On Skin Lighteners

Some say the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice,


I say the darker the flesh then the deeper the roots

 – Tupac Shakur


Thanks to a fellow Indicorps 'fella' who put this in her report.

Dear India,

How do you manage to cram so many people in one country; so many people that there is no concept of private space, that I can’t help but offer my lap to the old grandma determined to fit into an overfilled auto, that even going to take a shit is a social event?How is it that when I’m walking through a sea of peopleI feel so alone? 

Your multiplicities bewilder, amuse, inspire, stimulate, and frustrate me. I am humbled by the resourcefulness and determination of your citizens and feel helpless by the normalization of society’s greatest tragedies: hunger, violence, servitude, the list goes on. How does one robbed of dignity recover it in your arms?

How come I don’t see very much of you in me? When I refer to you in Ukkali, I say “our India”, then correct myself and say “your India”, because I’m not sure I know what ‘my’ India looks like and if it is anything like their India.

When will I stop referring to your people as ‘them’? Can it ever transform to ‘us’?  I’m waiting for the day when I truly internalize the reality that my well-being is tied up in your people’s well-being. My secure safety net prevents me from recognizing the joint struggle. It’s difficult for me to relate because when most of your people slip, there is nothing below to catch them. 

India, in you I hoped to find a part of myself. I don’t think I will find that lost piece of my identity that I so long for, but instead, I am creating pieces to fit into a new puzzle. Why did I think living within your boundaries would hand me all the answers? It seems like I’m asking more questions than ever before.   

“True generosity lies in striving so that these hands – whether of individuals or entire peoples – need be extended less and less in supplication, so that more and more they become human hands which work, and working, transform the world. This lesson and this apprenticeship, however, must come from the oppressed themselves and from those who are truly solidary with them.”

 – Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

Am I solidary with your people, the unjustly oppressed that survive within you? I want to be. I will be. It’s harder than I thought.

Escaping Muscular Humanitarianism

I thought I had begun my fellowship with no expectations, with a clear, open mind, but really, that was not the case. Once I got to my project sight, I realized I had been imagining myself doing Swades* style- muscular humanitarianism**, involving big muscles, big bucks, and big technological and political knowledge. Guess how many of those things I have? None. I did, however, bring a certain sense of determination and ambition, and some very silly subconscious daydreams.

I envisioned myself creating a study group for girls, bringing vocational and art classes to the village, bringing women into the public arena: ‘arre wah!’ I saw myself transforming a small town! I am the hero in my own Bollywood superhit! These subconscious reveries began to break down as I realized how village pace worked. No one would come to my meetings, people already knew about child marriage laws and just chose to ignore them, and even my host mother was a corrupt ex-president of the Gram Panchayat. Despite these deeply troubling issues, the biggest obstacle I felt I faced was housework. Housework, of all things. I hated those two words more than anything. Girls are often restricted in their activities because their mothers need them to do house work. Then I began to actually observe my surroundings, to see that in my own host family’s home, housework was central to every day life. From drinking chai to turning on the TV, the work that women do in the house is essential to every drop of water I drink and every morsel I consume. When I had to bring the water in myself, in a giant pot balanced on my hip, it began to sink in that housework was not just feather dusting the windowsill. It is about survival.

Survivalists! What an epiphany (I hope my sarcasm conveys itself on paper)! People work so they can eat, so they can drink, so they can raise children. I have never had to work this hard for a cup of water. A month and a half in, I still don’t do a fraction of the house work the average village woman does every day.

I wondered if technology could liberate women (i.e. washing machines, dishwashers), I wondered if education would allow women to be seen differently, if higher incomes would gain women the legitimacy they deserved, but deep inside, I know that the only way for women to break the shackles of patriarchy is a change in mentality, and that’s the most difficult change to catalyze. I was blaming housework for women’s limitations because it was easier than attempting to conceptualize and implement solutions for a less tangible culprit. Housework was not my enemy. Really, would a washing machine solve women’s problems? It certainly didn’t serve as a sustainable weapon for battling patriarchy elsewhere.

My sister asked me if my idealism is being ripped to shreds here. I said no, but I had to think about it first. The hesitation comes from the recognition that while I still cling to my idealism, I must modify it to fit with the needs of the community and not my own egotistical, impatient visions for change. Muscular humanitarianism loves the dam that generates clean water, loves the solar panels, and the paved roads, the quick, easy-to-recognize signs of development. But MH is silent in the face of social norms, patriarchy, and invisible oppression. I need to re-design my ideas of change and transform the Swades daydreams to fit with my capabilities, and most importantly, with Ukkali’s reality. As obvious as this conclusion may seem, it took me a while to shed these egotistical vision of change and opt for a subtler, and infinitely more powerful approach to development, in which the development of the self is necessary to occur.

