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.