The Diaspore

Sometimes I think about my dad, age 26, jumping off the eastern ghats and pulling the string. He parachutes over Indian Seas, Arabian Deserts, English Pastures and finally Atlantic waters only to land in Queens, NY. And I imagine him buying the following items, in order, according to accumulated wealth and luxury: rice and rice cooker, Dannon yogurt, and finally a bag of potato chips to complete his makeshift chore, thaira and pappadums.

Remember when we used to spin our globes fast and furiously? And then we would interrupt the whirling motion of lands and ocean to see where we would fall next? And we learned that Abu Dhabi was indeed a real place, not just some make believe land where Garfield packaged and sent his nemesis Nermal.

Later we would trace our lineages, dozens of ghost fingers dotting western Europe and one lone goblin finger timidly placed on the Land of Curry and Silk.

"Your house smells funny."

Fast forward 15, 20 years later:sitting in a car driving down the Garden State Parkway and having this conversation with my Dad: Some people, Tara, stay in one place," referring to Mom's colleague who grew up in NJ, completed undergrad and medical school in NJ and now lives with his own family in the town in which he grew up.

I hear the undercurrent though my cheap glass Hawaiian seashell: Not you my wayward child. You seem to keep wanting to leave us.

My lunch today: whole wheat bread soaked in home made yoghurt, cabbage and potato kuttan and mango achar. My mom looks at my meal and makes some comment about its (my) strangeness. This coming from a woman who puts tabasco sauce in her Ramen noodles.

Recently I heard a 21 year old figure skater who said, "Everyone has their own trajectory. Some take longer than others."

So I am sitting on the NJ transit train on my way and I get this lovely view of industrial america. And I wonder what next? where will my parachute fall? how many will get on this train and how many will get off at the next stop? And I have a mini panic attack before the train finally reaches my destination, a warm embrace, "the huggiest hug" ever. Home.

song of salman

just finished Zadie Smith's White Teeth and was a little disappointed in the ending. The Fat Ruddy White Man with an upturned nose and the bluest of blue eyes gets shot in the leg, fated twice in his life. It was a book about circular histories, how everything comes back. It was a story about Twins, and the mysterious connection that leaves us singulars wondering 'what if I had one'...

She received such wide spread acclaim at the age of 26, for this novel. She was compared to Salman Rushdie, her patriarch (he wrote high reviews of this book) and predecessor.

So I once asked Meer: what do you think it takes? Who becomes "genius" and who gets lost in the gray?

Who leaves a mark? Who punctuates and pluralises and enters The Canon?

"You have to have some kind of obsession, a kind of madness. Lots of people can write, but The Writer can't do anything else. It becomes her, she becomes it."

Not her words exactly. But her wise thoughts.

Professor Farber once said in a creative writing class I took in college: "a writer is someone who writes." I don't know about that...I think it might be more...the madness, the obsession.

***************

I am too scattered, too unruly.

too messy. and too lazy to clean it all up.

"Clean the fascia. Clean it up. CLEAN IT!!!" Dr. Sangari's singsong accented voice resonates through my head.

Other voices in my head:

"Why you want to do that?" -my dad on going to Berkeley, going to South Africa, taking a year (or two off), going hiking on a crisp winter day with my dog, going to the local coffee shop to study (translation, why can't you just study at home."

"I'll write you an email about it!" my mother, angry that I forgot exactly which day during the weekend of my wedding that we were going to the temple. Another example of my spiritual void.

"Whiiiiiine." Dave, in perfect mimicry, after I whinily asked him "whyyyyyyyyy?" I don't even remember the context, just remember cracking up in total, painful, awareness of my childishness.

I may have been whining a little in my last posting, and in fact have a counter-reference: Dr. L, prominent figure in child abuse research, interviewed me last April after I received the Doris Duke Fellowship. He then saw me four months later when I presented my research to the pedi research committee and said "Well Tara, this is certainly a much bigger task than what I had in mind for you. I wish you well in it." He had only met me once before. I think it might give insight into our medical culture, in which we evaluated with dozens of our peers simulateneously, by professors who see us one or two times (as was the case with the Dr._ the aforementioned professor) and cannot often tell Tara from Sam or Adam. But Dr. L had met me under a completely different context...and therefore remembered me long after our meeting.

