The Parent-Daughter Trap & A Potentially Suitable Boy

What happens when you visit your parents for a mere four hours one fine Sunday evening? You get ambushed. Or rather, if you are my parents, they cloak you in their guidance-counselor fog and coax you into spilling the beans when you thought you had none. Add a dose of self-imposed Jewish guilt. What you end up with is the basis for a non-traditional, independent film on the second-generation immigrant experience.

One fine Sunday evening while visiting home, my dad indicates that he would like me to sit in the front seat on the way to dinner. A mere forty-five seconds into the drive, he pops the question: how do I feel about meeting people, and what am open to (or not), given that they are receiving "references" for me?

Don't ask how I failed to expect the unexpected in that particular moment. I was tempted to lash out and use my imaginary middle-child card. Instead, my inner zen erupted an unstoppable flow of lava into my veins and I answered every question calmly, with only the slightest hint of sarcasm and defeat, and perhaps a dose or two of cynicism.

The truth is, I realized I was 26 and have no more cards to pull, and that my dad was, in short, nice. All he asked is if I was open to the idea, and even worse, the truth is, I am. To me, meeting people is meeting people, as long as no one is forcibly dragging you to the altar. From here on, however, our conversation bordered on the comical and I wasn't quite sure what dimension of reality I had suddenly entered.

By the time the lava had calmed my inner nerves, I was able to muster a watery "ok" in response. Thinking he was getting away with this too easily, he soldiered on through some talking points about how "this" would work before I could tell him to beat it. "This" will involve no parental involvement, and "this" will only serve to put me in touch with a Potentially Suitable Boy (suitable for what, both parents failed to clarify, but I'll take full advantage of the ambiguity). Another watery but somewhat more flippant "ok" escaped from my mouth.

I actually began to enjoy myself with the onset of Talking Point 3 - my "preferences." Haha - what a notion! As if one can afford to have preferences in such a dire situation! As if I'm the Queen of Sheba and setting preferences is my job! I contemplated requesting a checklist of possible attributes/characteristics on which I could tick off (or better yet, rank!) what matters to me most. Only you are privileged enough to read what that is in A Suitable Boy and A Suitable Boy, Part Deux.

Some of the suggested categories: profession, geographic location, and region of India from which Potential Suitable Boy's parents hail. What happened to Ability to Understand Pinky & The Brain and The X-Files References? Or Knowledge of Early 90s Bollywood Music? Or - Does He Read Books? I nearly pulled out my cellphone and punched in a string of "hehes" and "LOLs" to my friends, but the poor guy was trying and I just had to dignify the effort. So I told him that I don't really care (which is the truth for these suggested categories). And let's be honest, this was not the time or the place to bring up the "must eat goat" requirement, which sadly trumps the "must let me pass on my maiden name to one child" requirement. If I had voiced these concerns, I'm not quite sure where we would have ended up that night - certainly not dinner, but perhaps a place to contemplate the sanity and singledom of middle daughter.

And so, I embarked into unknown territory by - being honest with my parents. I somewhat appreciated their levelheaded efforts and decided to even the exchange by telling them about 1) Family Friend Who Confessed His Feelings For Me And Who A Large Number Of People Think Is Right For Me But I Do Not (FFWCHFFMAWALNOPTIRFMBIDN) and 2) my online dating attempts. My mother giggled. My dad largely ignored me, although he did ask what was wrong with FFWCHFFMAWALNOPTIRFMBIDN. Of course, because he is one of the Large Number of People.

I have yet to write about some of my interesting online experiences, but perhaps it is time. I plan to have a side-by-side comparison with The Parent Set Up and The Online Connection, although I hesitate to write about people other than the string of cartoon characters that are my family and friends (sorry, guys). Do Potentially Suitable Boys deserve the same fate? Perhaps - we'll just have to wait and see.

On another note, it occurred to me later that on that fine Sunday evening, we were driving along the water on the north shore of Long Island - a drive my father made 10 years ago on my 16th birthday to the same restaurant for dinner. My, how time flies, and how often we travel the same paths differently...

Stop Congratulating Your Indian Friends

Now, this hasn't happened to me, but I'm sure other people may have experienced something similar...

Home Sense & Sensibilities

Picture courtesy of The New York Times

"A Modernist Temple" of a home recently featured in The New York Times got me thinking about space and aesthetics again. This East Village apartment was constructed and designed to fuse both modern and Indian elements of design, and I considered whether or not a balance was truly achieved, or even possible, as well as what makes any home particularly Indian or modern. I believe that how we choose to define the space around us speaks volumes about our personal histories, and the idea of fusing heritages and identities is particularly close to - home.

