BY Nneka Hylton
V.S. NAIPAUL’S SHORT STORY “ONE OUT OF MANY”
Some people are oblivious to the plight of others. We only know our own daily struggles, which can incorrectly lead some to believe the sun shines elsewhere, but only we face the dark rainy clouds. Most immigrants who do not arrive in this country with a high-level job arranged or a wealthy and charitable friend or family member face similar struggles. Our stories aren’t distinctive. In fact just as the story’s title states, we are merely “One Out of Many.” I am an immigrant; at the age of seven I was brought to the United States of America by my mother seeking a better life. When we left Jamaica, all the children envied me because I was heading “to foreign” to live the life showcased on the Cosby Show. I was going to the place we all swore was paved with gold. Even adults had a false vision of American life, believing immediately after the plane landed we would empty our pockets to find money that wasn’t there before. Ironically, like Santosh, we only found trinkets in our pocket, nothing of real value. The night of my arrival in New York, I called my relatives home to let them know I got in safely. Everyone congratulated me, similar to how you would cheer on the winning team of any Super Bowl game. My cousin Dexton said, “You’ve arrived!”
Various things struck me about the reading; one is the rose petal glasses immigrants see their ill-fated homeland through. My mother was not hungry, but there was limited chance for upward mobility in Jamaica, and so, like the character Santosh, she ran away. However, to talk with her about Jamaica today, you hear a version about the place that sounds like heaven. Whether it was two days ago, last Thursday, three weeks, five months or ten years ago. Every time I speak to my mother she talks about the good ole days of Jamaica, “when no one cared about money, race wasn’t holding her back and the lovely fresh air.” Now that she has been long removed from Jamaica, she has eulogized the country. Like my mother, Santosh remembers Bombay with happy thoughts, but ironically both refused to return home. Santosh states, “Happy times, but they were like happy times of childhood: I didn’t want them to return” (1672). I often goad my mother by asking, “if Jamaica is so great, then why did you run away, and why don’t you just go back?” She often pretends to never hear my question, but one time she replied that going back would mean she failed.
Every immigrant takes a gamble, and oftentimes it doesn’t turn out like they expected. However, they cannot just pack up and head back home. They cannot go backwards because that is a sign of defeat. Santosh explains it when he says, “It wasn’t possible for me to return to Bombay to the sort of job I had had and the life I have lived” (1672). My mother will not proudly show her face to people back home who never got the opportunity of living in America. Instead, she must accept that this is her life now, and must keep putting one foot in front of the other. Getting out of bed day after day, to work long hours without enough sleep. Never having a good day or week, instead like most unhappy immigrants she bravely faces each day on the calendar like a robot. Santosh explains the outlook of all downtrodden immigrants when he says, “… knowledge that I have a face and have a body, that I must feed this body and clothe this body for a certain number of years. Then it will be over” (1682). What is happening to me, my mother, cousins, aunts, uncles and more of my family members is very normal. It makes no sense, to waste any time feeling sorry for ourselves because we are just one of many!
Often, I hurry off the phone with my mother as she begins to soul search, wondering where it all went wrong in her life. Like Santosh says, my mother, “trie(s) to think of the particular moment in life, the particular action” (1681). Eventually she lays blame on her lack of research about this country before she made the decision to immigrate. She kicks herself for getting on the plane, and rails against my uncle who convinced her to stick it out, when the idea of escaping entered her mind. Like Santosh, she often talks like someone is holding her prisoner here. I recall her sharing that the first night in America she sat on the floor crying alone in a small apartment until it was time to get dressed for work. Not only did she have her own body to feed and clothe, she was also solely responsible for mine.