Neema Avashia on Childhood in the Kanawha Valley
January 8, 2021
It is 1982, and nine Indian women gather in a circle in a basement in Cross Lanes, West Virginia to celebrate the festival of Navratri. The basement floor is covered with bright blue carpet, the walls lined with brown, faux-wood paneling, and there is a red metal beam in the center of the room where a lighted brass pot called a
garbo and idols of deities typically stand. Women, in sharp contrast to their damp surroundings, who are dressed in their heaviest silk saris and best jewelry: finery brought with them in suitcases that travelled 8,000 miles from India to New York, sometimes by way of Africa or London, and then another 500 from Queens to the Appalachian hills of West Virginia.