*Swades: We, the people, is a Bollywood film starring Shah Rukh Khan in which an NRI returns to India and ends up building a small hydro-electric plant through his own personal funds and initiative in a small village.

**Note: Muscular humanitarianism is a term used by Political Scientist Anne Orford in her critique of humanitarian military intervention. I am utilizing the term in relation to international service work.

I appreciate

the humility and comfort felt in worship that brings your head literally to the ground.
Beyond that, I don't know what I think about God(s).

"My pencil went to heaven"

I've decided that working with kids is fun. It's probably good to realize that right now just about a week before my job ends. I guess it's easy to feel nostalgic about a tough job when you know you're leaving soon.

It's been challenging, exhausting, exasperating, but in the end, I've enjoyed it. Kids have way more personality than a computer, that's for sure. There are also several reasons why I don't love working with kids in the context that I'm working with them, but let's concentrate on the positive.

Reasons why I love working with kids:

a) i get to read all the kids books i want and feel accomplished because i read about 6 books just during lunch. also i discovered that chocolate chippo hippo is one of the greatest book titles in all of history.
b) three words baby: arts and crafts
c) i feel tall, if only sometimes (there are a few fourth graders taller than me, but who's surprised)?
d) i feel smart, if only sometimes (i relearned how to carry over when subtracting and how to do long division)
e) i get to drink the milk the kids waste. my favorite is strawberry
f) power and control
g) creativity overflows! we made costumes out of cardboard!
h) toilet humor never gets old
i) good stories, good memories, and an idea for what I want to do (and don't want to do) with the rest of my life. (i.e. the title of this blog post is the answer one of my kids gave me when I asked him where his pencil was)
j) almost everything is amusing, fascinating, and exciting.

I realize that I am just a blip in the lives of these kids, but this experience has meant so much to me and contributed a lot to my development this year. It's so weird to think of these kids in 13 years, when they are my age. I wonder how many of them will start a band, pursue art, become activists, entrepreneurs, explorers, scientists, engineers. I wonder how many of them will make it to high school. I wonder how, if at all, I influenced them. I wonder whether or not they will look back on the third grade as a great year, as I do now of both my own third grade year and theirs.

I'll come back to visit.

Identity crises

INDIA INDIA INDIA

that [Indian] elephant in the room

that permanent smudge upon my face

The following essay was written for an application that asked: 

What role does India play in how you define your identity?

The word that seems most fitting to describe the role of India in my identity is omnipresent. India has constantly been a part of my identity and thoughts, with the familiarity of perpetually re-reading a book whose ending I’ve forgotten.  I’m constantly aware of its presence, ambiguous and vague as a shadow in the background of my life, yet, I do not think about IT when I go to the store or catch the bus. 

In many ways, India is an identity that is thrust upon me, with people assuming I was born in that far off land of spices and therefore can speak for all South Asians, and assuming I emit a sort of mystical spirituality involving some flamingo-like pose at the top of a mountain. At the same time, I feel entitled to my status as a minority, as a South Asian, and have, in the past, felt robbed of an experience to which I never had access. 

In the past, I’ve often dreaded India, as a nation, culture, and part of my heritage. When visiting relatives in India, I am instantly put to the test; the “Are you Indian enough?” test, which manifests itself as a friendly (but judgmental) interrogation made up of the following queries:

Do you eat Indian food?

Are you vegetarian?

Will you marry the man of your parents' choosing?

Do you possess knowledge of the great Hindu texts?

While I dread such interrogation sessions, I face the same kind of interrogation in the U.S. (i.e. ‘But seriously, where are you REALLY from?’). I feel restricted by essentialized notions of who and what people expect me to be or become. I still long to claim ownership over my Indian heritage. Yet, I become angry if anyone attempts to deny my Midwestern roots. I feel justified, however, in correcting people when they attempt to essentialize Indian culture, or any culture, in fact. At the same time, I feel qualified to only offer the culture I’ve grown up with and experienced, which is but only a small piece of the puzzle that is India. 

One thing is for sure; I am still negotiating my relationship with India as it has changed, evolved, and metamorphosed throughout my life and will continue to do so into the future.

