Dev Trivedi didn’t accept free pizza. It didn’t matter to him that at the tender age of 10, the only thing more exciting to me than “food” was “free food”. Nope, my dad didn’t care that we had already waited 20 minutes and were starving, and it certainly didn’t upset him that the kind folks at Pizza Hut had made our first pizza wrong, which would force us to wait another 20 minutes for the correct pizza. Or that I was starving. Did I mention I was starving? Cuz I was. (And I’m pretty sure I reminded him every five minutes.) Nope, Dev Trivedi never accepted free pizza, and after he turned away a delicious, incorrectly made pepperoni and sausage deep dish, after I had a little cry in the bathroom and held myself for a while, I asked him why. My dad informed me that the pizza people had made a mistake, it was not their fault, and he refused to benefit off of someone else’s mistake. He told them to feed the incorrect pizza to staff and that we would wait patiently for the correct pizza. At the time, this infuriated me. Nothing was more sacred to me than free food! But over the years, I’ve come to realize that is just my dad. So why this trip down gastronomic memory lane with Leena on this fine Gastro Friday? After a very long and difficult battle, my father has earned the right to be called mayor of my hometown. Now, I am not a very sentimental person. I mean, you won’t see me crying at laundry soap commercials unless someone threw away delicious food. But I am so proud of my dad and all he has been through, I thought it was time the man deserved some props. Sure, he denied me the right to a free pizza, but he wasn’t against free pizza. If free pizza were given to him out of the kindness of someone’s heart, he would take it. He just never wants to take advantage of someone else’s misfortune, no matter how small or big. They really don’t make them like this anymore, folks. My father grew up in Gujarat, India in the 50s and 60s. When he was only twelve, his father, a cotton farmer, passed away from a heart attack, leaving my grandmother to care for him and his four brothers. He came to the U.S. in the late 60s, where he discovered the joys of meat eating and met his first gay man (he was in San Fran). He studied hard to become a forensics scientist specializing in drugs, and eventually met my mother in Chicago, where he bugged her endlessly for a date until she gave in. He has worked as a forensics scientist and later assistant lab director for the Illinois State Police for more than thirty years. During that time, he served on my grade school school board, and later ran for alderman of the ward we lived in, a position he held for 14 years. He became known for personal contact with the citizens in his ward. If ever there were a problem, Dev Trivedi handled it personally to ensure happiness within the city government and among the citizens. He even used to go around to all the grade schools and give anti-drug talks with a giant suitcase filled with fake drugs–that was my dad! My dad has always been a very happy and loving man, but nothing made him more happy than following the law. Almost to the point of driving me insane. See, when I was in high school and would get a speeding ticket, he didn’t feel paying off a ticket was punishment enough for me. He would ground me 2 days for every mile over the speed limit. When I got my second ticket, the cop thought I was crying because of the ticket. I was really just upset that I would be grounded for another three months! As much as my father loves to help people, the obstacles in his life have sometimes prevented him from doing so. First off, he was an Indian man who married a white woman in the 1970s. Not only did he have family issues on both sides, but within society as well. In the late ninties, he suffered a heart attack and had to have two triple bypass surgeries, which gave my entire family a big scare. It was the same type of heart attack that killed his father when he was only twelve. In addition to that, he has faced opposition to him participating within city government, and not just the typical competitiveness. I’m talking racist hate mail telling him to go back to his country. I’m talking anonymous messages on the answering machine in the same vain, Internet message boards with racial slurs from citizens..it has gotten so bad that opponents have had state-wide, federal and national investigations brought up against him to try to find a way to get rid of him. Even though my father has been a legal citizen of this country for over thirty years, INS investigations have been brought up against him (nothing negative was ever found during these investigations). But never a negative word about his opponents was uttered from his lips. He never compromised his own character to put down the people who were trying to put him down. And this has killed me on the inside. For one, he is my father, and I understand how hard he has worked and how much he loves helping people. On the other hand, I have also endured racism in this same hometown and on many different levels, so in a sense, I feel protective over him as well. Even though he has probably been dealing with racism since long before I was born, it still hurts to know what it feels like to have it directed at you. And in the face of the issues our country is currently facing, like legalizing gay marriage and finishing off this war on terror, it is just unfathomable that racists still exist to me. It really is. It’s like, didn’t we get over that in the 90s? Or is this leftover from September 11th, when we decided as a country to hate any brown person that remotely resembled the plane hijackers? But as much as it hurts, I know this is not my battle. My father really understands that obstacles are just there to make you show how bad you want something. After his heart attack and surgeries, he became a strict vegetarian again, and started working out on a regular basis so he wouldn’t meet the same fate as his father. In politics, he has simply carried on, ignoring the nay sayers and doing whatever he could to help out others. During his mayoral campaign, he walked door to door, speaking to as many citizens as he could, sometimes for as long as nine hours a day. He ended up winning by a few votes, but then had to wait a few more weeks while they counted the absentee ballots. This past Tuesday, we found out that my father had finally won the position of mayor, by a very slim margin. And it probably still isn’t over. It is very likely his slim win will be challenged, a recount will be demanded, and lawyers will need to be hired. But we refuse to let that soil the victory that has been achieved. Sometimes, it feels impossible to me that a man like my father could even been in politics as long as he has. I mean, the man won’t even take a free pizza! But then I realize that is how he has survived so long. He never changes who he is for anyone else, and who he is is the most honest, dependable, caring, committed, helpful person you will ever want to meet. This man who taught me the valued of a denied free pizza has shown me again and again that if you really believe, if you really never give up, you can’t help but succeed. Congratulations, Dad. ~LTG!
