meet lucy

my new girl.

she woke me up this morning to go run amok in our backyard. we paid tribute to old Caesar by his cherry tree.

she's 6 months old. we found her at our local jersey mall. amid all the last minute holiday shoppers, we were brave enough to weather the storm and rescue her.

she's worth every Bergen County penny.

already the similarities are striking. Dad, the old curmudgeon, threatened to throw her out if I ever left her home...but then he admitted that she kind of looks like me. sad eyes. a nose that hold a thousand histories, that searches high and low for meaning.

she is afraid of doorways. but once she gets out she lets loose....loosey goosey. timid and brave all at once.

the similarities are striking.

mom calls her lucy locket. i call her lucy mol. meer calls her loosy goosey.

my grandmother, dad's mom used to have a dog, a stray named Pandu. nevermind the irony of naming a dog after a satyr who was cursed by a blind old man for killing his blind old wife. A fallen arrow: Pandu would never be able to consummate his love for his wife, lest he would die. My Achamma's Pandu probably consummated once and again, many times over, the tramp he was...but he was loved by her, unconditionally.

Caesar was another story: mischievous, sloppy, full of love. Would steal Dave's socks everytime he came over, begging Dave to chase him, simulataneously jealous and in love with this new man in our household. Meer would pull his tail, nearly dislocate his shoulders when both he and she were young pups....they grew up together. first she was bigger than he, then he bigger than she and finally she towered, winning by several margins.

Lucy hasn't met Dave yet. She and I will cruise through the next six months as single ladies, taking the towns of New Haven, Park Ridge and Philadelphia into our own hands. And then we'll have to let him into our lives, our space. It will be different...

I can't wait.

the Awakening

Old Frimi Sagan once wrote on the board, in neat cursive: "Rites du Paysage."

At 14, I knew enough French to translate literally: "Rites of Passage." And while I could abstract on some adolescent level, the phrase remained distant, hidden.

My beloved English teacher, round and gray, puttered around in her long cotton dresses, waxed poetically about her grandchildren who loved to run around naked. She baked cookies for our class, and we nibbled delicately while deconstructing the sexual awakening of our adolescent protagonists, whether Odysseus or Maya Angelou.

She excited us, inspired us, made us aware: that this was not the end, and greater things loomed ahead. At that time in our lives, this was a fairly new concept.

It was a time when feelings became more real: the fluttering belly at first glance, the fluttering a little further south when you jump-roped or bounced on the trampoline. Feelings you simultaneously never wanted to stop, and desparately wanted to end. Feelings you just could not exhaust.

Fortunately, I could never act on these feelings: I was too self-conscious and awkward. In life I sought invisibility, I silenced and sliced my body so that no-one would see. In dream I sought flesh and bone. Not in high school, not in college, not until I met the man who would become my husband. Any attempts prior to that were known to lack promise, self-sabotaged from the get go: like the time I invited my fellow student learning center tutor out to coffee. Failed once because I didn't have his email address...and even when when Sheela and I printed out my note and left it in his work mailbox, I knew it would never fruition, I knew he already had another girlfriend. Sheela, my girl, my love, you helped me explore, in more ways than one and I thank you...but it suppose I would not be ready until I graduated. Another rite of passage.

Rites of passage: this is what I think about as I sit in my childhood home, watching old home movies and imagining what is about to transpire within the next six months. I sit precariously, uneasily wedged between fear and excitement. I wake up, sit with my parents sipping tea or coffee, watch them age. One minute I cannot wait to start my life with this person I love, and the next I am frightened of leaving behind and creating a new. I am afraid of those who will leave me and whom I will leave, afraid of rites of passage that dictate finality, mortality. The reason why warm wells pool in my sunken eyes everytime I watch Beaches or horrible holiday movies like the Family Stone.

My family, the only people I have in this world. And I will soon leave them in a way I have never left them before.

A rite, a passage.

the miseducation of me, tea-chi

I would rather watch E!'s 100 most starlicious makeovers than Jim Lehrer.

