India Center: A year from now (Rekha Valliappan)

 "A year from now, you will wish you had started today" - Karen Lamb

"Our white frame house, with a storey and half-storey above the basement stood at the east end of what I might call the farmyard with the windmill close by the kitchen door." Willa Cather in "My Antonia"

A few months ago I found myself rummaging through a chest of drawers and discovered what to me seemed like a "treasure" - an old bound edition of Better Homes & Gardens featuring older Homes from the 1930s to 1945 or so, including one from July 1928. I was thrilled. Older dust jackets did that to me - the colors, the feel, the print, even the smell. Here were charmingly quaint mostly white two-storey frame structures, small, sturdy and practically built "homes" for comfort and use, some with granny porches, which I later discovered became out-dated after the war years.

IALI's "India Center" - 92 East Old Country Road, wedged between Charles Street to its right and a row of houses to its left, plunged me right back into that protean era. I had first discovered images of this house on my computer screen, one blustery fall day, nine months ago to be exact, on a popular Long Island Homes website. Here was this neat, all-white, straight-lines single standing structure, free of most appurtenances one typically finds in homes of all kinds, staring back at me. Well, yes, there were some additions, the white railings for example, the red-bricked front yard, the "retro-mod" fixtures, which did take away somewhat from the overall complete older character of the original as I imagined it must have stood then, all those 75 years ago, in that very same spot. I was enthralled and blithely taken in.

With this, IALI's long envisioned my-cup-runneth-over gargantuan moment arrived. It was overwhelming, this pivotal moment - the very apex of our longevity - a "home" to call your very own, as our serialized version of IALI history relates. This after all was to be the abode of your social, cultural, recreational, communal and educational life, the epicenter or "eye" of our oriental identity. Long journey, long tale, told and re-told with embellishments. So now, indigenous excitement gripping, here we were, into the solid framework of this worthy building, indolently carrying perhaps some of those vestiges of our "founding" years - the eclectic "Me Decade" of the '70s  - Thomas Wolfe and others. It had to be "the best of times" - Charles Dickens.

I think I digress, but lucid "dreaming" it is archived got us going to where we stand today, some 4 decades ago, when "IALI's Founding Fathers", as portrayed, started the India Association of Long Island (IALI) from seed, in Central Islip, Suffolk County, its renowned birthplace. Those were the good old days of the "turbulent '70s" rife with counterculture and the continuum of protests antiwar and otherwise. A trite comment would be of lucidity delivering many innocuous interpretations. This it did. 2 developing groups at this time were expanding many of America's social rights and proclivities - women's groups and freshly arriving families particularly those from the Indian sub-continent. America was awash with cultural movements. The "interpretation" in flux would have emerged of Indian arts and crafts with all its varied richness and flaming heritage exhibiting au naturel its diverse, timeless, ancient, multi-ethnic, multilingual and pluralistic culture in synthesis with the American way of life - our "American Dream" epitomized.

A zillion questions tumbled erratically through my mind. But where does one go from here? What is our touchstone to be? How does one vault over popular pedagogy amplifying with equanimity the intrinsic value of our motherland's past ages versus obfuscating with impunity the India of our present, oftentimes patronizingly, to one of having built this world wonder icon to "Love" - the incredibly beautiful  multi-colored marble Taj Mahal? How robustly would the immeasurable measure of "Our Dream - Your Dream" too - IALI's "92 East Old Country Road" - this diminutive structure do for the communities of greater Long Island what had been imagined since 4 decades ago? Which would be the greater sentiment to prevail - the pervasive "now moment" of resting on one's laurels for having attained an unachievable feat or the persuasive "then one" of out-flexing one's laurels for having adapted to changing trends? What manner of remarkable milestone had we arrived at? What manner of extraordinary cross-roads were we looking to reach a year from now and beyond?

But I am going astray again. So, coming back to my story, here we found ourselves in that remarkable winter of 2014, into 2015, standing literally on the threshold of IALI's new home - "INDIA CENTER", taking stock of a relatively small, neat looking edifice, appropriately fashioned with red gabled roof, overhanging eaves, handicap-ramp, support front pillars, small porch under the main roof overhang, nicely buttressed, my Better Homes & Gardens circa 1940 personified, finally acquired, hopefully to fulfill for the long haul, IALI's showcase of India's culture  - fabrics, tiles, ceramics, metalwork, furniture, painting, sculpture, stained glass, woodwork, leatherwork, embroidery, jewelry, enameling, pottery, literature, history, poetry, food, festivals, music, dance - to our adopted country the USA.

"Where Do We Go From Here"? Martin Luther King once famously spoke in a completely different context, also decades ago. It was said then in order to answer that one must first honestly recognize where one is now, to be able to say with some fortitude "This is where we are." This is "Where the bright gleam, Of our bright star is cast" James Weldon Johnson. Yes indeed, endless possibilities, bemusing too.

Rekha Valliappan is currently Two Term Secretary of the India Association of Long Island (IALI); writer and blogger;