For Fear of Bad Poetry

I wrote these poems in high school. I am still entertained by them. Some of them were once published in our high school literature and art publication, Scratch Pad, and others were not deemed even good enough to qualify as bad high school poetry. Enjoy.

1.
Slender legs that slice
When they are spread
And unspread
Curvaceous
So I can grip you tight
I love your music
When you cut my paper

2.
In the Media Center

The rain bullets upon the roof.
Everything outside is thinly glazed.
I am inside, an unfrosted cake.

3.
Autumn Wind

The wind sweeps across the trees,
Whistling like a thousand birds screaming.
The trees sway with the motion while
Their leaves fall to the parched yellow grass,
Sighing winter one by one.

4.
You're sitting in class,
Waiting for time to pass.
Your desk, you caress--
And suddenly depress
Something hardened.
Your fingernails dig,
It's chunky and big.
You look underneath,
While licking your teeth,
Seeing an array of color.
Stupid and dumb--
It's gum.

5.
once upon a time
prince charming
met ken and they
ditched their fairy
tale disproportional
girls and they dated
each other instead
and prince charming
proposed to ken
with a ring that had
a huge rock and
ken said yes thinking
wow he is the boy of
my dreams and they
got married illegally
and they lived
happily ever after

6.
The Cycle of Non-Flushing

You go to the toilet.
You look in the pot.
Something's there that should be not.
Why don't people flush? You wonder.
You sit down and leave your plunder.
You ponder your thoughts.
You read the walls, reaching for the toilet paper.
Getting up, you juice the gossip.
You leave the stall.
The next victim walks in.
They look in the pot.
Something's there that should be not.

7.

PANDORA           born with a brain to be used
USED HER BRAIN                     a new concept
AND GAVE                                     took away
MEANING TO LIFE      the monotony of utopia

8.
Roller coasting up the hill
Excitement quickly mounting ‘til
The top is reached and we become
Nervous, thinking kingdom come
Hearts beat wildly in flip flops
The creaking coaster slowly stops
Silence, hushed anticipation
Trembling, screaming expectation
Bodies freeze desiring action
Soon – within a second’s fraction…
Zoom the coaster now descends
Down the hill and quickly bends
Around a corner, upside-down
Loop-the-loop, round and roun’
Thrilling, chilling, oh what fun!
Can you believe it’s so soon done?
One more time – it went so fast!
Please oh please, we’ll make it last!

Death by One Giant Space Rock?

Biology, astronomy, and geology collide when scientists try to figure out why dinosaurs went extinct. My favorite theory is the methane gas theory: dinosaurs farted themselves to death because their own fumes suffocated them. I don't know if that is a real theory but somehow I remember discussing this possibility back in sixth grade. Anyway, I just read an article that got me thinking. It cites a study which suggests dinosaur extinction was caused by a single asteroid, six miles in diameter, that crashed into earth. The impact not only resulted in a 110-mile wide crater in Mexico, but also fires, tsunamis, dust storms, and the demise of several animal and plant species. Can you imagine a giant rock shaking the earth and causing such colossal destruction? What's particularly fascinating is that while many species were devastated into extinction by this impact; birds, mammals, and presumably some plant species survived and adapted. Props to the scientists who devote their lives to getting to the bottom of these titanosaur-sized questions.

Post-Thanksgiving Drive

I dropped my mom to the airport at five in the morning today. On the way, a world nearly invisible during daylight hours emerged. Near the intersection of Preston Street and Martin Luther King Boulevard I saw a woman walking in the middle of the street, I think there was a median there but either way it seemed riskier than choosing one side of the street to walk on. Particularly given that it was still dark outside. I wondered what she was doing at this hour and figured she might be on her way to work, and presumed work for her meant a low-paying job. Just as I was merging onto I-295, I saw three more people walking where they shouldn’t be, along the side of the highway. They were walking on the other side of the orange cones blocked off for construction, so they were somewhat safe from being run over, but nevertheless it was a heartrending sight. Where were they going? Were they on their way to the Greyhound bus station, or had I already passed that? Were they also on their way to work? The three were not walking together, they appeared disassociated with one another. When I returned from the airport and parked my car, I saw a person rummaging through an overflowing dumpster. I think the person was a woman, although I couldn’t see her face clearly and she was wearing a puffy coat. She was looking into a cereal box and picking out the crumbs.

I thought, should I offer her money? Is it rude to offer money to a person who isn’t begging? What’s the point of giving her five dollars anyway, it’s a quick bandage that will make me feel like I did something but that really means nothing. I would rather give her food, but how exactly could I make that happen? I’m not going to run to 7-11 when I should be sleeping. I continued thinking and feeling my subtle emotions, policy solutions, quick fixes as I crossed the street to my apartment and hit eight on the elevator. What am I talking about? I certainly have food in my fridge to offer, it occurred to me. As I quickly put together a bag with three slices of rye bread, a little bit of raspberry jam, a plastic knife. I cut an orange into wedges and Ziploc-bagged it, put some leftover green-bean casserole into the microwave, and put a fork into the bag. I filled up a water bottle – that hadn’t yet been washed, but oh well – and put the water, green-bean casserole, and the orange into the bag. I hope she hasn’t left yet, I thought to myself.

