My mother and I were in my parent’s bedroom surveying her closet. She was selecting a sari to wear to Ronald Reagan’s inauguration in 1981.

“Will you take one of those tours of the White House?” I asked.

“I’ll only go to the White House if I’m invited,” she replied. “I’m not going on any public tours,” she said haughtily, her nose up in the air.

She selected a red and gold brocade sari, a pair of black evening shoes, and a matching hand bag. “Fold the sari nicely and put it in the suitcase with the other things,” she directed me.

My parents voted for Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election, the first US presidential election in which they could vote. They had been naturalized as US citizens the year before in 1979, the same year as the Iranian Revolution which deposed the Shah. Later that same year, 53 Americans were taken hostage for 444 days, from November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981, symbolically released the same day Reagan was inaugurated into office.

When the hostages were taken, Puchi and I were living in Pakistan, attending the International School of Islamabad. The superintendent of our school, a man by the name of William Keough, had previously been the superintendent of the American School in Tehran. After the Iranian Revolution, he was posted to the International School in Islamabad. That November, Mr. Keough returned to Tehran to finish up business and pack the last of his things, and was taken hostage with the other Americans on November 4.

Anti-Americanism was spreading through Central and South Asia, and the American embassy in Islamabad was also attacked later that November, the same day that Puchi and I were to fly to Karachi on our way to Connecticut for the Thanksgiving holiday. The previous month, in October, we received a telex, to my great joy, “You are cordially invited to 112 Stoner Drive for Thanksgiving Dinner.” I thought my parents were responding to the misery I often expressed about having to live in Pakistan during my junior high school years, but in actuality, our names had come up for US citizenship and we returned to Connecticut for the Naturalization Oath Ceremony just as the Americans were being evacuated from Pakistan.

Before Reagan won the Republican presidential primary, my mother was keen on George H. W. Bush. She supported the elder Bush in the primaries and even hosted a fundraiser for him at our home in Connecticut. She was active in the West Hartford Republican Women’s Club.

I wasn’t home the day George Bush came over for the fundraiser, but I remember a photo of Mimo, dressed in a blue shalwar kameez, shaking his hand.

My mother never received a formal invitation to the White House, but I know she enjoyed the inauguration.

Eight years later in 1988, I cast my ballot for George H. W. Bush in the first presidential election in which I could vote. My family was Republican and I was comfortably following in their foot steps. I was towing the party line. As I became more politicized in later years, I changed my party affiliation, but I always like to tell people that I voted for Bush in 1988. It just goes to show you, a person really can change.

Typically there are seven days and nights of functions involving custom-made ornate outfits, hair and make-up, jewelry, and a myriad of other details including outdoor tents, catering  and seating for hundreds of guests as well as several gifts for the new bride including multiple sets of jewels. There’s the Mehndi, which takes place the day before the actual wedding, a ceremony of mostly women who apply Mehndi, or Henna as it is known in the West, to the bride’s hands and feet, and then all the ladies sing, dance, and bless the bride as they hop around her.

There’s also usually a musical evening, and for Baba’s wedding this included a private concert by the Sabri Brothers, a well-known musical group trained  in Qawwali and North Indian classical music. There’s the Nikah, a small private ceremony for the bride and groom to sign their marriage contract. And then the actual wedding celebration which is typically hosted by the bride’s family. On the final night of festivities is the Walima, or reception for the bride and groom as their first full public event together.

 

At the time, the Pakistani wedding custom was new to me. For the several years prior to the wedding, we had been mostly living in Connecticut. I was becoming increasingly Americanized and I thought these Pakistani wedding traditions were too elaborate. I think my parents may have thought so too. Towards the end of the week of festivities they did not look very festive.

This picture is among my favorite photos of my parents. They are both scowling in a way that is so authentic and unfiltered. It wasn’t the first time I had seen these expressions on their faces, nor was it the last. It’s clearly a look that got passed down to their children. Here I am trying it out early.

I was playing outside under the sprinklers on a hot day in the summer of 1973 when my mother asked me to come inside and pose for a photo. A West Hartford News reporter was interviewing her, most likely for being a recent “exotic” immigrant to West Hartford. The reporter writes of my mother, “she sits relaxed in her native, elegant Pakistani ‘sari,’ appearing much more accustomed to her West Hartford home than one would expect of a woman who has been in the country just six months.”