Dave and I often fight over the remote control, because he'd rather watch Fox News so that he can scoff and grumble at conservative ideals, and I'd rather find out who paid for Linda Tripp's nose job.

I usually win.

I try to keep myself informed. I have the New York Times as my home page...although more often than not my eyes will find itself on the book reviews or the entertainment section. I listen to NPR on the radio...sometimes. Or at least I listen to wfuv, Fordham University's station that streamlines NPR headlines, thank you Karl Castle, whomever you are...and then plays my beloved cracker music, a hoaky mix of bluegrass, folk and jazz.

Here is why I think not watching PBS keeps you more informed:

1. E!'s 100 most starlicious moments is what the rest of America is watching. That and Fox News. And if you never watched either of these channels, you would never get to see the latest propaganda piece put out by our commander in chief...or at least one of his cronies: a war video game put out by the United States Army, the only one of its kind. Now I am all about supporting our troops, mostly because I feel sorry for these KIDS who join the army because they think it is one giant cyberspace party. Blechhhhh. Remember, I can't be patronizing...only matronizing.

2. E!'s most starlicious makeovers let you know the extremes celebrities will go through to keep themselves *marketable.* Marketable: a term that was often tossed around in jest, but often taken to heart, at my home, as in your skin tone is marketable, but your nose is not. Little girls watch these figureless figures and say hey I want to look like that. I was one of those little girls, until I woke up and actually LOOKED in the mirror. I have grown to love my large sunken eyes, long lashes, thick eyebrows (even with they are approaching unibrow status), full lips...and, yes large nose! Hence the previous entry. I love my flat chest and big bum. Every bony and fleshy ounce of it.

3. The History Channel-- ok not quite E!, but definitely no where near PBS status. It's definitely more pop tart, than melba toast. I don't know what that means. But I can sit for hours watching the mini bios of all our presidents past and present. Especially when they highlight the scandals.

4. Back to E! Old SNL reruns remind you of events past, in a purely different context...and let you take in the glorious Lauryn Hill, a goddess if I've ever known one. Long live satire, which I will take any day because gosh darnit sometimes you just have to laugh at the nonsense. And long live Lauryn Hill. She reminds you that some guys, some guys are only...about. That thing. That thing. That Thi-i-ing. Come on girls sing it.

So here it is the miseducation of me, tea-chi.

nose and knees

knees and nose.

I don' remember much from books I've read, but this image in Midnight's Children stands out: prostration + one giant nose= nosebleed.

nose and knees.

Every few months I wind up with a scraped up, banged up knee. It usually happens when I am running, trail or concrete, and I zone out as I am wont to do when running, driving, walking or just existing, silently. I sail over a rock or a crack or my own feet before finding myself on my knees, prostrating to mother earth below.

Two days ago it happened in front of Harkness Dorms, whilst juggling my lunch, consent forms and tape recorder. Boom. Right on the sidewalk by the children's playground. No children were there to help, and the one medical student who was walking towards the dorm didn't even look my way. No matter, I was fully capable of hobbling towards clinic where I was headed anyway, sneaking into the phlebtomy room when no-one was in there and wiping my wounds clean with some alcohol swabs. The wound hissed as I sucked in my breath.

Never mind the $30 pair of Banana Republic pants I had neatly ripped, one horizontal line dividing my thigh from my leg. Never mind that they were on sale. Never mind that I walked around the rest of the day with a giant hole in my pant leg and a teenage mutant ninja turtle bandaid in the middle.

Knees and nose.

I have another badge of honor, more permanent than the scars on my knees. And that is my enormous ancient nose. This is what I inherited from my father's clan, from the house of the Cheruvattaths: large, broad, hooked when viewing the profile. Smooth at the distal end, slightly kinked more proximally just below the thick browline. It is a nose that bears witness to many histories, holds deep within its muscular nostils many secrets. I was looking at some old pictures today, my father and my younger self, the noses the one and the same, the silence the one and the same, the temperment...no longer the same. My nose flares like his when I am filled with rage, but I have yet to see his swell, blush and melt when sorrowful. Even when his mother died, I did not see the nose transform. While at night I heard him call her name in sleep, his nose never disclosed in wake.