I got back outside and couldn’t see her at first but as I approached the dumpster I saw her (him?) examining a clear plastic take-out box that only appeared to have some sauce on it. I tried to offer her the bag. Here, I brought you some food. As I approached, she shrugged away from me and into the corner, I couldn’t see her face and my approaching her was compromising her invisibility. I took out the green-bean casserole. See, it’s green-bean casserole, I offered gently. She shrugged further into the corner created by the dumpster and the wall of the building behind it. What to do, take the food back? I put the bag down near her feet and went back into my apartment. The voice of a homeless woman shouting at the character Mark from the musical Rent is ringing through my head: Who the fuck do you think you are?/.../My life’s not for you to make a name for yourself on!/.../Just trying to use me to kill his guilt.

A few hours later, when I was on my way to work, I walked past the dumpster to see if the bag was gone. It was still there, untouched, so I took it with me to work.

I am thankful to have been witness to the events of this morning. I walk to work by choice whereas the people I saw walking in pedestrian-unfriendly auto-oriented environments were probably walking because they probably can’t afford many (or any) other options. The woman I saw rummaging through trash for sustenance was probably homeless and probably had little in her life beyond the vaguest sense of privacy, anonymity, and dignity and I’d tried to rip that away from her in an attempt to do a good deed. I’m glad she didn’t let me do that. I am grateful for my awareness yet frustrated that my understanding and awareness barely skim the surface. I hope that my attempt at good deeds aren’t merely me trying to kill some underlying guilt over my own privilege, or me trying to improve my karma.

There is no quick fix. It seems like the people I saw this morning are facing greater adversity in their lives than I am in mine. I’m making all these assumptions about what they are going through, and maybe I’m way off. Who am I to try and chip away at social ills with green-bean casserole? I am thankful for having had this wake-up call. I am also thankful for my awareness, for a full fridge and an ability to share, and for my perseverance to keep chipping away.

The Soundtrack of My Life

The songs listed here are songs that bring to mind specific times, places, and people. In some cases the song was actually playing in the background and in other cases the song is not actually playing but my memory associates the song with that time. Since memory works in funny ways, the time frame I’ve assigned to each song is approximate. As I write this I can think of many more songs that I haven’t listed. This is not a list of my favorite songs, some songs I wish made it on the list don’t bring a specific memory to mind and therefore are not included.

Age 4, 1984: “Beat It” by Michael Jackson

Gigantic first-graders performed a dance at an Indian cultural function in Lubbock, Texas dressed as doctors to “Beat It”. It may seem that a Michael Jackson song and a bunch of six year-olds dressed as doctors has nothing to do with Indian culture. Ha! These children were obviously being indoctrinated, pun intended, at an early age: all Indian parents hope their little Hrithiks and Madhuris will one day become brain surgeons skilled in synchronized dance routines.

Age 7, 1987: “The Way You Make Me Feel” by Michael Jackson

In Ames, Iowa now, I am holding what I perceive to be a life-sized lion stuffed animal up on its haunches and talking to my friend Priya while listening to Michael Jackson’s album Bad in the basement of the townhouse my family lived in at the time. “The Way You Make Me Feel” is the second song on the album and it starts with a animal-like roaring sound. I scream, thinking my stuffed lion has come to life. I remember telling my mom that I thought the lion, a gift from my uncle Ajay, was life-sized. She laughed at me, because real-life lions are much bigger than seven year-old girls.

Age 9, 1989: “Cover Girl” by New Kids on The Block

Tuhina, Priya, Pooja, and I are in Tuhina’s bedroom. My assigned New Kids on the Block boyfriend is Donnie Wahlberg, Tuhina gets Jordan Knight, Priya gets Jon Knight, Pooja gets Joey McIntyre, and apparently Danny Wood is the reject. Even though Donnie isn’t my favorite New Kid I accept him as my man and swoon when he sings “Cover Girl.”

Age 10, 1990: “We Didn’t Start the Fire” by Billy Joel

I walk into J-4 Rollaway, the local roller-skating rink, with Priya and Tuhina and yelped loudly because this song was playing. I don’t know why I was so excited to hear this song but apparently this disproportionate and inexplicable animation is quintessential Manisha.

Age 12, 1992: “Jump” by Kris Kross

In the Ames Middle School gymnasium on a weekend night all the “sevies” including myself are jump-jumping to this song. The boys’ voices singing-slash-rapping this song have yet to change. This is when I learned the difference between a Mack Daddy and a Daddy Mack.

Age 12, 1993: “I Will Follow Him” from the Sister Act soundtrack

Joy and others who went to Saint Cecelia, Ames’ Catholic Elementary School, are my group of friends in seventh grade. We act out and sing along with Sister Mary Clarence and the other nuns in front of the television in Joy’s basement.

