Diesel Fumes and Rain

I don't really remember the plane ride. My parents told me stories, of course, bits and pieces. How I slept most of the way, even though it was so noisy. I was only seven, almost eight, when we left Fiji. My father, he remembered everything. The smell of the jet fuel, how the air conditioning on the plane was too cold. He would joke about that, years later, when the Sacramento summers hit 105 degrees. But he never joked about why we left.

My father was a bus driver in Lautoka. Not for the big inter-city routes, mostly the local ones, bringing people from the villages to the market, to the sugar mill. He loved that bus. He’d polished it so much the chrome shone like a mirror. But after the coups in '87, things got… difficult. He wasn't involved in politics, not really, but he was Indian, and that was enough. He told me they started asking questions. About his friends, about who he talked to. He had a few cousins who were more vocal, spoke up against the military government. One day, men came to our house. Not in uniform. They just asked him to come for a ‘chat.’ He refused. They came back, louder. Then they came to the bus depot. That’s when he knew.

He had studied for his commercial license twice, once when he was young, and again after he married my mother, just to keep up. He always said, ‘You never know when you’ll need to drive for your life.’ He didn't say it like a joke. He’d saved some money, not much. My mother had family in Sacramento, her auntie, who had moved there in the seventies. So, an application went in. The political refugee status. It felt like forever, but it was really only two years, 1988 to 1990. My parents always talked about those two years like they were twenty. Waiting, wondering if they’d be next.

When we arrived in Sacramento, it was September 1990. I remember the air. Not humid like Fiji, but dry, and a strange smell. Like dry grass and diesel fumes. We stayed with Auntie Asha on Elder Creek Road. Her house was small, three bedrooms for six of us already, and then five more with us. My parents, my older brother Rahul, my younger sisters, Nisha and Priya, and me. We slept on mattresses on the living room floor. I remember one specific corner, by the big window, where the morning sun would hit. My father would wake up early, always. He’d be out looking for work before the sun was even properly up.

He got a job within a month, washing dishes at a Chinese restaurant on Broadway. It wasn't driving, and he hated it, but he did it. Then he found a driving job, not a bus, but a delivery truck for a furniture store, ‘Comfort Home Furnishings.’ He worked there for about three years. He’d come home smelling of new fabric and dust. The pay was $7.50 an hour, which felt like a fortune compared to Fiji rupees, but rent for a two-bedroom apartment nearby was already $600. It wasn't easy.

Eventually, he got his commercial license converted here. It was harder than he thought. More tests, more paperwork. Form MV-44, then DMV-52. He’d complain about the traffic laws, the ‘four-way stop signs’ that didn't make any sense to him. But he did it. He started driving a city bus for Sacramento Regional Transit. Route 51, I think it was, or maybe the 86. The one that went past the Capitol, then out towards Watt Avenue. He loved that. Driving again. It was different, the schedules, the routes, but it was his. He sponsored all my siblings, one by one, over the next ten years. Rahul first, then Nisha, then Priya, and finally, our youngest brother, Sanjit. It took a long time, but we all made it. We all started our lives here. That corner in Auntie Asha’s living room, it was only temporary, but it felt like the start of everything.