The Quiet Little Indian Girl Fires Away

Now I’m no Pat Benatar.

I can’t just look you in the eye and say hit me with your best shot.

I’ve been boxed. Shipped across a hundred seas as “the quiet little indian girl.”

Which is a joke of course. Because I am neither quiet nor little.

But I do have a HUGE (‘UUUGE) ego, busting at the seams, easily broken with the tinniest prick. (pun somewhat intended, at least in retrospect.)

I am a good medical student. And I am going to be a great clinician or researcher or whatever I damn choose to be.

I not good at very many things. But this I know. It says so on my evaluations:

“Tara is a quiet, but bright medical student with an excellent fund of knowledge and has wonderful rapport with her patients. Her presentations are precise, her notes are thoughtful… yada yada yada.”

I cannot tell you how I was hurt by what I saw as a personal and not a professional attribute…a personal attribute that was NOT true.

Because I do say what is on my mind, when I think it is appropriate. I am not afraid to make suggestions to attendings, residents and other medical students. I am confident and self-assured. And they agree.

So today I went to a meeting for those who were applying for a peds residency next year. I had emailed the clerkship director letting him know I was going to be there. And we exchanged some pretty funny emails revolving around the Barnum and Bailey Clown University in Sarasota, FL, a rednosed powder-faced floozy who can walk on her hands, and my uncanny ability to trip over my own big feet.

You would think that this kind of dialogue we had achieved some kind of more intimate relationship. But no. Because I went to the meeting today and I was given a blank stare.

So I approached him. But I was overshadowed by my peer, whom I truly believe is going to make an awesome pediatrician, but who clearly one-upped me with his legacy. He was the son of a faculty member at Monte. I heard words exchanged about whether his father was going to robe him or not.

Years and years of being in a club, even Einstein, a refuge for the disenfranchised, first Jews now others, even Einstein has its club. But legacy is not the only IT factor here.

It is one simple equation: If NOT loud, irreverent or overzealous, perky or pert, Then diminuitive.

Then not memorable.

Maybe it is because I don’t set up a hundred anxiety-ridden meetings with these people. I am lucky to have even one meeting. Because I just don’t think it is necessary.

But it is, it is. Because even when I vaguely talked about the emails (stating dates that we had set), he still did not remember.

He was one of the ones who had stated, in my exit interview for peds, that I am a little too quiet. He was also the one that wrote my evaluation that said the same exact thing.

It has been over a year. So why should he remember, if I had never approached him before?

I had a phone meeting with one of my advisors the other day. We argued over the word paternalism and transference, I for the latter, she for the former. I confidently stated my points, but acknowledged hers. I was diplomatic, and not irreverent to this woman who was clearly more experienced than I. But I stuck by my views (don’t like the word paternalism) throughout.



Once upon a time I was invited to speak to my neighbor's special ed class about what it was like to be indian. I prepared a speech, with the help of my mom, wore my hair in fat braids and cool bubble gum pink reeboks and took a deep breath...only to find out that the class was learning about American Indians, not Indian Americans. At 9 years old I had to relate this distinction (with the special ed teacher's help of course) to my neighbor and her classmates.

And so it goes. God Bless America, as my mom would say.

And I say:
“Fire awa-a-a-a-ay.”

if the shoe fits

i know what you're thinking. you're thinking, oh god, she's going to write about her feet. her large, stinking, calloused/corned/bunioned feet. with a beached whale for a sad little pinkie. but no. this one is about the "happily ever after" syndrome.

when i was about three, just under four, i would copiously underline my cinderella storybook, while my mom copiusly underlined her now antiquated copy of Nelson's Textbook of Pediatrics. i could in fact read at that point...in spite of the fact that i was slow of speech and movement, i could actually read. strange but true.

another little bit about my childhood: i also chewed the feet of my barbie dolls. they were so chewable. and ridiculously arched.

so i grew up with these icons: barbie and cinderella. and evidently had a love/hate relationship with them.

i often imagined myself as lead young actress of the next made for tv movie about divorce, because that is what i wished my parents would do. they did not fit the cinderella-prince charming mould i so desperately wanted them to fit. they yelled, screamed, cursed each other to pieces...their armory of verbal assaults seem always be replete. two of the most mismatched souls: she a woman of prayer, Indian nationalism, Extreme Moderation; he a man of glamour, starlights, Extreme Excess. how the stars wrote this one, i had yet to learn.

