Places | Where Are You From

How a Lost Church in Rajasthan Helped Me Find My Way Home

The magic of the Bandikui church is that it stays, rests, and remains, despite the world moving on and away from it.

April in my city, New Delhi, wasn’t hot when I was a child. It was the month we started school, doves cooing from the gulmohar trees lining our street, hiding behind the bright yellow flowers. The soft spring breeze slowly turned into the famously hot Delhi loo wind heralding summer. Back then, air conditioning was for the wealthy; telephones and televisions were rare. We were young, and we played in the streets until Ma called us home. That’s how it was in the seventies, then eighties, soon nineties.

We lived in Chittaranjan Park, a neighborhood named after a freedom fighter and called a park for no reason. That neighborhood was for Bengalis, who liked to remind each other that we had fought against the British. Most of us were refugees or children of refugees who left East Bengal, or what’s now Bangladesh, to become educated middle-class Indians with middle-class ambitions.

In 1993, I moved to America: an immigrant, a molecular biologist, a student. I married the first man I ever loved. He abandoned me after a decade of marriage, seventeen years of indecisive togetherness maintained through my own sheer will. I lost Baba first. Then Ma. Then my marriage.

All through this, San Diego remained home. Soon I had lived longer outside of the Park that used to be my neighborhood than I had there.

*

April 2018. I return to Delhi. Now a naturalized citizen, parentless, freshly out of that marriage I never thought I’d leave, I realize I have almost lost what Baba used to call my “Bengali-ness.” In the years prior, I’d lost many things: hope, a certain naiveté, joy, curiosity, my parents, my husband, and my home.

In April, the old neighborhood is unrecognizable. The space in front of our empty house, where the Durga Puja celebrations—welcoming the goddess to earth for five days—used to fill the field with music, people, dancing, and food, now serves as parking for foreign-make neighborhood cars. The roads are narrow—shops have encroached on the near non-existent sidewalks. The air is stifling, and the sun blindingly bright. Incessant car horns blare irregularly at all times of the day. Even the pigeons stick together, flying in huge droves as if there’s comfort in numbers.

I wonder if earlier, my neighborhood was all that—horns, sounds, hot sun, sticky air and that I am now romanticizing what’s gone? But I am becoming one of those non-resident Indians who pine for the time when their world seemed quieter, softer, responsive rather than argumentative. That’s what I feel, or so I think.

*

My trip to the church has been years in the making. For decades, this small church in the middle of a railway junction town has remained unoccupied. In the desert state of Rajasthan, where the predominant color is the hot beige of the dry sand coating the ground, this church has been an outlier—a reminder of the British Raj, of the people who worshipped there. It stands in a dusty town next to the railway station connected via desiccated roads.

The first time I saw the church, it was because a friend posted a photo of it on social media. An architect, he photographed it by highlighting the tall spiral column, the straight lines, the starkness of the bare desert ground. A photo of a lone spire, an Anglo-Roman Catholic stone and glass structure in an empty field. Out of place. Old, broken. Waiting. It felt like me.

Staring at the church on my screen in San Diego, I wondered if the church was calling me to visit—or was I delusional? It was just a church, in the middle of a Hindu town. A church for British worshippers who were long gone, Anglo Indians who didn’t stay. Nothing important. India is filled with dying, mournful buildings like this one, testimonials to our colonizers and invaders.

India is filled with dying, mournful buildings like this one, testimonials to our colonizers and invaders.

Growing up in Delhi, I used to walk past Islamic dome-shaped mausoleums, decrepit temples, and aging columns of British buildings, deep stepwells on my way to school, playgrounds, and library. The modern and the old, even the forgotten coexisted. So why worry about this old church now?

“Church janaa hai,” I decided. I have to go see it.

*

What I haven’t confessed yet is that no matter how many countries I visit, no matter how many oceans I cross, I have no sense of direction. Every trip I make is my announcement to that fear: look, look at me, I can do it. I am afraid of heights, look at me trek up this mountain. I am afraid of getting lost; look, I found my way back. Look, look!

