Ambition.

I've seldom thought of my gigs as parts of a "career" as such. I don't really think out my next move as much as most people from my peer group seem to do. I'm here, I'm trying to do the best I can, something happens and I move on, but it takes me a while. I'm not afraid of change, just not planning for it in short intervals.

I am fast approaching an age where I can't think of myself as young anymore. It is a little shocking - you live with yourself from day to day and know there are changes, but when you take the long view backward, you realize 20 years have gone by since this or that memory.

This means that it's time to think more about what I want the rest of my time in this work to look like, I suppose. But for me, I'm ready to have people with a deeper skill set and the requisite love for the community take leadership and move the conversation forward. I'm not going anywhere, but I don't have delusions of being the next greatest anything. I think it's freeing, actually. Suspending the ego and ambition as best we can without sacrificing drive and passion for the work might be the only way to grow old in work such as this.

I much better understand the idea that many have put forward about a shift in priorities when you have a child. At this point, while it's not true that nothing else matters or that my passion for some of the work is still strong, I feel a different sense of purpose when I'm conscious about the role I play for this little one. There will be a hundred amazing organizers, writers, lawyers, workers who I can look at and say, if I did something or many things differently, perhaps I could have achieved what they did or will. But my little boy will only have one father, however I play that role.

And that's quite a difference - striving to be better than the best in everything in the outside world, or striving to be the best you can, which is all your little one will know, inside your unit.

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Ever Have One of Those Weeks?

Sorry dear faithful reader(s?) of DotBS. I've been sidetracked and crazy busy. Busier than I thought. Busier than makes it possible to get in all the writing I'm hoping to do for work, let alone getting up on here to ponder a bit. But you know what happens when a person like me doesn't have a venue like this to vent a little steam? I go a little crazy, for one, but then I also kind of let things go against people I don't even really know.

It's just that even as I want to walk the path of righteousness rather than self-righteousness - to stay focused on building and not tearing down (too much) - I slip up. I have to ask forgiveness sometimes of folks whose opinions aren't that important to me at the end of the day. It's like this: it takes a long time to build personal capital up with people who you don't politically align with right away, even if they are blood (or in my case, extended family). But once you do, you can still blow the load of it if you just pull a McCain and throw a tantrum.

I did just that on email today, in reaction to a racist/anti-Muslim Obama smear email that an uncle of mine, of whom I've written in the past, forwarded out to our family list serv. Rather than just say "that was stupid" to myself and my trusted partner and/or sister I decided to engage via email. Needless to say, it didn't become a flame war between me and my 75 year old uncle, or all his kids who have kids of their own who are approaching college. But it could have been, and I didn't see through the red enough to be tactical.

I'm usually okay in this regard - strategy is something I've tried to learn and teach myself, particularly in the last few years. And especially with the kind of work I want to do - tempers don't build things. And anger is okay, but we have to use it constructively, with a greater purpose in mind. And against true injustice. So I kind of messed up. I think need to write more often. Rage on these pages is better than rage on the internets. Better luck on Friday.

Be safe, have a good weekend, and no matter who you vote for: don't vote for McCain/Palin.

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Comfort in the Home Stretch

I am a more than casual listener of music. But it gets in the way sometimes, especially when I'm trying to learn a bunch of legal concepts for this exam.

At long last, and not a moment too soon, I've finally found the right sound to carry me through: Filmi songs from the 40s - 60s, featuring Lata and any partnering male (at this point, I'm listening to her with Mukesh). I don't understand Hindi, but that's the charm: these songs immediately speak to me of home - I can almost smell my mom's cooking, and I can hear her singing along. I know the melodies like old lullabies that you've heard a thousand times before. But I don't get lost in the words - I just hum along.

There's something about the way that these songs are hardwired into many of us: our parents because of the way the songs linked them to memories of home and gave them a lifeline in their new, immigrant lives (I touched on this once before) and us because we grew up with the songs playing all the time.

I feel like I should make a cup of tea and have some dhokla or something. All I need now is the rain.

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Ego and Those Difficult Conversations.

There's something about a certain kind of gathering of uncles and aunties in which I can't keep my mouth shut anymore. Regardless of the deep and lasting friendships they've had with my parents, regardless of how they have been the support when I've been far or further away, I just can't help myself from almost visceral reactions when they say things I find offensive - which in these circles have ended up being anti-Muslim nowadays, vs. anti-black in the past. I think with their kids growing up and going through public high schools in their small urban areas (vs. the artificial (and white) suburbia of comfortable houses that many of my cousins occupy in New Jersey), the parents have at least had to curb the biases they learned through their white colleagues and American mainstream culture because many of their kids reject some/all of them.¹ But they haven't been able to do that with the biases they brought with them from (and are perpetuated by contact still in) India.

