yesha. (what does it mean?)

Paradise, thy name is New Hampshire

2011-07-25T18:14:00.000-07:00

The past four days I was completely out of touch with all friends and family except for the few with whom I was staying, at the World Fellowship Center, the tagline of which is Where Global Justice Meets Nature.

I soaked in nature, reveled in it, biked it, drank it, ate it, partied and laughed in it, swam in it... all but became one with it.

some of the memories that stand out:

floating on my back in the middle of Whitton Pond and gazing up at the blue sky and clouds while the water cradled me
getting coached by Bike Guru Howie on three consecutive days of progressively more difficult bikerides. (the second two being at six in the morning!)
learning how to properly get on and off a "tall bike" - as I always used to keep my seat way too low... (again from Bike Guru Howie)
greedily gathering wild blueberries at Whitton Pond and enjoying their plump blue-purpleness as they popped in my mouth
watching little M (my friend's daughter) enjoying wild blueberries for the first time
sharing the amazing World Fellowship food with friends who are family - and getting to share laughs with Galia about my odd food preferences (I think I was the only adult to request peanut butter and ketchup!)
relishing the musical offerings of Tomas Rodriguez (Spanish and Flamenco Guitar), mbira master Kevin Nathaniel Hylton and percussionist Urbano Sanchez
delighting in the prettiness of the white goat
getting scared (in a good way) as I got pushed by G. in the t-a-l-l swing that's hung high up in a tree
watching four year old S. and 2 year old M. each dance and delight in the music in her own way as the dining hall resonated with the sounds of the mbira, the guitar, and the rhythms
walking down to the pond - and then swimming, diving (diving!!!!) and floating around to my heart's content. and lounging about on the floating docks when a respite was needed...
learning (the hard way) that I don't know how to row a rowboat. But thankfully being saved by D's mad awesome rowing skills, and making it all the way to Blueberry Island (and back!)
singing French songs to little M. in the rowboat
snorting at H's deadpan jokes
laughing with S and G and friends over wine, beer, and chips in the buggy but snug porch of Weller House
creating art under the able guidance of Stephanie - who taught us a bit of printmaking - working with linoleum and rubber and inks!

All in all I feel like a hobbit who's returned from a glorious stay at Rivendell.

Fourth time's the charm

2011-05-14T09:28:00.000-07:00

For the fourth time in my life, I'll be crossing a graduation stage this June, this time to receive my MLS degree. In fact, I had made up my mind not to go. Who wants the fuss of a cap and gown? Who wants to swelter or have your legs fall asleep while listening to speeches galore, mostly by people you don't even know?

And yet, the time has come, and, with some prodding from my sister and parents, eager to put a stamp of fanfare and closure on the last four years of part-time schooling (which probably drove them almost as crazy as it did me, considering how often "But I've got a paper to do!" was an excuse for... whatever I needed it be an excuse for...) I decided, fine, I'll go through the process one more time.

It's not the ceremony that's important to me, (obviously). It's the being done, it's the breath I can finally exhale, it's the smile that's returned to my cheeks, it's the lack of guilt while I'm blogging, playing, or just lying there, the lack of, "oh damn. I've got that paper to do, that Blackboard post to write, that research project to research..." And, to be frank, it's the achievement of the Masters. For years to know that I was capable of this (and more) but not having done it, was a silent little thorn in my side, as much as I like to think I'm above such thinking. Now it's no more. I proved myself to myself. The breath of relief is exhaled and a sense of calm descends.... for a moment.

And then it's on to... What's next?

new york: it is the best of cities, it is the worst of cities

2011-04-30T15:57:00.000-07:00

today was just a fantabulously scrumptiously beautifully gorgeous day in NYC.

the sun was gloriously shining down on us, people were so just so happy to have a nice day on a Saturday, they were even smiling at strangers on the subway. (okay, so maybe i made that last part up, but one could always dream, eh?)

seriously. i had such a fantastic day. it started with South indian style brunch at Saravanaa's in Curry Hill with author-activist extraordinaire, Neesha Meminger. We talked of some ins and outs of the publishing world, and about the inequalities that exist within the current publishing paradigm, as well as creative ways writers can step around that structure to make things happen in ways that work for them and their audiences. I am not going into high level of detail here, as I didn't take notes... and maybe just maybe I'll get to interview Neesha for a podcast and we can talk about it more leisurely there...

then i was off to the post office to mail my friend Joy Weese Moll some books that she could (potentially) blog about... or just read for fun. As a just-one-class-away-from-being-a-librarian, I often get more books than I know what to do with. And teens will take only so many! At the post office, I was hoping to beg the staff to help me seal my yellow envelope with packing tape, (I had forgotten to bring mine), but what do you know, the PO, struggling with budget cuts, is no longer giving their employees pens to use, let alone tape!

It galled me to think of buying tape when I have so much just sitting there at home, but I went to a hardware store anyway... And then, lo and behold, the guy who worked there had a heart of gold, and let me use not only his tape but even his utility knife so i could hack off pieces of tape, for free! And he wouldn't even accept a candy for a thank you! May he have 7 years of good luck, I say! Then, having shipped off my lumpy bumpy package to Joy (hope you like 'em, Joy) I was off to the N train stop at 23rd and Broadway, to get back home to work on my (last leg of my) interminable research project. And there, at Madison Square Park, was a fully in swing Sikh festival going on, complete with langar for all... By then, my appetite was craving for a little something, so i satisfied it with salty lassi, paneer makhni, chole, roti, makki ki roti, and saag... oh yeah, and jalebi. and watermelon. yum. and it was so fun to see so many families just enjoying themselves. I think I saw more Sikh people in Madison Square Park than i did on my entire month long journey to india this past January! and everyone was so friendly, and genuinely happy to give you food and, i don't know, it was just such a warm feeling. Imagine... feeding complete strangers, for free, in midtown Manhattan!

and then, i was back on the subway, back on my way home. When my train arrived, the guy who was standing in front of me, paused and let me go in before him. so polite... (albeit unnecessary.) it brought to mind something (completely opposite) that happened a couple of days ago. As I was entering a station, having just swiped my Metro card, this guy who was leaving, just pushed himself out of the same entry/exit gate i had just swiped... thereby making my swipe invalid and trapping me outside the station, with a 15 minute wait ahead of me till my metrocard reset itself... (and, if my card had been the pay as you go, i'd have been so S.O.L.) When I protested to him, as he was about to push out, saying, 'hey, i just beeped my card!' his snarled response was, "you saw me, f- you." Beautiful.

So, there we have it, NYC and its people in all our splendor --- beautiful generosity, mixed with petty cheap meanness... it's part of what makes this city so surprisingly alive.

Found: Old To-Do lists, circa 1998 and 1999

2011-04-17T18:02:00.000-07:00

To Do June 14, 1998

Newsletter

Transfer Newsletter

Letter to HI counselors/Telephone to the same(?)

Lunch with Nabila

Sending info to the USIS info centers in New Delhi and Bombay

Drawer Audits…

---Deposit

---Admit

---Shortage

to do for yesha for 4.5.99

call Honolulu Country Club and arrange for food .

call Lei Lady (Phone #??) and perhaps arrange for Leis in HI

Call HI High Schools and arrange visits (!!!)

Call Lil World Travel and buy plane ticket (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Evaluate files on desk

F.A. phoning

Shortage phoning

Meet with Astrid re: LA reception. Talk about: a. slide show---can she/we put together ASAP... maybe take pics of "a day in the life of..." new version? b. Itinerary---print out an old one if possible...go over who will do what c. Making sure there are students there... maybe we need to arrange for a special LA-a-thon!

Proof those Web Apps!!!

********Put together a list of Presidential scholar recommendees***********

to do 8-11-99

Send Measles paper to dr. w’s nurse… also include note about needing TB test certification.

send reg for Praxis exams.

send in promissory note to fin aid office

call fa aid and ask them if can reduce the unsub loan and then increase it later, if necessary…

send j.m. an email about that class…cannot take due to scheduling conflict.

pack for new jersey

laundry

---------- somehow laundry is the one that still resonates, all these years later...

India Days 9 and 10- Thiruvannamalai

2011-01-11T22:00:00.000-08:00

On Day 9 I flew freakin' early in the morning from Delhi to Chennai, and then hopped in a rented car for a 4 hour drive to Thiruvannamalai to visit my friend S's family -- her grandparents live there and her mom and bro and sis in law were also visiting. I felt so honored to be asked to visit!

This is short, as I have limited internet time, but... TV malai, as S's family calls it, was Spec.Tac.Cu.Lar.

things I remember, no particular order--

drinking fresh green coconuts, just picked from the tree in S's grandparents garden (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
eating fresh hot dosai
visiting the ashram of Ramana Maharshi... I have no words for the peace that descended as the devotees chanted...
Visiting the main temple and being blessed by a baby (girl) elephant! (it involves giving a coin in return for a gentle thump on the head!!!)
having S's tata (grandfather) show us around the temple, telling us the history, and even get us the opportunity for special pooja of the main deity as well as of the goddess
playing with S's 1.5 year old daughter
getting a (mild) electric shock - (Note: Be VERY careful when removing your phone from being charged!!!)
the gorgeous Arunachal Mountain
walking to the little temples next to S's grandparents' place and learning about her family's guru...
Taking time with D and S to hang out in S's grandfather's study... a timeless place that elicits thinking and contemplation, while staring out at the beauty of Arunachala
being blessed by S's grandmother and mother
the l-o-n-g car ride back to Chennai with little M and S, singing songs to little M to pass the time! :-)
The lovely dinner with S and big M in Chennai (even it was North Indian!!!)

india day 8 - Delhi

2011-01-09T10:23:00.000-08:00

In the morning, P and I went for an excursion to old Delhi... We saw the Jama Masjid. It was beautiful, with a vast stone courtyard, picturesque arches and ornate stone window screens. It was also freezing cold, as we had to remove our shoes. Thank god for socks, which protected our feet not only from the numbing stone vastness, but also from the product of thousands of pigeons which swoop over the courtyard.

After that we took a walk around the nooks and gullies of Chandni Chowk, the market of old Delhi. As it was a Sunday, many shops were closed, but that had the advantage of making the traffic easy to navigate, both by foot and car. Also, we focused on the beautiful if decrepit architectural details. (Again, I don't have the photos downloaded, but in due time some will be attached to this entry.)

Then we went to the very close by Kitab Bazaar (book bazaar) that's held in the area known as Daryaganj every Sunday. These guys spread out their wares (of secondhand books) and wear socks, to make it easy to traipse over the books to pick up the one that an interested customer is pointing at. P noted that most of the books were about computers, computer programs, business, or some type of educational book. Very few humanities represented, except for the ubiquitous "trashy novels." The librarian in me noticed that some of the books being sold were in good condition while others were so far gone that they would have been weeded asap, had they been discovered lurking in my library.

Then we found this guy who sells old stamps, not only Indian, but from over the whole world. That cheered us a bit, to find something we considered of real value out there, amidst all the detritus of C++ et al...

Lunch was with the whole gang and some of their friends and some of my friends, all at the Habitat Centre, specifically at the Delhi, O Delhi restaurant, which has an excellent buffet. I was stuffed when we left -- with good conversation, new friends, and a great meal. Yum.

Then we came home and S and M promptly put me to work, helping create a fairy treasure chest. It's hard work, you know! :-) Much talking and laughing happened, despite the taskmaster's strict orders to focus on the task at hand -- of painting the treasure chest as many bright colors as possible.

After dinner, it was Harry Potter time again, and today we read all about Grawp - Hagrid's half brother. Much giggling happened alongside the reading, due to the antics of both Grawp and of 5-year old S, who was in a zany mood. The goodnights were bittersweet, as I depart (fog allowing) for Chennai tomorrow morning...

Then a little more conversation, a lot of readjustment packing (keeping in mind the warmer weather in South India) and now off to sleep... Good night!

oh, and p.s.... Forgot to mention that I started off the morning with a short brisk walk around the track at Gulmohar Club. There were swings too, so I got in a few swings before the security guard informed me that the swings would break if adults went on them. I don't know... it seemed sturdy to me!

:-)

India day 7 - Delhi

2011-01-08T10:02:00.000-08:00

Highlights:

birthday party for my friends' 5 yr old... complete with an indoor bouncy castle and to-die-for chocolate cake made by a Canadian bakery
Making a string doll with the 5 yr old's nine year old sister
dinner at a chic Italian restaurant to celebrate the 5 yr old's dad's 39th birthday. Yum!
a before sunset stroll by myself in a beautiful, quiet neighborhood
drawing bunnies, genies, and puppies with my 5 yr old and 9 yr old nieces
watching the five yr old's eyes glow as her birthday presents towered in front of her
talking with my friends M and P about their newly-found grudging acceptance of Barbies
going to a party being held by a writer at her barsati, and meeting journalists, artists, anthropologists, and even a former race car driver there!
going to sleep!

:-)

India day 6 - Delhi

2011-01-07T18:17:00.001-08:00

As today I was (shakily) feeling better, I was up and about, but cautiously. I took a short trip to a local market... (Didn't feel up to going to a museum or anything more touristy). Bought some birthday gifts and clothes to wear when I go to South India (which is warmer)

Then came home and spent time with five year old S., making a string Bharata Natyam doll, complete with a flying house. Much fun was had.

But I must say, 5 year olds have a LOT of energy. Who knew? :-) I ended up taking a 2 hour nap in the evening to compensate.

Evening routine was the same, with the Harry Potter and chat with P and M...

Pictures to follow.

India day 5 - Delhi

2011-01-06T18:15:00.000-08:00

I was sick all day... Just lay in bed with a fever and other things... And was taken care of by P and M. I couldn't ask for better friends, who talked with the doctor on the phone, got the meds, made me take them, fussed and hovered...

Today was.... achy sleep.....

