I was born in India in 1957. The youngest of four siblings in an American missionary family from small town North Dakota and Minnesota. We were evangelicals. Conservative in a Protestant theology heavily influenced by the Holiness movement of the 19th century. Small sect Methodism that believed all sinners could be completely ‘sanctified’ or perfect, in their lifetimes. Among other things of course.
I was born in the southern Tamil temple city of Madurai but we lived 850 kilometers northwest in a Kanarese speaking area of what is now the Indian state of Karnataka. Dad’s employer, the Oriental Missionary Society or OMS, had established a bible training college in the town of Gadag, famous for producing one of classical Indian music’s noblest performers, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, and a lively printing industry.
Dad taught theology and related subjects to young Christian men and women from the surrounding areas. He regularly preached at outdoor revival meetings with his colleagues and students. Mom helped out wherever she was needed, sometimes as the bookkeeper for the college, sometimes she would join the pastors’ wives in their rural evangelizing campaigns but mostly she raised us kids.
They had landed in Bombay after a long voyage across several oceans from New York in February 1952. They were appointed to join another American family, The Davises, who had two boys round about the same age as my two brothers, and a jolly, tubby spinster from Baltimore, Mary Ella Taylor.
Mike my oldest brother was 5. Gregg, next up was 3. My sister Rebecca would arrive 3 years later, in 1955 and I brought up the rear in ‘57. There is a good case to be made that another sister was stillborn before I came along.
We lived on the campus of the Karnataka Bible Seminary, whose red brick buildings dated back several decades. It was well shaded at least in the front part and served as a safe, walled but sprawling little world for me to explore as a kid.
We were generally happy and normal. Among our subcultured circle of missionaries anyway. In fact, compared with the Davises, mom and dad were liberal youngsters, which did cause ongoing friction between them over the years. As is the wont of every child what they see in their homes they project onto the entire Universe. There was nothing different about us. We all believed broadly the same things about the Bible and God and Jesus. We shared a barebone existence with few physical comforts. It was simple, filled with good food, devotions, trips to exotic places like the temples of Hampi, Shravanabelagola and the beaches of Karwar. Of course, “we” in these instances refers to other OMS missionaries or white folk in India more broadly.
It was impossible not to notice that most everyone else around us and among us did not believe these things. But then, that was the whole point of our landing up in rural southern India. To try to get as many of them as possible to come over to our team. A spiritual kabaddi match.
Only recently have I begun to distance myself from the lived experience of my childhood. To look at it not from within but from a distance of 60 year; and from the outside. How did this rural, poor family from Minnesota end up in the villages of central India, speaking strange tongues and eating strange food? Why? What was going on in India at the time? And how did being surrounded by religion and spirituality, in the home or everywhere you went in India, and speaking Kanarese simultaneously as fluidly as English and having Indian friends to whom I was closer than to my brothers who were away in boarding school?
What does /did this niche childhood-–Minnesota, Holiness Methodists, missionaries, newly Independent India, bilingual communication–influence who I am today?
This is about that.
India has been an indivisible aspect of my life since 10 July 1957. At times some have found it irritating and maddening. Others have seen it as fascinating and exotic. Most just shrug, especially now in this tiny world we live in, in the 2020s.
My connection to India is something I’ve always loved but haven’t known how to incorporate into my story. Or stories. It depended on the audience of course, as all stories do. My wives have felt threatened by India which is so easy to love in comparison with a real complex woman. So, there is shame and protection mixed in with my love of India. I’m sure many, including myself, thought I would outgrow my romantic childhood when I became an adult and that its influence would settle into a manageable and quaint curry now and then and perhaps one grand tour with the family when the kids are old enough to enjoy an adventure.
But it hasn’t happened that way. The older I got the more attached and fascinated by and in love with the place I become. I chose to study Hindi rather than Latin or French in high school. At the University of Minnesota, I jumped from majoring in Anthropology and Journalism and English before settling on South Asian Studies and History. I studied Urdu as well as Hindi. I spent a year after university studying in Lahore Pakistan. I was thinking of doing a PhD on one of the most important figures in modern South Asian Islam, Maulana Maududi. But then I got a job with the UN in Islamabad and began a career that took me around the world. India faded into the background for those years but never died.
I began blogs about South Asian music and wrote a novel set in Pakistan. I read books on the caste system, Tamil anti-Brahmanism, Aurangzeb and the film industry, travelled and photographed across India whenever I could, did an ongoing deep dive into south Asian music and film and wrote a weekly column on the subject for an Indian online paper. I was asked to write a history of the Pakistani movie industry and now I’m thinking of leading tours to the sub-continent.
India is not fading away like it was supposed to.
Many of my kind (Missionary Kids from India and Pakistan) break into song when asked by Indians to explain ourselves.
Mera juta hai Japani
Yeh Patloon Englstani
Sar pe lal topi Russi
Phir bhi dil hai hindustani
(I wear Japanese shoes and English trousers, The red hat on my head is Russian but still my heart is Indian)
It’s a hackneyed trope but does capture the essence.
My first blog I named, the Washerman’s Dog which is the English version of another famous Indian aphorism: na ghar ka na ghat ka, dhobi ka kuta (neither of the ghat nor the home, the washerman’s dog)
Both sets of lyrics resonate with me. I do feel homeless in a way, neither from here nor there. But also completely blended in with India.
Hence, it seems appropriate to name this column, My Desi Heart. A place where I’ll explore the story of my love-affair with the sub-continent.
Missionaries, Mercenaries and Misfits 