This oscillation between the spectrum of rejection and reclamation explains, to an extent, how India has played a part in my amorphous identity. The rest of my journey of self-identification requires a negotiation of some middle ground between these two extremes and creating my own hybrid identity through my Indian-American experience.  I hope to begin a reclamation of India on my own terms. 

Flashback attack

Whenever I'm home, I tend to do some major purging of my room, mostly of Clothes I've Had Since Seventh Grade, a process known as Stop Telling Yourself You Can Make Wallets Out of Old Jeans (although I have made dog toys out of them, which proved to be quite unpopular with the only dog in the house). I also indulge in some major naval-gazing by pulling out old school projects and reminiscing about a younger, more innocent, creative, and cute me. In doing so while home last week, I stumbled upon a treasure in the form of a Second Grade Memory Book. The book was in an envelope that said DO NOT OPEN UNTIL 2005, 2015. 2015 was written underneath 2005 in my mom's handwriting. I opened it anyway because the sacredness of 2005 already passed, and typed print usually trumps written.  In the envelope were my most memorable moments of second grade, written and drawn in my own sloppy hand. I learned many things about my 2nd grade experience, like the fact that my drawing skills peaked around that time and have only degenerated since. I also learned about what I wanted to be when I grew up, which is something that interests me because I'm still trying to figure that out. Near the end of the book, however, I found one particularly enlightening passage:

"When I grow up I want to be an illustrator because i love to drawe [silent 'e's are confusing, ok?] and a mom with kids. I will cook lots. And when I'm tired, my husband should take me out to eat, I don't care how tired he is."

At this point, I was reading out loud to my mom, but had to stop because we were laughing so hard. My mom especially found it difficult to keep it together and continued giggling uncontrollably for a good minute. After we laughed ourselves to the point of near-asphyxiation, I read on:

 "And I want to be a basketball player and play all the time."

That's where my passage ended. Damn, how things have changed.

Conclusion: My mother and the Chicago Bulls were my biggest inspirations in the 2nd grade.

Doppelganger

I met my doppelganger* today, and she seems pretty cool.

We stared at each other while we were lining up to get on the bus, but finally she was the one who initiated the conversation.

DG (for doppleganger): Do you know if this bus going to DC?
Me: I think so, but who knows.
DG: I'm confused.
Me: Me too. Let's just wait and see where we end up.
DG: This might seem like a weird question, but are you Bengali? You know, we just have similar, haha, you know, beautiful! features haha...(trails off in embarrassment)
Me (smiling with reassurance): No, but we ARE pretty freakin' beautiful.
(nervous, awkward laughter ensues, strangers stare at us)
(Goddamn, why am I so awkward!?)


The conversation got subsequently less and less painful after we got over the fact that looking at one another felt like looking into a mirror. Another uncanny similarity was that we have the same names, except that hers has -iya attached to the end of hers. Maybe I am Bengali??? Maybe I was adopted and we were separated at birth like Seeta Aur Geeta**?? People always said I looked too dark to be my mother's child. Who am I?


The similarities, however, ended there (as did my identity crisis), as she is Canadian, likes science, and is significantly more fashionable than I am (which is not difficult to do). 


In other news, I made some cards!

This one is for my Gma's birthday!

This is a card I made for an old friend shaped like a red blood cell. For clarification, the card is shaped like a red blood cell, not my friend. I call it Mr. Hemo, short for Mister Hemoglobin. 

You would have thought that I would have gone crazy making valentines during the blizzard, but that did not occur to me, not even once. I even forgot that V-Day existed until I walked into CVS and noticed that part of the store looked like it had been attacked by gallons of Pepto Bismol. Maybe I'll make some valentines in March. February is a short month, not enough time. 

* After writing this post, I looked up Doppelganger on Wikipedia and found out that it is believed to be an omen of death to see one's own doppelganger. I have also been dodging falling sheets of ice all weekend. I am thoroughly freaked out.

** Seeta Aur Geeta is one of my all-time favorite movies. I love love LOVE it, because Geeta is easily the most entertaining, gorgeous, and badass female character in any movie I've seen. Check out my favorite scene here (although it is in Hindi with no subtitles, it is worth your while). Disclaimer: I do not believe in violence as a solution to any problem. But damn, revenge is sweet. 