It’s hard to read the text of this article, but in it, my mother holds all things instant in high regard. “This intriguing young mother and spicy cook finds life much simpler at this end of the globe, especially in the cooking department.”

“In Pakistan, a woman’s place is in the home,” my mother was telling the news reporter. I heard her talking about how in Pakistan a woman would spend all day in the kitchen preparing the dinner. Grinding spices by hand in a mortar and pestle, cleaning and chopping vegetables. This may be objectively true for many women in Pakistan, but I was fairly certain, even at the tender age of five, that my mother had not spent days in the kitchen preparing our food, either in Pakistan or Connecticut. She had household help to prepare our meals.

She didn’t even know how to cook when she and my father were first married. I think he taught her the first few dishes she ever made. Though she always took an interest in food, and eventually became quite a good cook, she was even better at delegating the meal preparation to the household cooks or to us, her children.

When we moved to Connecticut, she discovered the “joy of instant foods.” Instant garlic, and frozen chopped onions replaced the fresh garlic and onions in masalas and curries. And a little too often for my liking, we were served food out of a can or a box.

“I’m hungry,” I would say.

“Make yourself a Cup-a-Soup!” My mother would respond with a little too much enthusiasm, handing me a box of the dried soup mix that we would pour hot water over. I would look with amazement as dried pieces of chicken and vegetables turned into tender chunks before my eyes, in less than a minute. This was cooking? Chef Boyardee, Hamburger Helper, and Shake ‘N Bake became frequent meals too.

“One strange custom her husband noticed about American meals,” notes the article about my father, “is the amount of time a woman takes to prepare them.”

My mother elaborates, “We were visiting friends at their home from 5 until 7:30 one evening, and when we finally left, they weren’t even beginning to prepare supper.”

I don’t think my parents had discovered take-out and delivery yet.

This blog is bringing  Puchi and me closer together. She calls me all the time now, and she’s finally active on Facebook, too. She also often comments on my blog postings. Sometimes, for her own good, I reject her comments. I don’t think she understands that this is a public space. Like when I posted the Family Feud blog about when we almost got in a fight, she posted one word in the blog comments section: “Ugh.” I thought she was mad at me again, so I emailed her with the subject line, “Ugh?” and asked, “Did I piss you off again? I promise I am not trying to, just having a little fun. Did you not think Family Feud was funny? I’ll lay off you on the blog if it is upsetting. Remember Rodge and Podge.”

She emailed right back and said that the “Ugh” was for putting her foot in her mouth. She was referring to her snippy comment on my Facebook page about Repeat After Me, a blog I wrote about her son Akber’s first words. And then she emailed me again. “And the Ugh is also for stupidly thinking the comments I posted were like an instant message chat rather than a world wide post….being new to facebook and all.” She was also anxious about the Patsy and Eddy stories that I was getting ready to write about her and Mimo’s partying youth. In a third email, she wrote, “The Ugh is also for the trepidation of the Patsy and Eddy stories.” I decided to reject the “Ugh” comment because it lacked these nuances. Since she wasn’t mad at me, I didn’t want other readers to get the wrong idea.

Now she calls me practically every day. She calls on Skype, on my cell phone, on the home phone. Early in the morning, late at night. She lives in the Philippines so we’re never in the same time zone. She’ll be polishing off a bottle of wine just as I’m having my first cup of coffee, or vice versa.

Anyway, I’m glad she called early yesterday morning because I had a lot of questions about the Maharani Baroda who came to live with us in Connecticut in the early 1980s. It wasn’t unusual for us to have guests that stayed with us for several months, or even a few years at a time. My mother liked having a lot of people around. So if you weren’t getting along with your parents, you could come live with us. Or if you were getting divorced from your abusive husband, you could bring your small children and you’d get a suite of rooms for as long as you needed. The Maharani Baroda lived with us for the better part of a year.

 

“How did the Maharani Baroda come to live with us?” I asked Puchi when she called yesterday.

