Nearly three decades ago, a friend excitedly called to tell me our fellow Assamese American, Jhuma, had gotten engaged…to an astronaut.
“Is he Assamese?” I asked.
“How many Assamese astronauts do you know?”
Good point. None. Like many of us second-generation Assamese born and raised on U.S. shores, hers would be a blended marriage and, eventually, family.
On Friday, Aug. 1 at 11:43 a.m., Mike Fincke soared into space as a member of NASA’s Crew-11 on a six- to eight-month mission. He is the husband of Renita Saikia, my lifelong friend I’ve only ever called Jhuma.
This week, I joined a few dozen of their family and friends at the Kennedy Space Center to wish Mike well. We began with a “wave across” staged in a parking lot, a rope separating the four quarantined astronauts from loved ones, allowing us to say goodbye and good luck at a safe distance. We ended with the actual launch, the second attempt to send the SpaceX Dragon up after clouds and the threat of lightning thwarted the first try. In between were parties, photo opps, tours of space facilities, impromptu lunches and dinners and late-night gatherings among disparate friend groups suddenly united.
We infused these time-honored space traditions, though, with some of our own. Months ago, when Renita extended this precious invitation that comes with behind-the-scenes access to Kennedy Space Center, the astronauts and the rocket launch itself, she did so not only because she’s known me my whole life. Renita’s father, Rupesh Saikia, emigrated from Assam in the 1960s, among the earliest pioneers of our tiny Indian community on U.S. shores. He married Monju Aunty in 1966 and eventually settled in New Jersey, then Huntsville, Alabama. By the time my own father arrived, in 1971, families like these helped the newer sets navigate America, from foods and customs to bank transactions and mortgages. When my mom was pregnant with me, Renita’s mother helped throw a baby shower combined with the Assamese ritual of panchamrit, blessings for the mother and child. As a child, I remember Renita coming over to color and play games with me and the long drives we’d take to go meet her family.
“I want you to be the Assamese rep,” Renita told me. “The community has been so important for Mike and me…keeping some Assamese flavor in the mix would be so great.”
And so I write these words, mission accomplished, with a sense of that obligation. It’s really cool to attend a space launch, and I was aware of the privilege and once-in-a-lifetime nature of what I was experiencing. But at each and every event, I also felt an enormous responsibility to the many identities Mike and Renita straddle and inherit, and the one I happen to share.
The Assamese infusion
“Do you know how to make that noise?” my friend Seebany Datta-Barua, another Assamese American at the launch, asked at the wave across.
She was talking about uruli, the Assamese tradition of making a high-pitched sound by moving the tongue back and forth. We do this at weddings, festivals, moments of joy – and departures.
“I don’t but I can try,” I responded. And so we did. (It sounds like this.)
Mike instantly responded by smiling, in recognition, bowing his head and clasping his hands into a namaskar. My husband and I, Seebany and her daughter also had very American signs spelling out “M–I–K–E,” but on the backside of one, Seebany had written, in Assamese, “Mike, infinite blessings to you!”
We planned our outfits to include elements of Assamese flair. On the day of a pre-launch celebration, we wore mekhela chadors, the signature two-piece Assamese garment. I hesitated, especially in Florida’s 100-degree humidity, but my husband assured me the designs of the japi, an Assamese ornamental hat made of cane or bamboo, resembled flying saucers. Sold.
We took NASA’s life-size cardboard cutouts of Mike and adorned him in the ceremonial gamosa, a red-and-white cloth that we simultaneously use as towel, altar covering, offering and assertion of our identity. This mission marks Mike’s fourth journey to space, and he has taken the gamosa up before as one of his sentimental items. Sure enough, a NASA livestream commentator detailed why in the moments before he boarded the spacecraft:
Mike Fincke’s embrace of our people
As Mike has learned, and my own husband too, to marry an Assamese, at least a certain type of Assamese, is to enter a community that is so unique and tight-knit, where everyone knows everyone else due to the smallness of our diasporic population, a complex collective that teeters between parochial and progressive. Because so few people know where we come from, we quickly learn how to define ourselves and how to fit in. Being Assamese, I maintain, allows us to traverse lands, languages and cultures because there’s a universality in being unknown.
Except for the years he’s been in space or quarantine, I see Mike at least once a year at our annual Assam Conventions. He and Renita make it a point to fly or drive from their home outside Houston, three children in tow, as a way of keeping tradition alive. My family feels similarly, and our children have often choreographed and danced the folk dance known as Bihu together.
In the years, he can’t physically join, Mike still makes an appearance. In 2004, he called in from space — projected onto a screen in the hotel ballroom in Austin, Texas — to wish everyone well and perform a Bihu dance. Check out this clip that went viral in our communities across the world:
When the cameras aren’t rolling, though, I can attest to Mike’s sense of respect for our culture and people. I see it in how he treats his in-laws and elderly people like my parents. I see it in how he springs into action when my own daughter, who attends college in Houston, gets stranded after a flight cancellation and he does not hesitate to go collect her from the airport–at 2 a.m.
These are the stories of selflessness, immigrant solidarity, of community building, that many of us grew up with — but have waned in recent years. Some of it is understandable and more pragmatic (a taxi is a perfectly reasonable option from the airport) as our tiny Assamese population grows. But once upon a time, if you found a Kalita or Saikia in the phone book, chances were high that you would call as strangers and emerge as friends.
In the decades I have known Mike and Renita, who — it’s worth noting —also works for NASA, the behaviors I describe of immigrants are also traits I have come to associate with astronauts. I was reminded of it this week as the escorts NASA assigned to be with the families of the crew are astronauts themselves, in the unique position of knowing exactly the high stakes and high pressure and many emotions of a launch. I watched them carry suitcases, drive loved ones to and fro, roll wheelchairs, soothe fears, cook comfort food, answer lay questions. The flat hierarchy and sense of service are remarkable and challenge the oft-held notion in Corporate America that the smartest people in the room aren’t always the most compassionate. Here, intellect and humanity are equal and necessary ingredients for success. I emerged this week with a new appreciation for space travel as a means of understanding what it means to be human.
Perhaps that study of said humans attracts the best humans in the process because their examination actually begins with themselves and their daily actions.
So how many Assamese astronauts do you know? I know a guy who comes pretty close.
S. Mitra Kalita is a veteran journalist, author and commentator. She is the CEO of URL Media and publisher of Epicenter NYC.
