The Importance of Being Earnest...And Unavailable

The Universe has been sending me mixed signals, even when it's done by the numbers - literally.

In sharp contrast to the suggestion the that I'm not emitting the right so-called-Vibes towards the opposite sex and thus quickening the speed at which I shack up and reproduce, my recent Numerology report accurately diagnosed some of my gravest personality ailments.

Don't ask why I have a Numerology report. I told myself yesterday that cramming for my finance exam at the last minute wasn't going to help, so I decided to attempt another type of financial analysis on Numerology.com. Truth be told, I'm sort of kooky, earthy, and new-age like that. But mostly, I wondered if I was missing something about myself, and those awesome little Google ads that show up in your Gmail are like giving a mouse a cookie.

I was suspicious about the meaning of my Life Path and Expression Number (8 and 4, respectively) but my Soul Urge number (6) was like, whoa. Finally, someone (Thanks, Mr. Blair Gorman of Numerology.com) seemed to understand that it's not that I don't have good vibes to send - in fact, they are all fantastic and too many of them are out there! In all my earnestness towards life, I have no mystery or sex appeal and am unacceptably, undesirably, and horrifically all too - available:

Your soul urge is to nurture and take care of others. You love people and believe the greatest expression of your inner divinity is through teaching and guidance. Many of you are very maternal or paternal at an early age and are often regulated, by default to the role of advisor or therapist in your social life. Unfortunately your willingness to take on other people's burdens threatens your romantic relationships. This is because you are often perceived as a friend or a helper rather than as an object of desire. The result is that many sixes end up with broken hearts simply because others simply could not recognize their empathy as being an expression of love and desire. Part of your challenge in life is to learn how to make yourself more sexually attractive to others. Often this means learning the brutal rules of the game of love, which in courtship often mean practicing a certain kinds of power plays and being mysterious. The mistake that you often make is letting yourself be too available to the person you are trying to attract. As the object of desire realizes that you are willing to be there for them no matter what, they take it for granted that you will settle for less. It is often a six who will spend a year comforting someone they are attracted to in the hopes the person will recognize their good heart, only to be dismayed when they are thanked for all their kind support and the person moves onto a romance with someone else. Your candidness and forthright manner is also a drawback romantically as others are turned off by your dogmatic approach. As you tend to discuss everything about yourself with a member of the opposite sex, there is little mysterious or sexy about you. Spilling your guts does not help you professionally either, as it encourages others to steal your ideals. Part of your inner struggle might be fighting your urge to connect so intimately with every single person you meet. One way to combat this is to make an effort to be a little more stand offish and play your cards close to your chest, especially when it comes to romance. As you are a very sensitive and compassionate person you tend to take things very personally. When others let you down you have a tendency to retreat from society and nurse your wounds. Often when a six decides to play the victim in a relationship he or she is met with very little sympathy or help. This is ironic as sixes are so eager to help others and comfort them when they are down and out. The cosmos presents you with this type of situation so that you are forced to heal yourself with the same type of focus and devotion that you use to heal others. If you feel yourself succumbing to a tendency to isolate yourself or find yourself succumbing to addiction or depression your best course of action is to forget about yourself entirely and go out and make an effort to help someone less fortunate than you. This teaches you to be helpful to people you are not attracted to as sixes have a way of only making themselves useful to individuals that they find attractive or desire. The very highest calling of your soul urge number is to renounce sex and relationships altogether and devote your life to a religious or spiritual practice.

If you want to know a second truth, this fits in nicely with my vision of helping those less fortunate than I in Africa or India in my 40s and eventually adopting the one poor child who just spoke to me like none other. While my life revolves around people and a the-more-the-merrier attitudes towards them, I've always secretly wondered if I might not reach my true potential if I did exactly that.

If you want to know a third truth, it's that I consider myself highly spiritually evolved (something else confirmed by Mr. Gorman) and thus miserably suited for living a conventional if comfortable life. Yeah, I'm so over it all that I can barely get through it. So mature that I can't dumb myself down to the level necessary to bear it. Too idealistic. Too romantic. Too trusting. Too everything. And now on top of everything else, too available.

I get it - I really do. But the point missed here is this - I'm only candid, forthright, and dogmatic when I've been given some sort of greenlight to be so, and when someone is responsive to this "dogmatic approach." So how can this make me too available? I want to think about it more, but it's a vicious cycle and makes my brain hurt, so I'll move on to a more interesting aspect of my Soul Urge.

Truth #4 - I'm certainly rather maternal and have really just always wanted to take care of people. That wasn't meant to be funny. In fact, it is why I tried to pursue medicine - twice. I've come to terms with the fact that there may be other ways I can follow that calling, if we want to call it that. And it's also true that the reason I find myself making it through at times is knowing that there are people far worse off than I, and rather than mull over myself, I should put my high evolution of spirit and mind towards helping them instead. I don't know if I can ever denounce all that I have, but I can certainly appreciate it to the max and at some point move on.

In sum, it appears that I'm too maternal, spiritual, earnest, and available for my own heart or reproductive system to handle. And so, for a little experiment of a while at least, I'll have to place some importance on being unavailable as well. I can be all too good at that, too, I have a feeling - let's see if it is possible to strike a balance. If not, Africa, here I come.

Mr. Bean 'n' Bhangra

This will make your day:

For Kutner

They did what? They killed off Kutner? Or more precisely, they made Kutner kill himself off of House? Wait, what's this I hear - Kal Penn made the show make Kutner commit suicide so that he can go work for Obama? What is going on, and why did I encounter this strange tragedy at 7:45 am while enthusiastically working out on my spanking new elliptical? My love-hate relationship with Kal just reached new anxiety levels.

So yes, you heard right. Kutner may have committed suicide on "House" - or he may have been murdered, or something else truly mysterious happened to him and House won't rest until he figures it out, not because he cares about people, but because he loves puzzles. In any case, no more Kumar/Kutner/Penn to charm me. I'm convinced this is a big fat conspiracy to deprive me of my favorite TV characters - let's not forget what happened to Gary Dourdan of CSI last season. I'm still sour about that one.

But clearly, Gary was having some issues. Kal, on the other hand, has decided to help Obama save the world, and I'm both irritated and jealous. I mean, seriously, who doesn't want to work for Obama? Wouldn't you quit your job and go work in his administration? Kal appears to be a smart guy from what I've read, and so in many ways, I applaud him for leaving a rather successful actor career (thus far) to become an associate director in the White House office of public liaison (read about it here), where he will be working with the Asian-American and arts communities.

While I'm not 100% sure what that means, I do know that I can name at least 10 fine Indian-Americans who could have filled that spot. It's not that I think Kal isn't qualified - in many ways, he is actually an ideal candidate for such a position, particularly since he is one of the few, if only, mainstream Indian-American actors. But it did make me wonder what sort of process led to the decision that he fill it. Also, I feel kind of bad for all of those artsy Asian-Americans out there for whom this would have been a plum position and opportunity.

Missing Kuttner won't be fun, but stalking Kal in the new administration like will be - intern, anyone?

I'm Not The Only One Who Loves Goat Meat

Apparently, The New York Times has finally discovered it as well:

How I Learned To Love Goat Meat

Henry Alford is one lucky goat meat-eating dude who would definitely meet one of my few requirements . Goat meat parathas in Jackson Heights! Goat meat tacos at Cabrito! Jamaican curry! Goat ragu! Such delicacies even I have not had the good fortune of experiencing. I have, however, been eyeing the tacos at Cabrito for a few months now - I might have a restaurant review/goat meat love letter up soon!

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.