Miel Sehgal (4:02)

Thank you so much. It's lovely to be here and to be speaking with you like this.

Renita Hora (4:07)

Exactly. And as you said a few minutes before when we were in the pre prep session, we haven't actually spoken with each other ever in this kind of format. Right?

Miel Sehgal (4:18)

Y. Absolutely, absolutely. So I need to be careful not presume we're chatting on the phone and start, you know, rambling on about other things.

Renita Hora (4:26)

No, I think you need to presume exactly that.

Miel Sehgal (4:29)

Okay.

Renita Hora (4:31)

So I was absolutely thrilled to read your piece, and I know that you had been working on it for a while. This is the piece that you had talked to me about when I visited you in Toronto not too long ago. You had mentioned to me at the time that it was about your grandfather or inspired by your grandfather, but that's pretty much all you said. So it wasn't until you actually sent it to me after it was published in a local magazine that I learned that it's called Balancing Act. And I remember thinking to myself, hmm, balancing act. What's that gonna be about? How does that refer to. To her grandfather and oh my gosh, truer words were never spoken. So give me just a little bit of background as to how and why you wrote this particular essay.

Miel Sehgal (5:30)

How it happened is that this is my first foray into creative nonfiction and into the personal essay. My writing before that has been nature and wildlife and sort of more feature article type of writing. And since I was going into the personal essay field, I wanted to delve straight into something that means a lot. And it always starts with family, because that's what's most important to me, at least while I was thinking about my family. And my grandfather and my roots. The recent move that I made from India to Toronto obviously is foremost and all of the things that come along with that. So it really was something that emerged pretty much on one night, I think was when it all came together. I just wrote it in one night and then perfected it after that. But it was thinking about all of those things. Family, place, belonging, home. And it was published in the Hamilton Arts and Letters in an issue that was themed around home and place. So I guess it fit in with that, and that's how it all came together.

Renita Hora (6:33)

Miyal, of all the people that I have ever known in my life, you are one of the people that I really associate with the idea of family. Because in some ways, I can't separate you from the idea of family, your family. So as I listen to you, all of this just resonates. It makes perfect sense. Now, the article opens with a photograph of you and your grandfather. That is Emiel I have seen many times. I've known her for many years. I can recognize her instantly. Your grandfather, Pitaji, as you call him, obviously was a very profound influence on you as well as on your other family members. I mean, your sister has written about him. I've heard you all talk about him. So tell me, why, of all your family members, why you picked him as the starting point?

Miel Sehgal (7:30)

I think with him. I think you're right. Instinctively, a lot of my family members pick him. My aunt is deeply influenced by his story. My father will still quote things that he said repeatedly in some way. I think some Personas just occupy a very large space, and you can't always put your finger on why there's such a deep presence in everyone's lives. But he certainly is one of those. You. You couldn't be around him and spend an hour or two with him without taking away something. And for those of us who've been in his presence longer than that, you feel so much of you is molded by everything that he was. Possibly I attribute some of it to his yoga practice, which was quite holistic. And some of it is just Persona, I guess, and his experiences, like your grandparents and so many of us who went through partition and lived through a very seminal time in Indian history. Their lives have a lot for us to learn from.

Renita Hora (8:31)

Indeed. And the sense of place, the sense of belonging, ties so much into the sense of identity. We had your aunt, your father's sister, on the True Fiction project a few years ago at the time of India's 75th anniversary of independence and partition, and she shared with us, a very special story called Ranu and Partition Story with Shuklal, your aunt. And she certainly talked about this thread of movement of the family from Lahore to India, how she was a young child when all of that happened. She referenced your father, who wasn't even born at the time.

Miel Sehgal (9:16)

My father made the partition move in utero in Utah. Yes. That's how we moved across.

Renita Hora (9:24)

I do understand that for all of your extended family members, there is this thread that carries through that talks about place and belonging and how identity is derived from that, attached to that.

