Calling home

Spoken words are also actions

I recently participated in a Storytelling workshop at my local library. In response to a prompt about my favorite song, I shared the below.

It is said that actions speak louder than words. But what if actions are not an option?

Back in the 1980s, as a newcomer to the US, I enjoyed exploring American life and culture. Getting to know neighbors and coworkers and helping them get to know me (“how was I fluent in English so soon after arriving?”), sampling new cuisines, and consuming a wide range of books/ TV/movies. 

But, when it came to American music, I felt challenged. I couldn’t make out the lyrics and the beat did not match my sense of rhythm. 

One song changed all that. It was “I just called to say I love you” by Stevie Wonder. Not only could I understand all the words, the sentiments and the soulful tune matched those of the Bollywood songs that I had grown up humming. 

However, the opening words, 

No New Year's Day to celebrate
No chocolate covered candy hearts to give away
No first of Spring, no song to sing
In fact here's just another ordinary day

…seemed to be about all that once was but wasn’t anymore.

I had recently watched a TV movie about the devastating aftermath of nuclear war. Stevie Wonder seemed to be singing about the yearning and nostalgia that the surviving individuals might feel as they recalled their old lives. 

After paying close attention to the refrain of the song (I just called to say I love you, and I mean it from the bottom of my heart!), I had felt a wave of relief wash over me. The singer was calling a loved one for no reason at all and THAT was the point. No occasion or nudge needed. 

~~~

Until the advent of the Internet in the 2000s, international phone calls were very expensive ($10 for a 3-minute call). I used them sparingly, mostly to offer and receive assurances that all was (mostly) well. and for conveying the most urgent news: a new pregnancy or a new job. My family members in India almost never initiated the calls as it was, relatively speaking, even more expensive for them.  

We never said “I love you.” Indeed, there are no words in my mother tongue to say that. My parents would have felt rather awkward if I had made such a pronouncement.  In that culture love is expressed through actions, among them: anticipating the needs of a parent or grandparent and giving them a helping hand, seeking their blessings before setting out on an important venture (new job, college exam), and avoiding causing them worry, shame, or heartbreak. 

So, it would seem that the point of Stevie Wonder’s song – to call just to say I love you – would be lost on me. But that was FAR from the case. I am able to articulate NOW what I implicitly understood THEN. When actions are not an option, words (spoken or written, as in earlier eras) can create shared celebrations of the seasons of the year as well as the seasons of life. 

My short calls were indeed calls to just say “I love you.” The ones who were far away were shown that they were not forgotten, and that they continued to MATTER. 

~~~

Fast forward three decades. I was on a trip to Mumbai to visit family. It was the now-usual confounding experience. Eagerness to catch up with family and friends, eat familiar foods, and walk the byways of childhood had been tamped down by the reality that now felt foreign to me. Hot and humid weather that challenged my acquired “New England” weather preferences. A cacophony of sounds from car horns, and a neighbor’s loud television. Incessant traffic, pollution, jet lag – all made me want to stay indoors in an air-conditioned shaded bedroom and not go anywhere at all.

Amazingly, on my last Sunday there, a neighbor started to play my favorite Stevie song! It turned out to be my lucky day, for other favorites followed – Celine Dion’s “Because you loved me,” “My heart will go on,” and a few others.

I started to feel homesick as I was reminded of my family, home, and community back home in America. In particular, my friends who include me in their own networks of love and care. They keep me from falling into an abyss of non-belonging, of feeling new, temporary, or different.  

I am seen as an American when I am in India and as an Indian when I am in America. But I am just me, the sum total of Indian roots and American wings. I feel no conflict in having these two identities. If anything, my life is richer for being at home in two such widely different cultures.

If the US were a person, on that hot and humid Sunday afternoon in Mumbai, I would surely have called and sung, “I just called to say I love you, and I mean it from the bottom of my heart”!