Age 13, 1994: “Mausam Ka Jaadu” from Hum Aapke Hain Koun!

“Can you play the songs from Who Am I To You?” my four year-old cousin Ishani asks my parents in a youthful, high-pitched voice from the backseat of our car. I think it’s funny that Ishani can’t remember the Hindi title of the film but instead remembers the formal-sounding English translation. The Bollywood film song begins with a heavily-accented man exclaiming in English 10! 9! 8! 7! 6! 5! 4! 3! 2! 1! Let’s! Start! The! Fun! Ishani, my brother Nitin, and I are sitting in the backseat and burst out in extreme laughter.

Age 14, 1994: “The Time Warp” from The Rocky Horror Picture Show

How I convinced my mother that going to a midnight screening of this film about characters from the planet Transsexual with my friend Caity was an okay thing to do still perplexes me.

Age 14, 1995: “My Name is Jonas” by Weezer

My stereo, upstairs in my room, is on full blast playing Weezer’s blue album. It is early in the summer after my freshman year in high school. That summer I biked to and from the school gym for a weight lifting class three times a week. Uh huh, that was the buffest I’ve ever been. “My Name is Jonas” is the first track on the album. I am downstairs in the kitchen, home alone, doing dishes and dancing and shouting out the lyrics.

Age 15, 1995: “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes” from Paul Simon’s Graceland

Ankita and I sat in her living room and picked this song apart line by line. It was my sophomore year and I had done this exercise for “The Boy in the Bubble” last year for Miss Eddings’ ninth grade World Studies class. She engaged us in learning about apartheid by showing us a video of Paul Simon and Ladysmith Black Mambazo singing about the South African freedom struggle in Zimbabwe in 1987. Now Ankita was in Miss Eddings’ class and she had the same assignment. We thought “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes” to be one of the more cryptic songs. We appropriated a meaning to every stanza. Essentially, we interpreted that “diamonds on the soles of her shoes” was a reference to the South Africa’s wealth of diamonds that helped the world ignore the atrocities of apartheid.

Age 16, 1997: “With or Without You” by U2

Driving in my dad’s white Geo Prizm on Grand Avenue in Ames past the mall, Wal-Mart, and Cub Foods with Wendy on a steamy Iowa summer day, we decide to leave the windows rolled up and the air conditioning off because the heat feels good.

Age 17, 1998: “La Flaca” by Jarabe de Palo

My Spanish host-sister Beatriz and I are at a pub in Manzanares near Colmenar Viejo in Spain. This is my first distinct memory of being flirted with and flirting back. A boy said something to me in Spanish and my giggly reply was “¡No Me Mentiras!” (don’t lie to me!).

Age 18, 1999: “E Ajnabi” from the Dil Se film soundtrack

My stereo moves into the third floor lounge of Stanley Residence Hall, two doors away from the dorm room I share with Heather. Liz and I pretend to study our engineering coursework as we turn up the volume of this ethereal song obnoxiously loud.

Age 19, 2000: “Brown Eyed Girl” by Van Morrison

My boyfriend Marc comes to visit me at Dance Marathon, a 24-hour event to raise financial and emotional support for selected families of children in the pediatric oncology wing of The University of Iowa Hospital. Soon after he arrives, “Brown Eyed Girl” plays. Marc is lost somewhere in the crowd and we search frantically for each other because this is “our song”. We find each other and our dance is captured in a photograph that appears taped on my door, pasted on a red construction-paper heart with the title “RA Lovers”. Both Marc and I were resident assistants on the same dormitory staff, and either my residents or fellow staff members posted this image on my door.

Age 21, 2001: “Dil Chahta Hai” from the Dil Chahta Hai film soundtrack

My cousins Mayank and Akhil and I are posing at Fort Aguada in Goa, India, attempting to recreate a scene from the Bollywood movie Dil Chahta Hai. I argue that we are not at the same fort that Akash, Sid, and Sameer are at in the movie and later watch the film to find out I’m right. Every time I watch this film or see the soundtrack I remember this Goa trip and posing at the fort.

Age 22, 2002: “Ray of Light” by Madonna

Allison, Tim, and I are on a frequently-stopping slow-moving train from Jaipur to Jodhpur in Rajasthan, India. Allison and I are feeling grumpy. I had purchased headphone splitters in earlier in Mysore, and now we plug two sets of headphones into my Discman so we can both listen to the song that consistently cheers us up. It didn’t quite cure all this time, but we were mildly less irritable after listening to it.

Age 22, 2002: “The Power of Goodbye” by Madonna

I am on a three-wheeled yellow and black auto rickshaw on a curving road in Bangalore. This song was not playing at the time, but when I hear it this is where I envision myself.

Age 23, 2003: “A Long December” by the Counting Crows

Marc, sitting on his bed in his dorm room in Cambridge, Massachusetts, tells me on the phone that he is listening to this song on repeat. I am walking around my dorm room in Philadelphia and we are breaking up.

