Category Archive

Reasons for not writing:

1. I had to finish college. I am now a college graduate!

2. I had to find a job. I found one for the summer!

3. I couldn’t write. I was too overwhelmed!

4. Swimming back to the island took up the better part of the last two months. This last one is what I’ll be writing about for a bit.

There are many things to say, dear readers, if there are any left. Now that the rest of my life is starting and for a year at least it will not involve being a student, this blog is ready to go. It will probably be strangely sentimental at first, but such is the way of me attempting to process.

Also, does anyone have reccs. for great podcasts? One of my many post-grad life resolutions for now is to get back into podcasts and I’m looking for progressive ones..you know. Or food ones! Or any great story/narrative ones. I feel like the regulars know what I like.

Till tomorrow (yes, tomorrow!)

I was fortunate enough to grow up in a home where crying was nothing that needed to be sheltered - there was no shame in it (although neither of my parents ever seemed to do it). But then you know, I grew up to learn about when it’s “okay to cry” and when crying makes women look weak (turns out, the answer is ‘always’), and when it’s  a matter of pride, a matter of saying “there’s no way I would give you the satisfaction of seeing me so upset” - this latter feeling has turned up in the classroom more times than I’d like to admit.

Then in the fall, I found myself stifling emotions further and further, until my ability to strategically be open with other people became a flawless talent - where I could spend hours counseling and guiding others only to spend the remainder of the evening sitting and doing work while tears leaked out of my face for reasons that are too overwhelming at this point to write about at all, let alone in public. I’m an expert at avoiding my own life and focusing instead on the needs of others. WOC? Could be.

I spent yesterday with a woman who is truly phenomenal, who has lived a life I thought I would only hear about through memoirs and rumors. She’s wise and smart, and stunning. And whenever I see her, I just feel compelled to work out those little issues that aren’t really little at all. That’s how it goes though - she’s a woman who knew my mother before I was born, who has insight on my family I could never conceive of, and has statements to make about my own life that make me feel  blessed and confident about the uncertainty of where it is headed.

Coming home - to my parent’s home - has always been a space where I could curl up and cry - a good cry; the kind of cry that resonates out of your guts, where you can’t see and you can’t breathe and liquids are pouring from your face and every time you try to breathe deep it gives you enough time to rethink all the things that made you cry in the first place, forcing a new surge of heaves and sobs to rise out again. And you think of the people you love and the people you’ve lost and the things you are afraid of, and it keeps going until finally you start to breathe a little normally and brutally rub at your face until it starts to regain feeling and dryness and you sort of…keep going.

That’s really the best way I can describe the good cry. Maybe I’m not the writing type after all.

In any case, I saw this phenomenal woman, and I came home and I finally had a good cry - a cry that had been working it’s way out in short and uneasy spurts throughout the last few months, but had been suppressed for as long as possible.

Also, I really have no problem crying in front of strangers. It’s the people I care about, the people who care about me, that I hate crying in front of.

Yes, that does say quite a lot about me.

Anyway, what a lacking post - but here it is - I’ve written something, and it was about a good cry.

Until next time -  I’m sure the next few months will be filled with things worth ranting about and turning over in my head.

Yes, there is a new look - I was getting tired of looking at a dark screen, and even though I loved the template I had before, I needed a change. I won’t admit how long it took me to settle on this and even though it looks different, and makes my words look more naked than they already are, I’ll keep it. If you’re a wordpress user and have suggestions for other templates, let me know - I’m always open to aesthetic suggestions.

Also, yeah, I definitely haven’t written a lot in the last three weeks - but that’s how it goes, isn’t it? When you have the time to blog, you don’t necessarily want to blog at all - and when you’re swamped with work, that’s when you’re itching to put it all down on virtual paper.

In any case, I’m headed towards my last semester of college; there are too many feelings associated with this that aren’t worth writing about because such is the nature of change, and transition. I’m in the process of looking for a job - offers, links, connections and words of wisdom are of course, most welcome.

What I have been doing for the last three weeks is reading - I check my feed about five times a day and I’m loving the opportunity I have to check the blogs I love, read the news frequently, and think about politics a little bit more. This blog is political but not about politics, however, which means I don’t really feel ready to blog about Bhutto or the U.S. primaries or Obama vs. Hillary. I feel fine about this - there are bloggers who are writing about these things and they have been doing it longer and do it better than I ever could.

I’ve also been making my way through The Wire. What a fantastically well-written show.

This post was written mostly to dip my toes back into the blogging waters - but I’ve been turning a lot of things over in my head, so I will be writing steadily over the next couple of days.

In the last month, I have:

1. figured out that I don’t want to get my phd in English. Right now at least. I don’t want to be a professor and pursue a life in academia - not because I think I couldn’t do it, but because right now I feel there are other things I could do that I might love just as much; not because I think it would be too hard, but because there are certain sacrifices I don’t feel I would be willing to make. There are other careers, other jobs, other opportunities, that I want to pursue. Getting a master’s in Public Policy, for instance..

2. Found that public policy is something I could really enjoy. I still have yet to figure out in what capacity - but in the last three years I’ve done a lot of student organizing and mentoring and managerial work and I’ve come to realize that I really enjoy those things. I really love writing and editing and researching - so maybe my road to finding a working life that I would enjoy means finding internships for publications I admire, programs I encourage, organizations that need help. Then in the future, maybe I will go to graduate school. I’m ready to find work opportunities that work for me.

