Hotel, motel, Patel
The alliteration in
our title was previously used as a slur at the number of Indian-descent
proprietors of inns in North America who are from India. This was the case in Bonham, Texas’ America’s
Best Value Inn where I was billeted not too long ago. I also found the phrase, “it takes a family to
make a dimsum” true in the Canadian
prairie in the 70s where the Chinese ran restaurants in small towns of mostly Scandinavian
and Slavic descents.
My daughter and 6-yr
old grandson took me last week to a riverboat ride in Chicago towards Chinatown
when we passed a docked boat flying a Philippine flag in front of a
semi-circular building that had international flags on its river front. International, multiethnic and interreligious
qualities of American metropolis is foisting the possibility of both real
diversity and, perhaps, even authentic integration, in the mosaic sense, of merged
peoples and ethnicities from around the world.
Chinatown itself in
the Southside of Chicago had workers and customers attired in veils and
scarves, white kufis and black yarmulkas, all in the same place. Halal and
Kosher shops were not too far from
each other, though I must confess that the pinakbet
at the Pilipino store my daughter gets her meat barbecues and fresh fish left
a lot to be desired on this Ilocakano palate.
One of the gifts of
the urban center is precisely the intentional setting of amicable presence and interchange
between traditionally warring factions elsewhere. My chaplain brother was in a group of
religious clerics who considered taking on the offer of the newly established
City of Kapolei to build a singular religious structure with many fronts that
would host religious groups and functions in the city. They never turned the offer into a
groundbreaking event, but the intent was there.
While living in Uptown
Chicago in the late 70s and early 80s, the local Community College offered
courses on 48 languages identified as spoken in the area. The new French market near the Chicago train
station by Canal St. smells of various cuisine from former French colonies
around the world, beyond the offerings of the old Latin quarters by the Seine. The aroma of French breads and pastries wafted
us back to one August morning in Montmartre when we innocently shot our
weeklong budget on an Middle Eastern hotel because tourists dominated the Arc
de Triomphe and Paris that time of the year while the locals vacationed to the Cote
d’Azur and visitors were scalped helpless to the bone.
In my daughter’s home
along the boundary line of Barrington and Palatine, Illinois, residents jog in
the morning and I was pleased to hear Urdu spoken among their ranks. The restaurant where I was taken to lunch was
named Kai Yee, easily an Anglicized “chao yi”, or “qiao yi”. Don’t matter. Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, South and
Southeast Asians numbered among the customers on the hour we were there. There
were no quarrels on boundary lines, psychological and geographical. The distinct qualities of each did not
disappear but they were not on each other’s throat over differences.
Not so in some
quarters. Delineated boundary is today’s
“conservative” agenda. Ukraine just
received a suggestion from one of its billionaires to build a wall at the
border of Russia and Ukraine; a task he estimated can be done in 6 months. This is meant to stem the flow of Russian
armaments that arms the pro-Russian population of the Crimea and
East Ukraine.
We are familiar with
this perspective in the US where NAFTA drew us to Canada but had us convinced that the
dreaded Mexicans attracted their cousins all the way from Columbia and Ecuador through
Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Belize and Guatemala to “surge” the
border into California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas. Ola!
Why do you think we built the ineffective but expensive virtual border fence
now staggered at the coast-to-coast Mexican-US border?
China, Japan, and
South Korea also haggle geographical boundaries, though the squabble in East Asia’s
continental shelf is clearly for the oil.
But strict geographical boundary is the impulse to protect national
sovereignty in a time when the very notion of nation-state, a hangover from
colonial times, is very much in question.
At the personal level,
psychological space is at a premium, and intellectual integrity
sacrosanct. I just left three years of
university where the “footnote” ruled (other people share my thoughts), and most intellectuals quoted sources to
bolster their positions. In democracies,
law is predicated on precedence, more often in favor of limits rather than
possibilities.
It was in China that I
read the story of the Life of Pi. The main character is Pi Patel and that’s how
the “Patel” from our title, previously used pejoratively, is now to me a brand
of unique individual distinction worn with pride. My grandson’s favorite game is Lego,
constructing without instruction book and/or glue. The compassion in our time is to manifest the
desire to see and hear individuals freely claim, “I am,” finishing the sentence
with the fullness of their existence.
j'aime la vie
pinoypanda2031@aol.com
yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!