India day 4 - Delhi

2011-01-05T19:25:00.000-08:00

explored Dilli Haat some more and shopped for some more gifts
watched a fun dance program in the courtyard at Dilli Haat - Rajasthani bhavai - wherein there was singing, whirling, whirling with pots (6!) balanced on head, and accomplishments of feats of balance, like dancing on top of two swords! I have photos galore, but not on this computer, so if one were to return to this blog, in time there would be photos to see...
went to Khan Market to revisit Manzil - a youth empowerment and learning center. This time my friends P and M and P and S came with me. Manzil is just an amazing organization, and if I were to return to volunteer, this would be an excellent place to come. I'm so glad my friends came with me, as they're in Delhi longer, and I think they might volunteer. The kids there are so confident in themselves. It is a beauty to see. We first had a nice talk with Ravi, the founder of the center, and then were given a tour and an opportunity to observe a couple of English classes by R, a 13 year old with an intrepid gaze and surety beyond her years. It also gives one pause to think, that Manzil is located smack dab in the middle of Khan Market, a hustling bustling capitalistic enterprise... It's a great metaphor for what is possible in life, if one chooses to focus on the important things...
came home, had a nice dinner, a nice Harry Potter reading, and a nice chat with P and M by the "fireplace" (actually a radiant heater) (The indoor temps here hover between 40 to 55 degrees, sometimes feeling lower due to the dampness of things.)
Then... at night, things started to fall apart, leading to..... my first sickness of the India trip.
All I can say is, thank Spirit of the Universe that I was / am with friends who took amazing care of me, despite my stubbornness.

India day 3 - Delhi

2011-01-04T18:41:00.000-08:00

Some cool stuff (not necessarily in chronological order):

hung out at the American Embassy School with P and M - their kids go there. and there's a cafe there, with yummy food and a relaxed vibe, called Open Hands. I walked around the beautiful campus too, taking fotos of pretty New Year's rangoli made with flower petals as well as several beautiful sculptures and some lush plant life.
ate a yummy yum guava for lunch
went to Dilli Haat to meet an old friend (MK) who's living here... As we caught up on our lives, we shopped a bit for gifts as well as ate momos at the Nagaland booth, amaranth cutlets at the Navdanya booth, and bought some organic foods from Navdanya, (founded by Vandana Shiva) including haldar (turmeric) for my mom... Also, since it was freezing cold, we drank cup after cup of mint and lemongrass tea. Yum.
went to GK 1 to do some clothes shopping at Anokhi and another store (kurtas)
listened to another cozy installment of the Harry Potter reading series with the whole M, S, P, M family
ate a vegetable pastry puff at a bakery (it's like a croissant with a warm / spicy samosa-y filling, but not too much of the filling, so it's just right and hits the spot)
took the Delhi metro for the first time ever! by myself, too! and it was easy! and clean! and efficient!
night time conversation with M and P about the reality of adjusting to life in India, especially when it comes to bureaucracy... and formulating theories as to why things are the way they are...
ate Mango papad squares that MK kindly purchased for us from a booth at Dilli Haat
watched admiringly and chatted with M and S as they biked and scootered their way up and down their courtyard, showing me their squiggly wiggly moves

India day 2 - Delhi

2011-01-03T14:09:00.000-08:00

Highlights of day 2 --

meeting up with old friends P and M and their kids M and S after a very long time (I'll be visiting them for a while!)
eating exquisite tomato basil risotto at Khan Market
visiting the expansively gorgeous and thought-provoking Humayun's Tomb - which I learned from my friends was the only place Barack Obama had time to see when he v. briefly visited Delhi
braving the whole getting a sim card / exchanging money deal with trusty friend P at my side
a yummy homemade dinner of karela and cauliflower and kadhi with rice and rotlis
eating juicy India oranges after dinner
being treated to a cozy family story hour of Harry Potter read aloud by M as my nieces cuddled in to sleep, P made expressive facial expressions to go along with Hermione's characterization, and i blinked, woozy with jetlag, but happy to be with all...

Hopefully, I'll download some photos soon(ish) and add them to the respective posts.

India day 1 - Delhi

2011-01-02T11:56:00.000-08:00

highlights:

waking up at 6 a.m. and not being much jetlagged through the day.
eating guava on a sunny-chilly-fresh Delhi terrace
working out with friends
getting an oil head massage
eating yummy food at Ai (Japanese)
giggling with my 18 year old niece
talking and chilling with my Delhi friends

Food for thought - Email forwards from friends' kids

2010-12-03T03:52:00.000-08:00

So, I am recently (as of one hour ago) the lucky recipient of an email forward from my friends' kid, age, oh, about 10. This one, thank collective-soul, is not a chain-mail where all my hairs will fall off if I don't forward it to all of you within 17 minutes of receipt. Whew.

Rather it's one of the more thoughtful ones, full of rhetorical questions of things that make you go gee... (Scroll to the bottom of the post to see it, if you're at all interested).

It's easy to smile and feel so much older and mature, and think, "ah, kids will be kids." But I got to thinking. back in the infancy of the Internet, weren't we all (or most) forwarding such emails to each other? Jokes, chain mails, recipes, random picture (and virus) laden emails that heavily taxed our 2GB-limited Hotmail accounts?

So perhaps our kids and our friends' kids are not so much showing their youth when it comes to these forwards, but rather this is a stage that all (or most) newbies to the internet must go through... a rite of passage, if you will.

Here's the email from my friend's kid, by the way, in case you're curious. :-)

If swimming is a good exercise to stay fit, Why are whales fat?

Why is the place in a stadium where people sit,
called a STAND?

Why is it that everyone wants to go to heaven?
But nobody wants to die?

Shall I say that there is racial discrimination even
In chess as the white piece is moved first?

In our country, we have freedom of speech,
Then why do we have telephone bills?

If money does not grow on trees then
Why do banks have branches?

Why doesn't glue stick to its bottle?

Why do you still call it building when
it’s already built?

If it’s true that we are here to help others,
What are others here for?

If you are not supposed to drink and
Drive why do bars have parking lots?

We all r Living in a seriously funny world....
So just enjoy the fun

Land of Enchantment Day 4

2010-11-05T19:33:00.000-07:00

Today was the first day of the conference for which I am here - the YALSA Young Adult Literature Symposium. But before the conference got under way, I had an exciting adventure - one I wasn't sure if I would follow through on at first, but eventually did, which I will term the Beauteous Balloon Adventure.

The YALSA folks had kindly negotiated a good price for those who wished to soar into the skies on a hot air balloon (an activity Albuquerque is well-known for, as it hosts the yearly International Balloon Fiesta). I had always had a yen for ballooning, after an incident when I was 16 -- a bunch of us from Saturday School were camping for our annual Summer Camp, when a balloon came down in a scrub area near our campsite. Since the boys amongst us helped the balloonists bring their balloon down safely, they gave some of us a ride up to 80 feet, with the remaining hot air (once the balloon was safely tethered). But then I had also heard of a hairy hot air balloon experience my friends Liz and Bill had soon after their wedding, wherein they landed, I think, in a tree! So, with equal parts excitement and trepidation I decided to go for it along with about 20 other intrepid librarians from all over the U.S.

We were met at the conference hotel at 6:30 a.m. by several balloon pilots with vans (and presumably balloons) in tow and taken to the ground where the balloons would be launched. I was surprised to be recruited into helping get the balloon inflated -- my job was to hang on to one edge of the balloon (for dear life) while a giant fan blew air into it. Near the end, it felt like the balloon was about to lift off despite me bearing down backwards with my full weight. I need to write one of the other folks in my group to ask for that photo!

All in all about five to eight balloons were taking off from the same dirt field... It turns out that the early morning is the best time for hot air ballooning, as a result of relatively predictable and mellow wind patterns.

The best part of the ride was coasting along the tops of the golden cottonwood trees that grace the banks of the Rio Grande...

The worst part of the ride was that it was all over all too soon... I am so glad that, despite my reservations, I went for it.

Land of Enchantment Day 3

2010-11-04T21:35:00.000-07:00

Lori had suggested yesterday that Valles Caldera Natural Preserve would be a good day trip, as it is scenic, has some good hiking trails, and one can do a loop, going west and then north, up over Santa Fe, and then dropping down to Santa Fe via Los Alamos and then back down to Albuquerque. Jim was game to come along again, for which I am ever so thankful, as I don't think I could have hiked the steep trail we ended up hiking, without his encouragement.

So we set off mid morning, up 25 North, and then west on 550, and north on 4. There was a steady, curving incline as we climbed up the Jemez Mountains. Since we were going to go for a "real hike" (meaning that it was going to be moderately strenuous, at least for me!) I voted to get coffee at the Laughing Lizard Inn & Cafe in Jemez Springs (point B on map below) on the way to give me courage, what with my being out of shape and all.... Good, strong coffee with a chocolaty feel and look gave me that needed kick in the pants for what was to come!

Then we headed over to the Jemez Falls trailhead/picnic area. (see point C on map for approximate location.)

View Larger Map

The Jemez Falls are beautiful and only a short quarter mile hike away from the trailhead.
But then, we returned to where the trail forked, to go down to the McCauley Hot Springs... more like the McCauley lukewarm springs, as we learned... The way down (down and down!) to the springs was gorgeous, with a Tahoe-like atmosphere created by plentiful fir and pine trees (not surprising, considering we were at over 7000 feet in elevation.) The springs are about 600 feet down in elevation from the start of the trailhead, which was all very well and easy on the way down, but on the way back... well, let's just say that the going was s-l-o-w... :-)

But all the effort was worth it, as the McCauley springs are these gorgeous little dammed up pools filled with clear lukewarm water and sand, and minnows that like to nibble at your feet. In case you're wondering, it tickles! And did I mention the views are just stunning? Don't take my word for it... take a look at some of these pics!

After the steep back to the trailhead, we realized that more time had passed than we had allotted for the hike (hmm... wonder who might have caused that?) So we got back on our merry way, as we had yet to actually see the ancient volcano top (now a grass valley) that is Valles Caldera... Good thing that our path naturally had us driving around part of the rim of it, on our way to and through Los Alamos. It is huge and... well huge. Vast. Mountain tops formed back in the day, by lava erupting, in the middle of it. I don't think this photo (the one with the yellow grassy meadow) does it justice... You'll have to go yourself and check it out!

At this point, exhausted, it was decided to try to get back to Albuquerque to meet Lori for food as soon as possible, but it did take a while. After all, we had to pass through Los Alamos (there was a security checkpoint!) and Santa Fe as well. No visit to the old town this trip, as the sun was setting, but we were lucky to get a wonderful view of the sunset on the way back! Take a look!

Land of Enchantment Day 2

2010-11-03T22:30:00.000-07:00

Today Jim and I agreed to meet up at noon to mosey down over to the Frontier Restaurant for... what else? a breakfast burrito, but of course!

And it was a pleasant surprise to just by chance run into Lori and her colleague, who were also there for lunch, which was awesome. I love the way things just work out sometimes! Lori's colleague, Amy, is a local, we asked her for suggestions on cool things to do in the area. The plan was for Jim and I to hang out, as he's off work right now, and then to meet up with Lori again for dinner. Amy suggested we try the hike at Tent Rocks, as it's amazing. Plus I am lucky to have arrived in NM so soon after Tent Rocks re-opened to the public after being closed for a long time for road construction. And so, we were off (with a pit stop at REI for me to buy hiking shoes, as I no longer own any. (So glad to have rectified that sad situation!)

One thing we realized only after getting very very close to Tent Rocks itself is that neither one of us had water, but we decided to "brave" the short trail anyway... And so glad we did, as it is simply marvelous, weirdly gorgeous, splendid, spiritually inspirational .... What a place. Just see some of these pics.

Tired, happy and thirsty, we gratefully gulped down some water found at a nearby convenience store and then raced back down to Albuquerque to meet up with Lori. After some discussion it was decided to go to Lori's beloved El Patio for dinner. Oh, so good, the vegetarian plate with Christmas on top!

All in all, a marvelous second day in the land of enchantment...

New Mexico food diary part 1

2010-11-03T21:54:00.000-07:00

malini, this is for you. read and weep. know that I have wept as well, if only from happiness. (and chili!)
Yesha's food diary thus far:

nov 2, 3 p.m. Frontier Restaurant. Breakfast burrito. To the unititiated, google or yelp it.

nov 2, 7 p.m. Flying Star. Buddha Bowl. *yes, not eggzackly New Mexican cuisine. but i was in the mood for feeling virtuous.

nov 3, 10 a.m. The best damn cafe latte with almond syrup, from michael thomas coffee.

nov 3. 12 pm. Frontier Restaurant. Breakfast burrito. (yes, aGain.)

nov 3. 8 p.m. El Patio. Vegetarian plate, consisting of: one avocado burrito, one bean taco or chile relleno, beans and sopapilla. oh and I had it "christmas" style, which meant Both red and green chili on top. And, they give you honey to eat with the sopapilla.

edit:
nov 4. not much for breakfast or lunch except for some great coffee and a couple of protein bars, and oh yes, an Odwalla C Monster...

nov 4. 7:00 p.m. Il Vicino Wood Oven Pizza with Lori and Jim.

nov 5. champagne breakfast, courtesy of the ballon pilots, complete with mimosa and prewrapped danishes (!)

nov 5. dinner, late! Los Cuates with other librarians... I had an omelet with green chili,----eh.... It was just okay, albeit nowhere near as good for vegetarians as El Patio. What was Quite Excellent was the salsa and chips. To Die For. I would recommend going just for the chips and maybe a drink and then going somewhere else (i.e. El Patio) for dinner.

So. That's the food update. For now.

Land of Enchantment Day 1

2010-11-02T21:00:00.000-07:00

Today I arrived in Albuquerque at about noon Mountain time, flying from NYC via Chicago. After paying way too much for a rental car (live and learn!) I checked into my home away from home - a sweet little casita with 3 affordable rooms for rent. The rooms all share one kitchen and one bathroom, and one small living room, complete with flat screen television. Oh, and there's also wifi. And a kickass cafe - Michael Thomas Coffee - next door. And a yoga / meditiation / massage / spiritual studio of all sorts (The Source) nearby as well. This makes up for the bad karma that is Thrifty rent-a-car. (Never rent from them again!)

After check in and some bonding with a new "housemate" at the Casita, I was off to the Frontier, an Albuquerque icon of which I have fond memories more than a decade old, for a late lunch. What did I have you ask? A Breakfast Burrito, my friend. And, mmm! it was so Good.
Ingredients? Here they are: one egg, hash browns, cheddar cheese and green chile... plus there is, if you choose to add, cold salsa, hot red salsa, hot green salsa, and ketchup. Which I did.

Then I was off to the Tamarind Institute, down the block, to check out their cool lithographs. The informational card below describes what you see above. Beautiful, no? And in the reflection you can see one of the UNM buildings across the street. And oh yes, the gorgeous New Mexican sky.

