Parul Desai Shah
My parents were excited to move into a two-bedroom apartment after a lifetime of cleaning, repairing, and remodeling their home in an infinite loop of suburban purgatory. Originally, they intended to sell their house by owner because they were that confident that people were secretly waiting to pounce on it the moment it became available.
“Why pay a real estate agent?” My dad gloated as he gazed admiringly across the 1980s ceramic floor tile to the retention pond his property looks upon. “This house sells itself!” My father prefers to call the retention pond a “lake”, which is already generous for the rather large ditch the developers dug for flood mitigation. But in moments of breathtaking poetic license, he can be heard calling it an “ocean”. The man had the vision to travel to the US at age 17 to seek an education and better life for himself and, indeed, he succeeded. Who was I to challenge what he saw?
“I mean, new bathrooms, new carpet, and even a temple room! What more could anyone want?” My mom bragged, as if in utter disbelief at the good fortune of the first person who would happen across the home listing and nab it before anyone else did. Each time she said this, she saved the best for last: the temple room. In my parent’s vision of home selling, a buyer would enter through the front door, turn toward the dining room, spy the French doors opening to the temple room, and drop to their knees. “I don’t need to see anymore, I’m ready to make this house mine. Name your price and I will bring it to you in small bills by 5 pm this evening,” the delighted buyer would plead.
Ultimately, they agreed to engage a real estate agent named Nina. Nina set them straight as her stilettos tapped across the ceramic tiles. She wished to market the house as a romantic, resort-style oasis, a waterfront property where people could forget their worries, but walking through the house caused Nina’s Botox-ed forehead to crack in stress fractures. My folks had cleaned, re-cleaned, and thrice cleaned the entire house for the agent’s initial inspection but as Nina surveyed every shiny surface, her cracks grew deeper. “Clutter. Too. Much. Clutter.” She snipped as her shiny pink nails pointed at the various surface landscapes in the living room. Upon each smooth plane were items normally found in kitchen junk drawers, garage shelves or crow nests. These items were arranged decoratively like floral arrangements along the wet bar, the side tables, along the fireplace mantle and under the coffee table. Where some may place a vase of flowers, snow globe, or porcelain figurine, my parents had meticulously arranged the bric-a-brac of everyday life: WD40 cans, broken pencils, measuring tapes, receipts, rusted nuts and bolts, Gorilla Glue, spare chargers, a flashlight, rubber bands, string, exterminator business cards and other detritus that left no room for romance or for anyone to forget their worries… unless, of course, you’re a chemical engineer like my father who sees no benefit to putting useful items away and out of sight and placing useless items such as pottery or fresh flowers in plain view.
Despite the violation of his logic, my father acquiesced to Nina’s demand (she did after all share his admiration of the retention pond, and so they were kindred spirits) and a full-frontal assault on clutter was launched. In a week, my parents gave away, sold, or tossed everything that Nina and her staging crew disapproved of. Like army recruits who’d just learned to make their beds and awaited the drill sergeant’s approval, my parents eagerly beamed as Nina surveyed the barren planes of tables, nooks and crannies where once tiny villages of junk thrived. She nodded approvingly until she reached the temple room.
I didn’t have the heart to remind my folks that not all Texans valued a room off of the formal dining room with a life-sized granite and marble altar for one’s deities or that the existence of such a room may actually turn buyers off, what with the evidence of devil worship having taken place. We were devil worshippers according to my middle school friend Shannon Hackett, who tried to convert me to Christianity—specifically Baptist Christianity, the predominant religion in these parts. Since my family didn’t worship the Holy Trinity, Shannon asserted we were Satan worshippers. I wasn’t so sure about this, we looked nothing like Ozzy Osbourne who launched devil worship inquiries after biting the head off a bat. We were vegetarians, for one. Still, I did eventually kneel on the high school track and surrender my soul to Jesus under the burning afternoon sun. I did so because I was a dehydrated, zealous people-pleaser as opposed to someone who was hot for Jesus. Within twenty-four hours of my conversion, I confessed to my parents through muffled sobs what I had done. And (sob) now (sob) I’m (sob) gonna go (sob) to Heaven (sob) and you all (silent sob, on verge of hyperventilation) are gonna go to (loud wail) HELLLLLLLLLLL. My parents assured me I could worship in any house I wanted, be it a church or a temple, and we’d all wind up in the same place anyhow. The matter was settled, and I resumed being a Hindu, though I kept it under wraps from Shannon, lest she attempt to exorcise me.
When my parents embarked on a remodel of their house and announced they’d be adding an annex to the formal dining room, I thought a butler’s pantry was a great idea. My Mom had an Indian grocery shopping problem for which two refrigerators, a garage, twenty-two cabinets and a walk-in pantry were insufficient. As it turned out, they weren’t looking to add food storage, they were building an in-house temple. They went to a stone surface warehouse to pick the granite and marble. “Wow! That’s gonna be one beautiful kitchen!” The salesperson whistled as my parents selected a pricey black marble slab. My parents looked at him like he was an idiot. Why would anyone spend so much money on a kitchen? Clearly, this level of investment was reserved for in-home temple rooms. And so the temple room was built, sparing no expense.
