DURING THOSE HOLIDAY weeks, with Holika gone, I wandered as the Diasporic Jew at Chanukah and Christmas seasons. I became a tourist visiting the guidebook suggestions. I still didn’t make it to the Taj Mahal. One Friday afternoon I wandered over to the Arts and Crafts Museum. Outside the building, in the courtyard, was a government-run bazaar where, I was told, about half the vendors are permanent and another half gets one month to sell their wares before being rotated out and replaced by a new crop. Just outside the gates were stalls selling foods from all parts of India, as well as Western fast foods. The juxtaposed smells of french-fry grease, curried dishes, beer and sodas, sweet, syrupy fried desserts, and cigarettes coagulated in the winter air. Inside the gates, cubicles and open stalls displayed ceramics, glass bangles, nose rings, moderately expensive and cheap rugs and clothes, papier-mâché jewelry boxes, cigarette cases, puppets, incense, good luck Ganeshas of all sizes and materials, and in this month … Santa Clauses. No crosses or menorahs, or baby Jesus or the original Madonna and child statues (yes, but one stall did have posters of the new Madonna), but mini–Santas and “Christmas” gifts. Many in the younger generation of the middle and upper classes in the cities, if not the villages, celebrated Christmas with the hoopla of a party night, more like July 4th than the holy birth of the Most Famous Jew. Far fewer, almost no one, cared or knew about Chanukah, the Jewish holiday of light and miracles that’s become the quasi-Christmas for the benefit of Jews living among Christians. Instead, India’s thirty million Christians lived among a billion Hindus and Moslems as “the other,” so unknown to Christians in the West. In India, I walked and wandered and saw myself again as the other, but different from my otherness in America. More like the invisible but detectable black American who is seen, spotted, and noted, unlike the undercover, already in whiteface Jew in America, where you can’t miss Christmas but the day is never yours. Where there are those unsure of who or what you are and who regard you with eternal suspicion until you can be placed. In India, few could take the Christian out of the Westerner. There was no other choice. Even if I hadn’t been blond and blue-eyed, they would have marked me as a Christian.
As I strolled along, bundled up in a heavy sweater, the vendors marked me as a potential customer. A slim Kashmiri vendor, who was probably a Moslem, the real Other in India—unlike the Indians I couldn’t always tell a Hindu from Moslem—persisted in following and calling out to me: “Best Christmas presents for your family. Best. I promise best prices. You have wife and children? How many? I have three.” He pointed to a back stall where a woman, who didn’t look old enough to have one child, sat with a baby on her lap and two other children played on the floor beside her. No way to easily explain either of my predicaments, my family or my heritage. “You can leave here without presents for them?” His persistence amused more than annoyed and my Pavlovian reactions kicked in and I decided to buy presents for Sarah.
My family had ritually exchanged presents at Christmas, never thinking it compromised their Jewishness. Sarah and I, and then Castor, continued the gift-giving tradition. Romey labeled me a Scrooge when I refused to allow any Christmas ornaments in the apartment. She scoffed at my explanation detailing the effects of symbols, meanings, and identity. She’d sailed through life believing America existed as an amorphous, yet officially Christian and English-speaking nation, which graciously allowed others to show up and act like European Christians. No matter her mumbled asides, I steadfastly drew the line: no trees and Santas, stockings, candles, or any other commercial or religious icons. No menorahs either, except one year: after Castor started Hebrew school we lit the candles, but he seemed not to care, so we abandoned that idea too.
I was half-heartedly haggling with the vendor when the irrepressible laughter and screams of a gaggle of children from six to ten years old overcame the adult sound of selling. I stopped and watched them for a moment. From behind, I felt a finger tap my right shoulder. I swiveled around, “Hello, doctor!” It was Ratish, effervescent in his greeting. Paint was splattered on his hands, cotton shirt, pants’ legs, and sneakers. Standing close on one side and gripping his hand was an adorable young girl. On the other side a young boy held his shirttail. I’d never seen Ratish look so naturally loose. Behind them the children were being led—well, more accurately, leading Summit and his wife, the couple who ran the orphanage out from the building and outside the courtyard gates. These were not orphanage kids but street kids who Summit and his wife tried to gather up every so often. Funded through Vijay’s organization and spearheaded by Ratish, the kids had spent hours doing finger painting and making papier-mâché dolls. They also got a hot meal.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
“My best, doing my best. Going to the States for the holidays. Ratish, would you do me a favor?”
“Possibly, yes. Sure.”
“Please tell Summit that I would love to help him with the children.”
“Is this right for you?” I heard a slight hesitation in his tone, which I felt could be my paranoia as easily as it could have been his empathy.
“Yes, I’m positive. It’s a very good thing you do and I’d like to participate.”
“That I can do. Yes, it is good, but it is so little. We do this and then they go back to their life.” It wasn’t as if they were totally neglected. Many of these kids had families who took care of them. Or some form of extended family system. There were laws of compulsory education, preferential programs for them at the universities—yet I knew, as did Ratish, a future free from poverty was unlikely.
The children tugged at him and we bid goodbye. I watched them stream out the gates and then went back to perusing the wares. The vendor, who had slipped invisibly away, came back to my side. I now bought a slew of presents. Not only for Sarah, but also for Matt, his wife and kids, Nurse Donna, Vishnu, Chandon (who told me he wanted whiskey), Charlie and Chrystie—not knowing at all what they wanted or needed.
This vendor, who led me around to all his friends, as he picked up commissions all along the way, offered to give me “a gift—only one hundred rupees” if I took a Santa.
“One hundred rupees is not a gift,” I said playfully, getting more familiar and comfortable with the game.
“OK, fifty. For your children!”
“I have no children,” I said flatly.
He frowned, upset that he might have insulted me or gotten too familiar. “Oh, then you must take. Free. It is a good luck gift. You will have children someday and you give it then. You remember me in India.” He stuffed it on top of one of my bags. I didn’t object. He smiled triumphantly. I smiled, impressed by his relentless optimism and energy as I, a reluctant Jewish Santa Claus, suddenly so exhausted, strode out the gates. And as I walked to the awaiting car, another of those adorable homeless girls, maybe she was six or seven, maybe she had even been with Ratish’s group, strutted over to my side. “Money, please.” Instead of money I took the pot-bellied icon from one of my bags and handed it to her. She held it in her tiny hands for a second, not sure if she wanted it or not, then bowed her head to me and scooted away, cheerily yelling something in Hindi while gripping the Santa.