I'm SNOW over it

But obviously not over the clever little zing dings into which people have been incorporating the word 'snow' and meant to make light of the fact that DC is entering an ice age (SNOW-MG is my fave). My room in my house used to be a balcony, and I am afraid of it falling off of the house, whirling away, becoming buried in a dog park near the capitol somewhere, a la Wizard of Oz. A suggestion by ways of my brilliant friend Lacy makes me think I need to buy a helium tank and millions of balloons as preparation for the next snow storm (UP-style, check out this link it's a movie trailer mashup of Gran Torino and Up). Not to mention emergency flares for when I'm buried underneath 6 ft of snow and dog shit.

Here are some shitty pictures from my phone from Sat evening. I have never seen the city so quiet. I felt like I was Cillian Murphy having just woken up from a coma to a world taken over by flesh eating zombies. 

Imagine trying to dig this out while zombies snap at your ankles and devour your dog. It's time to head for the helicopter pad.

So many potential zombie hiding places.

As you can tell, I've got zombies on the mind. I ordered 28 Weeks Later from Netflix about a month ago and it continues to lay next to my gummi vitamins, daring me to watch it. I keep pulling the DVD out of the sleeve, and then shoving it back in, running away and hyperventilating in the corner of my room with a blanket over my head, only to have the whole cruel cycle repeated again in the next couple of hours. The first time I ordered this movie I returned it without ever watching it, and, now, even though I still lack the courage to watch it, I am unable to swallow my pride and simply return it. It's quite stupid, actually, because I'm losing money keeping this stupid movie for so long. I just get into movies WAY too much and know that if I were to watch 28 weeks later during a snowstorm, I will go crazy and have an urgent need to buy a baseball bat/fling LPs at anything that moves . 

Fridge of fame

Over the holidays, I discovered that some cards I had made received the prestigious honor of hanging on my sister's and Evan bava's fridge.

Looking back, this card seems to be slightly inspired by american apparel. Except the colors would probably manifest themselves in multi-colored stretchy unitards instead. Sparkly ones. Barf. 

The card pictured below is for Evan bava, who works with computers or something.

Yes. I really do. All that heat seems like such a waste. 

Dishoom Dishoom

As a result of watching too many Sylvester Stallone, Jackie Chan, Steven Seagal, and Kannada and Bollywood movies of the 'dishoom dishoom' variety (i.e. a movie entitled "AK 47"), I've come to enjoy horribly acted, zoom in zoom out action movies that is sure to involve explosives, anxiety-producing orchestral scores, and sexy, sexy cars/jungles (although I would rather vomit several times than sit through Rambo 4 again). 

Super human strength, hyper masculinity, racial profiling, and female objectification are usually necessary components of the formula action B movie genre. A robotic body helps too. A die-hard feminist (haha get it?), these movies have always appealed to me, more so because I envisioned myself as the life-saving hero, wondering how the movie would be different if James Bond were a woman. A woman of color to boot. That’s right, I’d kick your ass all the way to next Tuesday, what, with my second degree yellow belt. I took karate for a couple of months in elementary school, but I was scared of my instructor so I stopped. Actually, that’s what I told everyone else. The real reason was that I couldn’t stand doing push-ups.

Inspired by these insipid films, I often created fantasy scenarios where I would be caught in the middle of disaster and, owing to the extensive database of action movie/disaster scenarios in my head, I would always wriggle my way to safety in these fantasies. Happy endings are Hollywood’s specialty, and a sad one certainly makes for a terrible Jean Claude van Dam movie. 

In my scenarios, I purposefully left out the part where Admiring, Leggy, Brooding, Generally Misunderstood Sexy Lady saunters by, and I sweep her away in my gadget-tastic car/robot and we make love on a bed with satin sheets for hours. I didn't think about that much as a kid.  My parents didn't even have "the talk" with me. I just got a book under my pillow, which I think was around 5th grade. At that point, I had a crush on a boy who picked his nose, and the most I fantasized about was him doing a Bollywood song and dance number on my lawn with a couple hundred backup dancers (Sidenote: I need that red dress that Madhuri wears in that video, and I HATE salman).  

Someday I will make a kickass action movie with female stars who aren’t stupid or annoying (it will be nothing like Charlie’s Angels because that movie is the equivalent of a frontal lobotomy, or at least I wish I’d had one before watching it).

P.S. If you haven’t watched Exit Wounds starring DMX and Steven Seagal, you are missing out. Put that shit on your Netflix queue, NOW.

Happy 2010!

Resolutions:
1. Get a job
2. Take care of my body
3. Make gobs of money
4. Spend it all on grapefruit gummy candy and a trip to the moon.