JENNIFER K MAHAL -- Reporter’s Notebook

When I stepped out of New Delhi customs at 4 a.m. on the first muggy

day of August, I worried I wouldn’t find my father in the gauntlet crush

of people waiting at the Indian airport. I don’t know what I expected to

feel when I saw his face at the end of the row. Relief, happiness, joy.

Instead I was glad he was holding me so tight, because what I really

wanted to do was cry.

Flight exhaustion. Yep, that’s what it must have been.

Two years ago, I wrote about my planned international excursion in the

short-lived Pilot magazine. To recap: My father took my brother, twin

sister and I to India when I was 4 without telling my mother, who came

after us and finally won custody of my sister and I after the case had

traveled to the Indian Supreme Court. We returned to the U.S. two years

after we left. Not your typical family tale.

My father pretty much stayed out of my life while I was growing up. He

visited in 1984, in 1991 and then again in 1996. It was that last visit,

on the occasion of my sister’s wedding, that made me realize I wanted a

relationship with my dad. That I wanted to know him.

And I wanted to go home again, back to the farm where I had spent some

of my childhood. It had been more than 20 years since I had been to

India. It was past time. My half-sister is now 21. My Dad and Raj

celebrated their 22nd wedding anniversary while I was there.

Things have changed and things have remained the same since I was 6.

The village of Hangoli -- you won’t find it on a map, but it’s north of

Delhi and west of Chandigarh -- has fewer huts and more rectangular

buildings now. But it still doesn’t have paved streets or, for the most

part, sanitation.

Water buffalo still walk its streets, along with the odd hen or two.

However, their sounds compete with the blare of the televisions during

the two to three hours a day when the electricity comes. California’s

problems with power are nothing compared with that of rural India in the

summer.

My family is not from the village. Instead, they are the villagers’

main employer. In a feudal society, they would be considered lords, which

does not sit particularly well with my American Quaker upbringing. But

that’s how things are. My dad has servants in the house and employs a

driver for long trips.

With privilege comes responsibility. My father funds the village

school. Classes are currently being held outdoors on mats while the

inside is being repainted. The one-room schoolhouse -- built with the

funds earned by my parents before the end of their marriage -- is my

father’s pet project. My dad, who holds a doctorate in botany, taught

high school biology. Now he’s teaching the first-year teacher -- who

makes about 500 rupees a month, or less than $15 -- how to impart basic

elementary skills.

The villagers wanted Dad to contribute money to build a new temple.

Dad said he would if they would contribute to the school. They haven’t,

so the temple was built without his funds. Education, he says, is his

temple.

A few days after I arrived in Hangoli, there was trouble in the

village. A man was discovered raping his 14-year-old daughter. In

America, the authorities would be called, the girl would be taken away by

social services and the local paper would follow the man’s arrest and

trial.

In rural India, the man was beaten. That’s all. We passed him on the

road the next day. He was still walking.

I asked my father what else could be done. He said, “If that man goes

to jail, who will feed his children?” Not a question one hears in

America.

Everything there is different. And I am different for having been.

I’ve put a moratorium on my father speaking of the past. On the last

night of my trip, sitting on my Aunt Joshi’s divan, he wanted to tell me

what had happened with my mother. I didn’t want to hear it. But he needed

to say it, and so I listened -- with the condition that we don’t tread

this ground again.

I won’t repeat what he said. Sorry if you feel cheated. I just think

that my parents’ past should remain personal between them. But I will say

that a great many things seem clearer now. And I still think my father

was wrong for taking us.

But I have learned that I can be proud of my father for the things he

does. I know that he is a man many people respect and love. A man who

makes family everywhere he goes.

He keeps adopting daughters -- not formally. There are the two servant

children that he makes sure keep up with their studies, the daughter of a

deceased friend whom he helped out when she decided to go to the States

for school, and the daughter of the doctor who treated my grandmother,

who now lives rent-free with a few others in my father’s Chandigarh house

while going to college. I can’t help but wonder if he was trying to make

up for the daughters he rarely saw.

It won’t take me 20 years to return next time.

* JENNIFER K MAHAL is features editor of the Daily Pilot. She can be

reached at o7 jennifer.mahal@latimes.comf7 .