After the short Tamarind Institute trip, I went over to the UNM bookstore to seek out a map. The first year student who rung me up and I had a little talk about how her first year is exciting but so busy as well... And when I mentioned that I was visiting from Brooklyn, she said she really really wants to visit NY, as she's hardly travelled and is so excited about everything she's heard about NY and Brooklyn in particular too. I assured her that to Brooklynites, New Mexico is exotic and exciting!

After a quick shopping trip to buy some almond milk, earl grey tea and sunscreen, (yay for casita kitchens!), I met up with my old friend (and past roommate) Jim, so that we could walk over to pick up his wife and my friend Lori from her work. Then we all walked over to the Flying Star for dinner, where I partook of the ever so virtuous Buddha Bowl, which consisted of steamed and stir=fried veggies, brown rice and tofu, with some nice ginger flavors. Oh and on the way there, we were accosted by a drunken would-be "friend" who kept begging us to let him give us piggyback rides. He dogged us for a good five plus minutes, almost running into us at times. Sheesh. But funny afterwards.

Over dinner we discussed various esoteric points about librarianship and... bonded. It was bliss to be sharing a meal once more, with old friends, in the Land of Enchantment.

how and why you should support libraries

2010-03-29T10:41:00.000-07:00

Dear New Yorkers,
Please consider supporting your local library and libraries in two (2) ways. (others may take the following and apply it to their own area libraries):

1-. Monetary support -- yes, donate, (money, not books--unless the books are brand new and you have checked it out with a librarian first that these books are in fact needed by the library-- donating unneeded books is like treating the library as your personal dump.)

How to donate---- (the following are three Separate library systems. Yes, really!:-) )

A. Brooklyn Public Library - http://www.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/support/donor/

B. New York Public Library - http://www.nypl.org/support

C. Queens Public Library - https://secure2.convio.net/qlf/site/Donation2?df_id=1420&1420.donation=form1

2. Political support - free to you, yet sends a strong message to politicians that this is a crucial service that cannot be cut.

How to send a message:----

A. http://www.petitiononline.com/nyclibs/petition.html
B. http://www.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/support/shelves/
C. http://blog.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/post/2010/03/18/Keep-Your-Library-Open!.aspx
D. http://www.savequeenslibrary.org/
E. http://www.nypl.org/locations/tid/8/node/31430

Here's why you should help:
In case you'd like to know, here are ways (with example links) in which NY area public libraries support their communities, besides providing access to free books and internet access:

1. free ESOL classes

2. free GED/ pre GED classes

3. free Job search help

4. free computer classes for senior citizens

5. free computer classes for immigrants (in their native languages)

6. free programs for babies, toddlers, preschoolers and their parents

7. free afterschool programs for teens (like Creative Writing workshops, TeenTime)

8. free afterschool programs for kids (like Arts and Crafts, Gaming)

9. free access for incarcerated citizens who desire to read but are not allowed access unless a librarian visits with a floating collection

10. and More: Manga drawing workshop with Misako Rocks, Jazz @BrooklynPublicLibrary, Health Info and Literacy @ Queens Library... and on, and on, and on...

2010-02-28T17:54:00.000-08:00

here are the 'normal' things that are going on in my life, beyond the unsettling-getting-burglarized-stuff...

on Feb 1, i started my 6th semester of graduate school at Queens College... my master's degree is definitely being done slowly and on a very part-time basis. This is because A- I am working fulltime at a very busy branch of my library system and B- my commute to school is long and therefore as much energy gets expended on the commute as does on the actual class (if not more), leading to not being able to take too many classes per semester. Plus, I think I am devoted to the quality vs. quantity model --- having achieved an A+ in every class but for one (in that one class i earned just an ordinary A) ;)

This semester I am taking one class, which is actually an internship at an academic library (in the instructional services department). Basically this means that I am paying about 1000 bucks (including fees etc) for the privilege of working for them. But seriously, this experience of interning has started off well, and I am learning a lot about how academic libraries (or at least this one) function/functions. Academic libraries are so different than publics in so many ways, i cannot begin to enumerate them here... but maybe i'll start keeping a running list for myself--- something good to put into my journal for my internship, eh? (ya, part of the internship class is to keep a detailed journal)

what else? Work is the center of my life right now, so I'll go into some details about what's occupying me these days...

Here's one reason I really enjoy my work at the public library: Last fall this one wonderful teen, "D", kept bugging me about starting a creative writing workshop at my branch. I told her i was skeptical and that prolly teens wouldn't come. But she pollyanna'ed me into doing it, and we launched the workshop in early December. I am proud to say that "D" has soundly proven my pessimistic ass wrong -- we have averaged about 8 teens per class since then. (the numbers range from a high of 14 to a nadir of 5). While I cannot say that I know exactly what I'm doing leading a writing a workshop (!!!), I will say that I absolutely love it, every aspect. The interacting with the "teens" is my favorite part. (attendees range from ages 12 to 18... with one anomaly of a 23 year old who is in between college and grad school and needs an outlet for her energy and creativity.) On a weekly basis they blow me away with their writing and their spirit... and their generosity and perspicacity when giving each other honest feedback on their work. While we have a limited time together due to scheduling difficulties, we squeeze the most juice out of that time as possible and inhale the rinds until the next time we can meet. To say that these teens have made life interesting would be a dull understatement. To say that they make my life worth living, and Wednesdays my most-looked-forward-to day of the week, might be maudlin, not to mention cliché , but that would be a bit more, um, accurate.

Another activity I enjoy immensely at work, in a similar way, is running the Arts and Crafts programs on Tuesdays at the same branch. The kids are younger and sweeter and more rambunctious and messy than the teens, but I enjoy them all. So far we have made a myriad projects together, but some that come to mind are-- a wall of snowflakes, sorcerer turkeys (don't ask), paper beads, mosaics, and sparkly pipe cleaner christmas trees with bead ornaments. Tuesday afternoons for me are a whirl of white school glue, construction paper, safety scissors, lanyards, pony beads, manila paper (remember that stuff from school?), and googly eyes, not to mention moving around furniture in the meeting room. And kids. Kids galore, of every age from 3 to 13. And, sometimes, their mommies. :-) Sometimes I have over 20 people who come to an arts and crafts program!

Moving on to less rambunctious yet equally though differently enjoyable work endeavors -- This January I became a mentor to two high school aged interns at my branch. they are interning at my library as part of an IMLS funded grant to start a teen internship program intended to introduce high achieving low-income youth to library work. The idea is to cultivate future librarians as well as to serve the multicultural, multilingual communities of our city. Can I just say that I adore the two interns who have been housed at my branch to pieces. "X" is a shy yet at times loud, sensitive, EXTREMELY well read, 2nd gen Chinese american, oldest child of a family of four children who takes great care of her kg attending brother and younger sisters, responsible, wise beyond her years, junior in high school. "Y" is a soft-spoken, high achieving, thoughtful, artsy, innovative, gentle, loved-by-little-kids-as-older-sister-figure, Pakistani-American, senior in high school. They are teaching me as much as I am trying or hoping to teach them. And, on a lighter note, I love feeding them chocolate, as it satisfies the spoil-the-kids urge within me.

Another experience I've been having at work that I might not have mentioned is that once a week I have a rotation within the library system. As my title is officially Librarian Trainee, they allow me to go, once a week, to another division of the library and take part in projects and work there as a staff member... for the past almost one year, I have been stationed at the education and job center at the main branch. There I have done everything from put together resource lists on topics like searching for green jobs and business opportunities and Internet resources for high education to working at the reference desk (very different from reference desking at the branch) to observing resume and interview workshops. I have also worked on building a wiki for the department to use internally (hosted on pbworks.com) as well as successfully advocated for a dedicated job information blog/discussion link on our library's intranet. Plus my supervisors there have been incredibly supportive and kind and enthusiastic and I cannot tell you how motivating and invigorating that is.

What else? I have managed to do some fun things too, of late. Some things that come to mind are:

getting back into dance this past fall with an 8 week bharata natyam workshop with Parijat Desai, who is an amazing teacher as well as a warm wonderful person and activist. I hope to do this again soon!

a snow hike with my friend Malini (also a dancer) up at Minnewaska State Park Preserve back in January.

a wonderful visit to Boston on Valentines day weekend to spend time with Smitha, Ganesh and darling baby M----- - just 7 months old, in addition to many antics to make the baby laugh her deep gravelly old lady laugh, I also had the opportunity to sneak in a dance class with Smitha as teacher as well as a viewing of My Name is Khan -- awesome NRI Bollywood movie that instead of examining what does it mean to be Indian in America, for the first time explores what does it mean to be an American.

not to forget a major highlight of December-- over winter holidays i got to bake and decorate cookies with my favorite Ohio nieces, M---- and S---, which was incredibly fun and relaxing. And catching up with their parents, Pranav and Myth wasn't too shabby either. ;-)

Another fun experience has been to housesit at my parents place while they were away, and spend time with my sister at their place. I baked banana bread for her despite her protests of too many calories, and in turn she dragged me to her luxurious gym as her special guest. I must say, the sauna was definitely my favorite part... (thanks H!)

link to an old podcast with my dad...

2009-12-21T12:26:00.000-08:00

blast from the past

In India and loving it!

2009-07-26T03:32:00.000-07:00

So far I've been in New Delhi for three days, Ahmedabad for 3 days... In that time, I met up with and visited the following people/places:

Delhi People

The Sethi Family
Ravikant at Sarai
Ravi Gulati at Manzil

Delhi Places

Ahmedabad People

the Pandit family
Kalpash Dalal from Aavishkar Academy of Performing Arts
Madhusudan from MAM movies
Charvee
Binay

Ahmedabad Places

Gujarat Vidyapith
Gandhi Ashram
Manav Sadhna
Crosswords Bookstore
Seva Cafe

more to come soon....

1st day in India

2009-07-21T00:53:00.000-07:00

For the first day, I mostly (and unashamedly) relaxed... Went to a local beauty parlor with Seema... I think it was called Hair We Are... and there we were, treated to an ever so relaxing oil head massage... Quite decadent and reviving after the 14+ hour trip from Newark the previous night.

Later that evening we went out to dinner... for sushi at Ai. Quite a unique experience... for example the starters were dumplings wrapped in edible rice paper... Even though I gamely ate it, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was eating paper. But the rest of the food was delicious. Especially the soups, the noodles and the mango/avocado rolls (what's not to love about my favorite fruit and favorite vegetable rolled into one!?)

But what's with this new phenomenon of restaurants in exclusive shopping malls?
In my opinion it takes away from the charm of being in India... One could be anywhere in the world (except for the fact that I've never seen a high-end restaurant in a shopping mall in the U.S.) I guess it's one way to "keep the riff-raff out." Ah well... will have v. different experiences throughout this trip and this is but one.

Arrival in India

2009-07-20T00:50:00.000-07:00

Monday July 20th, I arrived in the evening and was wheeled into and out of the airport due to my broken toe. As a friend pointed out over email, a broken toe is "good for something, after all."

Was whisked thereafter to friends' Seema and Ajay's place where was lavished with warm attention. Got to see their kids Pal and Pri all grown up and tall. To lean on the much worn cliche, my how time does fly!

The F word

2009-01-13T23:53:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-07T14:25:00.001-08:00

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

2009-01-02T20:35:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-03T15:21:00.000-08:00

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 - D eath 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

2008-09-14T21:25:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-01T07:52:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-23T08:26:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-21T06:06:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-18T06:09:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-15T02:39:00.000-07:00

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.

Down to Earth in Mumbai

2008-08-13T01:48:00.000-07:00

I am on a rare short trip to India (and Thailand--more about the Thailand bit in a later post) and thought that, unlike other trips which were basically selfish in nature - about shopping, touristing, and spending time with family - I would like to do something a bit different for this trip, something service-related, something that would take me out of my little self and pour me into something bigger and moving, something about others.

Well, I cannot lie and say that I have completely fulfilled this goal, because I have indeed indulged in shopping and relaxing -- old habits die hard.

But I did, on Monday, have the honor of beginning to experience another side of India, one I would like to get further into.

Before I left, I contacted Nipun Mehta to ask him for suggestions/contact info for educational nonprofits with whom I could make contact in the Mumbai area. He immediately (less than half an hour) wrote me back with the email for the folks at Down to Earth (no website yet), an organization which works with kids living in the Cuffe Parade area of Mumbai.

Upon receiving my tentative email asking if they would mind a visit from me, I was welcomed immediately by Team DTE (Down to Earth) to come and observe - or even teach - one of their educational sessions, and that I should contact Niki and Mansi, two of their teachers, to figure out logistics.

And so, with some trepidation and after a few phone calls, I went down to the Backbay Bus Depot in Cuffe Parade, Mumbai to meet up with Niki. The class she teaches is in a Bombay slum called Ambedkar Nagar, which sits right up against one of the more moneyed areas of South Bombay, within a stone's throw from the 27-story, $2 billion dollar home of the fabulously wealthy Ambani family (still being built). She had me meet her at the bus depot rather than at the actual place where the classes were held-- as it is so inside a labyrinth of huts and small buildings that it would have been impossible to give me directions -- or for me to follow them.

Niki turned out to be a serious young woman who, in contrast to me, had taken local transportation to the locality. I was embarassed that I had taken a taxi. This was indication number one that I have a lot to learn and a long way to go in the arena of service and humility. In our conversation on the tangled way into the community where the class was to be held, I learned that Niki has been involved with social work and teaching for the past ten years, and that in the mornings, she teaches for Akanksha, another educational service org in Mumbai. As we walked the twists and turns of the gullies, every other kid who passed us greeted her with a wide smile and a "Hello Niki Didi!" Here and there she stopped to make conversation--in Hindi.

One kid she mildly berated, with palpable love under the surface toughness, for not coming to the last session. We also visited another kid briefly, who had recently gotten a terrible electrical shock due to some exposed wiring in his home. His right arm was laced with scars and hung by his side as he sheepishly accepted Niki Didi's assertions that he definitely needed to go to the doctor. Despite one last exhortation from Niki Didi that he should take care of himself and get medicine from the doctor, one did not get the sense that he would be able to go. As we walked along we collected a half dozen companions - kids who were coming to the Down to Earth class.

The classroom was a tiny room accessed via a built-in ladder. Niki kindly took my backpack from me so that I could manouver myself into the room. Soon there were about a dozen of us seated cross-legged in a circle, with all eyes on Niki Didi. She began the session with some breathing exercises to center our attention. The kids smiled at me and I sensed their curiosity about this new person. At this point Niki introduced me briefly and asked each of the children to introduce him/herself to me--name and one thing that they like to do. Some were shyer than others, as English is definitely not their main language. Nevertheless, they persevered, and I learned that sports is very important in their lives -- many said that football (soccer) was their favorite activity.

