‘Well, you don’t know, but you’re going to have to believe me. I’ve always had a strong support network, even if you don’t see it. Nani and Papa do support me, though we don’t see each other often. I raised you by myself, but I’ve had people to lean on. Like you have your friends, I have mine too.’
‘Who do you think I called after that outrageous house party you threw? Gina. And she made me feel better and was there for me, like she has been all these years.’ She grips my shoulders.‘I will not be the person to hold you back. You have to live the biggest life you want to. That’s all I want for you.’
I nod, wiping my tears. ‘I don’t want to let you down,’ I say.
‘As long as you try your best, you cannot let me down. I’ve had so many adventures in my life, but my biggest one has been raising you. And I can’t wait to see what you do next.’
Adventures.I look at Mum, and I realise there’s so little I know about her, except the big brushstrokes of her life. This house is littered with all the places she’s been, everything she’s seen, but there’s still so much I don’t know, because I’ve been too afraid to ask.
‘Mum,’ I say.
‘Yes?’
‘Please can I ask you to do something for me? And be honest about it.’
Kajal Pia
“What is a Good Life?”
An interview by Selena Pia
I met Kajal at birth. As in, she gave birth to me. Kajal is my mother, if I’m not being clear enough. So, safe to say, I’ve known her my whole life. I’m taking this interview in the house I’ve grown up in, in Croydon.
‘I moved here a year after you were born,’ she tells me. ‘I got pregnant unexpectedly, and went back to live with my parents. And it turns out moving back in with them wasn’t the best idea.’
To unravel this thread, we need to go back much further in time. To long before I was even born.
Kajal Pia was the only daughter of Des and Naveena Pia, who had immigrated to London in the eighties. Born and bred in East London, Kajal was a creative and precocious child.
As her daughter, I can say she’s a creative and precocious adult too. Once neither of us had any idea what to make for my science project, and she managed to convince my science teacher that our illustration of astrological signs somehow counted as an entry. It didn’t, but she made a compelling argument, plus helped me create the poster.
‘I was always getting into trouble, much to myparents’ annoyance,’ she says, not quite meeting my eye. ‘But I was very good at school, even though I was a troublemaker.’
Des and Naveena had ambitions that Kajal was going to live out their immigrant parents’ dreams, become super successful as either a doctor or an engineer. They had sacrificed so much for her, the least she could do for them was to get a good job, find a good husband and live a ‘good’ life.
‘But what is a good life?’ says Kajal, a mischievous flicker in her eye. ‘I think we had very different views on that.’
Kajal told her parents she didn’t want to go to university straight away. She was going to take a gap year. It was 2001, and gap years were the new norm. Kids were flying all over the world, lured by cheaper flights and promises of personal growth. Naturally, Des and Naveena were not keen on this.
‘But it didn’t matter to me,’ says Kajal. ‘I deferred my entry to study Law, packed a bag and went to Greece. It was the cheapest flight out of London I could get. In hindsight, was it crazy for a young, solo female traveller to pack up and leave? Yes. Now I have a daughter, do I realise why they flipped out so much when I called them from Athens? Yes. Would I do it again? Also yes.’ There’s that flicker of mischief again.
In Athens, Kajal got a job working in a museum cafe. ‘A lot of tourists spoke English, so it was useful to have someone who could speak it fluently. In asign of my naivety when I left home, I hadn’t even considered the language barrier!’
Between making coffees and waiting tables, Kajal developed a strong interest in the ancient world.
‘To me, it was so much more interesting than science and maths. It was the stories of humanity. How we got here.’ She was taken under the wing of a leading female curator and was soon offered a job as her assistant.
Kajal was meant to be there for a year before continuing her studies, but she never turned back.
‘I was learning more there than I ever would at university. Something which my parents couldn’t wrap their heads around.’
She travelled the world, becoming a professional curator, working in China, Vietnam, before arriving in the place of her ethnic origin, India.
‘I hadn’t expected to fall in love with India the way I did,’ she muses. I’m always reminded it’s not only where she came from, but also where I’m from too. ‘It was this faraway place when I was growing up, and my parents taught me some of the language, culture and traditions, but I never could really imagine what it was like until I went. And it was beautiful.’
Kajal started working in a museum there, where she fell in love with a fellow curator. ‘It felt like pure magic at the time. In this beautiful country, with thisbeautiful man who promised me the world,’ she says wryly. ‘But I was still so young.’
Kajal fell pregnant. My origin story was always shrouded in mystery, much like a poorly written superhero. And now I can’t believe I’m about to find out the details.
