Baba comes back to Dublin, Ohio from his two-week trip to Kolkata on a sunny Saturday afternoon. After hugging his family and taking his suitcases in, he decides to call it a night, exhausted from thirty hours of travel. His daughter is playing with the small, wooden drum he brought back for her when, suddenly, she hears loud, aggressive knocking. She looks out the window to see a man standing there in a t-shirt and cargo shorts, his arms crossed over his chest. He is wearing sunglasses and has a baseball cap pulled over his eyes. She doesn’t recognize him so she decides he’s selling something and thinks nothing of it, but he continues to knock and ring the doorbell until Baba is jostled awake. “Who is that?” he asks.
“A stranger,” she responds, not thinking much of it. The knocking continues, until Baba hesitantly goes downstairs to investigate, then after a second yells up to her, “It’s not a stranger beta, it’s Mr. HOA!”
“Sorry,” Baba says when he opens the door. ‘My daughter didn’t recognize you and I was asleep.”
Mr. HOA scowls at him. His distinctly reedy voice cracks as he tells Baba, “You can’t just leave and let your lawn grow out like that. You’re lucky we didn’t fine you.”
Baba is startled, “Excuse me?” He said, his brain tries to comprehend the fact that this adult man was red-faced and furious about grass.
She uses her drum toy to drown out the voices, not understanding exactly what was happening, but like any eight-year-old, disliking the sound of her Baba getting yelled at. She could tell Mr. HOA was spitting insults, towering over Baba’s slender, 5’6 frame. She wanted to protect him, or yell back. Perhaps if she went down with her calf eyes and looked up at Mr. HOA to ask him, “Why are you yelling at my dad?” Then he would feel ashamed and realize how stupid it is to scream at someone about their grass being a couple inches overgrown.
She peeks out the window again to see Baba bending his exhausted frame over a lawn mower.
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I forget when Mr. HOA’s daughter and I stopped seeing each other. After her dad yelled at my Baba, I put on my roller skates and went to her house to try and make peace, to assure myself that this was between our parents, not us, and that she still liked me. When I rang the doorbell she barely cracked her door open.
“Do you want to play?” I asked.
She cringed and shook her head. “No thanks.” She said, before shutting the door. I received no further explanation. Love thy neighbor is a phrase that can only be applied when thy neighbor keeps a neat and homogenous lawn.
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In our neighborhood handbook, the rules and regulations surrounding private property include those about Exterior Remodeling and Additions, Detached Garages, Air Conditioners, Heat Pumps, Generators, Meters, Radon Mitigation Units, Satellite Dishes, Wires and Cables, Paint and Stain Maintenance Standards, Garage Doors, Roofing Installation and Replacement, Roofing Colors, Shutter Installation, Doors, Storm Doors, Sliding Glass Doors, Rear Entry, Side Entry, Screen Doors, Sidelights, Siding, Trim, Exterior Lighting, Windows, Skylights, Egress Windows, Chimneys, Driveways, Miscellaneous Installations, Awnings, Patios, Decks, Walkways, Detached Structures, Fences, Pools, Playground Equipment, and Yards and Landscaping. Our Homeowner’s Association dues are one hundred and twenty-five dollars. It is as if the world will rot with beauty if we don’t carefully manicure it. What power structure does it uphold? Who decided dandelions were weeds? We pay exorbitant amounts of money to drain the land and form our own little colonies in our backyards.
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The Indigenous people who originally lived on the land on which our neighborhood is now situated include the Shawnee, Mingo, Seneca, Delaware, and Wyandotte tribes. There is, amongst other things, an infamous monument of “Chief Leatherlips” and “Wyandot Elementary School” commemorating them. They are currently displaced in Oklahoma, on a reservation. The distance between Dublin, OH and Wyandotte Nation, OK is 727.4 miles via I-70 W and I-44. Imagine traversing this distance on foot after being forcibly removed from your home. Imagine that generations after you have been forcibly moved and your community has been devastated by disease and famine, they build an elementary school named after your people, as if you went extinct. The settlers who send their children to this school are blissfully oblivious that you are living, usurped, in Oklahoma. My parents were not displaced forcibly. They had the money and means to come here and use the system to their benefit, be upwardly mobile and move into the suburbs as if they were entitled to this land, only to be reminded constantly that they are being scrutinized, and that any misstep means they do not belong.
