidadian Hindus like their Indian counterparts perform Laxmi pooja at their homes and decorate them with lights. I immensely enjoyed Diwali evening there, especially the communal celebrations which included Laxmi pooja, fireworks and thousands of diya clay lamps that were lit in various flower-like patterns in the park that we had visited.

I was to leave Trinidad early morning for Miami on Thursday November 6, 1975, by British West Indies International Airlines (BWIA; those days it was Trinidad and Tobago’s national airline). Our mood on the night before was rather somber as Manisha knew that the following morning, I would be leaving her and did not know when and if at all she would ever see me again. I too had similar feelings and was a bit depressed. It was raining hard for a while, and the sky was totally black that night. Suddenly at around 10.30 in the night Manisha walked into my room where I was packing up my suitcase; she requested me to follow her to the balcony. We walked to the almost dark balcony where only rays of light came from a dimly lighted bulb on the streetlight pole. We sat down on two chairs, holding each other’s hands with clasping fingers, and started talking. I talked about my stay with her family and about places we visited in her beautiful island Trinidad. I told her that this lifetime experience will be unforgettable for me. I was expressing my genuine appreciation and most sincere thanks for her and her wonderful family. I think I told her that once I get my Ph.D. degree I will go back to India and rejoin my job with ONGC. It seems mostly I was talking, and she was listening to me patiently; occasionally she would press her palms against mine. After so many years now I don’t exactly remember what we talked but I do remember what had prompted me to propose to her to marry me.

Now Manisha asked me if I was happy with her or if I had anything special to say to her. I was a sort of a naïve boy, and she was quite a simple and coy girl and both of us shy by nature and totally inexperienced in matters dealing with love and personal relationships; thus, we were unable to express our true feelings of genuine love for each other. She asked me what I liked most about her. I said I liked everything about her and sincerely praised her beautiful and charming personality from the bottom of my heart and explained how kind and caring she has been to me throughout my stay with her family. I jokingly said that I especially enjoyed the freshly made glasses of orange juice she gave me every morning. She gently laughed and promptly said that she could make orange juice for me for the rest of her life if I wanted. I got the hint loud and clear and at that very moment I said: I would like to marry you, I like you, and I am sure you like me too (I still don’t know why I used the word ‘like’ instead of ‘love’ which truly expressed my feelings for her, a combination of hesitation and lack of self-confidence I guess). At that moment she hugged me tight and was in tears and said yes. As a matter of fact, she has been hinting me to propose her for marriage in so many ways, only I was apprehensive in my response. She was deeply in love with me and did not want this vital moment to go away without my commitment for her. For the first time in my life, I really felt love; her love for me, and a kind of love-current ran through my body as we embraced and kissed each other. I was extremely thrilled by Manisha’s acceptance of my proposal and loving gesture that followed. I felt emotionally and physically close to her. I am sure she felt the same emotions of love from me as well. Our mood of that moment is hard to describe; we both felt calm, overjoyed, and satisfied as if we had won something very big. She was very eager to be part of my life and I too desired myself to be part of hers’; thus, our mutual commitment to get married had made us feel extremely happy and victorious. At that moment she became my fiancée, and we were no more mere pen friends. We had taken a big decision about our lives without the prior consent of our parents. The only regret was that we did not have the time to share this news with the Ramcharan family. I was certain that we would have taken our parents’ approval and their blessings before getting married. It was getting late in the night as it was around 2.00 a.m. It was still drizzling. We very reluctantly parted company and then I went to bed but could not sleep. I bet she could not sleep either.

Next day early morning she, Rajesh and Dolly took me to the airport. Other family members including her mother also came to see me off. Manisha was almost in tears, and I too had a hard time controlling my emotions; with a heavy heart I said goodbye to her and her family members and went straight inside the airport without looking back because I did not want them to see me in tears. The four-hour long flight to Miami was quite miserable for me; I did not enjoy my flight as I had enjoyed while I was going to Trinidad. It was a bright sunny morning with a cloudless blue sky almost all over the Caribbean Sea from Trinidad to Florida. I took several photographs of lagoons, islands, the shallow and deep sea, and carbonate banks while flying over the Bahamas. I used these photographs for teaching afterwards and Prof. Cross was quite impressed with these photographs as well. I plan to publish a popular geology article on the aerial views of the Bahama Platform.

I spent one day at the home of Sam La Roue of Miami, who was a friend of Gordon Wood, my classmate at MSU. Sam was a disabled person but still he could drive his specially fitted car and he lived with his mother. Sam took me around Miami and showed me various places of interest. Sam’s mother was quite inquisitive and talked to me about my background and fed me with good food. Sam and his mother were very kind and helpful. On Friday November 7, 1975, I flew back to Detroit on my way to MSU. My MSU buddy Gordon Wood had come to the airport to pick me up and he drove me to East Lansing.