Modern Lives, Sacred Hills

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A scattered family reunites for the walk to a Hindu shrine

MY BROTHER, RAJ, my filmmaking partner, Tom, and I traverse a staircase that winds its way up seven hills, nine miles, and thousands of steps to the Tirupati Hill Shrine in the state of Andhra Pradesh, in southern India. The air thins and cools as we get higher and higher into the mountains. The stairs are lined with small tea stalls and soda vendors, spiced nuts at mile three. A sadhu is standing in the shade, steely-eyed, staring at us as we pass. His markings tell us his day began with prayer, and the stillness of his eyes tells me I have a lot to learn.

We keep climbing.

The midmorning heat is beating down, sweat pours, and the stairs continue to unfold around every corner. With every step, I reflect on the past six weeks, the past year, and indeed the past 30 years of my life. My mother was diagnosed with cancer last year, and since then my family's world has changed. For the first time in 25 years we find ourselves in India together. As a family. And I find myself somewhere I've never dreamed of, doing something I've never imagined.

In the northern reaches of Saskatchewan in the boreal forest, the land of lakes, there exists a species indigenous to the deep south of India. Traditionally a nonsmoking, nondrinking herbivore, the species upon migration has adopted North American feeding patterns and a potentially lethal obsession with filmmaking. This species is my father.

My name is Anand Ramayya, I am 100 percent South Indian-blooded, but I know absolutely nothing about what it means to be Indian. I was born and raised in Canada and grew up in the rugged but beautiful little town of La Ronge, Saskatchewan. Penumaka Dasarutha Ramayya and Jayalakshmi Presuna are my parents, descendants of a long line of orthodox Hindus with roots in southern India. My dad was a schoolteacher and my mom was a small-town girl when they married in 1965. Soon after, my brother, Raj, was born. The '60s were a time of opportunity for the educated immigrant, so my father and mother moved to Canada and reinvented themselves as Ray and Jaya Ramayya.

Ray has a Ph.D. in educational psychology, and Jaya works at a day care center and sells Avon on the weekends. My father is obsessed with making films, and my mother is equally determined to maintain some sense of normalcy in the household. She's stuck it out with him through three remortgages of the house and many other high-risk film-financing stunts. While my dad has a knack for making things epic and complex, her strength is making things simple.

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