Miel Sehgal (9:39)

It is. I mean, I think that there is this sense of homeland and where we came from and this wanting to know where our ancestors are from. Regardless of how multicultural all of us may be and the world may be, there is this rootedness that you get when you know where you're from. But for so many of us, I think from India who've been affected by partition, there's an entire life and an entire line of ancestors before that that we know nothing about. We haven't been to those homes. We don't have what so many Indians call a native place to go back to. Right. Because that's on the other side of the border in a country that is not very easy to get to. And it works both ways. So very often when people ask me where I'm from, I will say I grew up in Bombay. That's where I was born. But my parents were born in Calcutta, so there's that influence. But I will always reference the fact that my grandparents and everyone who came before that is from what's now Pakistan. So I think of myself as South Asian from Bombay, even though I'm very much from Bombay.

Renita Hora (10:43)

So this is something that I really want to delve into because I think so many of us. And when I say us, I'm not simply talking about South Asians or even immigrants from North India to elsewhere in India such as Calcutta or Mumbai or Madras or Chennai, or even immigrants from other parts of the world to North America, where we both are. You're in Canada, I'm in the US But I think there is this journey of discovery for immigrants. Right. Because we leave behind so much. We come to a new life, we create new lives where we are often our kids are born here. And I know that I have even spoken about these topics with your mother who says, you know, you leave your homeland, you don't have the language anymore. I remember her saying, you know, I can't speak Punjabi. I understand the words and the references and the songs and the lyricism. But there's still a disconnect. And I know I've had discussions with you where I think we both feel, despite the Punjabi heritage, we consider ourselves Bombay people or, you know, Mumbai people. You identify with that. Now, what is it that changes or makes things different from where or how or who you descended from to where you grow up in or what your.

Miel Sehgal (12:15)

Environment provides, your early environment, where you grow up. Like for you and I, it was Bombay, which then became Mumbai, is. It informs everything, right? It's where your peers are from. I think the fact that for us, we grew up in a very cosmopolitan city. It's not like we were Delhi where there was primarily North Indians or where Calcutta, where, you know, it wasn't necessarily as it is, blended. But Bombay was very multicultural. People from all parts of India came there. So you end up, I think we ended up being more multicultural because that's where we were born in, in a cosmopolitan city. But the deeper roots, your attachment to food, your attachment to ritual, all that I think comes from where your grandparents and your parents came from because that comes through independent of place, right? You could be sitting in North America and your comfort food is still what your grandmother made for you, what her mother made for her sitting in Lahore or wherever, you know. So there are some threads that come through regardless of place and there are others that are deeply influenced by place.

Renita Hora (13:17)

Now this is interesting because in your essay you talked about growing up in Bombay in a post colonial India. And you talk about language, you talk about ritual, you talk about food. You say that English slipped off your tongue much more easily than Hindi, which would not have been the case with your ancestors. You talked about sort of growing up in and amongst the holidays and the festivals that took place. You mentioned Diwali and Navratri, but there was no Hindu ritual attached to that. So, Miyal, do you think we lose some of this or we gain other kinds of perspectives or, you know, how would you put it?

Miel Sehgal (13:57)

Yes. So the truth is that of course we lose things when we thought we were moving towards progress by our parents putting us in these sort of convent schools or church schools or these English speaking schools. We gained access to the west in the way that maybe other people didn't have, right? But we lost so much when some of us who spoke English at home lost language or English became our first instead of second or third language. There was a lot of loss. But there are things we gain. I mean, as young women, you and I, going out into the world and going and getting ourselves educated of our own will. Perhaps had we lived in a very traditional society that had not been westernized, maybe we would have lost out on that opportunity. So we live this strange blended existence of plus and minus and give and take, and that's who we are. And I think there's a little bit of both.

Renita Hora (14:52)

And it's interesting that you bring this up, Miel, because so much, certainly the ritualistic aspect of it, the rituals that perhaps we have gone away from or missed out on or have evolved to be something different. I know all of us women from India and especially from the north, there's this plus minus situation. Right. Because so much of the ritual aspect of where we come from is not necessarily pleasant or equanimous. So. So tell me a little bit more about your perspective on that.