Having been a teacher myself in the past, what impressed me about the kids is that despite the crowded classroom and distractions -- bad weather all too palpable in the room with holes in its corrugated tin walls and visitor from abroad-- the kids were remarkably focused and intent on learning. Their respect for their teacher and for the spark of education she was cultivating in them was visible in their intent gaze and their immediate attention to all that Niki Didi asked them to do. When I taught middle school I would have given an arm and leg for such dedicated students!

Then Niki asked me to tell them a little -- in English -- about what is it that a librarian does, especially a librarian in the U.S. As I spoke of the kinds of programs that I conduct with the youth at my library in Brooklyn--gardening, arts and crafts, computer games, help with research--I couldn't help but wince at the relative wealth even average and working class Brooklyn kids have as compared to these bright young Mumbai-ites. Niki and Mansi explained to me later that Mumbai has no free public libraries in the tradition of what we take for granted in most cities in the States. I felt ashamed to have tantalized the kids with what is not available to them, but I only told them out of a sense of enthusiasm to share... It is difficult to know what is the right thing to do or say, especially when there is such dire disparity in our world.

Then, much to my relief, we moved on to word games. We played a word association game where we went around in a fast circle, each naming an English word that closely related in any logical way to the one just spoken by the previous person. No words could be repeated... The words went something like: black, white, paper, pencil, pen, school, child, boy, girl, child, school, desk, book, notebook, draw, bird, fly, sky, cloud, high, low.... (You get the picture.) If you couldn't think of a word within 5 counts on Niki Didi's fingers, you were out. The game moved quite rapidly with some funny attempts that didn't always pass the sharp scrutiny of Niki Didi. The winner was shining quick Jyoti with the mango-tied braids and the open smile.

The next activity was to think and write down as many br- words as possible, with the br- sound appearing anywhere in the word. As I myself could think of only two or three words off the top of my head, I was impressed at the diligence of the kids in creating quite a voluminous list of br- words. They could give Sesame Street a run for its money -- or at least help out with script planning!

And then, all too soon, my time there was over, as I had a promise to meet my dad early that evening. But I hope --no Plan!-- to go there again before this too-short trip to India is over.

I can't help but wonder how I - short on time in India - can help in any way besides donating funds. When I asked Niki and Mansi, they said that what they most need is not supplies but human power. It also seems painfully evident to me that they also need more classroom space. I can't help but marvel at the irony of the $2 billion Ambani tower going up in the neighborhood of these very same kids, and wonder if somehow wealthy folks like the Ambanis could not be prevailed upon to provide more space to these kids and their teacher. As far as human power, what with grad school and a full-time job, I won't be able to come out to help anytime soon after the conclusion of this trip, but I have a fledgling of an idea involving establishing some kind of cooperative project between the kids I see every day at the Brooklyn Public Library and the kids of Down to Earth.

Any other ideas?

Death of an incredible person

2008-07-24T15:38:00.001-07:00

Earlier this week I woke up in the middle of the night, sweating due to the high temps and AC not being on. Decided to check email. And learned that my former roommate, Ryan Jones, died this past weekend in a tragic motorcycle accident.

This whole week I have been shaken up by this. All the cliches came to mind. Such a good person. Didn't deserve to die. Too young to die. But so much more came to mind too. His art, his love of nature, his dedication, his ability to follow through on promises. All these things have been in my heavy heart and mind this week. And in the minds of so many others... Just see: http://inmemoryofryanjones.blogspot.com/

Ryan, do you know how many people are mourning you right now?

I really don't know what to make of this troubling article

2008-05-17T14:37:00.000-07:00

So, I should be studying for cataloging or working on my Happiness Pathfinder for school, but I found myself reading my email instead.

One of the messages I got from the South Asian Sisters listserv gave the link to this article, with the one-word comment, "Disgusting."

"Indian village proud after double "honor killing" was the title of the article that the link took me to... Disgusting indeed.

I am so troubled. Troubled at this horrible deed. Troubled that there is no shame about it, that rather vindication and pride are the emotions felt instead. Yes, the wincing pain of a father who is happy to see his daughter killed to save his "honor," such as it is (or isn't), this I feel deeply. But troubled too, that it is stories like these that make the headlines, that westerners of every stripe will read with relish and shaking of the head, troubled that this is the sort of news that, on some subconscious level is desired from India and from other nations like India. If this type of news doesn't come from that part of the world now and then, how else will the West top up its IV bottle of self-esteem. And then I fall back into being troubled by my own cynical reaction. After all, foremost isn't it what happened to this girl and her boyfriend the thing that matters? The fact that life was taken away with no regard or respect? Never mind where they were. Troubled that we live in a world where have to take in the news only after enshrouding ourselves with layer upon layer of self-protection.

Headline: Dogwood Blooms, people stop to stare

2008-04-30T11:44:00.000-07:00

Yesterday evening was a perfectly glorious, cool spring evening in Brooklyn. The kind of weather that the Bay area has a lot of, but rare and therefore ever so much more precious in New York.

I was feeling grumpy and unwilling to leave the house after I got home from work, which was exhausting because I started at a new branch of the library, (long story).

But I dragged myself outdoors into the waning evening because I knew that getting out would drive away at least a few of the blues and grumps within. And so it did.

Because, as I walked up 16th street in Brooklyn, I came upon the astonishing sight of a creamy white, butter white dogwood tree, in glory-glorious bloom, standing proud and pretty, lovely, rather, soaking up the warm evening glow with each of her outspread white petals.

I stopped in my tracks and fell up into the tree and down into reverie of dogwoods past. I stared at her so long and took so many pictures with my cellphone cam, others stopped too. When the resident of the house came home, I sheepishly explained to her that I was no stalker, just enamored of her perfect dogwood. Oh, no matter, she said. Yes, it is indeed a glorious tree, and others have stopped too.

Thank you oh perfect glorious dogwood of Park Slope!

Spirograph

2008-04-01T20:55:00.000-07:00

After two weeks of midterms and two papers, taking a study break with Anu Garg's site, wordsmith.org.

Played around with this spirograph feature... Kind of relaxing, in an internet kinda way...
check it out! (pretty, no?)

Created by Anu
Garg.

Shri Ram Jaya Ram

2008-02-20T06:01:00.000-08:00

"...sharanam, sharanam, Shri Ragunatha..." As I sit here and type, the tape player in my living room chimes with the rhythmic cling of manjeeras and the hypnotic repetition of this dhoon. But, no, it is not I playing this music. Rather it's my American roommate, who, having spent a couple of years in a Yoga camp, has acquired quite a repertoire of Hindu bhajans and dhoons.

:)

While in the past I would have felt odd about the cultural appropriation, I don't know... now I actually kind of like it... It's been a tough winter so far, and this morning, as I get ready for work and do some personal emailing before I set out for my day, it's nice to be soothed by familiar-from-childhood-sounding music. No matter who plays it.

zen cup of tea

2007-10-15T00:52:00.000-07:00

The following was found on: http://www.nozen.com/cupoftea.htm

A Cup of Tea

Nan-in received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full and then kept on pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he could restrain himself no longer. "It is overfull. No more will go in!"

"Like this cup", Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?"

Flowery Cabs in New York City

2007-09-25T11:50:00.000-07:00

The other day, as I was crossing Queens Boulevard to get back to work after a quick coffee break, I was stopped short by the sight of a beautifully decorated taxicab. It reminded me of how intricately the trucks and rickshaws are decorated in India. Another stranger was also pulled up short in admiration of the flowers boldly painted on the hood and back of the taxi. We wondered aloud to each other if perhaps the cab driver himself had taken a brush to his vehicle... I was inpired as well as mystified. This demanded that a photo be taken. As I pulled out my camera and took the picture you see here, the proud owner of the vehicle arrived, joyful that his taxi was the center of so much admiration. He explained that the flowers are actually made of paper and then glued onto the surface of the car, and that they were drawn by children with disabilities. The taxi driver, Mr. Deep Mangli, (pictured sitting on his cab) was also excited to share with me, as an aside, that he is a Punjabi Poet and Performer and if interested you can read all about his poetic activities at his website: http://www.deepmanglinyc.com/ (One of those only in New York moments...)

In the meantime, stop and enjoy the flowering cabs, which, according to The Gothamist, will be around through December 2007, as part of the Gardens in Transit program! Apparently, according to one commenter on the recent Gothamist article, the kids who participated in this project

"... got a huge kick out of the fact that their work was going to be on the city
cabs. In actuality, the by-laws had to be changed for this one time project
because the NYC yellow cab is an iconic symbol and can't be altered. They are
doing it this once and the law says that they can't be changed from any color
but yellow for the next 100 years."

Disturbing news

2007-09-20T19:53:00.000-07:00

So I get a forward from a former colleague at Mills College in California. At first I didn't open it, because, hey it was a forward. It could wait. But in the end I'm glad I did, though it did contain very disturbing news. One of their music professors, Nalini Ghuman, has been barred from re-entering the country for the past year. For no discernible reason! Not only that, but her immigration attorney is unable to make any headway into finding out the reason behind her being barred from the country by the State Department. It seems that there is a great possibility that, despite Mills College's attempts at helping her, that she may just have to seek employment outside of the country, and leave her job, despite the fact that her employer wants her here, despite the fact that she has been a resident of the U.S. for at least 10 years, despite the fact that she has done nothing wrong. What is this country coming to?

Here is an article from the New York Times describing this in further detail. Here is a quote from that article, speculating as to the possible reason for blocking her re-entry:

Ms. Ghuman is certainly not alone in her frustration. Academic and civil
liberties groups point to other foreign scholars who have been denied entry
without explanation at an airport, or refused a visa when they applied. A
pending lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union contends that the Bush administration is using heightened security measures to keep foreign scholars out on ideological grounds in violation of the First Amendment rights of American scholars to hear them.

looking serious while tabling for the RC

2007-08-23T14:44:00.001-07:00

looking serious while tabling for the RC
Originally uploaded by IndianGirl

another Red Cross foto...

smiling at work

2007-08-23T14:37:00.001-07:00

smiling at work
Originally uploaded by IndianGirl

me in my Red Cross regalia, after doing a Disaster Preparedness Presentation...

Rana and Betsy make a heartwarming speech at their rehearsal dinner... while looking handsome and lovely.

2007-07-16T11:22:00.001-07:00

Rana and Betsy make a heartwarming speech at their rehearsal dinner... while looking handsome and lovely.
Originally uploaded by IndianGirl

Don't they look happy?

It was an honor to be invited to Betsy and Rana's rehearsal dinner. It was a beautiful night for a courtyard dinner at a French restaurant in San Francisco, celebrating the love of friends.

2007-07-09T09:07:00.000-07:00

I was cutting a mango.
Or, to be more accurate, was about to cut a mango.
I hadn't eaten much yesterday, just a salad for dinner.
So was hungry at 1 a.m. and thought, why not a mango?

The mango was cold and ready. The white cutting board was awaiting the press of the slice.

My father walked up to me, and said, Bhaipal Bapuji marigaya. Bhailal Bapuji died.

Silence.

Things are stiff between my father and me these days, but still, the pain. Hug. We share tears; his staying deep inside the mine of his reddened eyes. Mine spilling out.

Thoughts of the old man with the scratchy voice who was perpetually sick, but perpetually hanging on, like tough leather shoestring, like stubborn sticky cobweb.

Thoughts of the old man sitting in the little room in the house on the hill. The half cousin of the family.

Thoughts of how I used him for a caricature in my monologue. Because he urged me to marry.

Thoughts of how he was the last link to the old Unava - the old village which I will never visit again.

The mango stayed green and perfect and whole and wet on the white clean cutting board.

Being Sita?

2007-06-24T10:21:00.001-07:00

When I was growing up in New Jersey, I had the privilege of attending a Saturday School where we were trained in the lore of ancient India, specifically Hindu India. I thank my lucky stars that, while the school was quite religious and pious in its focus, it never, Never followed the lead of such blind Hindutva-based, fanatical organizations as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. Instead it based its teachings on the rather more all-embracing teachings of the 19th century Hindu mystic, Shri Ramakrishna.

I don't intend to get into the whole history of Saturday School here, but just to talk of one incident; actually, not even an incident, really... more like a moment.

Our Saturday School teachers tried to instill in us a deep-seated sense of morality and good character. To this end, they taught us the meaning of portions of the Vedas, the Gita, and also the grand old stories from the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. Not only were we taught the actual stories and shlokas (verses) but these were explained and elaborated upon in long discussions. In many senses, especially in the early years, this school really mimicked the old form of spiritual education in India - the gurukul.

Another way that values were instilled in us was through memorization. We were given excerpts of speeches and writings by great people such as Mahatma Gandhi, Swami Vivekananda, Rabrinath Tagore, Saradamani Devi (the wife of Shri Ramakrishna) and so on. Our teachers called these excerpts "paragraphs" and each of us was often assigned a paragraph to memorize and recite at upcoming events, such as our (practically named) Annual Function, or other such gatherings.

Swami Vivekananda being a prolific speech-maker, most of the paragraphs were by him. I remember there was a very strong, bold one called "What We Want" because the starting line was, "What we want is muscles of iron and nerves of steel." "What We Want" was a much-coveted paragraph. See now, this is the thing, the heart of the matter. There were fun paragraphs, and there were not-so--fun paragraphs. We tended to like the ones that were rythmic and lyrical.... "What We Want" fell into that category, because we could apply a staccato, forceful rhythm to the words, "What we want is muscles of iron and nerves of steel..."

But then there were other paragraphs which were not memorable, but rather boring. We would dread being assigned one of these, as not only did they not lend themselves to the rhythms we liked, but they were difficult to stamp into the memory, leading to a lot of stumbling when reciting.

One time, our school was invited to another such school's event in New York City... Our teachers chose several students to recite some of the key paragraphs... One by one the paragraphs were assigned, and soon, there were only two paragraphs left... and two of us students left - my classmate Manish, a boy around my age, and I. The two paragraphs left were Swami Vivekananda's "Sita, India's Ideal" (hereafter referred to as SII) and the other was Rabrinath Tagore's "Let My Country Awake." (hereafter referred to as LMCA)

I prayed that I'd be assigned to LMCA, as I abhorred SII. The little budding feminist that I was, I didn't know exactly why I rebelled at the thought of Sita being my ideal, but rebel I did. So I rejoiced when I was assigned to LMCA. This was the creme de la creme of paragraphs, being a sublime poem rather than a paragraph.