This breathtaking home is all clean lines, open space, a bit bare, all light and air. It has all the modernist elements - functional and comfortable form/design, uncluttered, cool and yet not cold, vastness puncutated by the bright and bold. I sighed and longed for the day when I might be able to design such a space of my own. The more I thought about how that space would differ or be similar to this one, the less I saw in it that was warm, comfortable, and "Indian" enough for my tastes and my personal fusion.

The home I grew up in was toppling with one too many pieces of contemporary Indian art, statues of Ganesh, deep and rich contrasting colors, a preference for gold over silver and the bold/abstract over the subtle/petite, and texture. It is decidedly an "ethnic" home. It leans towards the ornate and is nostalgic for some version of a British and/or Victorian aesthetic. In India, I see similar themes. What I've taken from all of this is warmth in color and texture that can accomodate light and air without suffocating it.

This I cannot see in the Modernist Temple, although perhaps I would feel it were I actually able to pay this nice family a visit. For all the "purist" white brightened by splashes of "Indian hues like saffron, persimmon orange and peacock blue" this space is just a little too cool and restrained for my idea of a space that fuses both the modern and Indian. The functionality of furniture tucked behind walls is genius, but I'm a traditionalist when it comes to furniture and don't think I so mind the space it would occupy. In any case, the uncluttered feel of the apartment might have been balanced by a stronger decorative touch.

Two elements that I thought were beautiful, however - the polished cement floor (memories of running around barefoot on an awfully hot summer day on a blissfully cool floor at my grandma's in India) and the wall of ivy over a pool of water. So simple and zen, yet lush.

And so I continue to "work" on my humble shack of a studio 6 months after moving in. The little touches matter in any home, and this is my first draft. The exercise of developing and refining the space around me is, after all, in a sense also one of evolving and redefining identity as well.

Slumdog Continues...

Among other things, the little movie that could has taken over all things media and the blogosphere. I find a lot of these conversations to be immensely interesting, although I'm still puzzled by some of the reactions this movie has stirred. For the life of me, I really cannot understand why. It might be that I've seen one too many Bollywood movies already, but Slumdog Millionare was purely an entertainer for me, and it is with some hesitation that I feel people are reading too much into it.

Reactions to the movie are far more interesting than the movie itself. They reveal much about about the ways in which India has experienced change over the last decade, and consequently, continuous shifts in discourse about those changes. Much of that discourse sounds familiar and is unsurprising, while much of it begs the question as to why a film like this is the cause for so much debate when the problematic cinema that India produces, packaged prettily with its own exxagerations and stereotypes about Western and modern life, rarely result in any.

Two very interesting reads:

The New York Times: Taking the 'Slum' Out of Slumdog

And largely in response to that:
Slumdog: Ben Piven's Fulbright Research on Dharavi

Plus:
The New York Times: The Real Roots of the 'Slumdog' Protests

On Knowing Medical Professionals, Being Indian, & Jury Duty

Speaking of Indians in the mainstream here and here, my cousin called me at 11 pm to share this story. It was certainly worth putting down my hair dryer and pausing Law & Order: SVU for.

So cousin gets called for jury duty. A questionnaire asks if he knows anyone in the legal or medical professions, and he answers yes to both.

During the selection interview, he is asked about the people he knows in the legal profession. He refers to those 2 people.

Then he is asked about the people he knows in the medical profession. His answer was something along the lines of, "Well, I'm Indian...it would be impossible to name all the doctors I know." Chuckles of acknowledgment from the courtroom. This made my amazement at having SVU interrupted by a commercial for RCN starring the second-runner up of last season's Indian Idol even funnier.

I can't wait for jury duty.

The Siege of the Car Trip & My Musical Memory

My younger sister is the one who should have a blog. She is funny, and she works in PR. She is the perfect candidate for blogger-to-be, but instead, one of her great accomplishments has been the creation of a Facebook group called "My Cousin Is a FOB."

While I am, in fact, her sibling and not a cousin, I take responsibility for her aversion to FOB behavior. In case you don't know, FOB stands for Fresh Off the Boat, and describes immigrants (largely Asian) who arrived in this fine country wearing tight Levi's and matching denim jackets. While some FOB criteria have changed, negative stereotypes remain. If you are not an actual FOB like me but can be described as being "fobby," you're in trouble. My sister was inspired by mine and my cousin's (yes, we largely talking about 1 here) raging fobbiness. She made us officers of this Facebook group, and we wear our titles proudly.