Miel Sehgal (15:26)

I haven't had that much firsthand experience with ritual because it's not something that was practiced in my family daily. So I can't really comment to that in any meaningful manner. But I can say that I'm grateful to have been given equal opportunities regardless of my gender. And I think that has to do with certain more progressive, perhaps slightly Western attitudes within our blended culture that we grew up in. Ritual wise. I don't feel that I have been constrained by anything or. Or freed of anything because I haven't personally had that experience.

Renita Hora (16:12)

Now when you talk.

Miel Sehgal (16:13)

But I'd be interested to know. Sorry to ask you. I'd be interested to know your thoughts on that.

Renita Hora (16:17)

On what I feel about ritualistic living or.

Miel Sehgal (16:22)

Yes, well, and pluses and minuses there.

Renita Hora (16:25)

Pluses and minuses. Oh, my gosh, that could take us down a whole other rabbit hole. Right? Well, suffice it to say really quickly. I mean, ritual living is so much a part of the Hindu life. Past, present, like, I'm not a soothsayer, so cannot talk about the future. There is a lot of, well, you know, habits and behaviors and traditions come out of that to an extent, and those can be lovely. There is also, I think, from my perspective, a lot of negativity attached to that. I was speaking with a friend just this morning before this podcast recording. She's also ethnically from North India and just recently lost her father and was his caretaker for many, many years. And she says all of a sudden, you know, he is gone and you go into this place of rituals, whereas a girl child, you're just suddenly on the outside because.

Miel Sehgal (17:30)

Yes, absolutely right.

Renita Hora (17:32)

Because the rituals do not allow for you to be on the inside. It doesn't matter that you were the daughter of the family or took care of your father for the last 10 years, suddenly you're on the outside, because that's what the rituals call for. And she was really struggling as much with the grief of his loss. She was struggling with the patriarchy of the system. So, yeah, absolutely.

Miel Sehgal (17:57)

It's interesting you say that with the word patriarchy, because in my particular family, what I feel blessed about is that the patriarch, who is Pitaji, who I've written this about, didn't embody any of these kinds of values that we're discussing right now. Do you know what I mean? I think his daughters were quite free to be who they wanted to be, and certainly his granddaughters. So that's. Yeah, he's. That's yet another way in which I think he's been quite inspiring.

Renita Hora (18:28)

I can certainly see that from the granddaughters, the two of them, that I know. And certainly in talking to your aunt Shukla Lal. Now, one of the questions I'd love to ask you is your. About your connection to yoga, because in reading your essay, Balancing act, it is clear that yoga was one method of drawing you back into our culture. When I say drawing you back, it's not like you were ever out of it, but, you know, let's say drawing you further into our culture, yet in a very different way. So what is that different way?

Miel Sehgal (19:06)

I came to it, yes. Like many Westerners do, I came to it because. For stress relief and for exercise and for all those things. But as I went deeper into it, I realized, of course, that there's so much more to it, and it's an entire way of living and being. And that's how, of course, the thread came with my grandfather, who I recognize now as an adult, I recognize that he had been living that holistically his whole time. So I think we dig into our culture through different ways. Somebody might go through food or somebody might go through language or through music. I think yoga is one of those ways that would be accessible for a lot of people from the diaspora because it's so predominant in, I wouldn't say Western world in all cultures. Right. So I see it as an opportunity for diaspora South Asians to just go just that little bit deeper.

Renita Hora (19:58)

Now, in your essay, you talk about Pitaji when he was 97, having a connection with your son. What is that? Explain that.

