Echos

Out on our daily walk from the park, we bumped into two boys that we see often. My son was happily going up every stoop, walkway and driveway and the two kids, about eleven, looked on. They both seemed a little shocked by my son's apparent disregard for private property as he marched up stairs and attempted to knock on doors.

Enjoying the attention, my son, clambered up onto some lawn chairs on a porch, sat down and looked down, smilingly, at us watching from the street.

"He is like a deputy minister," said one little boy.

The description was so apt it left me stunned. And not only because that was exactly what my son looked like, smugly looking down at us, as we stood at the gate but also because it was coming out of the mouth of a Punjabi kid with echos of the Raj.

I was immediately drawn to some far off place where the sun always shines and children and women go barefoot. The boy's words brought me there, standing cordoned off from the bigmen, at some ceremony, where hierarchy presides, and well-fed men are squeezed into too tight, shiny suits, making endless pointless speeches to an audience who wonders what's in it for them.

I immediately thought, Wow, I'd love to be a fly on the wall at that kid's dinner table. I also thought, I am raising a white man.