Rose-Tinted Shards
After spending my afternoon wedged between leather and bare-skinned pot bellies at the Folsom Street Fair, and then playing some intense rounds of Scattergories and Celebrity with my buddies from law school, I BARTed my way back to the 19th Street stop in Oakland, ready to hop into my car and zip on back to my apartment and crash.
After descending from the train, I pranced over to my car parked on Broadway and opened the door to the backseat. I was about to set my purse down when my gaze fell upon a procession of pretty, blue-tinted shards of glass. I scratched my chin and wondered whether I had unknowingly left a glass vase in the back seat, then unknowingly jerked my car around violently while failing to hear or feel the impact of the vase’s breakage.
I shrugged and closed the back door, opening the door to the driver’s seat. My eyes were met with the sight of even more shards of glass on this seat, and some object in front of the brake resembling a tombstone. Then I saw the broken window on the passenger’s side.
Put a cute boy in front of me and I will begin palpitating; put my own burglarized vehicle there and I may as well be at a meditation retreat. I just stood there for a moment, taking in the deftness of the thieves who so precisely broke just that one window without causing any further damage to the vehicle; quite considerate of them, I thought. They hadn’t even taken any of my vehicle registration documents, so that would save me all the drama with the DMV. I simultaneously bemoaned the thieves’ misfortune of finding nothing of value except a stack of mixed Bollywood CDs I had burned off of iTunes.
Finally I realized that I needed to get home, report the incident, and eventually get the window fixed. I pulled my cell phone out of my purse and saw that its battery was on the verge of death. Sighing deeply, I crouched down and maneuvered around the glass to put my key in the ignition so I could plug my phone into the car charger (also generously left intact). I first called my sister to ask if she could pick me up, and then I phoned the Oakland PD, who quite understandably couldn’t care less about my measly car theft. I decided to leave the car there and take care of the fixing the next morning.
A Marriage Proposal
January 7, 2005
I was wondering how my sister and I had avoided being subjected to the parent-daughter discussion about marriage that ordinarily burdens every Desi woman starting around age 17. Then finally today our parents brought it up at dinner.
“One daughter is 24, the other will soon be 29 — it is a new year, and our goal is to find husbands for you both.”
My sister grunted, and I calmly explained that I had no interest in the institution of marriage, finding it utterly obsolete, among other things.
“Yes,” my mom smirked dismissively, “Come on. You must start thinking about settling down, marrying, having kids…”
“I have no motherly instincts,” I declared. “I hate kids. I can’t stand them. If I had any, I would neglect them and sit on the Internet all the time.”
My sister nodded, adding that she does like kids, but plans to adopt them rather than continue to overpopulate the planet. And, she pointed out, you don’t need to be married to adopt. Nor, incidentally, do you need to be married to conceive, should such a thing ever interest either of us.
But it was my comment that my mom couldn’t let go. “Yes, you have no motherly instincts,” she agreed, “Because you have no instincts at all. Let’s see: today when you left to get groceries, you didn’t lock the door. When you came back, you didn’t think to check the mail. Yesterday you brought back a nice suit from the dry cleaner and just left it crumpled on the ironing stand. Motherly instincts indeed.”
My sister and I reverted the topic back to marriage, preferring it over the commentary on our many vices. My mom suggested that my sister place an ad, but my sister explained that she was not a car.
Nevertheless, tonight we treated marriage prospects as cars by browsing shaadi.com with our parents. We soon learned that there is a limit on how many profiles you can view without creating one yourself. Alas. I proceeded to form an honest profile of myself using my sister’s input for the last line, and my mom was alarmed by its contents:
I like to eat and sleep. I go to bed at 3am and sleep until 2pm every day. I have no maternal instincts. I cannot cook, except heating up morningstar breakfast patties. I like to eat them with hot sauce and ketchup. I like all sorts of food, including pizza. I have no ambition other than to eat and drink. I love watching Bollywood movies- at least two every day. Mujhse shaadi karoge?
My mom tried to reason with me, pointing out that the habits and qualities I described were not among my best. However, I was emphatic about retaining the description as it was the most proper summation of my most salient characteristics that could be made in a paragraph. My mom scowled, but said to go ahead and make whatever profile, as long as it allowed us to browse the prospects. We entertained ourselves for an hour or so, but it was my mom that eventually got tired of the fruitless dig and went off to bed.
Let It Bleed
One morning in fifth grade, I was just going about my usual business: brushed my teeth, pulled my pants down to pee…
“Oh my God… I shit in my pants!!!”
I was mortified by my rectal incompetence!
But wait, it didn’t really look like shit; it was brown, but it had more of a… soupy texture. I didn’t know what to do with this, so I just took off my chaddi and presented it to my mom.
At first even she was surprised. You didn’t get hurt, right?”
“I don’t think so; I never felt anything there.”
“OK, well… it looks like you got your period.”
Ohh. I remembered her telling me about this period thing. I would start bleeding every month because later I would have to have a baby, and I couldn’t go to the temple when I had this thing — but I thought that was going to be when I was thirteen or fourteen, not ten!
“So what do I do now??”
“Ek minute.”
She went to the closet and came back with a small green package.
“This is a maxi-pad. You just tape it to your underwear so it covers the hole where you are bleeding from — you know, that is where the baby comes from. Do you want me to tape it for you?”
I liked to think of myself as grown up enough to figure things out on my own, so I declined the offer for help and proceeded to the bathroom with my pad.
See No Fat; See Only Urine
His name was Dr. Khare. A urologist by profession, he was also a self-proclaimed brahmin pundit that had expansive knowledge in a realm of subject. Within the Indian “holistic care” medical community, he was famous for having come up with a system to mend people’s dilapidated vision without further need for any corrective lenses or eye surgery. He was thus brought to our house in the summer of 2000 upon the recommendation of my maternal uncle.
After muttering our introductions, Dr. Khare asked my sister and me to stand up and turn around for him, and then sat us down for a pep talk.
“You are good guhls, and that’s why I am telling you this, because you are like my daughters,” he began. “There are some things all guhls want, no? Such as, all guhls want to have children, right? Biologically, all guhls desire to nurture and bring up children. Any guhl who does not want this would be abnormal, na?”
I nodded while wearing a blank Homer Simpson stare, internally shuddering as I envisioned myself muffling my ears with the pillow as my future babies cried for milk and a diaper change from their turd-infested playpen.
Dr. Khare then proceeded on to his next logical leap.
“And to have children, you must get married, no?”
I nodded again, fantasizing about cloning myself in a petri dish and naming the result “mini-ree,” or having a wild and irresponsible night with Johnny Depp and birthing his bastard child (John Abraham wasn’t around then).
Then came the upshot: “And who will marry you if you are fat?!”
My sister and I glanced at each other incredulously.
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.
Time Bargain
My mom has selective hearing, always blocking out the second figure in my time span when she asks me what time I will be home. This is why I have a system worked out for when I expect to return after midnight: I give a figure, just ONE figure, well beyond the actual expected time, because I know both of our Desi asses will immediately begin bargaining.
“What time you will be home?”
“I don’t know, like 4.”
“FOUR??? No, you be home by 12.”
“No, maybe 3.”
“1.”
“2:30.”
“No later than 2. Take your cell phone and make sure you have gas.”
Having been away during the year, I had forgotten that even a drive to the post office at 2:00pm requires a 10-minute conversation.