In time, I may find I have inherited his limp, given my predisposition. But for now, I am the proud bearer of his nose, secrets and all.

Knees and nose. Nose and knees.

the Golden Ticket

On a filofax looseleaf "shopping list" I wrote the following, in neat, carrot topped script:

To Whom it May Concern:
I had placed the enclosed parking voucher on my dashboard on December 1st, 2005. I mistakenly scratched November, thinking that it was Nov 30th instead of Dec 1st.

I am enclosing a check nonetheless. But if you would be so kind to return it or VOID the check given the circumstances, I would be grateful.

Sincerely,
TV


I've had my fair share of parking violations. But this one rotted. I mean, technically I had a 12 hour parking voucher and I parked in a 2 hour zone...for less than 2 hours! Because I couldn't dig around for enough damn quarters. I jiggled my jacket, felt up my own bum, stuck my head, arm and leg into my backpack...all for naught. Some of you have seen me do this when I search for my keys. It gets really interesting when I wear my black coat with the ripped pockets- then I really dig through the seams.

So I had to use a 12 hour voucher in a 2 hour zone. Hence the ghetto fabulous letter. Kind of like my letter of leave of absence to Einstein that I brilliantly fleshed out on looseleaf, a regular sized 8 x 6, instead of my present 2 x 4.

Anyway, I had wanted to talk about World AIDS Day, but couldn't muster up the courage on that particular day... I was too entrenched. A day of rememberance: the New Haven Green was aglow with paper bag lights lining the walkways. I hate these public days, dedicated to a disease that ravages lives and communities 364 other days in the year. But I suppose if we have to be reminded...the New York Times uses the week to publish more insightful articles about the epidemic....a particularly sad, not particularly well written piece on India, prostitution and the truckers/migrants "who bring the disease back to their wives."

Why do I get so worked up about this particular illness? I can't tell you. Maybe because it still is, and will continue to be, a disease of the marginalized, the disenfranchised. Maybe because there are layers and layers of stigma that need to be peeled in order for us to create any progressive movement towards prevention and treatment. Maybe because it could have been me, the child who received the blood transfusion in 1983, the woman who also later suffered an addiction of sorts. Never any needles...just the fear of being alone.

But more on this later. Right now I'm just coasting along on my Golden Ticket. I've had one too many Wonka bars, and I am pretty darn lucky.

the Sound and the Silence

Mondays through Friday I am a New Englander. When I'm not stifled by ivy covered walls, I actually enjoy this new role.

I was driving up the Merritt Parkway, a country road sheltered by brilliant foliage in the fall, snow covered trees and dark woods in the winter. I was lost in thought, thoughtlessly lost as usual, and I missed my exit by several miles before I actually realized so. It wasn't until I was quickly approaching a tunnel pass through the rolling hills (like white elephants) that I had awoken. I took the next exit, finding myself in the Westville section, the landscape much like the rest of town: an easy tension of gentrified business (spas/ overpriced health food stores/antique shops) and American Africana (hairbraiding stores/Golden Krust Bakeries/Episcopalian Churches). Guess which store I frequent.

On my radio: Handel's Messiah on NPR. Previously it had been Kelly Clarkson on Power 95.

How apropos.

I walk up my spiral wooden staircase to get to my apartment, each creak reminding me of the books I used to bury my nose in as a child: Jacob Have I Loved, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, and other Caldicott Medal favs. I oftened dreamed of the Sound and Cape cultures I read about...and now I am living in it. The beaches in New Haven are filled with locals. Yale faculty travel further out to the Cape or Rhode Island to escape, which also has its fair share of culturally and linguistically isolated communities. I romanticize their accents, I create stories about their lives. I am just as guilty of exoticizing this culture as those who have done the same with mine.

I missed the first two snowfalls of the year. I was in Philadelphia both times. We are expecting a storm tonight and I wait, patiently, with anticipation.