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A friend I grew up with has only had one run-in with her neighborhood HOA, when her sister was diagnosed with a chronic illness. Her family was overwhelmed by grief and fear, and the hospital bills were piling up. Their HOA is managed by an outside company who does not care about them or view them as people. In neighborhoods like ours, we are boxed in by our identical houses. We live comfortably, but do not know the hopes and desires of the people living a couple feet away from us. There is no sense of solidarity or comfort beyond the confines of our individual homes. Her family received a letter from their HOA telling them they were being fined for going longer than three weeks without mowing their lawn because they were too busy driving to and from the hospital. This fine was actually for being unable to maintain the appearance of happiness and wellbeing. The suburbs don’t care if your sister is sick or if your family is falling apart. This is not the kind of place where tragedies happen.
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A company named Biogreen cuts our grass for us now that Baba is getting too old to do it himself. Two smiling white people grace their website, claiming it is their company, but the man I see that comes and cuts our grass is Latino. He comes with another, younger man that I have decided is his son. I have only spoken to them once, when I was twelve and home alone. They repeatedly rang the doorbell until I opened it and was handed a bill and told to give it to my parents. As I grow older, I continue to watch them from my window as I grow up. I wonder why they came to this country and where home is for them—whether they have a home or feel as if they have no roots like me. I want to speak to them, just to ask them how they are and thank them for doing the work we are unwilling to do, but I feel like oceans separate us. Yet we are all navigating the same maliciously unfamiliar landscapes.
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In June of 1933, the Home Owner’s Loan Corporation (HOLC) was created to refinance mortgages and prevent foreclosures. By 1935, Columbus had created a “residential map” indicating the desirability and level of security for property investments. Type A neighborhoods were the destinations of white flight– new, affluent suburbs on the outskirts of the city. Dublin is a Type A suburb. Meanwhile, Type D neighborhoods were those that contained “foreign-born types,” BIPOC, and other “detrimental influences” on property.
The City of Dublin sees people of color as “detrimental” because we break the illusion of wealth. It’s implied in the way Mr. HOA walks through our yard without asking, scowls at us when we pass, and refuses to invite us to his neighborhood parties. Mr. HOA owns property in a way we cannot, not just because we’re still paying off our mortgage, but because I can’t imagine feeling so comfortable in a space. I wonder if people made to feel like this can truly own a home, if we are perpetually only temporarily occupying spaces. The emphasis on ownership is distinctly American anyway. The dream of a home is powerful– a promise of safety and comfort. I want to be affirmed as someone who belongs.
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The most common irrigated crop in the U.S is turf grass. Almost all of the water used to irrigate it is potable. About 70 million pounds of pesticides are used on American grass every year. Approximately 30% of the drinkable water in America goes to watering lawns. That is approximately four billion gallons of drinking water every day. Predominantly white and wealthy suburbs like Dublin, Ohio utilize excessive amounts of clean water on their lawns, grass that they cut before it can grow to seed, unable to reproduce, but kept in a state of useless green, alive and also dead. Yet this waste of resources is demonstrated while poor, black and Indigenous communities suffer without easy access to clean, drinking water. Flint, Michigan went five years without access to uncontaminated water. The Navajo Water Project’s website states that, “Navajo are 67 times more likely than other Americans to live without running water or a toilet.” Thus, predominantly white and wealthy suburbs, like Dublin, Ohio, prioritize aesthetics over the lives of other people.
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In 2008, a 66-year-old grandfather in Florida was jailed for his brown, overgrown lawn. This is not an uncommon occurrence in Florida, where Homeowner’s Associations act as a governing body. There are countless regulations and special assessments when it comes to owning a house in Florida, where the government website states that “the best defense a homeowner has against their homeowner’s association is to be well informed of their rights and obligations.” The idea that you have to defend yourself against an HOA indicates how insidious of a force it is. This man that was arrested wasn’t a person of color—but he was poor. He barely had enough money to pay his mortgage, ignoring letters from his homeowner’s association while trying to keep himself and his family above water. In the end, kindhearted members of the community who felt his arrest was unfair came together to take care of the lawn and they got the man out of jail, to the relief of his wife and daughter. Absent from this story is any sense of remorse.
