How to break a brown girl

I wrote this at https://quntfront.com/2016/05/10/how-to-break-a-brown-girl/
(Go read. With humor)

"Well for starters, you take her out of her (brown) country and put her in a white one. This way you make her realize she is brown, a lower-ranked pawn in the chessboard of colors. This is just the beginning. Repeatedly and loudly compliment her on her command of the English language, so that she does not forget that she is foreign, that language too is a colonial legacy, over which she has flimsy claim. Ask her if she learned how to speak so fluently from the movies or her parents (because they belong together on the spectrum of parenting)."

Room(s)

I have a memory of summers, a summer and a memory, which are one of my happier ones. I remember walking back home, perhaps from tuition classes or German or one of the many random nothings that filled up my teenage and early years. The street lights are glowing, the evening is starting to cool down and the dust has settled for today. I can hear the hum of evening rituals, voices and television and bikes and shouts and clinking of utensils.

Fraud Indian Woman

So I dug through the archives and found this. I wrote this but never shared it? I think it was probably because of it doesn't seem to make a clear point, just ask questions. But I still find it a useful compass, even if it is two years later. 

At this stage in my life, I find I have no choice but to talk about gender or being a woman. I am not going to get into how I am at this point or stage in my life but I find that I have to speak. There are so many levels on which I am tired of seeing how the world works against women. In this I include both men and women. It is not a one way street. As I moved to Minneapolis, I found myself navigating expectations of how I should be both as an 'Indian' and 'Indian woman'. I am not the first nor the last person to do this. I am just talking about my experiences, which for the longest time I have held back from sharing because I wasn't sure if there was anything new in it. That being said, not being new doesn't make it any less important. I have also often wondered how is it that people reach a point of incredible frustration and disappointment with stereotypes and expectations. I get it now. It is the timeless story of the last straw breaking the camel's back. You reach a point where you cannot take it one more time.

A Borrowed Imagination

I was going through some old writing and blogs and I found a bunch of things that reminded me of who I was and where I was and how far I've come in some ways (and not in others).

Diwali ki Badhiyaan

I'm back, back and back. I have Netflix in the background, caffeine in me and the laundry done. Take that jet lag (I don't think I get jet lag but it is a good substitute word for my regular tiredness for a week). It was an exciting trip and eventually it flew fast. I met friends and family. The wedding was so, so much fun. I danced my heart out and simply couldn't get enough. It was full of love, laughter, jokes, sunshine, music and booze. All great ingredients for any celebration. It also helps that I have lost my shyness and can enjoy the moment.

A Jigsaw Piece in the Wrong Puzzle

I'm home. I am not sure if I am home but you know what I mean. I am typing this on a scrunched up tablet keyboard. I chose to not get my laptop this time, a wise decision for my travel. It was one of the smoothest trips I have had, if only for my obsessive planning. Nasal spray, face mist, fleece booties, pouches for EVERYTHING.

On brownness and other things

Sometime in December, when I was back home, I remember drafting a piece, almost hastily, so as to not lose the words and sentences that had been floating in my head for a while. It has now been published.

Ahmedabad

View from Gandhi Ashram

My time in Ahmedabad has been far more intense and interesting than I imagined. I wasn't sure what I was expecting, especially considering I arrived at the start of an event that completely takes over the city with its sheer magnitude, in a week with important local and national holidays, and no meetings set up in advance. That being said, it has still been productive. Work-wise I have been able to learn new things, chat with some interesting people and get started on thinking in a particular direction.

Away

View from the hotel at night

By an interesting turn of fate, I am in Ahmedabad/Gandhinagar, for the Vibrant Gujarat event (and more). The professor I work for is a speaker her, and this led to me unexpectedly getting a pass to attend it, which seems to be quite the event. Really (I have done event planning in a former avatar and my heart quavered at the thought of all the coordination involved). Ahmedabad is a city where I lived as a child, where I have memories of a house outside the Army cantonment area, where I remember the rains that flooded the field behind our house, where I danced the garba with dandiya. I remember the house we lived in outside the cantt far more than the house to which we moved later. I remember taking my really young sister on a bike ride and crashing, the faint scars of which I still bear today.