Miel Sehgal (20:09)

I mean, if I've heard from grandparents, I'm not one yet, but I have heard that it truly is one of the most meaningful experiences. And I've had people say that they realized finally, this is why I was born, you know, to have a grandchild. So I cannot even imagine what that dynamic must have been like for him, to have not just my son as his great grandchild, but so many and have individual relationships with each of them. Think that for me, watching the two of them was probably one of the most special experiences of my life. When you can see the thread of your human history, you know, your past, your future together like that, it's a blessing and a joy to be able to see that.

Renita Hora (20:54)

And one of the things you talk about also is aside from the fact that he was a lifelong learner or not aside from it, maybe part of that was his desire to make new younger friends in his early 90s, and he persuaded some of them to teach him Tai Chi in the neighborhood park after his morning walks. Now, I have heard that for people who live a long lifespan, like Pitaji, this is very important. Making younger friends. What are your thoughts on that?

Miel Sehgal (21:25)

Yes, absolutely. Again, I think the intergenerational aspect is really. It's integral. I think it's important. I think as humans in human society, we were never sort of neither at school, if you look back in human history, we were never sort of segregated by age into these little bands and separated. It was. The children have always been part of the entire setup, right? You're in the kitchen, you're out on a hunt, you're doing whatever. The kids are integrated and the elders are integrated. They're around. Somebody's looked at for their wisdom, somebody's looked up for their strength. So intergenerational living has always been a part of human society until fairly recently, I think. And having younger friends keeps you alive. He wanted to. Yeah, he wanted to keep learning. He would go for his morning walk and nobody in the family knew. He'd go with his helper for a morning walk and made some younger, meaning perhaps maybe they were 70 or 65, I don't know. But he said, oh, what are you doing? Teach me how to do this. And he had a new hobby developed in his 90s that we only discovered, I think, quite a bit after that. So, yes, I think, tremendous value.

Renita Hora (22:32)

Niel, why did you call this essay Balancing Act?

Miel Sehgal (22:37)

Well, I think, of course, it's a take on the fact that it was the yoga was the common thread. So that made sense. It was balancing. It's what I saw him do, literally. I saw my grandfather do that when he was doing his headstands in the morning. But also metaphorically. It's what we all need to do, particularly Those of us who are traversing different cultures, different countries, back and forth, raising children in one culture, having parents in another. It is all a balancing act of how are we Indian, how are we Western, how are we our own culture? What threads of positive bits do we take from each to form our own unique blend which is eventually universal? We're all human and we all have to balance all of these cultural bits between us. I think that's where it came from.

Renita Hora (23:29)

And do we come to a point in life ever where we say, okay, yes, this is it, this is my uniquely blended self, or is it something that is constantly evolving?

Miel Sehgal (23:42)

I think everything is constantly evolving. You grow and you change every day and stagnation. Like saying, this is it and this is the pinnacle of my perfection of who I am. Oh my gosh, that would be just the worst. So to constantly grow is part of the fun of being alive, isn't it?

Renita Hora (23:59)

Oh, I love that. I love the idea, Miel, that anybody could point to themselves at different stages of life and say, that's me. But that's a different character, my 20 year old character, whatever the case may be. So I love how you ended the essay and I'm so tempted to read off your final line, but I think I'm gonna save it because you are actually gonna read it. So I'll save that for our listeners. But before we wrap up, I would love to ask you where we can read more of your work.

Miel Sehgal (24:33)

So it's still just this one piece on the Hamilton Arts and Letters website and I will keep you posted with more when I have that going.

Renita Hora (24:43)

Miel, it has been so much fun to speak with you on the True Fiction Project.

Miel Sehgal (24:47)

It's been really wonderful speaking with you about this because we have so many meandering conversations, but this is the first time we've very specifically talked about the idea of east and west and back and forth and what makes us. I think we've covered good ground and I'm so grateful for the chance to have this conversation with you.

Renita Hora (25:07)

Likewise. What a pleasure to have you on the True Fiction Project. Thank you so much for being our guest today.

Miel Sehgal (25:14)

Thank you.

Renita Hora (25:15)

That is Miel Sehgal, a writer based in Toronto, native to Mumbai, and most importantly, one of my oldest friends from childhood. This is the True Fiction Project and I am your host, Renita Hora.