Puchi told me that after we got our US citizenship in 1979, it became easier to get visas to travel to India. Both my parents’ families left their homes for the new nation of Pakistan during Partition in 1947. My father’s family moved from Jammu, Kashmir to Abbottabad, and my mother’s family moved from Bombay to Karachi.

My parents had fond memories of growing up in India and were happy when they were finally able to visit again. They went back with some regularity in the 80s.

 

On one of these trips, my father looked up some of his old childhood school friends. When he was a young boy, he went to boarding school in Kashmir with some of the members of the royal family of Baroda. One of his friends grew up to be the Maharaja of Baroda, a city in the state of Gujarat. On the eve of independence in 1947, India contained more than 600 princely states, each with its own ruler.  All of these princely states, joined the new nation of India after independence in 1947.

My father’s friend, the Maharaja of Baroda, married the only daughter of the Maharaja and Maharani of Jodhpur, a city in Rajastan.  Their wedding took place at the Royal Palace in Jodhpur. Apparently, as the Maharani Baroda told the story to Puchi, on her wedding night she brought a menagerie of animals, numbering something like 32, to their wedding suite. The Maharaja was appalled by this wedding night behavior. That was the only night they spent together in their 39 years of marriage.

In her youth, the Maharani was a bit of a tomboy. She showed us a photo that she had taken, dressed as an army guard, when she was in her teens. Maybe she was a cross-dresser, who knew? I thought she looked a bit butch when she stayed with us in Connecticut.

 

My mother insisted. “I have cancer too,” she said, “and my children don’t know how to deal with it, so having you stay with us will be a big help to my children.”

And that’s how the Maharani of Baroda came to live with us. When she arrived at the Stoner house, we didn’t know how to address her, after all, she was a Maharani. “Should we call you Maharani Baroda?” we asked.

“You can call me Aunty Susan,” she said. Susan? Her name could not possibly be Susan. So we said, “Your name can’t be Susan.” She told us that when she was little, she had an English Nanny who used to call her Susan. “So you see, my name is Susan.” Still, it seemed strange to call her Aunty Susan, so I just called her “Aunty.” And Puchi came to call her “Aunty Khamagani.”

“Why did you call her Aunty Khamagani?” I asked Puchi.

Khamagani is a term in Rajastani that means welcome, or best wishes. Whenever the Maharani was introduced to anyone, or greeted anyone, she would say “Khamagani.” Puchi loved how this word sounded and she came to affectionately call the Maharani of Baroda, “Aunty Khamagani.”

I hope Puchi calls again tomorrow because I have some more questions. I can’t remember when Aunty Khamagani died.

My father was handing each of us an itinerary. “Be down in the hotel lobby at 0600 hours tomorrow.”

We were in Athens taking a family “vacation” on our way to Pakistan at the end of 1978. Just my parents and us girls. My brothers didn’t come with us. Whenever we took vacations involving my father, it didn’t feel much like a vacation. He would schedule every hour of our time, in military time. At 0600 hours we’d start our day in the hotel restaurant for breakfast. At 0700 hours we’d have to be in the car. At 0800 hours we’d arrive at the Acropolis and so on. It was grueling.

 

We saw more of Greece in a week than I thought was possible. Athens, Deplhi, Olympia, the islands. It was a blur.

 

My favorite part of this trip was when we got lost in the countryside and had to go off the itinerary. We were hungry and had no idea where we were. We stumbled upon a tiny family-owned restaurant where we had the best food of our trip. Lamb chops, feta cheese, olives, yogurt and eggplant. It was so enjoyable to be spontaneous for a change.

Later the next year we went to India for the first time as a family. My parents were eager to show us their birthplaces. We went to Kashmir where my father was born and lived for the first years of his life. In the summer of 1979, Kashmir was  a peaceful, bucolic place. We stayed at the Palace Hotel in Srinagar. It was a beautiful luxury hotel overlooking Dal Lake. Not that we got to enjoy the hotel much since we were up at 0600 hours every morning to take a day trip to Jammu, or other historic sites like Shalimar Bagh or Pari Mahal. We also visited the boarding school my father attended as a boy.