I can't say I really understood either "paragraph" very well... (See below for the texts of both.) It's just that in the case of SII, it galled me that girls and women were exhorted to "Be Sita," while there was no mention of boys being required to do anything, as if all of India depended on girls to be obedient and ever-suffering.

While in the case of LMCA, it was the beauty of the words, the cadence, the concepts of freedom and truth that appealed to me. I surely had no clue as to what I wanted my country to awake to, or awake from. Come to think of it, I wasn't quite sure which country was my country - India or the U.S. - and yet Rabrinath Tagore's "paragraph" seduced my inner writer with its simple poetry.

To be fair, SII was also quite poetic, in retrospect, and strong in its rhetoric, which would have appealed to me if it were not for the sense of unfairness that raged within when I heard it. "Why do girls have to be stupid Sita," I remember thinking, rather bitterly, "and not boys?!"

Well. Life isn't always fair, and one of the teachers realized that the last paragraph to be assigned--SII-- and the last kid -- Manish, a boy -- didn't quite match. It would be a bit awkward to have that paragraph emanate from a boy's mouth, even though it was originally uttered by a man. (!!) And so... much to my chagrin, the paragraphs were reassigned. And I was, after all, assigned to my much-hated paragraph.

Postscript~
This may be somewhat of a non sequitor, but....
Recently, I read a book of short stories -- Shielding Her Modesty by Sita Bhaskar -- about whom I 'll be blogging shortly. I must say, that if I am to be like Sita, please let me be like Sita Bhaskar, who writes like a modern-day and less inhibited version of the great R.K. Narayan with a bit of her own unique spice and humor thrown in.
Amen.

Sita, India's Ideal
Rama and Sita are the ideals of the Indian nation. All children, especially girls, worship Sita. The height of a woman's ambition is to be like Sita, the pure, the devoted, the all-suffering!

Sita is typical of India — the idealised India. The question is not whether she ever lived, whether the story is history or not, we know that the ideal is there. There is no other story that has so permeated the whole nation, so entered into its very life, and has so tingled in every drop of blood of the race, as this ideal of Sita.

Sita is the name in India for everything that is good, pure and holy — everything that in woman we call womanly. If a priest has to bless a woman he says, "Be Sita!" If he blesses a child, he says "Be Sita!" They are all children of Sita, and are struggling to be Sita, the patient, the all-suffering...
-Swami Vivekananda
NOTE: The above is an excerpt from a much longer speech. If you would like to read the speech in its entirety, go to this link and scroll down for a bit.

Let My Country Awake
Where the mind is without fear and the head held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

-Rabindranath Tagore

am listening to...

2007-06-18T20:20:00.000-07:00

as I try to sleep, but I cannot... i am listening to Pari Mahal, one of my favorite pieces by the group Ghazal…

it’s so beautiful, I can’t stand it. it aches.
it’s the sweet tender playful part of every love affair.

it’s sunlight glinting through water passing through your hands as you smile.

it’s a dance of the heart and sarangi and melody.

it’s the question.
it’s the laughing answer.

Art present brings back memories of Art past... and perhaps inspires Art future?

2007-05-18T21:09:00.000-07:00

Today I attended (and was the volunteer bartender for) the SAWCC Slide Slam -- a slide show by several SAWCC artists who showed their work on an LCD projector and each spoke about her work for about 10 minutes... It was an inspiring art show and talk... something new for me... Bringing the process of art alive with talk of narrative, theory, and process. The artists featured were Yamini Nayar, Jaishri Abhichandini, Chitra Ganesh, Sa'dia Rehman, Swati Khurana, Rina Banerjee.

I was especially struck by Jaishri's explanation of the emotional impact of participating in P.S.1's Emergency Room exhibition earlier this year. The artists were given a set of elaborate rules to abide by in creating their pieces for this exhibit~ but in short they were to create, for thirty days, art that responded to or was inspired by something that was current in the media on each day. They had to work quickly, as each piece needed to completed within a very short time frame. The day that Sadam Hussain was executed, she chose to do a painting of his face after his neck had snapped, and when she described the visceral reaction she had initially, but then the need to acclimate herself enough to the YouTube video to be able to paint the image... well. That brought home to me that art doesn't have to be this esoteric "out there" thing that people "out there" do. Nor does it have to be a solely decorative process. She said that while this particular project had many limitations, one thing she gained was learning to create simple images, simple projects that could be read and experienced directly, and weren't unnecessarily abtruse.

Having the opportunity to hear the artists' thoughts on their work in a cozy, low pressure setting helped the audience better understand even the more abstract pieces that took more understanding of the deep meanings that the artist was gleaning from her environment in creating the piece.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Being immersed in the world of art, and not just art in a museum, but art given context and narrative by its creators brought me back to the times in my life when visual art was quite at the forefront of my mind... There have been many times like this, from the time in high school (and beyond) when I used to regularly stay up till one, two, or three in the morning, just to draw and redraw and redraw obsessive self-portraits... It wasn't so much that I was obsessed with myself, (though which teenager isn't, really?) as that I was obsessed with drawing faces... and mine was the only face I could with regularity get to sit long enough so that I could draw it.

Another time in my life when visual art was central was during the Notre Dame years... Actually, specifically the year 1998. I took an oil painting class with Charlie Strong. One of the assignments he gave us got me fascinated with the dichotomy of dark and light... What he did was to take photographs of each of us, in a relatively dark room, but with one very strong, unidirectional light source focused on one side of our faces... this produced striking effect of light and shadow, which were a delight to me... He asked us to use these as reference for our paintings.

I reveled in exploring the various nuances of light and dark, and the way colors changed in how they looked in different light. Also added to my challenge during this time was the fact that, in my cheapness, I only bought four cans of oil paint -- blue, red, yellow, and black. No white. So the paintings from this time were quite dramatic, both because of the dark/light contrast that was so pronounced, and also because I had very few colors to play with... (Although, i must admit, I did occasionally beg some white paint from a classmate. But the rare white stroke in the paintings from this time just seems to emphasize all the more how little white is there, with no white diluting the other colors at all...)

Another thing that led to the paintings' dramatic overtones was the circumstances under which they were painted... In those days, I used to work till 9 or 10 at night at the college, as I was one who could better concentrate after my coworkers left work... and then at about 10 or 11, I would go off to the art studio (having begged the security guard to let me in) and then paint to my heart's content. The thing that kept my energy up, besides being in my twenties, was that I kept a Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan cd there in my locker... and at that midnight hour, with no witness, I'd paint and sing, and dance and paint... it is hard to describe without waxing silly-- it was at the same time a soul stirring and soul soothing experience. NFAK would transport me to a trancelike state as I slip-slid around in my flats on the dusty art studio floor.... It helped that the studio was huge, cavernous, with walls of stone that were two feet thick, giving me the sense of being in a protected fortress, free to dance to my heart's content and paint to my soul's exhaustion... Finally, when I was done for the night, it would often be well past three in the morning...

and then, contentedly I'd drive home.

Something is Better than Nothing

2007-04-24T08:08:00.000-07:00

Well, you know me... It's always been either the best of times or the worst of times with me, especially when it comes to fitness. Either I was on the cross-country team, running at least 8 miles a day, or in Chennai dancing several hours a day, or doing Absolutely Nothing and watching my muscles rot. Nothing in between for me... I either wanted it all, or nothing would do. No middle ground. Or so it seems...

But actually, when I look back, I realize there have been times in between when I have strived for some equilibrium. There was the time in ninety seven ('98?), when Elaine and I would go down to Ocean Beach in SF most mornings, or least four out of every seven, to walk and run. (She ran, I walked.) And then that slowly built up to the point at which I started to run, at least half of the time. But then, what happened? I don't know... I moved, she moved. My enthusiasm waned with the loss of my workout partner. That shouldn't have been the case, but sadly, it was.

And of late, I've been hitting the gym at the regular rate of about once a week. A laughable proposition, perhaps, but hey, it jives with my new philosophy (thanks, Anil!) of Something is Better than Nothing. That's the mantra I've been chanting to myself (well, actually more like muttering) as I do my forlorn once-weekly trip to the gym.

Well... As I ponder health in general and heart-health in particular, I realize that the something part has got to be stepped up, to be a bit more substantial. A something more, if you will.

And that's where the brilliant Couch to 5K plan comes in. I plan to try essay this audaciously simple schedule for getting me back in heart-healthy shape.

I look to you, my friends, to remind me, to ask me, to tease me, to inspire me, from time to time, with the question, "How's the Couch to 5K going for you? Did you do it this week? Did you do it today?"

Better yet, join me in my quest to run 5K, and share your progress with me. We'll all be the better for it. Let me know via this blog or by email if you'd like to join and share our progress... Or, just bug me... I'll look forward to it.

After all this Something is a Whole lot better than alot of Nothing.

today... (Saturday the 6th)

2007-01-06T23:43:00.000-08:00

i had a truly interesting (in a positive way) experience… at the suggestion of a friend, I decided to go to the Brooklyn Museum’s monthly event, First Saturday… apparently Target has sponsored free entry and happenings every First Saturday of the month at the Booklyn Museum. How cool is that?

So today I was treated to two amazing exhibits:

Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer’s Life, 1990–2005,

and

Ron Mueck’s amazing, lifelike sculptures

Oh, and before all that, I wandered around Astoria Park (a 15 minute walk away from my new place) around sunset time and enjoyed the tail end of today’s freakishly warm weather… in fact, as I was walking down my street this older gentleman pointed to the front yard of a nearby house—“Plants!” he said, “plants are coming up!!” We admired the brave shoots together at the same time as feeling sorry for them that they got fooled into popping up before their time… What underlined the freakishness of it is that that particular yard still had its Christmas display up….

Bollywood romanticizes certain ethnicities

2006-09-23T21:36:00.000-07:00

have you noticed that the two ethnicities that are romanticized in Bollywood are Punjabis and (to a lesser degree) Bengalis? (There are tons of characters with last names like Malhotra and then, of course, there's the Devdas type of film, glorifying Bong culture) I guess this is not big news, but still... i guess if one were to look at those involved in the films, these two groups would be more highly represented, and thus the result is that they over-romanticize their own groups...

but it's annoying. especially when we gujaratis are relegated to the questionable glory of such songs as "G-U-J-J-U!" (in the film Kal Ho Na Ho), South Indians are relegated to slapstick humor, and most other ethnic groups are just plain ignored. It's quite ironic, considering that quite a few actors and actresses hail from various parts of India not well represented in Bollywood... For example, Dimple Kapadia is Gujarati, Aishwarya Rai is from Mangalore, Rekha is Tamilian and John Abraham is half Malayali and half Parsi.

it would be a refreshing change to see other Desi ethnicities represented in a positive light in Bollywood.

Delicious book recommendations...

2006-07-08T18:19:00.000-07:00

so i recently sent off an email to my friends:

looking to get from you recommendations of the very very best, best, bestest books that you've read in the last year or two years (or however long)
books that you Truly enjoyed reading, found delicious even.
looking forward to compiling a list... so that i don't just go to the bookstore and randomly blow money on random books... this way i can have a Strategy.
not that i'm planning on buying anything much anytime soon. but a girl can Dream, no?
:)

oh yeah, and books like this that *i've* read recently? Here they are, but i warn you, simply fun reads are mixed in with truly "great" literature in the following:

-The Glass Palace (amitav ghosh)
-The Hungry Tide (amitav ghosh)
-Kissing in Manhattan
-On Writing (Stephen King)
-My Uncle Napoleon : A Novel(Iraj Pizishkzad)

i also read love creeps but really didn't like it. i also waded through john irving's recent one, Until I Find You... he needed an editor to chop it down. Bad.ugh.

so far, here are some of the recommendations I've gotten... will update this entry as more arrive (and oh do feel free to contribute!)

The In Between Life of Vikram Lall
Cereus Blooms at Night by Shani Mootoo
Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi)

update from the fourth floor of St. Joe's

2006-06-22T22:22:00.000-07:00

in Paterson... today is thursday... well actually it's past 1 a.m., so technically it's friday...

anyway, am typing this from pappa's hospital room... he's sleeing... peacefully enough, it seems... it's disturbing to see him so weak. i really really really hope this operation has helped him and not harmed him, really hope.

glancing over at him now and then to make sure he's breathing alright. yeah i'm morbid, and maybe, just maybe, a bit paranoid, but waddyagonna do about it...

his blood pressure was quite low today, even for him, with his chronically low bp... hmm. worrisome. he's worried i know... this takes so much out of him, out of us... these hospital stays... we've become strangely used to it... this time it, meaning the whole routine of how things go here, everything is more familiar. whether we want to or not, we are becoming old hands at this. gosh. who would want to? unless you are a doctor or nurse or something. the nurses at the Open Heart recovery room were great. not that he had open heart surgery, but he did get a tunnel created in his upper chest, so the surgeon wanted to make sure he was well taken care of for the firt 24 hours... at least... now that he's back on the 4th floor, it's back to the family... it's up to the family and the patient to make sure that the right questions are asked... that's just how it is, these days... short staffed on nurses... all hospitals are, i understand, from talking to people...

exhausting... it takes its toll on all of us.

last year, when pappa was admitted to the hospital after fainting, and it turned out he had a n arrhthmia and needed an ICD, then... at that time, i freaked out. Freaked out. and actually lost weight even (a little) since i was constantly, CONstantly at the hospital. felt guilty about even going home for a couple of hours.

but now so exhausted .... of course tongight i'm in the hospital, watching over him... i've positioned this armchair thingies so that i face him... his neck does seem a bit bent fwd... hope he doesn't get a crick in it... i'll hit post on this, and then go try to adjust his bed a bit so that it's in a more noral postion... but hope i won't wake him up... well, the sleeping med he's taking has made him groggy indeed, though...

i worry about my mother too... all this... so much to deal with.

but then this is what life about... no life is possible without the surety of death.

and disease is but one ethod, isn't it?

morbid, my thoughts are

ahh... better go and try to adjust his neck...

later...

I am from...