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Renita Hora (26:34)

And now to the premise of the True Fiction project, which of course is to create fiction out of non fiction.

Miel Sehgal (26:54)

Balancing act by Me Miel Sehgal Half awake, I stumbled out of my bedroom early one summer morning to find my grandfather standing on his head in the middle of the carpeted living room. Pitaji, as he was universally called, was comfortably contorted into a yoga pose while everyone else slept or scurried about their morning routines. This has been his ritual for decades, but my seven year old eyes widened as I watched for the first time on his many subsequent visits to our Bombay home, I knew to tiptoe around when I heard the slow exhalation of Pranayam practice or caught him frozen. Frozen in meditative silence. His shimmering silver hair oiled and neatly side parted, thick spectacles by his side, snail like Pitaji retreated into his own private yoga studio whenever he needed to, wherever he was, no dim lights, soft music or fragrant candles necessary. While the youngest among us looked forward to his visits the most, the stories he spun entangled anyone in the the vicinity. With a booming voice that belied his medium build, he brought to life tales of Tarzan in the jungle and the adventures of mythological characters, a web of stories he knew and those he'd invent in the moment. But there were some we only heard when we were much older, those of his perilous escape from Lahore to Simla in 1947 when British occupied India, including his homeland of Punjab, was split along religious lines into two countries, resulting in one of the largest and most horrifically violent mass migrations in human history. We learned of how he drove his pregnant wife and four children to safety on the other side of the impending border, of his dutiful return to wrap up the office, and of the kindness of Muslim neighbors who helped him, a Hindu, escape along with a Sikh friend. The family home, just as it was, was gifted to a Muslim family. Forced to flee in the opposite direction, Ritaji spent the rest of his working life in a transferable job with the same insurance company. Now under Indian, not British, management, the family crisscrossed the country, moving from city to city and adapting to different dialects, cultures and customs. Along the way. They inhabited post colonial India with ease. Fluent in English and several, several Indian languages and comfortable in both Indian and Western contexts, Pitaji's books went along with them, evidence of his earlier years as a teacher of mathematics and his ongoing love of English literature. During my growing years, at a time when grandparents homes had no toys and the black and white television had only evening programming, I was captivated by that burgeoning bookshelf in their post retirement Calcutta home. Unlike Pitaji, I grew up in independent India. The colonizers no longer occupied our land, but had taken up residence inside our heads. By my first day at school, English slipped off my tongue easier than Hindi did and no Punjabi emerged at all. My sister and I enjoyed daily Indian meals, deftly tearing a bit of roti with one hand, wrapping it around spiced vegetables and dipping the entire parcel and steaming dal before devouring it. But we used cutlery for rice and our tables were set the proper British way. Diwali and Navratri were vibrant, festive celebrations once a year, but daily life involved no Hindu rituals. The chants that wafted out of the yoga ashram on the first floor of our apartment building were a greater novelty than the hymns we rattled off each morning morning in our colonial era church school. Urban Indians with such schooling are in a little club of our own, distanced from our cultural roots while being catapulted into privilege and opportunity by the same education that distances us. Many of us in post colonial countries absorb our own culture, filtered by the lens of the west. Like a fledgling waiting for the mother bird to chew and regurgitate a morsel. We find it easier to consume our culture softened by Western scholars, historians and scientists and fed to us in their language. Now our language with their added flavors and colors. Over the next few years I read texts on yoga in English, some based on translations from the Sanskrit that I never learned. I bored through popular summaries of scientific studies, fascinated by the metabolic changes in meditating Monks and the effect of Bhastrika Pranayam on anxiety. I believed just a little more in the chakras once I knew they corresponded to the endocrine glands and was pleased to find scientific proof of the impact of yogic practices on the parasympathetic nervous system. Western medicine, which conventionally treated the human body and mind system in disparate parts, was exploring psychosomatic interactions. Whereas my grandfather