Age 23, 2004: “The Way You Move” by Outkast

Andrew is expressively mouthing the words to this song. Elizabeth is dancing with me. Andy (different than Andrew) is the DJ, as he is for every city planning department party. Several other classmates surround us in our merrymaking somewhere near Rittenhouse Square.

Age 24, 2004: “Dil Le Gayee” by Jasbir Jassi

On the highway somewhere in California, Tuhina, Priya, Neha, Nitin, Tushar, me, and all our luggage are packed uncomfortably into a rental-SUV. Neha and I request this song and pass the CD forward from our leg-room impaired back seats.

Age 24, 2005: “Let’s Get Retarded” by the Black Eyed Peas

We decide to eat pizza at a café in Samaná in the Dominican Republic. Stacy, Jeannette, Curtis, Christine, Katherine and I are discussing the roles of men and women while a few songs play on repeat in the background. “Let’s Get Retarded” is the one that sticks with me.

Age 25, 2006: “Kala Chasma” by Amar Ashi

Every Thursday, January through April, Sujata and I go to “Sutra Night” at Red Maple, a trendy Baltimore club. We rename Thursday night, officially called “Sutra Night” at Red Maple, “Brown Night”. The DJ never fails to play “Kala Chasma,” which pleases me extremely. Then in May I am in India and do not escape “Kala Chasma”: my cousin Heemanshu is just as obsessed with the song as me. In the bedroom near the main entrance at the house in Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan, I remember my brother Nitin, Heemanshu, his brother Mayank, and I dancing to this song – and Chacha (my uncle) telling us to turn the music down.

Age 26, 2006: “Sada Dil” by Bikram Singh

I have designated myself the driver and Mitesh, Madhvi, Angie, Dhaval, and I are on our way home after Mitesh’s birthday. My road-ragey, distracted driving probably frightened my passengers on our way to DC, and now, on our way back, I am trying to keep myself awake by singing along to my newest song obsession “Sada Dil.” Nevermind that I do not know Punjabi or that my passengers have endured way too much of my so-called singing on this night already.

Do not call me exotic

Exotic is an odalisque in a painting. Stare at her, lust for her, she is beautiful and barbaric. Marvel at her private staged world for a small fee. Long for her mystery. She quenches aesthetic and carnal desire. She is an oasis in the strange, teeming, impoverished, and splendid land from where she comes.

She is not a companion. She is not a specimen to study and understand. To see her in full is to make her real. To unlock her mystery is to destroy her. The oasis is a mirage, come too close and she will disappear.


people talk about my image
like I come in two dimensions
like lipstick is a sign of my declining mind
like what I happen to be wearing the day
that someone takes my picture
is my new statement for all of womankind
- Ani DiFranco in her song “Little Plastic Castle”

Diwali

Every year my family has a Diwali party at our house. Past parties have included as many as sixty of our closest family friends. Everyone in the family has a role. My mom cooks a feast that includes at a minimum kadu (spiced pumpkin), poori aalu (fried bread and potatoes), dahi vada (lentil donuts in yogurt), and a variety of desserts: cham-chams, rasgullas, badam burfi. My dad is in charge of vacuuming and cleaning the house, my brother puts up the "Christmas" lights inside and outside the house, and I am in charge of decorations including candle and flower arrangements.

Since college, this ritual has become evermore important to me. Part of our Diwali tradition growing up including my mom telling us the story of Diwali and doing puja by our fireplace. Because our party is not always the same weekend as actual Diwali, it is sometimes a challenge to convince my family not to forego this part of the tradition –I am only in town for a couple of days and getting ready for the party takes precedence over the religious part of the holiday.

Whether or not we do the puja before the party, I love the feeling of our house prior to the party. It feels clean, fresh, and warm. We all are filled with the anticipation of guests arriving, the women decked out in their finest saris or salwar kameezes or lehengas. We turn on lights throughout the house and light candles, not only to welcome our guests, but Goddess Laxmi as well. Elements of the party include feasting, mingling, lighting sparklers and fireworks in the backyard, gambling with pennies as poker chips, and lots of laughing.

Growing up, I used to think of Diwali as Christmas, Thanksgiving, and the Fourth of July all rolled into one, since there would be decorating the house, new clothes, a feast, and fireworks just for that holiday. What makes it even better is that my holiday season starts as much as a month before Thanksgiving and continues through New Year’s. This is also a challenge, though, because I always want to take time off for Diwali to be with my family. Perhaps if Diwali were at the same time as Christmas and Hanukkah, I wouldn’t have grown up celebrating Christmas as well as Diwali – but lucky for me I get presents on both :-).

I have gone to great lengths to savor my mom’s Diwali feast. One year I traveled home with a cooler to bring food back with me, and got stopped at airport security because they objected to me taking a cooler and I didn’t have enough time to argue. I called my brother to take it back home with him and my mom actually Fed-Exed food to me a couple days later.

