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

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.

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?

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...

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?

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

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)

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

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...

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

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...

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

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

wow.

wow.

wow.

sometimes

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

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...

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

Two nights of Plays!

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

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

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.
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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

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.’”