when i grew older and came to understand a little bit more about the fallacy of the cinderella narrative, i began to appreciate their relationship more. they grew up together, and maybe, just maybe grew in love together. i know this much is true: my dad was with my mother the whole time she was in india, even though he had a million other things to do, a million SHOWs (and one wedding) to plan. he spend time with her family, he surprised her by attending her mother's shraadam (memorial), even though he tricked her and said he would only be there for lunch. (which is more typical of my dad...to show up just for the free meal...)

anyway...i grew up with this as my model relationship. so i was never under any delusion about "the perfect marriage." and i was unfortunate enough to inherit a double dose of their short tempers and bullishness. Dave has known this for a while, and he is kind enough to accept the package in its entirity.

our friend Lorraine made the comment that I often appear so *zen,* ie., calm, peaceful, tranquil. Both my parents have this attribute, at least in professional and social circles. But those in the inner circle know the violence that periodically erupts.

and so have i inherited all the elements: fire, earth.

by the way, the only reason i wanted to be cinderella is because of her ballroom dress. i wanted that ballroom dress. otherwise i more often play-acted as she-rah, princess of the universe. "by the power of grayskull..." i would thrust my sword into the air and transform.

I'll be your preacher-teacher

the two loves of my life lounging. her ears, his thermals...get me all the time.

so D and I keep bantering over Jon Stewart and other such political satirists. I am often put off by the self-righteous pedantry, the preachiness...and everytime we watch this show together, Dave laughs deeply and loudly and immediately turns to me to see if I am laughing, and I never am...which pisses me off more than it does him. Do I just not get the joke? Or do I just feel like I don't need to hear what I already know?

What I really hate is when people speak as though JS is the only one to tell the truth...when in fact he is just as guilty of manipulating media sources to meet his own end.

But then today D brought up this point about how the media in general has been so lenient towards "Bush the Lesser," and how only the far left has brought up impeachment even though it is clear that he has lied. And JS brings this up over and over again (to the choir nonetheless). Apparently our Repubican Senate and Congress (spearheaded by John McCain on whom D has a serious crush) tried to pass an anti-torture bill and Bush vetoed it. Certainly disturbing.

So then here is my question: why, if the media has been historically liberal, are they backing off and not creating more uproar?

I think alot of it has to do with the fact that we live in perhaps one of the toughest times in American history. The post 9-11 era. A time when our security was truly threatened. And now torture is something liberally minded US citizens can perhaps envision and flesh.

Because fear and redemption are primal. Especially if you are not sitting up high in your SUV or Toyota Hybrid, but instead are watching the rubble, getting caught under the stampede, hacking from the smoke, awaiting the NEWS of your husband, wife, son, daughter.

This Is Why I love Barak Obama: on a meet the press interview he was asked about an inflammatory statement that Hillary Clinton made about this going down as the worst presidency in history, and Obama said, well that there have been alot of really bad presidencies in the history of the US, but certainly the policies of this administration will go down as some of the worst. In other words, Hillary was preaching, and Barak was teaching. He made specific references, informing instead of yelling. (I'll also admit here that he is not so bad to look at and this may in fact color my interpretation of his words. But I do feel strongly about this issue.)

So last week we saw this desperately sad movie called Turtles Can Fly... about Kurdish children in the days before the Iraq war and landmines and all that stuff you read about, but never SEE or KNOW. It was lovely, and gratifyingly not self-righteous in the way that Born into Brothels was...because the only other "eye" was the camera lens. And of course it was a movie and not a documentary, but it almost had that documentary feel...maybe because I am the outsider, and ethnographist, a voyeur, and this director is telling me a story I simulataneously want to and don't want to hear. But the children were just beautiful...and some of them were play-acting like children should and some of them were truly assuming adult roles because they had no choice and all of it was just so stunning and horrifying all at once.

Anyway. There are lots of different ways to tell a story, from their own eyes. Some do it Jon Stewart style, using video and audio montages, others do it like this director, creating from the land. And I would rather listen to the latter. Call me self-righteous.