Diwali is a week and a half away. This year we are not having a huge party, just a low-key one with the two families we’re closest to. My mom’s father passed away in late July and she doesn’t feel it would be appropriate to have a large party, nor is she up for it. Nevertheless, I think all the essential elements of going home for Diwali are there (family, friends, food, fun) and I’m really looking forward to it.

Creating Community

With four years of experience as a freshman dormitory resident assistant and a budding career as a city planner, it shouldn't come as a huge surprise that I have a passion for creating community. These things are largely about encouraging and fostering a sense of community among others.

This past year, however, has been my first experience with having to focus on creating a community for myself. It has tested me, exposed my insecurities, and stretched me. Several months ago I realized that this was the first time some sort of community was not built into my everyday life. Until last fall, I had been in school, which always created an automatic community for me to some degree. Another community I had was the Indian families in Ames who my family was close with.

I grew up in a college town. When I moved here, it was the first time academia was not a part of my daily life in some way. This is why I feel so at home in Charles Village near Hopkins’ Homewood Campus, and why a lot of my friends that I have made in Baltimore are graduate students. Being around nerdiness is a norm for me.

In the last several months I have been accused of being not just outgoing and social, but very social. This is so strange to me. I think sometimes I still perceive myself as the timid, insecure grade school kid I once was, the girl who always had this inner confidence but who felt like a big dork socially. But when I had a party in June and had sixty-five people on my evite, and had almost thirty people crammed in to my one-bedroom apartment, I realized that there was something to all those accusations. How did I go from knowing virtually no one in Baltimore to sixty-five people I felt comfortable enough with to invite to my party? Since then the number of people I know has certainly multiplied, which is even more mind-boggling.

Creating community is not about sheer numbers, but numbers do help. You start feeling like you’re a part of a place when you can randomly run into people wherever you go. But if I had to choose between having a hundred people I could call friends versus one or two people who are really close friends that I can count on regularly and who count on me, it would be the latter. These would be people who don’t mind driving me to Dulles airport if I can’t get a flight out of BWI, people who will ask me to go to the doctor with them because they’re nervous and want moral support, people who call me just to chat, people who actually care about the inane details of my day-to-day life, people who don’t mind requesting me to bring extra food to their parties when they have them. It’s great to know dozens of people, because apparently, I am super social. I thrive around people-energy. But what floors me is that I have made a half dozen or so close friends who really care about me and expect things from me and who I can count on.

Creating community in the absence of a pre-constructed “box” to put the community in has been a challenging and rewarding experience. The people in my Baltimore/DC life are a diverse group of people, and though I think I may always seek my comfort zones such as university communities, I have enjoyed constructing a box for myself.

Anyway, this post was precipitated by my feelings of insecurity earlier today when I felt I had invited myself to someone’s party and that perhaps I wasn’t really wanted there. The people throwing the party have never done anything to make me feel this way, if anything, it’s been just the opposite. But for some reason, as social as I supposedly am, that insecure little girl inside shows up anyway. Thankfully, I had community to rely on (two close Baltimore friends, one best friend three time zones away, and one mom) to tell that little girl that her feelings were valid but to please shut up and stop being so paranoid. And then I went to the party, and surprise surprise, I had a fabulous time. The little girl will never go away but maybe she will slowly grow up. As she does, I will continue to build and strengthen this box of my creation.

Watching Movies and Re-runs Over and Over Again

My latest obsession is Casablanca. I have a subscription to Netflix but I've had the same movies sitting in my apartment for more than a month. So basically, I am wasting twelve dollars a month while I watch re-runs of Girlfriends or Nick at Nite or put in one of my DVDs or VHS movies that I've seen at least a dozen times.

Is it my ADD-tendencies? Yes, partially why I end up watching what I've already seen is because I don't have to pay that much attention and I can multi-task. I can be cooking dinner, checking my email, even listening to music while watching something I've seen.

Is it because I have a deep appreciation for cinematic genius and classic stories? How many times do I need to see a certain line delivered over and over again? How can I still laugh at Will Smith's cheekiness when I already know verbatim what he's about to say?

Every once in a while I look up from my multi-tasking and I notice something new and clever about one of my favorite movies or sitcom episodes.

Check out the above picture from a scene in Casablanca... look at the way the champagne glasses are placed! Equally spaced apart, Sam's in the foreground. A lot of thought went into every scene in this movie... getting everything on the screen so it was just right: body language, the placement of objects, the camerawork, the soundtrack and lighting -- all make a subtle statement. Some of the lines in this movie seem so cheesy, and we've heard them referenced so many times that it is hard to evaluate the movie from a fresh perspective. But given that I've watched this movie half a dozen times since I bought it a month ago, I think I like it for itself and not just for its impact on pop culture.

Anyway, in my true multi-tasking-attention-deficit style, I got distracted from doing something else so I could write this post. And now my movie is almost over... what to do, watch it again, watch another one, or turn off the tv?

