My father did irrigation jobs, and I would sometimes accompany him, and that gave me a taste of what was going on in the innards of India.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My father worked in agriculture, and I got to travel round remote rural areas with him and see a bit of the landscape and people.
My dad farmed, my granddad was a farmer. I wanted to be a farmer.
From the time I was a small boy, I remember working in the fields with my grandfather and father. We weren't growing grapes, but we were farming crops, creating something good out of the earth.
I was very fortunate that all my holidays I'd spend with my grandfather, experiencing a much more traditional way of life and listening to these wonderful stories, which I now feel are such an important part of Indian thinking.
I was a good Indian girl, but naughty in that I would often sneak out of the back door and into the garden and go off with my friends when I should have been at home cooking or cleaning.
My mother's family raised grains and crops. My father's grew sugarcane and mangos. So I knew more about the basics of farming than of acting.
Ultimately, my connection to my Indian-ness comes back to my mom and dad. They would all tell me and my siblings stories about their life in India, so it was very close to my two brothers and my sister and I.
And then a great thing in my life was going to India.
My parents had a gardener when I was growing up, and he and I would dig in the dirt together - my mom and dad were definitely not digging with me! When I was 5, he helped me plant some corn in our backyard, and I remember how fascinating it was to watch it grow. Little did I know that 50 years later I'd be growing corn in a different way.
Growing up in Ireland, when my family received important news, good or bad, we would boil water and make tea. It was the first thing I did when my father died in 1984. This ritual allowed me a moment to take in the enormity of what had happened.