My ex-husband was, is, a human GPS. When I traveled with him, I didn’t worry. It’s an interesting adjustment, to worry. Worry because if I don’t, I’ll be lost.

I don’t have an internal compass, or any compass for that matter. Every time I travel, I plan for extra time to get back on track. I always get back on track. But I need time. Theek hai, it’s okay.

The church calls me. I trace Bandikui, in the middle of Rajasthan. I’ll be there, I promise the town that doesn’t know I exist. My heart beats loudly, telling me, You’ll get lost for sure. Pataa hai, I know, I tell it. I’d rather be lost than be with him.

Bandikui, the small town where the church sits, is a train junction in the North-western state of Rajasthan. Once upon a time when the British ruled India, trains stopped there on the route between Jaipur—the pink city of marble, slate, and royalty—and Delhi, the administrative capital. In the midst of dry fields, cow dung-patties, and dusty mustard-yellow flowers, the little town rises up quietly, softly. Painted stone British-style bungalows dot the small narrow streets.

The bungalows are still inhabited. Attached to each bungalow are innocuous-looking buffalo sheds, as if animals living so close to humans is a natural way of life. It must be, because most of the people in these bungalows have buffaloes as their neighbors. In the sheds, I see the massive animals, their fur glistening in the heat. I think about Bandikui and its people, a normal small town with townspeople who’ve lived there forever.

But then I get lost, as always. Each narrow lane close to the railway station led me to another cluster of small homes, bungalows, white-washed and shining in the sunlight. “Bhaiyya,” I ask the tea stall owner, “Yeh church kahaan hai?”

He points left, as if he has been asked this question many times by tourists, curious journalists, and travelers alike. I notice the sweaty plastic water bottles with Bisleri labels stuck on them, hanging from the wooden columns holding the aluminum sheet roof of his stall. It’s so hot in Bandikui that even water is thirsty.

I follow the road ahead. It’s another long one, its asphalt turning ash with the heat. Bougainvillea wave in the soft breeze, a bright shocking fuchsia against whitewashed building walls. No church yet. I make another turn, for no reason at all, except that I am lost and I am used to not finding my way to any of my destinations. On that road, to the left, is another whitewashed wall, and beyond that a small, single-level one-room house. A shed next to it. Another buffalo there, I guess.

Walking up to the house, I spot a child and (likely) her grandmother sitting on the charpoy bed on the patio. The child grins. Adjusting her bright red dupatta over her head, the grandmother waves and signals, “Come, sit!” Baitho, sit. It seems like a standard greeting there. People welcoming strangers, visitors, travelers.

Prema is her name, she tells me. It means love in our language.

“Do you know where the church is?” I ask, wiping the sweat off my glasses. It is 110 degrees in the mid-morning heat.

Her eyes disappear in the creases of her weather-weary face. Smiling, she says, “Yes, my father-in-law used to be the caretaker in the British days. Look, it’s right there!”—and she points to her left.

Next to the shed, the church rises in the dust, among the dry cacti, desert flowers, and desiccated brown field. My heart races. This is what I have traveled from San Diego for. This is what I got lost for. This is home. This is foreign. It’s a church among Hindus.

I don’t know what to ask now, so I resort to pleasantries. “How long have you lived here? Is this your granddaughter?”

“I’ve lived here all my life,” she says, her eyes watering. “This is Guriya, and we don’t know how long we can live here.”

Guriya. Doll. The little girl plays with her grubby fingers, looking down. I turn back to look at the church. The towers rise, supported by columns constructed for a Christian god, protected by a Hindu caretaker. “Why do you say that?” I ask.

Her voice unsteady, Prema says, “We’ve lived next to this temple all our lives. It was beautiful when I came here as a new bride—”

I realize that for her, a temple and a church are the same: places for worship. “How many years ago was it?”

“When I was this little,” she says, putting her hand near her waist. She comes from a time when age was measured by your height. She seems eager to tell me, someone, anyone, her story.