I think I'll watch it again.

Where the Desis Are

When I was being recruited for my job, everyone at the office was over twice my age and I expressed my concern over how I would meet people my age and make friends. My employer-to-be drove me around the city to show me that there were plenty of young professionals in Baltimore. He assured me that I would have no problem making friends, and today I can confirm that he was right. Nevertheless, I distinctly remember something that bugged me on our drive around. I only saw one Asian person during the drive, and all day I didn’t see a single person of Indian origin.

I grew up in Ames, Iowa. The local Indian community in Ames has always been a big part of my life, and I imagine always will be. When I went to college in Iowa City I struggled to connect with other students of Indian origin, even though I participated in the Indian students’ association, I was in a group dance for Diwali one year, and I was even the master of ceremonies at the Diwali program the next year.

This struggle continued into graduate school, where I had a little more luck in making connections but still never quite found the right group. At Penn, there was the South Asia Society, which was heavily dominated by undergraduates. There was Rangoli, a student association primarily of PhD students in engineering and other sciences who grew up in India. The medical school, dental school, and business school all seemed to have their own Indian students’ associations. I ultimately became a member of the Wharton India Club, because they were a diverse, fun group of people who seemed most open to my participation. Nevertheless, I still felt like a bit of an anomaly, but also had a little more success connecting to the desi community in grad school than I did in college.

Now I live in Baltimore. I adore this city, yet its “black and white” mentality occasionally grates on my nerves. I have desi friends in this area (desi means of the country, as in “of India”) and yet still feel like an exception to the rule: desis are doctors or engineers and live in the suburbs while I am a city planner working at a community development nonprofit and I live in the city. I do not just live in the city to live close to work, I live here because I enjoy an urban lifestyle.

I have an Indian friend within the city limits who is a graduate student at Hopkins, and we bonded over both being anomalies – she’s studying public policy. We both really enjoy our dual culture, Indian and American.

Other than that, my other Indian friends live in Howard County or in Washington, D.C. I try to tell my Howard County friends that living in Baltimore is great, but they contest that there are hardly any desis here. The other night one of my friends told me that all the white young professionals he knew in his office chose to live in Baltimore city, whereas all the Indian young professionals chose to live in Howard County.

My D.C. friends seem to have an appreciation for Baltimore’s quirks but don’t have cars in which to come here. Furthermore, desis get why other desis would choose to live in D.C.: it's perceived as more diverse and with more fun things to do than Baltimore.

Feeling like an anomaly gets a little tiresome. Even though in many ways I think being different is one of my greatest assets, I still want to connect with the desi community. I want to be able to accept who I am while also accepting who they are. I often wonder if there is truth in our impressions of where we choose to live and work, or choose not to. A lot of times, people are pretty perceptive of their surroundings, but actually knowing some of the facts helps us know whether things are just in our heads or if there’s something to our impressions.

All of this is a long preamble to what may be the nerdiest thing I’ve ever done. In the same screwed up way that finally being diagnosed with a disease after feeling sick and not knowing why for a long time makes a person feel better, I thought I would look up some census data about where the desis are and see if I could diagnose whether I really am an anomaly. I looked at U.S. Census 2000 Demographic Profile Highlights for the Asian Indian Population for various geographies, based on Summary File 2 (SF 2) and Summary File 4 (SF 4). I also looked at U.S. Census 2000 Demographic Profile Highlights for the Asian population as a whole, based on Summary File 1 (SF 1) and Summary File 3 (SF 3) and U.S. Census 2005 American Community Survey Data Profile Highlights for the Asian population as a whole so I could get a sense of the changes from 2000-2005. Data for the Asian Indian subgroup of the Asian population is not available in the 2005 data, and not all places have 2005 data. All of this might sound complicated if you haven’t used Census data before – but it’s not as crazy as it sounds, look up http://factfinder.census.gov and you’ll probably be able to find some fun facts of your own.

People are always amused when I tell them I am from Iowa, because I do not exactly fit the stereotypical mental image of what an Iowan looks like. Plus people on the coasts or from large metropolitan areas find it fascinating that people, whatever their race, live anywhere in between. So two of the geographies I selected are my hometown Ames, Iowa and the state of Iowa as a whole. I also looked up Baltimore city, Baltimore County (which is not inclusive of Baltimore city), Howard County, and the state of Maryland as a whole, as well as the city of Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

I computed the percentage of the total population in each selected geography that was Asian Indian and Asian, changes over time, and the percentage of Asians who were Indian. I compared percentages between the selected geographies.







I also calculated the percentage of Indians who are foreign born – a lot of times, I think there is a societal bias towards thinking we are all immigrants, but I am American, born and raised. It is true that most Asian Indians are either immigrants themselves or come from families who have only been in the United States for one or two generations. Yet I feel strongly about asserting my identity as an Indian-American, and I think many of my counterparts do as well.