 

We stayed in Kashmir for seven fully packed days and then went on to Bombay, now Mumbai, to visit my mother’s city of birth. Both my parents still had extended family who stayed in India during the time of Partition in 1947, so we had many lunches, dinners and teas to attend. In Bombay we stayed with relatives. It was August 1979 and if you know anything about Bombay in August, you know it’s Monsoon season. The rain came pouring down in sheets. It was hot and humid. Flies buzzed around everywhere. Rats floated down the rain-flooded streets.  I couldn’t wait to leave.

Our itinerary in Bombay wasn’t quite as full, but the rains made it an unpleasant visit. When our week came to an end, we all felt like we needed a vacation. So we asked my parents if we could go back to Srinagar, on one condition: no itineraries. “We just want some peace and quiet,” we declared.

We wanted to lounge around the grounds of the Palace Hotel and go for a leisurely swim in the pool. Reading books all day. Ordering fresh lime and sodas. And room service. Visiting the lake.

 

My father was secretly pleased that we seemed to like Kashmir more than Bombay, and he agreed to our demands. Finally, we got a peaceful and relaxing vacation. No schedules, no planned excursions, no early mornings. Just pure relaxation. I think even my father enjoyed himself.

My mother named me. When she was pregnant with me, she read an article about twin princesses born in Malaysia who were named Soraya and Surina, named after stars in the sky. She liked the name Surina, and chose it for me.

 

I had other names too. When we moved to Connecticut, my mother, a fan of the nickname, asked me, “Do you want to be called  Betsy or Cindy?” I’m not sure why she only offered me those two choices, or why I didn’t ask for additional choices. Maybe because I liked the names Betsy and Cindy. At first I had a difficult time choosing between the two until I remembered how much I liked watching The Brady Bunch, one of my favorite shows, so I chose Cindy, who was the youngest of six siblings in the Brady family. For years my mother would affectionately call me Cindy or Cindy Lou.

When I was growing up, I never knew anyone named Surina, only Serena the mischievous cousin of  Samantha on the television show Bewitched. These days, the name Surina is increasing in popularity. Made even more popular by the character Serena on Gossip Girl. And how could I forget Serena Williams the tennis star? Surina even shows up on the website Babynamer.com. According to which, my name is used in Hindi and the source of it is Sura, a Sanskrit name meaning “Goddess.” Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes shortened my name to Suri for their daughter. It’s possible that my name may become a favorite of the Scientologists next.

Serena the witch was so popular when I was younger that people were forever misspelling my name, Serena, or sometimes Sarina. I still have to spell it. “It’s Surina, spelled S-u-r-i-n-a,” I say when people ask me my name. And then I spell my last name, “Khan, spelled K-h-a-n,” which, even when I spell it, gets spelled incorrectly as Kahn. So now I say, “It’s Khan, spelled K-h- pause for emphasis a-n. I have seen my name spelled in a variety of ways: Sarina Kahn, Serena Cahn, Sorina Caan. Maybe one day my name will be so popular that the spelling will be too.

Sometimes for fun, Jenny and I think about what our names and occupations would be if we had to go into the Witness Protection Program. Jenny chose Beck (from Rebecca) Laarsen, consistent with her Swedish heritage. Beck would be a valet at a boutique hotel in Montreal. I would be the concierge at the same hotel and my name would be Betsy Singh, consistent with my South Asian heritage, but mixing up the Indian/Pakistani and the Muslim/Sikh just to make a fun political statement. I like that my initials would be BS. And then Beck would make an honorable woman out of me, and I would change my name to Betsy Singh Laarsen.

 

Shortly after we moved to Connecticut, I discovered ice cream. My father loved it as much as I did. At least once a week, and often more, we would get in the car and drive to the nearby Friendly’s, an east coast restaurant chain. He would order two scoops of coffee ice cream, and I would get chocolate ice cream on a sugar cone with chocolate sprinkles. We’d often take the ice cream back to the car and eat it together in a comfortable silence.

When I got my first record player, a plastic, white and black General Electric glorified toy, my father, who was starting to gain a few pounds with the regular ice cream excursions, made me an attractive offer. “You can get one record album a week if we give up Friendly’s.”

One record album a week. Tempting. But giving up ice cream so shortly after I had discovered it was unthinkable. After a minute of careful consideration, I said, “I’ll keep the ice cream trips to Friendly’s.” I was gambling on the fact that I might get an occasional record album too. My first record was Elton John’s “Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player.”