A memory:
The silence of the storm, soft and deadening, awakens me at 5:30 am, 10 minutes before my alarm goes off. I leap up from my bed and peer out the window, squinting to see the snow fall by the lamppost, quiet and unassuming on the ground below. Rush back into bed, hide under my warm down blanket, wait for the clock to turn 6, wait for the phone to ring: school's been cancelled. A day of repose, a day of hot chocolate, marshmellows and snow angels. A day to sleep in.

Two reasons to pray for no wind: 1. we get to play in the snow for a little while longer, before the cold snow bites into our toes; 2. we get to watch in amazement our gorgeous backyard transformed, snow topped trees and all. One reason a little wind can be fun: Snow Drifts.

I will be in New Haven for my first snow fall of the year.

I wait and remember, again and again.

Carolina and Goose

On days like these I wish I could share a Guinness with Carolina to just mellow, warm dark brown and smooth.

Or go for a long run with Goose to debrief.

Just completed another parent-child interview. Pulled up some interesting stuff...but always painful.

Just thinking about the two of them makes me smile.

Goose, short for Vargoose, is my partner in crime. Dave came up with the name Vargoose, and I thought he just gringoed her last name, but really he was referring to Top Gun. She's the Goose to my Maverick. Or something like that.

(An aside: the Malayalam word, or more precisely the Kottayam word, for Gringo is saipamaran. I think it comes from Sahib. A female gringo is Madama....or Madame? How the tropes of colonialism haunt us so...not that either saipmaran or madama are used in any positive context.)

Anyway back to Goose: together we storm the city streets, running thisaway and that. I met her in my small group my first year and couldn't help checking her out...in addition to that itty bitty waist and gorgeous smile, she also happened to mention that her dream was to run in a marathon. And indeed she did run New York...three weeks before I ran Philly. I can't imagine a better gal to run and dish with. The kind of girl who makes lemonade: like the time we accidently wound up running along a major highway, and instead of getting flustered Goose tells me: " I kinda like this...its nice knowing that all these people are in a rush to get somewhere and we aren't in a rush to get anywhere." Did I mention how crazy smart she is? A Hahvahd gal. You'd never know it cause she's so darn humble.

And then there is Carolina. Another smart chick. A fulbright scholar and budding EM doc. Dave says that when I'm around her I seem so happy. Her charm is infectious. She was my sympatico in anatomy, and I haven't let her go since. We were the fab four: a Muslim, Two Hindus and an Irishwoman. We almost formed our own band, but split up due to political differences. I love Carolina because she is so self-effacing and funny. She loves to laugh at herself...and we all wind up laughing with her. Because life is just too damn short to take everything so seriously. If you go to her house for dinner, her dad will share a shot of Bailey's with you. Did I mention how crazy smart she is? You'd never know it because she's always laughing at herself.

I am a terrible person because I haven't kept up with Carolina in a few weeks now. We've been playing phone tag, but really I'm the slacker.

I love and miss you both. And Goose, I ran four miles today and thought of you the whole time.

A little Snippet on the first Blog

just a little snippet while I wait for my consent forms to copy:

last night I was watching 50 greatest child stars all grown up on E! and of course 22 was Doogie Howser, MD, aka Neil Patrick Harris and they cited him as perhaps the first *blogger.* Who could forget Doogie, child medical prodigy, wrapping each episode in front of a bright blue screen, always ready with a moral quip or life's lesson learned? Ah Doogie, once the love of my life and inspiration to start my own journal on our old Commodore 64, a vain attempt since at 9 I had no clue how to save anything...or perhaps was left without the option on that "monitor-keyboard-harddrive in one" set up. Oh Doogie, who lost his virginity to the lovely Wanda, but not before he performed her appendectomy.

Ah Doogie. Ah Humanity.

And now a little snippet on the origins of the word "snippet": I had an Iranian resident during medicine who would always give "just a little snippet" about each patient during morning rounds. I loved that he prefaced every patient with "a little snippet" and I was pained by the fact that though he was an attending in is homeland, he was demoted the moment he stepped on American soil. Downgraded to an intern. A story told again and again....