Finally, I calculated how many of us are homeowners, how many are renters, and how long, on average, most of us are willing to travel to work. I compared these numbers with numbers for the general population.





It seems that in all the selected geographies, Indians generally had a shorter commuting distance, but in the United States as a whole had a slightly longer commuting distance. I don’t know why it’s longer for the United States as a whole, I wonder if certain areas that I didn’t look at (such as the New York metro area or San Francisco Bay Area?) skew the results, or whether the areas I chose are unusual. But this confirms my sense that in the places where I’ve lived, Indians tend to prefer living close to work.

The housing data surprised me. Given that we are regarded as a relatively wealthy, upwardly mobile subpopulation, I thought we would exceed the average rates of homeownership. On the contrary, Asian Indians were less likely to be homeowners than the general population for every selected geography including the United States as a whole.

And regarding being an anomaly? Take a look at all the data for Baltimore city. Pretty abysmal I think... with the exception of the state of Iowa as a whole, Baltimore has the lowest percentage of Asian Indians in the places I analyzed. Anyone who knows me knows I would not advocate for Baltimore to lose any of its current population. I think this city could stand to add to its population, rather than replace anyone who’s already here. It would be nice if some more Asian Indians chose to live here, but they’re not going to just come-a-flocking just because I live here and I said it’s a great place to live. So, I am left wondering, what is it about our cities that fail to attract Asian Indians as residents, and why do the suburbs succeed in attracting Asian Indians? What in particular is it about Baltimore being the way it is, and Howard County being the way it is, what’s changing, and why?

Please feel free to comment on this post. I hope that people are able to see the charts and tables okay, right now they are jpgs but I might try to figure out how to get excel files in here directly or else work on hosting my own website. For the moment I think I've exceeded my nerdiness quotient, at least for the day.

If there are particular things you’d like to add or you’d like me to look up let me know, this is just a start. I know there are many cities and many subpopulations I didn’t look at, and that this analysis is very basic... but I hope it gets a dialogue going!

Mount Vernon in the Pink Evening Light

view around 7:20 PM, 9/19/06
Originally uploaded by spunky star fruit girl.

I decided to exchange going to yoga this evening with a slightly longer walk home to the wine store, so I could relax with a glass of Rioja and my writing. On the way back home, I noticed the magnificent streetscape that exists throughout Mount Vernon: even massive, modern buildings have a manageable and pleasant presence on the ground level. In other words, people walking by would not be overwhelmed by buildings much larger or taller than the surrounding buildings, because these buildings have street-level convenience stores or landscaping to offset their immense scale.

My infatuation with cities, art, and architecture go hand in hand. For example, I cannot walk around an architecturally rich neighborhood at dusk without thinking of Edward Hopper. His paintings of sunlight on buildings truly capture the texture of city life.

(For an example, visit: http://www.vmfa.state.va.us/collections/53_8.html).

This evening I poured myself a glass of wine, opened my window, and looked outside. At that time, a luscious light enrobed the neighborhood like pink cellophane. To the west, the sky was a brilliant blue. A calmness transcended the scene, not as quiet as the world seems after snowfall, but muffled and serene nevertheless. The air still had a touch of summer humidity but it was tinged with a cool, slow breeze hinting at the coming winter.

The neighborhood and sky transformed as the sun set. The pinkness diminished, to be replaced by gray-blue and then slate. As this happened, streetlights, reflections, and illuminated windows became more apparent. A more perceptible arc formed near the horizon of the western sky, formed by the light yellow halo of the sun and surrounded by mauve, melon, and light blue. I watched a woman with a backpack walking south and her shadow pointed to eight o’clock. Sure enough it was almost 8PM. The sky near the Inner Harbor, to the southeast of me, was slate gray and hazy and the lights over Key Bridge twinkled.

Appreciating my living space

A couple of weeks ago fall hit Baltimore in full force. As soon as the calendar changed to September, the weather cooled down. My apartment and I were so relieved! I do not have central air conditioning in my apartment and I had no idea how much the heat had been getting to me. All of a sudden I had the energy to move some furniture around in my living room and spend some quality time with my kitchen.

I love my apartment. I do not have a dishwasher, central air conditioning, a garbage disposal, carpet, a washer and dryer, or a balcony. There is no window in my kitchen. The linoleum on my kitchen floor and in the bathroom were poorly laid and are fairly ugly. I live on the eighth floor, which is the top floor of the building. This means there is no way to wash the outsides of my windows so when a bird flies by and relieves itself, I get to cherish the gift it leaves for me months and months. It used to be possible to sneak up to the rooftop, which is what many drunken tenants and their guests occasioned to do – very loudly – after closing time on weeknights. That stopped when someone apparently stuffed a piece of wood down the elevator shaft and rendered the elevator broken. For the next four months. The elevator is up and running again, but still makes for a bumpy, uneasy ride. It always seems to be on the verge of breaking down again and makes my guests a little nervous every time they come visit me. The common areas of the building are gross: dimly lit, could use some new carpet, sometimes smell funny. I feel slightly mortified by the prelude to my apartment every time someone is coming over for the first time.