2006-06-01T08:20:00.000-07:00

I just got a poem published in Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore, in the Spring/Summer 2006 issue. It is in the Creative Nonfiction section... Below is how it appears, on pages 47 and 48... Enjoy --- :)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In his column in this issue, Tom van Buren refers to the New York Folklore Society's 2005 Writing Folklore conference, which was held in September in Tarrytown, New York. The poems presented here are the contributions of two of the conference attendees. The poems were produced as part of a writing exercise led by Steve Zeitlin, executive director of City Lore, in which participants were given the beginning prompt "I am." We are grateful to Yesha for [her] willingness to share [her] poetry with Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore.

I am from the fog rushing over Twin Peaks
and from the parched Sabarmati Nadi
a river that sometimes is
and from the icy blue of snow-fed Tahoe

I am from the sandy alley in Unava where
our house doesn't have a number
not even a street name--
just "near Lakshminarayan Temple"

I am from Ba with no teeth
and an infectious laugh
and from Lakshman Dada
of no near relation but full of stories
of lotus roots he dived to eat
and daughter that he lost to death but found again in
me

I am from Aunti and Uncle at Saturday School
and wearing the wrong color blue pants and
getting in trouble

I am from my little sister and brother age two and four
weaving stories for their big-eyed wonder
when one was over and they begged for another
I told them they'd have to wait, because
the stories, like naughty children, were running races
around and around inside my head, and I'd have to
stop, go inside and...
CATCH one, before I could drag it out to tell them.
And they believed me.

I am from too much responsibility
but also from duties shirked

I am from the pink-flecked cool tile porch seat
wrapped around the front and back of my mother's
father's house in Ahmedabad
and from my dead black fingernail that fell off my
finger after
I slammed it in a chair
which I buried in my great-grandmother's garden,
where she grew meetho limdo

here i am

2006-05-27T21:30:00.000-07:00

sitting in my hotel room at the Days Inn in Shrewsbury, Mass, a town that was incorporated beFORE the 13 colonies declared Independence. Ya, *that* old.

my dad is across the hall, in room 133, catching up with old Rhode Island-day friends Nalin Uncle, Prafulla Aunti, Kirit Uncle, and Rashmi Aunti, Gupta Uncle, and others

It's funny. I am getting a glimpse of some of their past (theirs and my parents') that I hardly could have known about, since we left Rhode Island by the time I was seven... It's er... Illuminating to say the least.

mixed messages

2006-05-22T11:56:00.000-07:00

wow.

wow.

wow.

sometimes

2006-05-15T13:10:00.000-07:00

i get so so so so SO angry.

right now is one of those times.

I was researching fellowships online.

I found one for "new Americans" - people who are naturalized citizens.

Got excited about it, but then.

Found out they have an AGE REQUIREMENT. You cannot be older than 30 To Even Be Considered.

What kind of Bullshit is this?

Academia is a Stacked deck. They prefer to have callow, impressionable youths straight from the grocery stores - er, colleges - delivered to their doorstep.

I despair.

yesterday

2006-05-12T12:48:00.000-07:00

yesterday i wrote a poem while waiting for the subway
not super original, but something at least, vs. nothing…

New York is
pizza and smoke
burnt peanuts
and piss
whoosh and roar of underground labyrinth too dark to tell
push and run
glare and glamour and sleaze and
honking of impatient yellow taxis
workaday wonder
outrageous ordinariness
home

May 12, 12:42PM

a few weeks ago...

2006-04-20T20:45:00.000-07:00

...we attended my cousin's wedding, on a Florida beach... and took some interesting photos on the beach... :)

Two nights of Plays!

2006-04-01T05:41:00.000-08:00

on Thursday, Pooja and I went to see the fourth year of Seven.11

it was great fun... they had me giggling the whole way through... it was also fun to catch up with college friend Gitesh, who is producer, along with his wife, Rohi...

here's an excerpt from Desipina's press release re: Seven.11
DESIPINA & COMPANY is pleased to announce "SEVEN.11 CONVENIENCE THEATRE (2006)," the
fourth annual edition of their critically-acclaimed series that explores the alternately funny and poignant aspects of immigrant life in America via seven eleven-minute plays and musicals--all set within the confines of a 7-11 convenience store. Directed by DARROW CARSON, the production runs from March 30th through April 16th with an opening date of April 6th at THE KRAINE THEATRE, 85 East 4th Street.
The performance schedule is Thursdays-Saturdays at 8:00 PM and Sundays at 2:00 PM. Tickets are $17 ($11 student rush tickets at the door with a valid ID) and are available through Smarttix at (212) 868-4444 or via the web at www.SmartTix.com. For more information on the production, please log onto the official website at www.desipina.org.

Yesterday I had dinner with friends Roohi and Emme at Flor's Kitchen, a Venezuelan place.

yumm... empanada...

and then, we went to see Ms. Sophie Divine Presents, an amazing play!

Here's more about it:
Gender, Sexuality, and the Black Church (Theatre this Weekend!)

"Damien's story is one that occurs again and
again in almost every Black, Christian community."
Andrea Davis, Playwright

Ms. Sophie Divine Presents
By Andrea Davis

WOW Cafe Theatre
59 E 4th St (East Village - Btwn Bowery & 2nd Ave)
Thurs, Fri, & Sat - March 30, March 31, & April 1 @ 8pm
Purchase or Reserve Tickets at TheatreMania.com ($10)
(http://www.theatermania.com/content/show.cfm/show/119800)

In the space between life and death, Ms. Sophie Divine takes a young gay African American man named Damien on a journey that spans the events before his suicide attempt and confronts the bigotry of the church.

Staged reading directed by Andre Lancaster. Talk back to follow performance. Prospective full production designs will be on display. Funds raised will go to staging the future full production.

Featured Performers
Piper Anderson
Vaughn Belcher
Denise Collins
J. Michael Kinsey

Production Team
Directed by Andre Lancaster
Playwright/Producer Andrea Davis
Production Designers Amy Kitzhaber, Casey Smith, Elliot Lanes, and dj:ayden
Stage Manager Elliot Lanes

PRESS RELEASE (download .pdf)
March 20, 2006, New York, NY - Ms. Sophie Divine Presents, a timely new play and a response to the national trend of prominent black leaders using the pulpit to promote spiritual violence, will receive a staged reading performance at the WOW Cafe Theatre in the East Village (59 East 4th St., Between 2nd Av & Bowery). Written by Andrea Davis and under the direction of Andre Lancaster, this staged reading with a vibrant cast is set to go up Thursday, March 30th, Friday, March 31st, and Saturday, April 1st at 8pm.

"Damien's story is one that occurs again and again in almost every Black, Christian community, in some form. My hope is that placing the problem before the eyes of the community will make it even less ignorable, and will encourage the continuation of a conversation that has already become so crucial to the survival of a sense of unity within Black Christianity," says the show's writer Andrea Davis.

Ms. Sophie Divine Presents is the story of a young gay black man's attempt to take his life after years of having felt rejected by his church community. In the space between life and death, however, he meets Ms. Sophie Divine, who takes him on a reflective journey that spans the events leading up to his suicide attempt, and confronts the bigotry of the church. After the staged reading, there will be a talk-back surrounding the play's themes of race, sexuality, and Christianity, particularly as it pertains to Black
Americans.

"When you have so-called leaders of the Black Christian Community like Bernice King and Rev. Willie Wilson promoting a right-wing - or is it white wing? - homophobic and sexist agenda, it's imperative that believers and artists alike respond with ferocity and conviction," says Director Andre Lancaster. "This is what Andrea Davis has done with Ms. Sophie Divine Presents. Whether you grew up in the church or not, whether you're in the church or you left the church out of protest, you'll identify with these characters."

"I'm going to be in attendance to this staged reading, because this type of reflection around issues within the black community needs to be represented on stage - and it's people like us who can take this show to a bigger audience and national stage," says Playwright/Director/Singer-Songwriter Khalil Sullivan.

About WOW Café Theater:
Started as an international women's theater festival in October of 1980, WOW Café Theater is a women's theater collective which promotes the empowerment of women and trans people through the performing arts. WOW serves as a platform for performing artists at all career levels and in all disciplines, empowering them to learn production skills as well as to develop their creative vision.

running around

2006-03-24T07:47:00.000-08:00

which i love to do

new york is fabuloso, despite the rude people.

because here's a secret: for every rude person (and yes, there are Many) there are Three Nice People.

But shh... don't tell too many people--- this City is already Crowded. ;)

also, went to Philly to check out U Penn for a few days last weekend

this wknd am off to Florida to attend a wedding. (edit, edit, edit)

I was 17

2006-03-07T05:50:00.000-08:00

Visiting India for the first time in six years... My mother and masi had decided that it would be cheaper to travel by ST bus, from Gandhinagar to Ahmedabad, plus, the bus ride wouldn't be that long...

so we waited in the hot Gujarat sun... Magically the "amdavad vadaj" bus came and stopped right in front of me... I was carrying my three year old cousin, Megha, in my arms. She was my sweet darling, who could do no wrong. I had even made a batik of her baby look, so sweet, so innocent.

As the bus came to a halt, a wave of men slammed into me, as they scrambled to be first on. I was knocked flat onto my back, breathless, with Megha wailing on top of me. She was fine, just scared. I too was fine, just scared... And angry.

somehow we all got on, but there weren't enough open seats so that all of us could sit together. I was looking for a seat elsewhere... A young, handsome man offered me a seat next to him, but having had some experiences with fresh young men, i refused. Instead, I preferred to take a seat next to a fifty-ish Kaka (uncle). He seemed kindly, just a few years older than my dad.

as the bus got underway, i noticed movement on my right side. the Kaka's elbow was occasionally hitting my side. oh well, i thought. the bus had bad shocks, and the Gujarat roads were not yet the marvel of high-tech smoothness that they are now.
Soon, though, the Kaka's elbow seemed to be moving even when the bus was driving smoothly. After a few minutes, (YES. I know, I was OBLIVIOUS) anyway, after a few minutes i noticed the elbow seemed to be making a circular pattern on my side.

It dawned on me that he might be doing this for some sexual pleasure, but I resisted thinking this at first, because i thought, what pleasure can be derived from making circular motions, with your elbow, on the side of a girl.
Nevertheless, when it continued, I realized that this was just not normal.

But I was too young, too scared to say anything to him. After all he was a Kaka, even if not my Kaka.

What did i do? The good thing was i was sitting in the aisle seat. I turned around to look at the back of the bus, where Megha, my mom, masi, and bro and sis were sitting. I shifted over to the very edge of the seat, so that only my right buttock held me to the seat. Elbows-Kaka could not reach so far without contorting his body, so now i was safe.

Now to make this position seem more natural, I leaned back toward Megha and started talking to her, calling all the way down the aisle... We talked like that for a long time... After a while she ventured up to where I was, and we played and hugged and told each other secrets, all the while my right buttock precariously hanging on to the very edge of the seat. Megha was my favorite lil cousin before that, and certainly after, too.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note: This entry was written as part of Blank Noise's Blog-a-Thon on the topic of eve-teasing. To learn more, click on link and scroll all the way down, to see the list of participants.

of birds and ants and other small things

2006-02-25T06:15:00.000-08:00

meditation for the day

All good work is done the way ants do things, little by little.
-Lafcadio Hearn
(thank you to Seema and Ajay, whose holiday card featured this lovely quote.)

and…
another one from Anne Lamott, a bit more contemporary:

”Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’”

sunset today

2006-02-21T14:26:00.000-08:00

another day... gone.

where?

so low

2006-02-20T19:05:00.000-08:00

s’low
slow
slowing
need to regain nrg
momentum
spirit

didn’t do yoga today
that woulda helped
started off the day in much higher spirits, is that because didn’t accomplish what i wanted to?
feel adrift alone
but am strong can create new circles. but so
tired
slow.
getting old, i shall wear my trousers
rolled
yeah and i thought i understood that poem at age 17
i knew nothing at that age
am surprised now at how i even functioned back then
but then i realize
with dismay
i did better then than i do now, in many ways
what happened

Running to Write It Down... Weird where a thought can take you...

2006-02-20T05:06:00.000-08:00

The other day I was talking to Blank and she mentioned that so-and-so (someone I don't know) was "nice, but Weird." Suspecting that she and I may have very different views on this topic of What Constitutes Weird, I probed a little.

"Hmm," I said, tentatively, wanting to explore it a bit more, but also not wanting to piss her off by starting an argument. (Blank and I can get into arguments like that.) "Tell me, what does he do that seems weird to you?"

"Well, one time a bunch of us were out at a bar--a loud, dark bar where people were dancing--and suddenly he stopped and said, 'Does anyone have a notebook? I just thought of something, and I need to write it down before I forget it!' Isn't that Weird?"

"Hmm..." I looked at her. She looked at me. We both knew what I was thinking. But I said it anyway.

"Well, I do things like that all the time."

"Yeah, well..." she said. "Well... that's because you're weird too... figures that you would think that's normal." Now this wasn't said with any malice nor did I take offense at this. In fact, if asking for a notebook to jot down a fleeting idea constitutes weird, then let Weirdness be my trademark, my motto, my mission. I wish I acted on my Weirdnesses more Often.

This morning, as I drank my much-needed and anticipated two mugs of heavenly ginger-chai (after having dropped Blank off at the airport at 4:30 in the morning) this incident must have been playing around in the back of my (weird) Subconscious. Because as I drank tea and read further in the logical and yet infuriating book, The Nurture Assumption, I came across an idea that brought me running to this computer, to this blog, right now. But before I share my Weird idea that I came to write down, I need to give you some background on this much-discussed book.

In The Nurture Assumption, through much of the book Judith Harris refutes the commonly held assumption that it is parents who, through proper nurturing and guidance, teach their children (or don't, in some cases) what they need to know to have a successful life. Although I am not a parent, I have been a teacher in the past, and it both maddens me as well as intrigues me that she may have a point there. I won't go into all of her arguments here, but what she basically says is that children learn how to interact in each specific situation-- they learn the rules of interaction as specific to that circumstance and are socialized to behave in certain ways that suit that particular environment. This means that while the child may have been taught to be quiet and polite and honest at home through parental conditioning, he or she MAY be (doesn't Have to be) very different at school.