From one brute to another

The other night I received a call from a dear friend and classmate whom I haven't seen in many months. I spent the first 6 months of my third year with Phil. I remember the day I found out I was doing surgery at Monte with him-- I was so dismayed at the thought of spending my first 8 weeks of my third year at a merciless site with a group of *gunners.* Phil will never deny that he is indeed a gunner. And from my sobering demeanor, and pacifist approach to life, he may have been surprised to unmask my true academic spirit. I too was crazy enough to wonder how a certain professor of ours calculated the p value without using statistical software. But beyond that we had some enlightening conversations, and I was pleasantly surprised to unmask a thoughtful and sensitive spirit.

Anyway, Phil called me because I was the first person he thought of when he decided to pursue a project involving spirituality in medicine. Phil is president of the Shul at Einstein, and in recent months has been finding it difficult to get what he needs, as a burgeoning doctor, out of this religious network. So he, along with another third year, had decided to come up with a project to learn and study literature on the subject. And for better or for worse, I was the first person he thought of. Always self deprecating, he humbled himself before me as "the brute" who would like to expand his literary scholarship. I, of course, was speechless....moved beyond words.

And now I have no idea what I can offer Phil in his project. Nonetheless I emailed him some of my thoughts. I share them with you perhaps because you may help me in this endeavor. From one brute to another:

Hi Phil,

It was lovely to hear from you. It certainly was nice
to hear that someone in whom I hold high esteem,
professionally and personally, would think of me for
this important project.

This issue is one that is deeply personal for me. You
may remember my dissatisfaction with my internal
medicine rotation; in retrospect I think this was
largely due to months of dealing with the chronically
ill and the dying and a lack of real spiritual
reflection. At the time I was too overwhelmed with
emotions to understand this. My feelings were more
salient in this rotation, I think because we spent the
most time in it. But perhaps there is also something
to be said about medicine as a profession which does
not always enable spiritual reflection, whatever the
reasons.

In any event, I have always been interested in
palliative care and terminal illness, but more
recently, due to my chosen research field, within the
pediatric population. While I know this is a small
part of the issue you are describing, it is one that
is near and dear to my heart, and I will try to
approach the issue of spirituality from this
perspective. It is much easier, than to approach
spirituality as a whole.

I hope this makes sense. I look forward to hearing
from you,
Tara

It was Merely Another Thanksgiving

Cranberry chutney, Curried Corn, a 7lb Un Turkey...

And Meer.

There are few people in this world who can make me laugh so. It is a vicious cycle-- she starts, then I start, she laughs even harder as I become more apneic, I laugh even harder until I need to leave the room.

We spent the days watching home videos, Curb your Enthusiasm and Fever Pitch.

She was sad to find me even more tired than usual. She witnessed my mother giving me my shot of Procrit, and she winced when she saw my face writhed, alarmed.

And then my mother narrated the story of how she had to give me my adriamycin drip in the middle of a stormy blizzard. A slow cautious push, lest the vein sclerose. Two years before the birth of the second.

The videos reveal a whiny toddler, full of tears and expectation. They reveal a gangly, awkward child with a wicked temper and a million dollar face. The center of attention. Expressive.

Perhaps forced to make her mark as the sibling of the "special one." Dark and strong.

After the shot, we watched my mother peel her kiwis. Perfectly. Small hands, sharply contrasting our own. We smiled, knowing. Her precision, our butterfingers. But she is more like her than I, with her high cheekbones and short fuse.

I watch the two of them. Lovely and Amazing.

cityscapes 2

My New York.

I have memories of city life, three years in the Bronx, three months in Manhattan. Today I remember the latter, Medicine in Manhattan.

It will have been a year ago next Monday.

Standing outside the quarantined door of a cherpakarathan, a native son. My eyes closed, lest I see his bare bottom from beneath his hospital gown, my ears warm, listening to him make sweet, sad melodies on his violin. In minor key; this much I know from 10 years of piano lessons. He played to his window, to the city outside, mired in winter, its depths. He had been hospitalized in the psych ward for an acute manic episode, but I met him on 9L with a diagnosis of chicken pox. With masks we would walk into his room, and he would launch his flight, a spinning combination of perfect English and Malayalam. He knew my face and I knew his with its crops of vesicles and excoriations. A relief etched, in memories and beyond.