And then my musical taste began to go down hill. I became infatuated with Shaun Cassidy. When we moved to the Stoner Drive house, I had my own bedroom, where I placed a life size poster of Shaun Cassidy on my wall. I would climb up on a chair every night and give him a good night kiss on the cheek. And if I was feeling randy, I would give him a peck on the lips, when no one was looking.

Now that I look back on this, I’m thinking these might have been the first indications of my future as a lesbian. Shaun Cassidy did look an awful lot like a lesbian in his youth. You can hardly tell him and Kristy McNichol apart in this photo.

In 1985, my first year of college, Mimo and Puchi sent me two birthday cards, both post-marked December 7. One had a picture of Lucy from the comic strip Peanuts saying “Happy Birthday to someone who’s cute, sensitive, intelligent, talented and wonderful! I could go on and on!” And on the inside, “But your starting to get on my nerves!”

Both are written in Mimo’s handwriting and the return address is “M & P, 112 Stoner Drive, West Hartford, CT.”

The second one has a picture of Dick and Jane with their dog, Spot. “Dick says have a nice birthday. Jane says have a nice birthday. Spot says have a few belts and let the good times roll!” And on the inside, “Spot Knows you better than anyone!”

Inside, Mimo wrote, “Was going to enclose some fun in this card, but you will have to wait till I can mail it on Monday.” 

It’s no secret that the Khan sisters like a good party, and Mimo and Puchi introduced me to this preferred lifestyle early. On my 16th birthday, they woke me up “for school.” It was still dark out, but it was December and it was often dark when I woke up for school. I got up and got dressed thinking it was morning, only to find out that it was midnight. After presenting me with a cake and the Nikon camera I had been longing for, they put me in the car and took me out to a bar for a birthday drink.

I was in my Sophomore year at Walker’s and was living at home instead of at school because of Ami’s cancer. Everyone thought it would be better for Ami if the girls were at home with her. Made sense to me, but she ended her treatment early and left for Pakistan, leaving me under the care of my older sisters who immediately turned the Stoner mansion into their private party pad.

One day I came home from school to find people milling about in various rooms. I encountered Mimo and Puchi in the hallway near the Big room and Mimo said, “We’re making a liquor store run. You want anything?”

And I responded, primly, “Yes. I’d like a liter of Diet Coke and I suggest you get the same.”

Ten years or so later, I was introduced to the show Absolutely Fabulous. It was broadcast on BBC from 1992 to 1996 and 2001 to 2004. Much like the plot of AbFab, as it is known for short, I was like the disapproving Sapphy to my two carefree, pleasure-seeking older sisters. In AbFab, Sapphy, is Eddy’s adolescent daughter, who provides the persistently dour criticisms of Eddy and Patsy’s behavior. Sapphy, like me, was prim and proper, studious, responsible and a bit of a goody two shoes. 

 

That winter the three of us took a vacation to the Dominican Republic. I was excited. Warm weather, sandy beaches, blue water. But we never went to the beach. Mimo and Puchi would keep me up all night partying and dancing into the early hours of the morning. The daylight hours would be spent inside, sleeping, though it was often hard to find the bed. Their suitcases were an explosion of clothing in the bedroom of the apartment we rented, the furniture covered with various articles of my sisters’ wardrobe.

When the morning came for us to go home, they were in a deep sleep. I packed my things neatly in my suitcase, leaving their piles of dirty, wrinkled clothing in the bedroom, and took a cab to the airport, hoping they would miss the flight. Our seats were preassigned, and of course I had the middle seat, which I dutifully sat in, even though they were no where near the airport.

Most of the passengers were seated. The plane was going to leave on schedule, and I thought, “Oh good. They’re not going to make it.” Just as they were about to close the airplane doors, I saw them. Stumbling down the aisle looking like bag ladies. Unbathed, with handkerchiefs and scarves covering their dirty hair. They sat down, one on each side of me smelling of the things they had consumed the night before.

“When we get home,” I said calmly, “I have a lot of school work to do. If you pass me in the hallway of the house, don’t speak to me. Don’t even look at me. Understand?”

I can’t remember what they said. But the drink cart rolled by a few minutes later and they each ordered a Bloody Mary.