“The church is stuck with lawyers. Locked up. Closed. These no-good luffungas came one night, stole the lamp, the brass locks, the candle holders, everything, even Jesus. The town blamed me, my family. Said we stole everything!”

Prema’s family was blamed for allegedly selling church artifacts. While they live on the property, they don’t have access to the church.

She then points at another building in the far corner. “Our temple is a Kandahar, a broken relic. Now everyone who is Christian goes to St. Francis.”

Her eyes are worried as she looks at the church door. “I’m not sure what they want to do with the building. Isn’t it aalishan?” Dignified?

“Yes,” I agree, “It still is. I’ll go there now. Thank you for your time.”

When I turn back to wave at Prema, she watches me, unseeing, her lips pursed with worry. Behind her, Guriya has lost interest and walks unsteadily toward the buffalo shed.

*

The church sits on a dry desert land, cactus flowers strewn haphazardly on a path made by weather. A surprising jasmine next to the boarded-up door leans toward the windows. Through the cracks I can see the high ceilings, the majestic interior, shattered windows—it used to be hallowed, once upon a time.

Behind the building are three wells, or what remains of them—iron and concrete structures, a winch-pulley left behind to raise buckets of water for people living in a desert town. This church was more than a place of worship. People used to gather here. They drew water from the wells on the property. There must have been celebrations here. Nearby is a broken arbor—there were weddings, too. Funerals. Baptisms.

I peer into the church through the broken window. The pews, built from heavy dark wood, are stained and cracked. The wind and dry heat worked at breaking the church down, pew by pew, brick by brick. In the distance, the breeze whispers secrets I don’t know. The abandoned building stands tall, as if in defiance, asking me to remember what it used to be.

The first photo of the Bandikui church I had seen was taken in early spring, late winter. It was a happy photo, taken by my architect friend: yellow flowers caressing the outline of the tall building in a field of mustard.

That doesn’t match what I see now. The church, much like me, is old, tired, hot. It is cracked open, its guts spilling out, holding memories that leak out of the broken stained-glass windows. But the steps to the front door are surprisingly clean, as if waiting for someone to ascend and knock on the closed door. I don’t. The church is abandoned. They even stole Jesus.

*

I return to Delhi before I leave for San Diego. I tell my architect friend, “There used to be happy memories in that church, I think.”

He agrees. They had weddings there, christenings. There was a garden behind the church. There is still a cemetery, where the headstones are intact. This used to be a world. You can lose a place, a home, even if home is where you still live.

You can lose a place, a home, even if home is where you still live.

“Was the church what you expected?” my friend asks.

I don’t know how to answer that. I had traveled thousands of miles to connect with a church that was once vibrant, a place of worship for Anglo-Indians and British families. Did I find my answers yet? If I feel like I am like the church, is the church then alive, as I am? Or am I as dead as the church?

“Yes,” I finally tell my friend. “It was all and more than what I expected.”

*

Later, back in San Diego, the church looms large in my dreams—dark, tall and surrounded by the summer sunlight. It feels like its story is yet unknown to me. Sometimes, in my dreams, I see Prema waiting for a house to be a home, her dupatta a slash of red in the white heat. Sometimes I think I see Guriya running to the shed where the buffalo concentrates on chewing hay.

I feel as if I have lived many lives, as many houses, many buildings, many churches have. The neighborhood I lived in isn’t mine anymore. The parents I had are now gone. My marriage shattered. Sometimes I wonder, did I just imagine all that? And through it all, as I fumble from country to country, continent to continent, house to house, I am the keeper of memories—much like the forgotten church in Bandikui—holding stories that are embedded in me.

The magic of the Bandikui church is that it stays, rests, and remains, despite the world moving on and away from it. Prema and her family may be facing an uncertain future. And I, who have crossed continents hoping to find a sense of belonging in Bandikui, feel it and innately also know that it’s not my home, either. I may be lost most of the time, but what I found in Bandikui is a sliver of direction. Even though the thread connecting me to what used to be home is tenuous, it’s still there. And in San Diego, I realize this American city next to the Pacific is my home, too: It’s my home now.