Memories of dying. Memories of one death.

Memories of my city. Memories of cloudy skies, long December/ January/February days, skyscrapers and excoriations. Memories of running from our apartment on 17th and 1st Ave, to Fifth and 59th, the foot of the park, lights twinkling and that big ole tree. Memories of walking, hustlebustle surround, from murray hill to curry hill to get some samosas. Memories of dinner with old friends: Turkish, Korean, African and Me. All hyphenated. Memories of parties. Food and Drink. Memories of the chill pinching our cheeks, first red then blue, my face the rainbow coalition. Memories of ringing in the new year with my sister and other friends, memories of giggles the morning after. Memories of a pause.

I will never forget

My New York.

cityscapes

five pigeons. two sparrows.

one piece of pizza crust.

Sparrow manages to snatch it, in spite of the obvious crust-beak disproportion. He flies away with his buddy, but sadly it drops. Snarly Pigeons dive for it, while Sparrow watches mournfully, perched on a fence above.

This is what I witnessed yeterday morning, walking down Pine Street, across the concrete park spotted with Ginkgos.

Remembering an old poem I read in elementary school: the Ginkgo and the Willow. Cityscapes, Country Life...

I am spending the days before Thanksgiving in Philadelphia. Old Danny used to call it Filthadelphia, but I think he was soured by the elitist gay scene, a buncha pretty boys with fat wallets. I actually prefer the city to my own New York.

Dave and I knew the Nor'Easter was here when he managed to simultaneously burn steaming broccoli, spill water on the couch and break the track light while swatting a towel around to clear the air of smoke.

Yup. The Nor'Easter had arrived.

In spite of it all, a kind gentleman at the local coffee shop gave me free coffee. He had a rough morning and didn't quite make the drink I ordered. While I was unaffected by this, he was, tremendously, and refused to let me pay.

Today I am thankful.

pride

"our children are marrying outside the community because they have no pride in our culture."

everytime I think of this remark, spoken by one uncle and felt by many uncles and aunties, i am overwhelmed with sadness. this is what they think of me, a woman who has spent the better part of her life studying her story. It is the story of a Nation 14,000 miles across the ocean, the story of the diaspores who floated across the sea and happened upon new nations, the story of her birth. I know histories and herstories that remain untold to the residents of that land. I listen silently and absorb. Pieces of me, I break apart and put back together to understand.

And still I am castigated, confined to role of the "pardesh" the NRI, the non resident.

Understand that my mother never imagined herself in this country. She was the Nation, she is the Nation. She was born to a dissenter, a man who fought oppression and who witnessed the re-birth of his nation. She grew up listening to her forefathers speak on the radio, Jai Hind. And the tears still flow, 30 years after her exile. Jai Hind.

She was married to a man who was living in a different country. And she did not question. Even though they asked her opinion, she agreed with whatever they thought was right. Mata Pitta, Guru, Dev. Mother, Father, Teacher, God. All one and the same, and so the thought of saying no never once crossed her mind. Sure she had imagined a different life for herself once she began medical school, she wanted to serve the people of the Nation. But now she would have to call another her own.

Nearly 13 years after she arrived, she saw her friend of many years go back. This friend's daughter was becoming a teenager, and the threat became more real. Everyday she saw children having children, unmarried and alone. Everyday children torn apart by the ravages of peer pressure and the loss of parental control. Her own daughter began to refuse food, and she saw her wasting. The thought of refusing sustenance and nourishment was unfathomable...she had seen destitution, she had seen food scarcity, and though poverty was never a reality for her, food was always sacred. She had lived through rations, when America enforced sanctions for the nation's support of the USSR. So it was only natural that she blamed the country for her daughter's self-inflicted exile, her invisibility.

But there was a bigger threat at hand here. What if by coming to this country her Nation was erased? A history untold, for generations and generations until the memory of it became myth?