I love my apartment. I have a decorative fireplace. Once upon a time, this fireplace kept the living room warm. Once upon a time the living room may have been an office or waiting room, from what I hear the reason every apartment in my building is configured differently is because the building used to be all doctor's offices. Today, the fireplace and mantle are a place for my trinkets, plants, and tapered candles stuffed into wine bottles. Except for the kitchen and bathroom, the apartment has beautiful hardwood floors that were refinished just before I moved in a year ago. The apartment is spacious and has nine-foot high ceilings. It gets amazing natural light, coming through two large wood-framed windows in the living room, a bay in my bedroom, and a large window in the bathroom. These windows face downtown, and I can see a sliver of the Inner Harbor from my bedroom. The view, the fireplace, the bay window, the hardwood floors, the location, and the bargain rent made moving here a no-brainer.

Climbing up seven flights of stairs with several bags of groceries or overloading the circuits just by plugging in my iron when the window unit air conditioners and fans are on make me acknowledge that eventually I will want to move. But now fall is here, I just renewed my lease, and I feel satisfied enjoying my great view and my fake fireplace.

Nokia Reincarnation (the new phone)

Nokia Reincarnation (the new phone)
Originally uploaded by spunky star fruit girl.

The phone started acting funny so I turned it off... and then it would not turn back on. The next 24 hours were somewhat angsty: finding the numbers of people I was meeting up with that night, then not being able to text or call friends when we split up into smaller groups, not being able to call my friend Elizabeth in California to debrief the events of the night at 2AM EDT, trying to get a hold of people by email early Sunday morning to try to make plans for the day, and then waiting until noon to go to the Sprint store since it was Sunday and wouldn't open until noon.

When I got to the Sprint store I put my name on the list, and when my name was called I explained to the customer service agent that I had tried to prevent this from happening way back in June. At that time, the phone wasn’t charging properly so I took it to the store, went through the ordeal of waiting in line for an hour, and was told by an agent that someone would contact me in three to five business days once a free replacement phone arrived at the store. I waited two weeks or so and called the store, was redirected to an 800 number, and then redirected to an answering machine at the store. I left a message and no one ever called me back.

Yeah, I could have been even more proactive at the time. I could have spent more time on hold on the phone or leaving more messages or driving to the store and waiting in line to be told the same thing all over again. But since my phone was working I fell into complacency. The customer service agent was sure to lecture me that my phone was my responsibility. Apparently, good customer service was not her responsibility or her coworkers? After a lot of bickering back and forth she told me that rather than us wasting our breath why don’t I go talk to the manager.

I waited patiently for the manager to finish the breath-wasting conversation he was engaged in, with a customer who hadn’t paid his bill but wanted his phone turned back on. I then told the manager the whole story. He looked into it. After clicking some buttons on his computer and going into the back room, he came back with a newer model of my phone. He clicked a few more buttons and soon thereafter I had my reincarnated Nokia phone.

Sure, it would have been kind of fun to get a whole new phone, after enduring the pain of picking one out, shelling out the cash (actually, plastic) and learning how to use a new phone. But I was satisfied to walk away with the reincarnation. Hopefully I’m still eligible for an upgrade in December... didn’t think to ask that, oops.

Involuntarily purging a lot of information can come with its advantages. I can think of two times this happened to me. A few years ago I had a Hotmail account that contained a number of emails I was only keeping for sentimental reasons. At that time, Hotmail deleted everything in your account if you didn’t log in for thirty days. I was away on vacation and forgot to log on... and when I finally did, everything was gone. Technology helped me learn how to become a little less of a pack rat, to let go of the past, and purge.

I’m still not that good at it; most of my info-purging is still involuntary. When my phone decided to go kaput, there was a teeny-weeny little sense of relief. Gone are the numbers of guys who I shouldn’t call and who will probably never call me. Gone are the numbers of so-called friends uninterested in calling back. Gone are the numbers of people I met once and know I am never going to call but whose numbers were still in my phone just in case.

Between having other ways to contact people such as email, Friendster, mutual friends/relatives/co-workers, and my excellent Google-stalking skills, I think I can get a hold of people if I really want to. Also, I do live in Smaltimore and I run into people I know in places like the Hong Kong airport or in the cable car line in San Francisco or on Devon Street in Chicago. Or I meet people on the East Coast who somehow know people I knew back in Iowa.

There is a little fear that some people will be difficult to google-stalk and who might actually want to hear from me and now I’ve lost their info... but thankfully I am easy to google-stalk even if they aren’t.

I am very reluctant to change my cell phone number for a whole bunch of ridiculous “just in case” reasons... but I don’t know if there is a way to involuntarily lose my 215 area code.

As a result of this involuntarily purge, I’ve emailed a whole bunch of people I haven’t talked to in a long time... the irony is how losing all my phone numbers has made me more connected to my world!