One of the many fob criticisms I have received is that my level of knowledge about Indian/Hindi music is far beyond acceptable or normal. It's true that I have an amazing music inventory in this little head of mine, and I have often pondered why. The answer lies in car trips.

Yes, one too many family car trips. If it hadn't been for the Family Car Trip growing up, I may never have been exposed to long hours of Pankaj Udhas, Kishore Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar in the '80s and general Bollywood obnoxiousness in the 1990s while traveling I-95. I may never have actually liked any of that stuff either. But my musical memory is rooted in these tunes, and they formed the early soundtracks of my life.

An innate attachment to making sense of life through poetry and lyrics in a language other than English, classical dance lessons, and accessibility further set me on this treacherous path. By age 9, the History of Dance & Nostalgic Jams was in the works. At age 13, I bought discount CDs at the Indian grocery store and knew the name of every up and coming DJ. In college, I rapidly downloaded both the old and new to create a vast Indian music library.

Don't be alarmed - I listened to Boyz II Men, Nirvana, Greenday, and Mariah Carey just like everyone else back in the day, did my fair share of the club set, and love some alternative music. But I was never quite able to latch onto a genre or artist that particularly spoke to me even later in life. I generally have liked the same qualities in all music that I appreciate in Indian music - a solid melody or beats, something I can dance to, meaningful lyrics. An entirely different soundtrack developed during the teen years, during which I also frantically made mix tapes or bought my special "friend" a Savage Garden single, and lately, I'm dating John Legend. But none come close to my relationship with Indian music (although John Legend is trying really, really hard). Even the entrance of the Dirty Dancing soundtrack just post-Pankaj Udhas couldn't salvage the situation.

Aside from my general tendency to boogie whether the music be Punjabi or Portuguese, I argue that this has much to do with language. For all practical purposes, English is certainly my first, but there is a certain unease with this. My earliest memories are again set to a chorus of Hindi, and as a child I experienced moments of transition in which I temporarily lost my grasp on one or the other, or both. On occasion, in a particularly unguarded or intimate moment, I have the urge to speak it with someone I ordinarily wouldn't. Somehow, Indian music (traditional, fusion, folk, dance, pop, you name it) latches onto and invigorates a neuro-psych pathway - one with diminishing influence and relevance in my life - that only it can keep alive. Compelling stuff if you ask me. Perhaps no excuse to listen to a song called "Desi Girl," but nonetheless, I think others might share a similar sentiment.

And so the result of the siege of the Car Trip is that if anyone ever has any song requests or needs song info, you now know who to go to. I'd be more than happy to offer my FOB services.

Picasso, Martha Stewart, & Me

I recently ordered the above poster to better the feng shui and general life vibes of my apartment. For those who don't know, I moved into this place in a flurry of activity during early September. It was such an alternately slow and yet hasty move that there are a number of things I never really quite took care of. Like buying a paper towel hanger-upper or a kettle. After many late nights assembling cheap furniture, I was a bit pooped by the whole process, and other than cleaning, did little else to make myself feel at home. Until now.

Since some measure of drama had also taken a toll on my good energy & I discovered Ikea (in DC of all palces), the Martha Stewart in me decided to take matters into her own hands and - decorate. Wall decorations became my daily mission, and cushion covers the ultimate prize. I promised not to give my friends advice or wag my finger at them if they just told me one more time - black or brown? My traditionally slow decision-making reached new heights as I undertook this task with a zeal unmatched in other areas of my life. My efforts have led to a somewhat patchwork result, but I feel more at home, and that's what counts.

The Picasso painting pictured above is titled "The Lesson" and is one I've never seen before. I gazed at it longingly day after day before finally purchasing. It brightens up my space, and it puts a smile on my face. It is a blissfully serene painting with a balance of warmth and coolness that puts me in my comfort zone - an area that is always a bit of a contradiction or a balance, depending on how you view it.

I grew up in a house that my parents committed to turning into some modern South Asian (and then some) art/artifact museum, and while my sisters and I somewhat rebelled against it, in my growing and infinite wisdom I now realize how much that definition of space has informed my taste and sense of place. When I look around my apartment, I see their influences everywhere, and feel a mixture of surprise and comfort that is both remarkable and touching.