Why didn't she take her kids back? She couldn't. She wouldn't. There were too many other players involved.

Her story has always been my story. I was born from it, I reclaimed it, I re-write it again and again. And no matter how many times it is penned, no many times I give birth to this story, the threat of annihilation exists.

Tribute to Old VS

so it has occured to me that i've got a little too much race on the brain. ala Cornel West and Skip Gates.

But not a la Old V.S.

I have this terrific caricature of Naipaul posted on my wall, from the cover of the the New York Times Book Review, and the title of which is "Thorn in Side or Pain in Neck: V.S Naipaul, knight and Nobelist, does not care for literary theory, African republics, multiculturalism, political pieties or of alot of other things examined in his collection The Writer and the World." Naipaul is in deed a site for sore eyes, looking every bit as disgruntled and constipated as I imagined him to be, carrying the dry weight of a new empire and retaining it with all his might.

I tore this out at a time when I too tried to remove myself from all of those things. I was trying to tuck it away, this history of mine. No longer did I wear those robes, no longer did I walk through Sproul in wakeful dreaming. I needed to be here, now, fully present and within my decided profession.

Recall RH whispering to me in her softened accent: "the personal is political. the political is personal." Recall seeing this same German professor of mine at the gym, naked and shameless after her shower, pointing her sagging breasts and bony fingers at me: the personal is political. Since then I had exhausted my literary asanas. I had rejected myself as woman, native, other.

But of course I come back to it. Because here I am a brown girl, working with black children, and about to marry a white boy. I have to face it everyday, when I talk to my kids and tape our interviews and listen to the tapes of my speech and their speech and feel overwhelmed by our similar differences.

I love this job because it enables me to reflect, step apart, come back and look within.

I don't believe race defines me. Yes I was born into a country which colored me. But to a large extent it also left me blind. Because when I am talking to my kids, I never remember the brown. When I am with Dave and Dave alone I never remember the white.

I am aware of the beauty of this blindness and its potential complications. I aware that there are issues I cannot avoid.
and I cannot be without.

My children are mostly black. They are all HIV positive. Layers and layers and layers...

I peel.

my riveting rosie

so a couple of weeks ago I attended this conference at the NIH for all one year research fellows from various schools and programs. most of it was meant to inspire us to stick with it, as there is a shortage of physicians who want to go into academia. not surprising, since there is NO incentive after having racked up just about 200Gs in loans.

Then of course we had a number of women physician scientists lament the difficulties of being a woman in the field. One particularly negative woman (a researcher at Brigham, of course) commented that of the 40 people who had interviewed her for the position, two were women. And let's not forget that while 50% of medical graduates are women, only 8% of those in academic medicine are women. Most of these women hold associate professorships or less...don't even ask about tenured positions.

That said, there were a number of female physicians who were trying their best to rally the troops. We can do it! says Rosie the riveter/psychiatrist/associate professor at this and that university.

At one point there was a panel consisting of a white woman, a black woman, a white man and a black man...in that order. A forcible representation of the underrepresented.

Sure we can do it. My brown, ball-less battle is significantly less than that of Rosie's or even my mother's. Mrs. Sunshine was surprisingly bitter the other day when she lamented her lack of a job offer at a prestigious institution as an academic faculty member. She even went as far as to say that if her name were Joel Cohen, or something to that effect, she would have gotten the job. She redeemed herself slightly by mentioning that she probably wouldn't have gotten the job if her name was Jane Cohen.