3. Realized that I don’t want to study abroad after I graduate. It isn’t for me. I feel fine about that. There is other work that I want to do that I feel more excited about.

4. had to come to terms with the fact that every time something wonderful like this comes along (nominate someone you know!), there is going to be something horrible and offensive like this that more people know about - for every semi-forward step that is taken by large companies to attempt to do some good and allow the public easy access to “social change,” there is something that makes me want to vomit because it is too ironic and too unbelievable and appropriating.

5. Had to accept that the blog posts are just going to be slow from now on. There are times I want to write, but I am too tired, times I want to yell and scream but too flustered to type. Some of the reasons are excuses and some of the reasons are just things that happen in life that force you to re prioritize sleep and well-being and academics over writing. Rest assured the posts will continue, and rest assured they are going to get back into commentary about the elections and the United States and about the news and the media.

I’ve spent the last two weeks in a haze of semi-panic. It put me on pause with my blog, it put me on a track where it was all I could do to get some work done and try to sleep for 4 of the 8 hours I was in bed. These things happen. The proverbial pity party is over.

I took a wonderful trip to Santa Barbara to visit a friend, my best friend in fact, who is just settling into her life in graduate school. It was a wonderful trip that made me arrive back to work with full-fledged pro-activity. So here are a few things that I am thinking about.

1. I got intimidated by the pressure to write serious posts all the time about important and serious issues that directly relate to race and gender. This is a problem because it means I never write. So I’m going to try harder to follow my instincts with my writing as I did when this blog first began, and write about things that I genuinely am thinking about - my life after graduation, my family, my insecurities, articles and issues that infuriate me, and books that I’m reading.

2. I am going to graduate school, but it will not be for at least a year after I graduate. And it might be two years. And in those years I am going to do other things that I think I might like. I’m reading lots of websites and books (and am always appreciative of suggestions) about whether pursuing a career in academia (in English..postcolonial lit/victorian lit/food studies/womens studies) is worth it. Also lots of books about other jobs I might be interested in. Turns out, I don’t think I would like to be a newspaper reporter. But I think I might like editing. Or working for a progressive or some liberal publication.

3. I am going through a period right now where I am extremely insecure about my body, my weight, and am struggling to prioritize my health (eating, exercise) at all, let alone first. This is a hard thing to do. It is also an entirely separate post.

4. I’m reading this book by this guy, Robert Sutton, called The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t; I am not even halfway through it, but it is interesting because it is exactly what the title suggests.

5. I really like academics. And learning. It’s a really overwhelmingly privileged position to be in and I think everyday I’m figuring out the best ways to use these privileges in a way that is beneficial and empowering for myself and others around me.

6. My parents are really really amazing people - they are the most important people in my life. I’m really proud of them.

I know the waves of insecurity and panic and fear and inadequacy will continue on and on, and instead of letting those waves topple me over into the sand, I have to learn to hop a little right before the wave hits.

I need a break from blogging - something happened yesterday that made me so turned off from writing in this thing. I think it might be stress - I’m approaching the end of a semester and I’m starting to feel so overwhelmed that everytime I look at this thing, I panic.

I will be in Chicago for the Kriti Festival - South Asian women’s writing/diaspora literature. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Until May…

I have been away from my blogging for too long - there was and continues to be so much to say about my trip to India that I was paralyzed at the thought of having to articulate the experience here. I am contemplating a new blog that is specifically about the things that I learned there regarding my family and family history. It is still in its imaginating process so there are no links to reveal.

I slowly made my way through Sen’s The Argumentative Indian (alas, I never finished it and with a new term coming up, I think it might be a few months before I can pick it up again) which I highly recommend.  I was reminded of my upbringing as a Hindu and the Hindu philosophy that stems particularly from the Mahabharata: doing your work.

Here I was all this time wondering why I felt so drawn into Audre Lorde’s words about “doing one’s work”. I’m doing my work, are you doing yours. And in going back to visit my grandparents I was reminded that this way of living is practically hereditary, particularly among the women, in my family. When my grandmother speaks about her arranged marriage (this is a topic I will address in detail in a later post), her remaining in the relationship for over 50 years, she always ends with “but..you have to do your work”. Sometimes this becomes intertwined with “you have to do your duty”. A part of me felt so helpless and suffocated by the concept while I was there - at one point I screamed something about using this phrase as an excuse to not resist the things that oppress us as individuals, as women, as women of color. It took less than a breath to be called out and be reminded that doing one’s work, and sometimes even doing one’s duty, does not remove our agency, and often becomes our outlet to the most resistance we can ever claim to have.

I feel very lonely here, here in the states and here in this small college. I keep writing off the waves of nostalgia and homesickness as an ephemeral phase…but I’m not quite sure if that’s the case. We shall see.

Consistent writing has returned! Hello 2007.

Thought I needed to put this up on my way out the door because it was just too good.

“Don’t you like her blue dress, Mama?”

I had to admit, I did.

She thought about this. “Then don’t you like her face?”

“Her
face is all right,” I said, noncommittally, though I’m not thrilled to
have my Japanese-Jewish child in thrall to those Aryan features. (And
what the heck are those blue things covering her ears?) “It’s just,
honey, Cinderella doesn’t really do anything.” read the whole story here