The F word

Facetious.

I love love love love love love love love this word. Facetious. Facetious. Faceeeeeeeeeeeeeetious. Love how it sounds. Love what it means. All around. Love it.

What’s funny is, for the longest time (through high school and most of college) I would encounter this word in books, but never quite know what it meant, and yet while I was mildly curious, I never bothered to look it up. Call it the laziness of the callow-minded? Or am I being facetious? :P

And then, one day, I did look it up. And then I was like, oh holy cow, I like this word! A lot! So I adopted it. And gave it a room in my brain.

It is now a teenager and feels free to run amok in my conversations, popping up as it pleases. And I indulge it. Facetiously, of course.

Ten things

When Sundry from Any Given Sundry tagged me to write about "ten things you did in 2008 that you're happy about or proud of" I had to laugh. On the next to last day of 2008 I had the kids in the library do a similar project, where they made mini-books in which they listed their "Eight bests of Oh Eight." Thanks for the opportunity for some reflection, Sundry! And, because I have the tendency to procrastinate, I am going to do this. Right now.

Okay so here goes.

Ten big and small things I am proud of having done in 2008

1. Living through a whole month-plus of no heat in NYC. I realize it's not something to be inordinately proud of, but I'm glad that I somehow got through that time without unduly losing my cool. (Pun intended.)

2. Writing a pathfinder on the elusive topic of "Happiness" for my reference class.

3. Learning something about gardening. (A very minuscule amount, really, but just enough to be able to introduce kids to the fledgling garden near our library.) I accomplished this by befriending and talking to gardeners at the community garden near my old place. (I will really miss living there!)

4. Striking out on my own. (Getting a studio apartment for the first time.) This one speaks for itself.

5. Reconnecting with an old friend. Nuff said. You know who you are. :)

6. Secret goal accomplished. (And no, wild horses won't drag it from me.)

7. Learning about digital imaging at grad school.

8. Learning how to design and put up a modest website.

9. Becoming more honest and kind to my sister.

10. Acknowledging the truth about life to myself.

Now do I get to tag someone? Hmm... who shall it be? I think I'm going to tag Jeannette Langmead from Alone in Kudamatsu. I cannot remember how I found her blog, but when I did, I thought it fascinating enough to subscribe to it... I hope she'll play! :-)

authentic baloney

so on the right side of my FB page, I am being advertised to by Yahoo....

they say:

Meet Single Men
Meet authentic people like you who are serious about dating. Find singles on Yahoo! Personals looking for long-term relationships.

Hmm... so if I go through Yahoo I will meet authentic people, but otherwise the people will be made out of plastic or some other fake material? or they will not be humans at all but robots?

seriously.

The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga's Booker Prize winner

In the last few weeks, several events have made me hyper-focused on two things—the inqualities between the rich and poor in the world, but specifically India, especially in the cities and also the violence and anger that are bred by these and other inequalities.


First, I went to see (and was blown away by) Slumdog Millionaire, which is set (mostly) in Mumbai, India, the fifth largest and most impossible to define city in the world.

Second, the attacks of Nov 26 to Nov 29 in Mumbai caused chaos within both my external and internal worlds. Others have written much more eloquently about this than can I. I recommend reading the following takes on this horrific situation:

• Amitav Ghosh - Defeat or Victory Determined by Response
• Mira Kamdar - A Gash in the Fabric of Mumbai
• Suketu Mehta - What They Hate About Mumbai
• Sandip Roy - Guns and bombs in booming India
• Biju Matthew - As the Fires Die: The Terror of the Aftermath
• Tarun Tejpal - Death Of A Salesman And Other Elite Ironies

Third, I read The White Tiger, this year’s Booker prize winner and justly so.
I’ll write more about The White Tiger soon, but till then, just know that it is a book to be reckoned with, and once it captures your imagination, it will not let go willingly.

When you open the cover, prepare to meet the little discussed and uncomfortable underbelly of India….

Thirty years ago and today

Thirty years ago I lived in Forest Hills, which I didn't know back then was just a tiny slice of Queens, New York, and was very very young and thought to myself, maybe one day I'll go to college. At the time, the only college I knew the name of was Queens College, so I thought, one day I will go to Queens College.

