Nisha Purushotham

My father Sam and second mother Gwen are currently on the road to their new home Nashville, TN. In preparation for the move, I’ve watched them sort through memorabilia, clothes, knick knacks, books, photos, kitchen utensils, cleaning supplies and even perennial flower blossoms. This will be their 10th move in 32 years of marriage. This ongoing practice of gathering, sorting, and letting go, of planting, uprooting, and replanting has become a way of life.

Among our many homes, I only feel attachment to the first apartment my father, mother, and brother moved into after immigrating to the United States. There I felt most connected with my neighbors.

Jackie Wright, who, with my foster sister Tammy, introduced me to the best of 70’s R & B.

    Mr. Sigmund, the 70+ building manager, who spent many an afternoon tossing     a frisbee in the courtyard with my brother and me.

The Cacuzza Family who regularly hosted us for meals of homemade spaghetti and meatballs.

While dwelling with these neighbors I suffered the passing on of my mother, Kanaka. As I felt the world around me caving in, the love of neighbors and friends pulled me to solid ground. Not ground made of hardwood or concrete. But the solid ground of companionship and compassion.

We live amidst great change. New technologies emerge at an accelarated rate. Regimes of several decades have ended through peaceful resistance and violent retribution. Human induced disasters have destroyed and displaced thousands all over the globe.  A hastily resuscitated and fragile global economy continues to gasp and totter. Widespread people’s movements rattle the foundations of dictatorships and multinational corporations. Whether half way across the world or around the corner, these developments send forth tremors we can all feel.

In this time of change, as the ground we have stood upon shifts, changes shape, and begins to give way, what nurtures a sense of solid ground in you?