faithfully followed the centuries old practices of the sages of the Himalayas, I needed revalidation from the sages of Harvard. I discovered that the physical postures and breathing techniques I was learning were just a tiny fragment of this practice that serves to guide us through the human condition. From truth telling to non violence moderation to self inquiry and selfless service to discipline. Wisdom was passed from teacher to student for thousands of years, with each individual encouraged to follow the paths best suited to them. Physical postures, most easily adopted by Westerners familiar with exercise along with breathing techniques and meditation, were packaged and commercialized into the hundred billion dollar yoga industry of today. Many consumers, however, miss a central meaning. Yoga, pronounced yoga, means to yoke or unite. And wellness comes not just from contortions, but from the integration of mind, body and spirit. The enduring ancient teachings apply to everyone and while it may align with the context of a Hindu or Buddhist quest for spiritual liberation, this is an inclusive and expansive tradition. Being South Asian or having an interest in Eastern philosophy is entirely un unnecessary. A few months before he died at the age of 97, Pitaji showed my nine month old son the delight of being able to bring his own hands together to clap. As I watched them together under the banyan tree taking in the late morning sun, it was hard to tell who was having more fun. Pitaji found joy in new experiences right down to his last vacation with us exploring the mangrove forests of the Ganges river delta by boat at age 96 to celebrate my father, his youngest child. Turning 60p's age had only slightly slackened the physical and mental health he maintained throughout his life. He lived on his own with a helper close to family members he met every day but never moved in. With a lifelong learner, he made new younger friends in his early 90s and persuaded them to teach him Tai Chi in the neighborhood park after his morning walks. He'd had the same lifestyle for decades. Simple vegetarian meals, respect for his body, a vibrant intellectual life of science, literature and politics, and gatherings with like minded people. If he carried any unresolved trauma from the partition, repeated upheavals of home and the 10 heartbreaking years he spent tending to his beloved wife as she withered away from Parkinson's. Parkinson's disease. We saw little trace of it. Pitaji, who integrated east and west, mind and body, lived the true essence of yoga. Thousands of miles away from my country of origin, I'm on an endeavor to lead a more integrated life in this new place. I hope to find balance in my culturally blended identity and to keep learning and growing from my still intermittent yoga practice. I look for teachers connected to an unbroken line of instruction from the Indian subcontinent who refer to postures by their Sanskrit names and can help me carry on this ancient tradition. I may not find my place in the local studios of tight Lululemon and hushed concluding namastes, but I'm grateful they exist and hopeful that as the teachings expand, they will resonate with more people of diverse ages, abilities and ethnicities. Most of all, I'm grateful to my grandfather for showing me that where you live or what you leave behind is not nearly as important as what you carry inside.

Renita Hora (35:46)

Here. Here at the True Fiction Project, we are always looking for great stories that make for compelling fiction. So if you have a great story or know somebody who does, or if you are a writer who would like to contribute, then please do get in touch with us@renita.com contact.

Renita Hora (36:08)

Thank you for listening to the True Fiction Project with Renita Hora. Be sure to subscribe to the newsletter to receive more inspiring stories showing how fiction is born from our everyday experiences. For more information, visit www.TrueFictionProject.com as humans, we're naturally driven by the search for better. But when it comes to hiring, the best way to search for a candidate isn't to search at all. Don't search match with Indeed. When I was looking to hire someone, it was so slow and overwhelming. I wish I had used Indeed. If you need to hire, you need Indeed. Indeed is your matching and hiring platform with over 350 million global monthly visitors, according to Indeed data, and a matching engine that helps you find quality candidates fast. Ditch the busywork. Use Indeed for scheduling, screening and messaging so you can connect with candidates faster. And Indeed doesn't just help you hire faster. 93% of employers agree Indeed delivers the highest quality matches compared to other job sites, according to a recent Indeed survey, and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility@ Indeed.com podcast that's Indeed.com podcast. Terms and conditions apply.