Look no words

This is what my walks in the park look like in the middle 
of the day (January 1 was unusually warm) 

Delhi beset by winter rains. Everything became more
beautiful and colder.

Feet guiding you to different lines
of metro at the Delhi Metro.

Snapshots

It is dusty, so dusty outside, that no matter how many times I wash my hands, I can see (or imagine) a layer of dust coating them. I decide today is the day I venture out, the list of small tasks has grown and in a way, I am now itching for action.

Dilli 2014

Let the shenanigans begin (quietly).

Trainspotting

This is a post from when I was working. I used to travel a fair bit and unexpected things would often happen. In this post, I recount one of the more unusual adventures I had, while trying to board a train from a small town.

The interesting thing about my work is that a lot of interesting, unexpected things happen. Some of these are fun on the spot, for some I spot the fun much later. One of my recent train journeys is definitely something in which I saw the humor much later. Much, much later.

I had to board a Jan Shatabdi train early in the morning from this town in Punjab. I recall from previous attempts that I had to run for my coach in the train in the past because nothing is marked (unlike the Delhi platform where the train comes to stop at specific points for specific coaches). The coaches in trains are connected but I often get confused and so I always aim to board my coach. I had thought the confusion at the platform was bad. I was wrong. 

My two bits on the Delhi Metro

Source:
http://respectwomen.co.in/life-of-a-woman-in-delhi-metro/

I vividly remember my first encounter with the Delhi Metro. It had been recently set up and made functional (especially the blue line which I was using) and I decided to use it to visit a book fair at Pragati Maidan. On the way there or back, I can’t remember clearly now, I recall sitting in a busy coach. A man was uncomfortably close to me and coming closer. I was younger then, and perhaps rash, so I gave him a few swift kicks to remind him that this was not okay. In retrospect my behavior is not very commendable either, but I forgive myself because I have let things slide in such cases more than I wish I had. This man started yelling brazenly ‘this lady is hitting me’ and it did not seem like if things escalated, anyone would help me out (notice the word rescue purposely not being used).

After that I stopped using the metro during rush hours and then pretty much all. I was hardly alone in feeling that unwarranted touching and ‘accidental’ brushing was going on during busy hours and otherwise. Soon the Delhi Metro launched a ladies compartment and I think it changed the face of the metro. I don’t think of transport as necessarily gender neutral. Especially not in India, where gender issues are a big problem. Traveling in crowded spaces for women means dealing with not just the regular annoyances of being cramped or pushed or having to board and deboard moving vehicles risking your life but also dealing regularly with the gropers and molesters. You have to pick your battles especially if travel is part of your daily routine. I don’t think you can spend all your traveling time fighting and possibly screaming and shouting. Especially when you know help is not always forthcoming.

Leaving and arriving

This one is about 'feelings' so you are warned in advance! Specifically about home and homesickness. I wrote this a while back and while I am right now in Vietnam, it still holds true!

There is nothing new or unique about the loss and longing associated with leaving home. It has existed since forever and has been captured in beautiful words and images by authors and artists alike. Some of my favorite books are those about the experiences of those who left or were immigrants (one that just popped into my head was The Prayer Room). If you are reading this, you perhaps already know that I left (a suburb of) Delhi to move to Minneapolis to study last year. It wasn't the first time I was traveling, it wasn't the first time I was going to the States but it was the first time I was going to live away from home and in the Midwest. I think I was as prepared as I could be but it was still a hard, tough first semester in so many ways. I have spent the months after thinking about it, wondering what I could have done to make it better for myself and can I make it better for someone else. I have tried to decode how much of my experience was because of who I am, in terms of character traits, being an international student, being brown (:)) and my gender and how much of it just a rite of passage that any move will always involve. It interests me tremendously and is one of my favorite topics to talk (ad nauseam).