Nina wasn’t happy about the temple room, this being a home in the middle of the Bible belt where Jesus saves but if you don’t believe, it’ll cost you. She sent her staging crew to manufacture the illusion of a worry-free luxe retreat where no one needed WD40 or deities to grease the wheels of their lives. I wondered how the stagers would present the temple room. It could be a gun room, perhaps. A fantasy man cave for someone named Brett who’d hang his grandaddy’s Smith & Wesson right above where the meditating Shiva idol sits. Or maybe the altar could be a display unit for Brett’s hunting trophies. I could just see a taxidermized deer head gazing benignly down from the exotic spire framing the altar. A stuffed wild hog could take the spot where Baby Krishna’s cradle swayed and a little armadillo might fit nicely on the soft white marble pedestal crafted for Lord Ganesha. Nina would point her shiny pink nails at the temple room, rally all her saleswoman chops, and coyly suggest, “With the hunting trophy room directly connected to the dining room, one could whet their appetite browsing the game before eating it!”
Of course, the second highest population in Texas after hunters named Brett are reverent women named Lupe who worship La Virgen. The stagers could understandably lean into the decorative style of Tejanas. Shiva and company could be replaced by the Virgin Mary clad in turquoise blue with a Christmas light halo blinking on and off as she granted miracles. Ultimately, Nina’s stagers were noncommittal in their presentation of the temple room. They placed a low table in the center of the room and festooned it with fake plants and a cheery hand-lettered sign that exclaimed “Love”, a decorative scheme that left more questions than answers as to how such a space may be utilized. Shiva, Ganesha, and Krishna were tucked into the linen closet and thus my parents, like me back in junior high, became closeted Hindus.
The first day the house went on the market, three viewings were booked. My parents waited eagerly for the bags of money to arrive, each competing with another even larger bag of bills to win the sale of the house. Instead, what arrived was a critique no one, not even me with my juvenile, uncultured ridicule of my parent’s decorative choices, could have predicted.
“A buyer said the house smelled. Like spices,” Nina stated with dramatic condemnation. This was a bullet wound to my family’s soul. Yes, we didn’t put things away in drawers. Yes, we had a temple room where most would prefer a swanky wet bar. But to say the house smelled because it carried the signature of the food we loved, the food hoarded like precious treasures to lavish upon family and friends—that hurt. At least, it hurt me. My parents, being the good immigrants they are, shrugged off the insult and immediately amassed an army of Febreze soldiers to spray any trace of Desi-ness out of their home of 36 years. It didn’t work. Another four viewings occurred and another round of feedback about the masala smell. The “EWW” that followed the comment was a silent one heard by all. The potential buyer had used the word masala, the word used to describe the prized spices for which India had been conquered and colonized, to let us know their discerning nose had detected our undesirable Desi-ness. And, with colonial hauteur, they handed down an opinion: We were found out! We stank!
Now I was pissed. My family moved a lot when I was growing up and so I have done a good bit of home touring myself. I can still smell the faint odor of ground beef burgers, cat litter, outdoors-loving Golden Retrievers, and carpets of homes where one wore shoes all over the house as though the home wasn’t the sacred space, a temple where shoes were forbidden, as we Desis believe it to be. My parents and I would sniff the air, note the unpleasant difference between its “fragrance” and that of our own home, and quickly move on to the more important matters of floorplan, pantry size, and pantry size. We accepted that the air within a home held in its atoms a story of a different family and we knew the story would air out over time and a new one, our story, could begin. We didn’t allow the sensory input to metastasize into judgment about the race, culture, religion, or culinary preferences of the absent owner. It was a secular country, after all. You forgave the differences among people or else nobody would ever find a house to live in. We knew all it took was opening some windows, cleaning the carpet, and living our day to day lives for our new home to smell like our home rather than a sweaty Golden Retriever named Gus.
I reckon immigrants, whether by an abundance of necessity or hope, believe passionately that any place can be home. It doesn’t matter who the previous residents worshipped or what they ate. Shannon Hackett was wrong and my parents were right, we all wind up in the same place and it is not hell. That place is an altar, a sacred space called home in which we rise to meet the challenges of our days, gaze out at a retention pond, and see a glittering ocean of possibility.
Parul Desai Shah lives in Texas. Her short stories and essays have appeared in Prompted03 and Passager, amongst other publications. Parul is a former advertising copywriter doing penance by operating a childcare center. She writes short stories, essays, and poetry.
IG: @parul.desai.shah
Featured photo by Shantanu Pal (Pexels)
