Checkin’ In From the Margins
Growing up as a second-generation South Asian in a Northern California suburb, others often made me aware that my family life and cultural heritage were distinct from all that was “American.” Inside the home, my parents would gracefully incorporate cultural history, practices, foods, arts, languages into our regular lifestyles along with celebrating Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. However, America declined our offer to hyphenate our identities and subsume ourselves – at least somewhat – under this prestigious label of “American.”
I suppose that in some ways, it should not be a matter of particular remorse that someone of my appearance or heritage could not be classified as American. If “American” connotes vapid consumerism, bland food, female objectification, corporate exploitation, and turning a blind eye to the country’s legacy of genocide and imperialism, then in its present form, it is a label I could do without. Still, I cannot claim to be unbothered by the marginalization of people of color; I seek to expand and redefine this American identity, despite the seeming imperviousness to its symbolic borders.
Dangerous Blasphemy
One morning, a foolish girl named Leena stepped into the shower, agitated that she had already missed one class and might not make it in time for the next. She hadn’t given a shout out to the Goddess in a long time, so today she thought she would recite the Gayatri Mantra while scrubbing herself. She didn’t quite know the meaning of the prayer despite her shoddy semester of Sanskrit, and her parents had always insisted that its authentic application was limited to young boys’ thread ceremonies, contrary to what seemed to be popular modern Hindu thought. Nevertheless, she commenced:
“Om Bhur Bhuvah Svaha
Tat Sa-”
All of a sudden the shower massager she had installed for obvious reasons came crashing down off its socket and collided into the big toe on her right foot.
“FUCK!” She exclaimed in the middle of her incantation, and then calmly re-affixed the apparatus without ensuring its security.
She resumed the chant, rotating her bodily angle in case the Goddess should hear it better from wherever she might be lounging.
“Tat Savitur Varenyam…”
The goddamned device came plummeting down once again, this time on the big toe of her left foot!
“Mothafucker!” She exclaimed, poker-faced, and re-affixed the instrument once again.
Then she remembered she had to practice for an upcoming performance of the Desi-style vagina monologues, so she abandoned the Gayatri Mantra and opted for “Let It Bleed.” Right after the utterance of “rectal incompetence,” the appliance yet again came crashing down, and this time injured her left pinky toe.
Now she will have no choice but to miss the next class and lie horizontally on the futon with a pack of ice melting over her toes.
Cinematic Debut
In the summer of 2001, something possessed me to audition for a role in a zero-budget Hindi-language venture. The casting call had been put out by an aspiring Bollywood director, newly arrived from India and eager to put together this pilot project for Zee TV. I was going to be around Berkeley the whole summer with nothing to do after the 9-5 office space crap, so I figured, might as well see what’s up.
My acting ability, like my drawing ability, is something that only exists when I have some detailed example to bite blatantly. Before going into the audition, I popped in some Madhuri Dixit flick, which at the moment of necessity enabled me to ape the melodramatic lines and accompanying gestures with the greatest of ease. Because of this and the probable reluctance of many an aspiring actor to take up this shady unpaid gig, I landed a role as the “feminist friend” of the female lead.
The story was something along these lines: The male is is this dorky, persistent, but well-meaning guy who comes to an American college from India, and, while walking by McDonald’s, instantly falls in love with the female lead who happens to be passing by; she is American-born with “Indian values” (read: sexually modest, naive, and ultra-forgiving). Ooh, such deep irony in the East-West swap already — can you feel it?!
Now check this: the “feminist friend” is newly moved from Bombay (more irony!!), and, for some reason that the audience is not supposed to sympathize with, dislikes the persistent, bumbling Indian-born guy with pretty much no game. She instead sets the heroine up on a date with a jerk of an American-born Indian cocaine addict, who ends up tricking her into getting drunk (poor girl would never drink alcohol of her own volition, mind you; she thought it was just Coca Cola!) and… sexually assaults her. The heroine is traumatized because she feels responsible for having her “honor” toyed with, so she overdoses on the date rapist’s cocaine and ends up in the hospital. This is when dork man comes to hold her hand and tell her he loves her, and rapist dick also comes to apologize and beg for her not to take legal action. This gets dork incensed and ready to beat him up. However, sweet desi chick forgives rapist dick and tells dork man to leave him alone. Then dork man and forgiving dipshit chick fall in love and live happily ever after.
We shot a couple of scenes in my apartment, and during one such occasion, I thought I’d have a nice two-hour “discussion” with the director over a chai break.