Why or how would this happen? Well, according to Harris, the child adapts to each situation according to its own peculiarities. If the School environment causes Lying, Cheating and Stealing to be rewarded then the child will be likely to engage in these behaviors at school, even if he or she is quite honest at home. This concept--of switching behaviors to suit the environment--is called code-switching. A very common example of code-switching happens in the lives of children who are immigrants or children of immigrants--they quickly learn that although in the home environment they must speak their native tongue, they must speak in English to survive in the school environment. So they (mostly) do. I would suspect that the ones who don't are able to do this because so many of their peers speak their native tongues. (I have seen this happen in one of my ESL classes... but there is also more going on there--one sign of emergent language is understanding but not speaking the language. Oh my, I am digressing quite a bit.)

One area of influence, though, where Harris concedes that Nurture can have a huge societal effect is that wielded by teachers. She says it's not so much the content of what the teachers teach, as it is the atmosphere of belonging and groupness that teachers can (and yet so rarely do) create in their classroom that can have a huge positive impact on the kids who are part of that rareified environment. She gives as an example the story of an inner city school teacher, Ms. A, all of whose first-grade students continued to do well in school and in their careers, better than their peers from the same school, throughout their lives! Harris attributes this not so much to what the teacher taught them, as the fact that in her classroom these kids probably learned to love learning, and a safe environment was created for learning; thought and education were respected by the whole group. This is indeed very different from most classrooms, where the peer group makes it an Uncool Thing (at least in the majority of American public schools) to want to learn. In fact Harris found that students who weren't in Ms. A's classroom were positively affected by these values, if they chose to identify with them!

While her theories seem very well-thought out and are cogently argued, I can sympathize with the parents out there, who reading this, might despair, or, more likely just reject her theory outright. After all, who likes to hear that they are pouring their efforts for their children into a black cauldron of Hmm... Maybe it'll Help? But my purpose here is not to disprove or agree with her perspective.

Just to say that as I pondered the wonderful Ms. A's of the world, and how I wished I could have been one of those talented leader-teachers who gave their students the gift of the love of learning... as I thought about this, one teacher came into focus. She was my 5th grade teacher, and I was in her classroom for only two days, as my family moved to another state right after school started. Her name was, I think, Ms. Werth and she changed my life forever in that day or two that I spent in her classroom.

What did she do? I distinctly remember that first day; I even remember that I sat on the right front side of the classroom and felt wistful as she outlined how things would work in her classroom--her teaching philosophy. I remember being impressed that she bothered to do this. (This was back in 1980, and things were fairly old school. Especially in NYC public schools.) In fact I remember knowing that she was going to be a great teacher even before I entered her classroom; her reputation had percolated through to the fourth grade, and I had been so excited that she was going to be my teacher, before the impending move turned everything topsy-turvy. One thing though, before my memory strikes you as strangely and unbelievably prodigious. If you were to ask me about her teaching policy today, I would be hard put to describe a single tenet of that philosophy.

However one memory is Crystal Clear. At one point she said, "Sometimes, you may see me jump up in the middle of a lesson to go write something down in my journal. Don't worry--it's because I'm a writer, and so when I have ideas, I have to write them down right away, or else I'll forget them. So don't mind me when I do that... In fact, if you have thoughts you want to write down like that, I welcome you to do it. It's what writers have to do!"

This stuck with me. And the thing is, she was such a leader, so respected by the kids, that instead of this somewhat strange behavior being a point of ridicule, this was actually a Cool thing about her. At least I believe it was--otherwise her reputation with the children would have been quite different. (Remember your teachers? Kids tell each other these things, and they don't mince words.)

At any rate, today, as I sit here reading The Nurture Assumption, my conversation with Blank comes to mind, as I ponder how we are socialized--or not--to accept Wonderful Weirdnesses as Welcome or Strange and Undesireable parts of Life. And I silently thank Ms. Werth. In two days she may have... I don't know. Changed my life?

places I have traveled to for work

2006-02-16T05:42:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I caught myself feeling a tiny bit jealous of my sister, cuz she is going away to an island for a lil mini-vacation, something she has done more than I have. (I've gone once, to Curacao, but that was it. Not that I'm complaining.)

But then I remembered that I have been so lucky as to get to travel to many interesting places for work. And while it was for Work, and so many times I was Too Busy to Actually see much and it wasn’t all that glamorous as it may sound, I was always very Curious, and tried to, whenever possible, explore and seek out the Adventure in each place I went. Even when I had a 101 degree fever and bronchitis, in, for example, Geneva.

so, here’s the list. please don’t be jealous. those who travel a lot for work know what i mean, no?

i will try to do this in somewhat chronological order, but memory may fail me. some of my favorites are bolded...

1. Chowchilla, California (in the Central Valley. Woo hoo!)
2. Visalia, California. (ditto)
3. Fresno (oh yeah)
4. Bakersfield
5. Reno
6. Tahoe
7. Sacramento
8. Los Angeles
9. Seattle
10. Portland
11. Spokane
12. Eugene
13. San Jose
14. the East Bay (back then, it felt like a foreign country to me)
15. Albuquerque
16. Colorado
17. Santa Fe
18. Taos
19. Riverside
20. San Diego
21. El Centro
22. Vista
23. Taft, Cali (hoo, boy)(please, no offense intended if you live in Taft, but… I never felt more aware of my race than when I was in Taft. People Stared at me.)
24. Imperial, Cali
25. Marin County
26. Eureka
27. Fortuna
28. Hoopa Valley, Cali
29. New Delhi
30. Bombay
31. Taiwan
32. Manila
33. Hong Kong
34. Singapore
35. Jakarta (though how does this count. Was there Less than 24 hrs!)
36. Bangkok
37. Honolulu
38. The Big Island
39. Maui
40. London
41. Paris (my hotel room had a Hole in the Door, the size of my Fist. What did I expect for USD50? Plus I got bronchitis here, which lasted me through the rest of Europe. Joy.)
42. Brussels
43. Geneva
44. Athens
45. Auburn, Cali
46. Davis
47. Mendocino
48. Fort Bragg
49. Point Arena
50. Willits
51. Clear Lake
52. Chico
53. Anderson
54. Shasta
55. Ferndale
56. Clovis
57. Grass Valley
58. Nevada City
59. Loomis
60. Marysville
61. Yuba City
62. Loyalton
63. Redding
64. Dixon
65. Fairfield
66. Cloverdale
67. Cotati
68. Healdsburg
69. Petaluma
70. Rohnert Park
71. Santa Rosa
72. Sebastopol
73. Napa
74. Vallejo
75. Portola
76. Lassen
77. Susanville
78. Chester
79. Quincy (near Feather River)
80. Tacoma

more about being healthier...

2006-02-15T07:08:00.000-08:00

Sat Feb 11
Worked out at gym for 1 hour (including stretching time)
Sun Feb 12
Shoveled snow (during Blizzard!) and took a walk thru the blizzard
Mon Feb 13
Went Sledding with J'ben and her kids... see photos below!
and, Shoveled Snow
Tue Feb 14
Hmmmm.........................
Wed Feb 15
Yoga first thing in the Morning - about one hour

sigh

2006-02-14T13:31:00.000-08:00

why is two always company?
feeling abandoned by coupled up people.

seems things have to be in even numbers, the older you get.

the day After the Blizzard...

2006-02-13T17:58:00.000-08:00

we went Sledding!

and... built a Snowperson... (we're not sure of the gender... but we know that he/she sure is friendly-looking!)

The Blizzard of Oh Six

2006-02-12T14:37:00.000-08:00

Valentine to my parents

2006-02-07T09:36:00.000-08:00

Sometimes people misunderstand when I write about or podcast about my parents or other relatives. They question my motives, they imply that I do not love them, nor am I grateful for what I have been given.

I am indeed grateful. Grateful enough to understand that they are human, and not gods. And humans have flaws. And I would even argue that it is a greater act of love and courage to see your parents as people with treasures and faults hidden in their nooks and crannies, instead of hiding behind the "obey and cherish my parents blindly" rule that many follow. Because to understand them, and then to love them is the greater act of faith.

But today, I'd like to dwell on the reasons I'd like to give my parents a valentine:

Valentine to my parents
To my mother for walking the mile with me, every week, to the library, to take out exactly 10 books. That was the limit of what they allowed. And then, she read them to me, all week long.
To my father for working year after year after year in a job that wasn’t his first love, in order to do the right thing--the only possible thing as far as he was concerned--support his family
To my mother for teaching me the Navakaar mantra when I was three
To my father for teaching me to laugh
To my mother for saying yes
To my father for saying no
To my mother for taking such care of me when I had the chicken pox
To my father for sharing his gazhals and shayris with me, even when I couldn’t understand
To my mother for singing the Stavans and Stutis with us every day
To my father for telling us his tales of college mischief in Baroda
To my mother for her shy voice
To my father for his crooked smile
To my mother for my birth by the bank of the river Sabarmati
To my father for my life

being healthier

2006-02-07T08:07:00.000-08:00

i have resisted writing about this because i felt i was doing too little… but in the spirit of “bird by bird” by Anne Lamott, here goes:

things I have done that are bird-steps on the path:

* eating a little less
* trying to stop when full (although this just does not work as well with Banilla Yogurt)
* substitute healthier (yet delicious options) when possible. Example: Banilla Yogurt instead of ice cream
* resist buying cookies at the store. It has been at least two weeks. Possibly more. Wow. I didn’t realize that till I just wrote it down. cool.
* trying to walk more. Some days I do great, and then others, NOTHING happens. But on Sunday I really walked -all the way from 112th street in NYC to 42nd st. !

oh yes, the voim...

2006-02-06T02:40:00.000-08:00

Coined a new word, and submitted to Merriam-Webster's Open Dictionary

voim (noun) : the void within oneself, when one drowns loneliness in internet-related activies such as instant messaging and internet games
example sentence:
The voim got me playing yahoo games really really really late at night to forget the fact that my most important friendship was down the drain.

shimmering white peacock day

2006-02-05T19:01:00.000-08:00

new york did its
fractals of beauty,
shimmering white peacock imitating the fire engines passing by St. John the Divine,
most delicious pizza in the world,
impromptu job interview,
sweet room-for-rent across the street from Labyrinth,
Hungarian cupcakes and cider,
North Face sale in 35 degrees weather,
Times Square alight and well,
friendly strangers helping,
Whole Foods jasmine lotion,
Poet’s corner wisdom,
and
Riverside blue clouds and dogs
dance today.

someone just reminded me of this great old song

2006-02-04T06:39:00.000-08:00

Words-adapted from the bible, book of ecclesiastes
Music-pete seeger

To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time for every purpose, under heaven

A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep

To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time for every purpose, under heaven

A time to build up,a time to break down
A time to dance, a time to mourn
A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together

To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time for every purpose, under heaven

A time of love, a time of hate
A time of war, a time of peace
A time you may embrace, a time to refrain from embracing

To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time for every purpose, under heaven

A time to gain, a time to lose
A time to rend, a time to sew
A time to love, a time to hate
A time for peace, I swear it’s not too late

"Showing Off"

2006-01-27T13:25:00.001-08:00

one of my oldest artworks... a batik... done when I was 17...

gold (fall in NJ)

2006-01-27T10:39:00.000-08:00

gold (fall in NJ)
Originally uploaded by IndianGirl.

I took this back in November... just got around to uploading it now...

Glorious, no?

my personal journey

2006-01-11T11:08:00.000-08:00

My personal journey is a mirror, a small microcosm of the struggle for authenticity that American Desis face. Although I was born in India, I emigrated to the U.S. at the young age of one. As I began to attend nursery school and then kindergarten, my parents started to wonder and fear what an American education would do to me. They feared that I would not know India and wouldn't learn about my heritage, that I might be led astray in this strange land, in ways they couldn't even fathom. Therefore they decided to see if I would able to handle being sent to India for a long visit of three months--without my parents--their thinking being that if I were physically strong enough to handle this visit, then they might send me to boarding school in India the following year. I went to India at the age of six, right after first grade. In fact, my parents were so anxious about me spending an adequate amount of time there that they pulled me out of first grade a whole month early to send me off!

I was (perhaps surprisingly) quite excited and eager to make the journey; after all, at that age my parents were my gods and if they told me that going to India was a wonderful idea, then it was--and I was also looking forward to spending time with my grandmother. What I didn't know is the impact this journey would have on me. One could argue that when I emigrated to America at the age of one, I lost the authenticity of being truly Indian, at least in the eyes of my parents, first generation immigrants to whom nothing in the U.S. could match up to romanticized notions of the homeland. My parents were understandably concerned about this loss. To help me regain this lost authenticity, they sent me to India at age six.

But what happened is that now in India I lost whatever American authenticity I had gained in my first few years here. When I left America, my parents admonished me to speak only in Gujarati to my relatives, worried that most of my relatives didn't speak English. When I arrived in India, I missed my parents terribly (after all they were my gods at that time) and so I obeyed their dictate in a literal fashion; I refused to say a word of English. Looking back, I remember even being begged by a nun (my uncle's acquaintance) to speak to her in English, but terrified, I ran away, refusing to spout English. I know that I did this because the superstitious, magical-thinking child that I was, I believed that something terrible would happen to me or my parents if I disobeyed their order. Within three months I regained (arguably) much of my “lost” Indian authenticity, but at the cost of my American self. Upon my return to the States, I found it very difficult for many months to think or speak in English, though I was still able to read quite fluently. (My parents had not banned reading in English while I was gone!) I also looked very different, having lost a third of my body weight due to illness and lack of desire to eat in the hot climate of India. My American body had betrayed me in India and all of the germs of India gained a toehold within me, making me a reticent shadow of the bubbly girl that my parents had sent off with such great hopes. My parents, to their credit, immediately realized that Indian boarding school was not for me, and resolved to keep me with them. They did, however, keep a long-range plan in mind of eventually moving back to India, after saving “enough money.” (Ah, that typical immigrant dream!)

Slowly, I lost my aura of recently regained Indian authenticity, but curiously never quite felt at home here either. My parents had spent too much time reminding me (and reassuring themselves) that I wasn't American. Though I slowly--and with great difficulty--learned to adapt to American culture in school, I was mostly insulated from its effects when at home. Every day I woke up in India, and walked to school in America, bringing with me my chutney and cheese sandwiches and my trailing sense of authenticity. I simultaneously belonged to both places, and to neither. It wasn't until my freshman year of college, at age 18, that a college professor woke me up to the fact that I was indeed an American, when I wrote a paper about being Indian and he commented that since I lived in this country my whole life, I was indeed an American. And yet, while I knew in my heart that no one in India would truly accept me as an Indian either, I very much wanted to claim an Indian identity. After all, my childhood was staked on having that authentic Indian identity.