Now it's thirty years later, and every time I walk (run) up the stairs of the E/F station at 71st/Continental to catch the Q64 to Queens College in Flushing to be there in time for my grad classes, I catch sight of the old stomping (and swinging) ground, good old Parker Towers, where I read and cried over Beth in Little Women and created Planet Shazu with friend Judy, and played Julie of the wolves and missed school buses and watched the health nut run around the center smiley-faced fountain and collected lady bugs with my Japanese friends, and walked alone across big bad Yellowstone boulevard to buy my mom some diapers at the Waldbaums which no longer exists. And where in the distant past I dreamed my dreams about college.

Last Hurrah

The fall Oh-Eight semester has begun, and with it, I must turn down the gushing waterfall of books-just-for-fun I've been indulging in over the summer... Not that I won't read for fun, but it will slow to a trickle.

Here are some of the books I've read and truly enjoyed, (or felt conflicted about):-

Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
(not yet released in the U.S., but I was glad to find it in a bookstore in India) Vast saga... I was pulled into the story as if by the inexorable waves of a storm, although at times wished that Mr. Ghosh would have turned down the wall-to-wall vernacular in favor of clean, easy to understand plain English. Which wouldn't have been as colorful, but a whole lot more apprehensible.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
Hands down, this is my favorite book that I read in 2008, so far. No wonder it won a Pulitzer in 2000. About true love between three wonderful (and vastly different) human beings as well as life in World War II era New York. I'm glad read this after moving to NYC.

Before Green Gables by Budge Wilson
Being an avid Anne fan, I couldn't tear my eyes away from the pages of the prequel, and I must admit that it's fairly well-written, and even well done in its meticulous research of the condition of poor rural Canadian women of that era, and yet, the overall effect? Disturbing. And yet fascinating. It's like pinning down a beautiful butterfly to better understand it.
I'd advise true Anne fans to Stay Away. Anne needs no explanation.

Denouement: thoughts about India trip and the need to grow out of selfishness

Now that I'm back in Brooklyn (and not only back, but on the verge of a move within the borough -- as I type, all my stuff is in boxes awaiting the movers!) and about to start the next semester of grad school, I've been thinking a lot about this short India trip. On one hand I am so glad to have broken through the invisible barrier of setting myself apart from the poverty, or rather the inequality that I always see when I visit but in the past have done nothing about. Even now, I cannot say I have done anything about it. What did I do? Just go attend a class being held in a Mumbai basti by a couple of idealistic teachers who are doing and giving that which I idealize and yet am too weak and mired in my own selfishness to give and do.

This going to the Down to Earth class was just a dip of the toe into the pool, just a tiny percentage of the time I spent in India. The majority of my time was spent enjoying the luxuries of shopping, eating, and lolling about in air-conditioned environments at posh houses of family friends. Not only that, but I was pretty selfish even in that posh environment. I was traveling with my father, but I resented having to always be there for him. In the past he's had a tendency to expect to be served, but this time, he is older, weaker -- he genuinely needed help. It's not that I didn't help him, but there was a side of me that resented this intrusion into "my India trip." And so I often escaped under the guise of shopping or hanging out with friends, when he would have benefited from more company during this tiring journey.

All in all, I cannot say I am satisfied with myself or my behavior. Yes, a small inching forward in terms of a different mindset of service, to some tiny degree. But then a huge backlash of selfishness accompanying it, not to mention returning with loads upon loads of fancy clothes and other shopping that I don't really need. You might say I'm being hard on myself, but am I? I don't think so... I read somewhere once that when given the chance to spend money or time, one should always choose to spend it on experiences versus things. And I think that while I have endeavored in that direction in this trip, it was a bit of a teetering effort, with many failures. Perhaps the backlash was because the monkey mind got scared of this new direction? I don't know... I just know that I hope to remember this feeling of disappointment I have in myself right now, so that I don't repeat the same mistake in the future.

And now, I should go, as the movers will be here any minute.

Down to Earth - revisited

I had the honor of visiting Niki and Mansi's Down to Earth class one more time before leaving Mumbai. On this visit there were a lot more kids... It really seems incredible that the kids and teachers are able to get anything done, with such a lack of space, and yet they do. Determination.

We played word association again, and then Nikki invited me to conduct activities with the kids. First I taught them the "I went on a picnic and I brought..." game. Except I forgot to do it in past tense, so I had the poor kids stumbling over "I am going to a picnic and I am bringing..." Everyone giggled when one of the picnic-ers decided to bring a garden.