Black face, White mask? White face, black mask?

and I'm still waiting for my vagina to speak.

gas station uncle

gas station uncle never remembers my name nor my face. he always greets me with a smile and immediately launches into friendly hindi banter. I smile and politely answer "I'm well" in English to his "kaise aap," but before long I have to apologize to him and admit that I am from Kerala, hindi no bolo. We then chat about our families, he tells me about his four kids, one a master's nursing student, the second a medical student in the caribbean, the third at stonybrook and the fourth in high school.

he asks me if I am married, I say no, not yet, just engaged. he has, in fact, met my future husband, and in a previous conversation politely smiled and said congratulations...but his disappointment was hardly inapparent. I read his mind, just as I had read the minds of all my aunties and uncles before they had met Dave and before they knew his kind spirit and weightless soul.

fortunately for me, gas station uncle never remembers me. he does not know that my family lives less than a mile from his gas station. our conversations are transient, passing. existing in a liminal space, neither here nor there.

until now.

brown sugar

just a quick note on my halloween experience:

I went dressed as brown sugar. I was inspired while driving home, when the old Stones' tune came on the radio. my roommates and I had been trying to come up with famous pairs for D and I to dress up as....Annie Hall and Woody Allen, J Lo and Ben Affleck, Shrek and Fiona....none seemed to compare to Mick Jagger and Brown Sugar.

Of course, I was aware of how "problematic" this idea was...in a previous era I would have been more cautious. I looked up the lyrics to the song anyway, and there really is no question....

What was Mick trying to tell us? Was he trying to deconstruct the black female body by recapitulating stereotypes? Or was he just a racist british bastard? I mean this is a man who perhaps inspired the androgynous punk rockstar...obliterating gender lines...can we give him more credit?

So I dragged Dave to a trampy girls clothing store and made him try on several tight denim jeans with sequins on the ass. The lovely store workers, all of whom were black, got a kick out of this skinny white boy trying to show some booty. And they thought that it was "cute" that I was going as brown sugar...even though they had no clue who Mick Jagger was. Different strokes.

My own brown sugar experiences run long and deep...I was about 20 years old, buying the condiment in a grocery store and while standing in line, the guy behind me says, with a leery grin, "so you like brown sugar, huh?" "Yeah?" I said, not at all confrontational, like I wanted to be in my head, but timid... as usual. Scared of flirtation, of his eyes fleshing out and sexualizing my colored body. Afraid of being wanted, of being desireable. It had made me want to purge.

I went as brown sugar this halloween. I wore lots of glitter. I donned velour pants and I wrote the word sugar in glitter glue on the ass. I wasn't afraid of flirtation, because I had Mick by my side. Problematic? Yes I think so. I was however, afraid to bend over, lest I show some crack. Damn those low riders.

Now here is my question to you: Is brown sugar a condiment? I leave you to ponder that and wonder what flava was the guy at the grocery store... and if it really matters.

hardy mums and their daughters

I've been thinking a lot about mothers and daughters lately...especially after my roommate's mom came into town. This Jewish mazza brought supplies: chocolate babka, challah, fruits, matzo ball soup... a desperate attempt to find some coherency in a world she could not control. E was having ankle surgery, there was nothing her mother could do about it.

I had met Jewish mothers before. In fact I was born to one. My mom fits all the stereotypes you can imagine-- overbearing, with major control issues, emotionally needy, does a fine job of making her daughters feel guilty, and is always making sure her children are fed twice over, always thinking of her children before herself, the martyr she is. " The kind of woman who will always give you her jacket even though her slight frame can tolerate the cold less well than you can.

I can't say D's mom is quite the "Jewish/Indian" mom mine is. I mean of course, she will always give you her jacket...but she believes in calorie restriction, a metaphor for her reservedness. She loves D dearly, and always weeps when they part, and often sends him health cookies and care packages by mail...she is a wonderful mother no doubt. But she doesn't hang on to him with the same kind of desperation, and I never got that same feeling that her children are her life. Is it the immigrant woman's story? Are we carrying a history of strife and struggle that makes our mothers cling on ferverently, anxious that the bough will break at any second?

D's mom is Canadian. There isn't quite the same history in that peaceful country....

on a different note, my dearest Vinita is about to become a mother herself...to a baby boy. I am excited to wait and see how the next generation will emerge...

A New Beginning

Here it is my new blog. I am keeping the old, in tradition: indianrock.diaryland.com

there are a few repeats, as I am writing this entry November 22nd, the day I started this new blog. And for the sake of continuity I pasted some old entries here. But what is time anyway, but relative? A moment of silence for the old AE....