My experiences growing up straddling two cultures have taught me that categorizing someone as authentic or inauthentic can be a violent act in terms of identity formation, because this act of labeling has a visceral impact on one's psyche at such a young age. Not allowing a particular individual to develop and flower in the environment she is in, but telling her that she needs to be in another environment is not just unsettling, but can also be brutal to her sense of self. I am fortunate that, despite having undergone the violence of having my identity stripped from me in various ways, I have yet learned to reclaim my own sense of identity, my own stake on authenticity. Contrary to when I was a child and was told what and who I was, now I decide for myself. And I have decided over the years that I yield neither culture: I fully claim both American and Indian cultures as my birthright and my home. Now I create my own sense of authentic self, in my own image, as I see fit. Of course this sense of identity has been hard-won, but I am pleased, even at this late stage, to have finally grasped it for myself, especially in light of my beginnings in this realm.

These formative experiences have been instrumental in bringing me to my desire for graduate study. I wish to examine in a larger context the cultural aspects that try to strip authenticity from second generation immigrants. I would like to utilize what I learn, not just academically, but also to help young immigrants gain self-trust in the face of the struggle for identity that they must also face.

I believe this struggle that I have undergone has been the instigating factor in my decision to work as a teacher and a college admission counselor. In my chosen professions until now, I have been able to utilize my own hard-won self-knowledge to help students who may be going through similar struggles of their own. This has been gratifying--that I can help others in ways that I wished I had been helped while growing up. I wish to continue on this path of service to youth in my future as either an academic or school librarian, but I wish to do this after having gained a broad academic basis

middle school

2006-01-06T13:09:00.000-08:00

my middle school years... i could write reams about those three years. or be utterly silent. there's almost no in-between way to describe that pain... it was a very lonely time. all that i wished for during those years is to have one friend in the world that i could really talk to. i did have a friend, but intellectually we weren't on the same plane. (there was a lot of affection, but we couldn't really communicate... that friendship was more about having a warm friendly person that you could go to the pool with, than about sharing your inner intellectual life/dreams/thoughts/ideas) I read all the time in middle school - Dickens was one of my favorites - while she barely read anything even for classes... you get the picture... of course this reading habit got me labelled weird... and boys would taunt me... it didn't help that i was one of a tiny sprinkling of Indian kids in our entire town of mostly Italian-Americans in New Jersey. Now that i think about it, i did have a couple of friends-- Mrs. Nover, the school librarian, and Mrs. Strauss (who was Mrs. N's sister!) my French teacher. Those two ladies saved me... in fact, when i decided to become a teacher a few years ago, i decided of all things to teach middle school probably to try to give to children some of what i was lacking back then, as these two wonderful women did for me.(i did it for 2 years, but then realized that while i loved many aspects of teaching, that big classroom with 30-odd kids you have to manage wasn't for me...) when i went back to my old middle school during the time i was preparing to become a teacher, i met some old teachers of mine, and one of them had something very interesting to share: she said that back then, i was pretty articulate and even gregarious with adults, but had a very tough time with my peers. i remember this, and the pain of it. i was one of those on the outskirt kids... all this slowly started to lift and get better in high school and much changed by college and beyond... but it took years to shake the feeling that, when people laughed, that they were laughing at me.

what brought me to a life of honesty

2005-12-25T11:08:00.000-08:00

once, a long time ago, i stole some quarters from my mom’s purse.

i had so many in my fist, I could barely close it.

as I was walking up the staircase in our house, there was the inevitable soft clink of sweaty quarters slipping around in my greedy tight fist. My father, the shrewdly honest, figured out in a lightening flash what was up, and demanded that i reveal what i was so desperately trying to hide within my childish grip.

when my fingers slowly unfurled, like albino spider legs, he kneeled down and cried at the thought of his daughter, the thief.

i never stole anything again.

my favorite person of the week

2005-12-12T07:54:00.000-08:00

i just recently (and BELATEDLY) discovered the beauty of the thinking and writing of Amartya Sen, nobel prize winner, economist and visionary

check out his autobiography: http://nobelprize.org/economics/laureates/1998/sen-autobio.html

eerie...........

2005-11-24T01:21:00.000-08:00

You Are Likely a First Born

At your darkest moments, you feel guilty.
At work and school, you do best when you're researching.
When you love someone, you tend to agree with them often.

In friendship, you are considerate and compromising.
Your ideal careers are: business, research, counseling, promotion, and speaking.
You will leave your mark on the world with discoveries, new information, and teaching people to dream.

The Birth Order Predictor

the states i've visited are in red

2005-11-22T23:05:00.000-08:00

create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

countries i've visited

2005-11-22T23:01:00.000-08:00

create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands

well.. unfortunately, i wasn't able to limit the red to just the cities i went to... so it makes my travel look more extensive than it actually was...

thought i'd share

2005-11-18T10:11:00.000-08:00

a favorite poem of mine:

anyone lived in a pretty how town
by E. E. Cummings

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did

Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain

how to flirt

2005-11-17T20:27:00.000-08:00

http://www.sirc.org/publik/flirt.html

my newest way of procrastinating................

which, by the way, is one of my 43 things... to stop procrastinating.

go figure...

varanasi

2005-11-14T17:19:00.000-08:00

varanasi... a place i haven't yet been....

Room to Read

2005-11-06T12:36:00.000-08:00

This year, I decided my birthday gift to myself, (albeit a humble one since I don't have too many funds right now), would be to give money to a charitable cause.

After doing some research on the internet, I found Room to Read which seems to me a fascinating and worthy organization. Also, it's a good match for someone who's a bit of a book-a-holic, such as me.

Here's what they do, in their own words:

"Room to Read seeks to intervene early in the lives of children and help provide them with an education and the lifelong gift of literacy.

"To increase the likelihood for success, Room to Read enlists community involvement. Our challenge grants require villages to raise a significant portion of the overall expenditure (through donated land, labor, materials and cash) for building a new school, thereby allowing our cash investments to go further so that we can help more villages. We also establish libraries, computer labs and language labs in conjunction with schools whereby they contribute shelves, desk, and chairs. Our challenge grants act as catalysts for community building while also maximizing the local participation and expertise brought to our programs to ensure they are run efficiently and effectively."

i can't believe i actually hit send on the following email

2005-11-05T20:09:00.000-08:00

... and yet it's such a satisfying feeling. The below email was emailed to a lady running a matchmaking bureau in Gujarat, who periodically sends me emails (addressed to my father, even though it's blatantly obvious that it's my email address to which she's mailing them!) listing the particulars of gentlemen who are interested in my biodata.

I hope I don't sound too catty. That wasn't my intention. Just that, how are all these men, (Weight: 55 Kgs.) going to be interested in anything about me, other than my U.S. citizenship?
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sat, 5 Nov 2005 20:08:25 -0800 (PST)
From: "yesha n." View Contact Details Add Mobile Alert
Subject: Re: Matrimonial
To: (email deleted for privacy)

Dear Mrs. Shah,
My name is Yesha; thank you so much for forwarding
these ads to me. I have two concerns, however.

One is that I currently need to lose a lot of weight.
(My current weight is 60+ kilograms.) To be very frank
and realistic, I don't think men who are very thin and
short will be attracted to me...

Second is that, as I grew up in the U.S. and I care
more about being able to communicate well with, and be
attracted to a prospective mate, than I do about their
family background...

Would it be possible to know more about their
knowledge of English and of literature?

Many thanks,
Yesha

blah, blah, blah

2005-11-05T19:25:00.000-08:00

everything is blah blah blah, here in this overheated, overinsulated apartment in north jersey.
:(

bronchitis, laryngitis, cross-country flight, fever, chills, sweats, no sleep and the GRE (!)

2005-10-26T13:58:00.000-07:00

wanted to share that, despite having gone through, in rapid succession: bronchitis, laryngitis, cross-country flight, fever, chills, sweats, and no sleep, I still managed to get to the GRE test center in time today, and, more importantly, did okay... well, at least on the verbal and math part. (the analytical writing section won't be scored for another two to three weeks... but i'm hopeful that i'll have more than a zero score... ha ha.)

my verbal score was better than my math (surprise, surprise...)

(740 verbal... 530 or 520 math-- can't remember, as everything from this morning is in a best-forgotten fog... except for the fact that they allowed me to take cough drops in with me as long as they were pre-unwrapped before heading into the testing room--thank goodness, for the sake of the other test takers, as well as for my poor throat)

okay, so the math isn't that great, but honestly, it's an improvement from the scores I got on the practice tests I took!

anyway, glad it's over...

now.
have to decide where to apply to school. and for what.
(well... have already given that some thought, but it still needs some more.)

thanks for listening!

uh oh....

2005-09-25T11:06:00.000-07:00

the alternate title i was thinking of for this post is, "... now the fun begins..."

my twelve yr old niece (friend's child) just emailed me the following forward. hmmm........

>HOW TO TELL IF A GUY LIKES YOU:
>
>1. The guy will be extremely nice to you.
>2. He will tell you that you did something good, even when
>you did it horribly.
>3. He might make fun of you.
>4. He will want to be your best friend.
>5. He might complement you on something normal like, your
>hair, even if you wear it that way everyday.
>6. He will stick up for you.
>7. He will start hanging out with your friends.
>8. He will flirt with you.
>9. He will call you for no good reason.
>10. He will make eye contact with a serious look on his face.
>
>
>HOW TO TELL IF A GIRL LIKES YOU:
>
>1. They always talk about the different kind of guys they
>COULD have.
>2. They stare at you with a smile on their face and won't
>look away until you do first.
>3. They ALWAYS seem to be talking about how nice or cute
>you are.
>4. They laugh at all your jokes, no matter how stupid they are.
>5. They will ask you who you like, continuously.
>6. They talk to your friends about you a lot.
>7. They always are flirting with every other guy, except you.
>8. They always try to make you jealous.
>9. They beg you to do everything for them.
>10. They always ask you what to do in a bad situation.

something i learned about today at the NY Folklore Societies Writng Folklore Conference

2005-09-24T16:52:00.000-07:00

Bernadette Mayer's self published book _Utopia_, which she gave away for free, when she discovered that bookstores could not sell it.

http://home.jps.net/~nada/mayer11.htm

got to hear and meet kirin narayan!

2005-09-23T20:54:00.000-07:00

in 1994 or 1995 perhaps, an acquaintance (actually a very handsome man of the what-I-thought-of-then as the advanced age of 29, and upon whom I had a huge not-to-be-requited crush) mentioned to me that i would enjoy reading Kirin Narayan's book _Love Stars and All that_

new to the bay area as i was then, and having this aforementioned unrequited crush on this handsome fellow, I picked up the book as soon as i found a copy. and fell in love with this sweet, irreverent, romantic and yet realistic novel by a woman who was a former berkeley academic.

tonight i finally got to hear, and subsequently meet and speak to Kirin herself, at the New York Folklore Society's annual field trip (like a mini conference) up in Tarrytown, NY.

first of all, she read about 10 pages from a memoir she's working on. it was great. about her family, especially her relationship with her brother Rahul, when she was growing up the youngest of four children in a biracial family on Juhu Beach in Bombay. I was riveted... there were times when i was just so excited about the kinds of things she was writing about, that she was reading, and also by the fact that i actually was lucky enough to have the opportunity to listen, that actually became a bit lightheaded, and with a big goofy grin plastered on my face.

and then, afterwards, i got to speak to her... can i even believe, she actually even thanked me for a comment i had made upon a question she asked the audience...

needless to say, i'm a bit giddy right now, so not making much sense.

more later!

september breezes

2005-09-23T20:32:00.000-07:00

... i stepped out of the house, on my way back to the car, to pick up a bag of cookies and salad dressing pressed upon me (so sweetly that i could hardly refuse, though i hardly know what to do with so much food now that i am no longer at the bustop coop) by the kind ladies of the New York folklore society (yes, i know... random... but anyway--that's another post...)

as i was saying i stepped back out of the house to go to the car, parked on the sidelawn in front of the two-story, two-family house on First Street, of which my parents rent the top floor. As i stepped out, i noticed something i hadn't noticed before. the breeze.

deceptively like a bay area breeze... so like a bay area breeze, that just for a moment, i forgot what the coolness of the breeze means, here in New Jersey. i was lulled into thinking this is right, this is normal, this is just how weather is.

But. Here the coolness doesn't mean business as usual, weather as usual, with the nights cool and the days less cool, as it does in the bay area. here it means: september is here, really here, maybe a few weeks late, (despite what the calendar says) but here, bringing with it cool days, bringing with it fall, bringing with it, maybe sooner, maybe later, but definitely bringing colors to the leaves, a briskness to the air, a crisp something, that, while now it mimics (or seems to, to my bay-area honed senses) the bay area breeze, it's much less an everyday than it is a harbinger... harbinger of the change... the thing that, more than anything else, I've been drawn to the east coast for... that autumn season. the fall has always been my favorite season, growing up here in jersey. then it seemed inevitable to me that trees should become glorious for a few weeks, maybe a month each fall... but for the past eleven years, i forewent (or was it forsook) the fall, in favor of the hot days of September and October in the Bay (well-earned, of course, after the cold, fog-ridden days of July in San Francisco)

But now. the breezes blow here in NJ... and stressed though I have been by this move, by the idea, even if it's not to be permanent, of giving up my beloved bay, its culture, mountains, and yes, even its fog (foolish that i am, i get teary-eyed thinking about the fog fingers, rushing, galloping down twin peaks) even so.... here is the silver lining... giving up fog for fall...

2 a.m. in Jersey

2005-09-16T22:52:00.000-07:00

just been looking at my last few entries. it's been a long time, and so much has happened. can't even hope to catch up, not really. so won't try.

just suffice it to say, it's friday night/sat morning now, depending on how you look at it, and i've been in NJ since Wed morning. i've moved here. well. not here, here. not to jersey. but to the east coast general ny nj area. am in a limbo right now. don't know where i'll end up when. life is open a bit too, maybe, just maybe. but it's good too... so many possibilities. so much responsibility to pick the right ones, to make the right choices, each choice leading so irrevocably to the next.

hope to be moving to ny soon. maybe even by the end of this weekend, depending on my friends' schedules.... I'm moving in with some friends in Queens. long story, but they're letting me stay there till i figure things out. very generous of them and i'm tongue tied just thinking of it. ashamed to be taking the generosity being offered to me. and yet grateful.

i will try to write more soon.