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My Baba refuses to tell me what Mr. HOA said to him all those times he came to our house to harass him, nor will he tell me how he felt. He says there’s really nothing to say beyond the fact that our neighbor was aggravated at our presence in his neighborhood and that at some point he accepted it and moved on. This is the way most of my conversations with Baba go. He is short with his answers, just as his father was short with his answers before him.
The lawn marks a gendered division of domestic labor. While women are expected to toil in kitchens and keep the inside of the house tidy, men are expected to take charge of the outdoors. There is a history of the outdoors being advertised as the suburban man’s domicile, where they can escape the burden of their wife and kids and take a quiet hour for themselves. Lawn mowers have historically been marketed towards men and have become a symbol of suburban masculinity that is so ingrained that Lawn Mower Racing is now a motor sport. Is this the reason Mr. HOA wanted to police my father over our ill kept lawn? Did he perceive the refusal to control nature to be a failure of masculinity? A failure to demonstrate his authority as a man by keeping his grass green? Mr. HOA has a vested interest in men who take pride in their property. He put up a Trump sign in both 2016 and 2020, despite my hope that he had changed. The sign didn’t go down after the election or the capital riot.
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Every year, the few South Asian folks in my neighborhood get together to celebrate Diwali, at my Hindu neighbor’s house, the one on the opposite side of Mr. HOA. We have sparklers and those things you throw down onto the pavement so they pop. There is always more food than anyone knows what to do with. We are all from different parts of India and bring something from our region to serve as appetizers. The hosts typically make pani puri, my neighbors across the street bring samosas, and my family brings ghugni. On top of that, we get dinner from the local Indian place and there’s usually a cake from the Middle-Eastern bakery too. We light hundreds of candles– down the driveway and in the windows– we are welcoming Lord Rama home, lighting his way.
Every year, like clockwork, Mr. HOA calls the cops on us, makes us remember this isn’t normal where we are, tells us our joy is a nuisance, even though his annual Fourth of July party is unbearably loud and a hundred times more disruptive. We go back to our quiet houses.
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Ma tells me that there was a period of time she and Baba considered moving to escape Mr. HOA’s harassment. She drafted a letter complaining about him, but she never sent it. Who would she send it to? And where could we go? Another Dublin neighborhood? A different safe, Type A neighborhood in a different city with blue-ribbon public schools that are named after different, exiled Indigenous groups? Her colleague at the insurance company, the same one who tried to convince her to keep a gun, told her that the next time Mr. HOA came around, we should tell him to get off our property before we called the police. I used to frequently imagine this scenario in my head. We call the cops, they come and Baba tells them what’s going on. Every time, instead of arresting Mr. HOA, they arrest Baba. These scenarios have existed at the edge of my consciousness since I was six years old. I was a very melodramatic child, but my melodrama is undeniably rooted in reality, and there is still an inkling at the back of my mind that someday, things will turn irreversibly and irreparably for the worst.
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When the pandemic started, my Dadu, Ma’s father, had a stroke in Kolkata. We couldn’t go to him. Every day while he was hospitalized, Ma and I would drive through the neighborhoods of Dublin for hours, looking at houses on quiet streets. We would mock the ugly McMansions and the people we imagined lived in them, and speculate about my first apartment. We think about home and how it has changed now that we cannot fly back to India whenever we need to. Ma tells me if she had known something like this would happen, she never would have left to come here. It feels like half the protection of home is gone. She has a new dream of home now: she wants to retire in the country, to get a one-story ranch house somewhere quiet. She wants to be surrounded by trees and fields that hide her away from the rest of the world. It will just be her and Baba, and she’ll plant a garden and send me what she grows. She wants to be at peace. She wants to let the grass grow to seed.