Then, on to mathematical crafts. I had brought some craft supplies for kids to make birds using paper circles cut into full circles, halves, quarters, and eighths... It was a bit chaotic, with lots of Hindi-English translation. I also made fun of my American accent, and explained that yes, I do say the word "bird" in a funny way, but that they should excuse me because I just have a funny American way of speaking that I can't help.

Above are some photos from this visit. The one of the kid (Ahmed is his name I believe) with the littered field behind him is one I took on my way out of Ambedkar Nagar (the little slum neighborhood of Cuffe Parade where the Down to Earth classes are held). This field is not only a dumping ground for garbage but is also the playing ground for games of all sorts.

In retrospect it seems that I spent far too little time engaging with the good folks of Down to Earth. I hope to strengthen our connection and spend more time and energy working with them in the future. Next time, it would also be great to have some time to talk to the teachers and other organizers in a separate meeting to get a better sense of the background and mission aside from what is of course obvious in the field.

New Delhi

So I did something incredibly indulgent on this ever-so-short India trip - I took a 26 hour trip to Delhi to visit some close friends - Seema and Ajay and their kids, Pallavi and Priyanka. (It was Seema who enticed me to visit via a very persuasive phone call, but, as I told her, it was seeing the kids that was the big reason.) Pallavi is now 15 and Priyanka is 11. When I first met them, they were 5 and 9. Time, as they say, moves too fast, and I didn't want to lose the opportunity to spend time with them while they are still kids, and so I went off to Delhi to spend it... During our short time, I managed to hang out with the whole family as well as mutual friend Anu.

Painting and drawing with Priyanka, a long talk about teenage-land with Pallavi, a visit to the beauty parlor for a head massage - and girltalk- with Seema, playing a slightly altered version of Scrabble with Priyanka and Anu (wherein Priyanka enforced somewhat communistic rules of sharing tiles to help each other win better double-word scores and the like), a short shopping excursion with Ajay, Priyanka and Anu to the hip-n-happening Select City mall complete with designer stores within and cavernous potholes without, a late dinner and drinks with the adults at fancy-shmancy Shalom, and then finally, the next morning, getting to drop off the girls to school on my way to the airport.

Yes, incredibly indulgent, but money well-spent, to strengthen the ties of friendship.

from Suvarnabhumi airport

It amazes me that I can understand this word -- "suvarnabhumi," as it's of Sanskrit origin, and yet here it is in Thailand. Suvarna means gold and bhumi (bhoomi) means land or world (depending on context.) So Suvarnabhumi means Golden Land! Here I am in the Golden Land airport, awaiting my delayed flight to Mumbai.

Pardon the random thoughts of this post... am actually not feeling well at all... My dad and I went to Pattaya for the wedding of some ultra-wealthy Indian folks to whom we are connected tangentially via my dad's college friend. Lest you get needlessly jealous, let me explain... My dad's health is such that he cannot travel by himself, therefore he asked me to go with him. And, it turned out to be cheaper to fly via India than directly to Thailand, go figure. So, that's the story.

The resort where the wedding was held (and where we stayed) was beautiful and huge. But I really would have preferred a different type of Thai experience. As it was, it was difficult to get "off-campus" especially due to the social obligations of attending the actual wedding events, of which there were a plethora. So all in all, the effect was more Indian than Thai. The food, I must say, was, to use my dad's favorite superlative, "superb!"-- until I got sick.

To be honest, though, I did duck a few of the wedding shenanigans to simply enjoy the breeze on the lovely balcony in our room, on a recliner and in the company of a good book - Michael Chabon's The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.

But, before I fell sick with dysentery, I did get to go see the town itself (very commercial, with lots of Thai ladies walking arm in arm with white men of all sizes and ages). Better yet, I got to swim at the beach near the resort, which, albeit smelling a bit fishy, was lovely warm.

And then, of course, I got dysentery. (I'll spare you the details, other than to say that I went to the hotel clinic at which the nurse, after giving me antibiotics, activated charcoal, and some other minty stuff, suggested that I give her my silver bangle. Which, in my stupefied state, I did.) All in all, am glad to be back on my way to Mumbai again. Above, by the way, are some pics from Pattaya and from the wedding.