So this atmosphere prompts me to launch into a diatribe of my own, vaguely throwing in a number of related but not logically necessary issues I feel like bringing up, with an audience of fairly patient older folks (for a time). Sparing y'all the details, I think it falls somewhere between a rant and a rail, with bits and pieces of what could become a cohesive manifesto, but if I have to be objective, my argument technique sometimes resembles that of a desperate person in a sinking ship trying everything he can to reduce the water in the ship, throw items overboard that he believes may make the difference, and wholly, haphazardly, being unable to take coherent, clear, unemotional steps (i.e. make points). Somehow, I was able to bring in factoids (and emotional stretches of the truth) about everything from Mountbatten's hasty departure and creation of Partition, to philanthropy in well-off Indian communities that doesn't address issues in our community at all, the Ghadar Party, the American genocide of native peoples, the many secret wars in central/south america, the massacre of sikhs in India, the use of "American" to describe only white people, the way that we're expendable to white people until they decide to hate us, questioning loyalties to nation-states, the tired use of the "forced conversions when Muslims came to India hundreds of years ago" as justification for widespread animosity/hatred towards all Muslims now (this is going to be another post on a possible short logic argument I just worked out).... the list goes on and on. What the hell was I thinking.

The combination of ego and some knowledge is a really dangerous thing, and I can see how easy it is to walk into the trap of being a self-righteous, belligerent liberal (or conservative) who just figuratively bludgeons people into submission (or, really just not caring or wanting to engage again). I think that rather than truly value the exchange of ideas and the opportunity to share knowledge or what you've seen with someone (in a more collaborative, integrative way), in these situations, it just becomes a contest to see how many zingers or "points" I can make. But that's useless in the big picture, and if I can't master the desire to shock over substance and dialogue, my ambition to be a constructive contributor and collaborator rather than just another close-minded egoist, is doomed. I sometimes get into these situations with my own friends, but it's usually with a very particular group, and for whatever reason, something triggered the deluge tonight. Discipline, beyond just thinking about these things, is a critically important tool.

Really, the whole point of having this kind of dialogue is so that you actually can get somewhere. When you bring in everything else, it just confuses things too much to get something useful out of the dialogue. If every conversation we have is just to further convince ourselves that we're right and the world is filled with dumbasses who don't get it or care, starting with the person we're talking to, well, that's pointless. But the conversation has to more of an exchange. It's just so hard to do without losing your cool.




[1] As a tangent, these kids are different from the kids growing up in enclave-like suburbia (like Long Island, where 2nd Gen Gujarati Americans grow up with only Indian friends, in their own little slice of 'burbladesh that takes the worst of both their parents' communalism and mainstream Long Island's neuroses about so many things). The different slices of 2nd Gen Desi America are far too complicated for me to deal with right now, but I know that the generations are incredibly different, even if they are only 5 - 7 years apart.

Regardless, I think a lot has to be said about how close these ties become between Indian immigrant adults who are bound by their shared experiences here. For my mom and some of her friends, you'd think they knew each other from childhood. For adults to create such strong friendships long after they'd gone through the typical places where we make our friends (neighborhood friends while growing up, school friends, etc) is remarkable. While I've met some people over the past years who have become quite close - you just naturally don't get that attached to new people, that quickly. And especially after marriage and kids - the ability of these families to come together and to forge such close friendships is really remarkable. I mean, I feel closer to these uncles and aunties than some of my own relatives. I guess that may be why I just feel free to shoot off my opinions?

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I for India: On Lata, Leaving, Longing, and Losing Our History.

I recently had the very good fortune to see I for India - a family documentary that touches on the emmigrant experience of a particular family that settled in the U.K. If you can see this film, I highly recommend it. It's a very personal look through the eyes of the family itself, because they used the medium of film to keep in touch with the family they left behind in the United Kingdom. The loving arrangement of these fragments was made by the youngest of three daughters and interspersed with amusing and illuminating BBC and other clips, as well as present-day segments with the filmmaker's parents, the emigrants who straddled two worlds in their quest for a new life, and even tried to return to India.

I'm not going to go into the play-by-play on this one. Just check it out. However, there were a few scenes that really touched me. There's a scene that has the filmmaker's father in the present day, going through his morning routine (and at other times going through mundane, home-owner chores like property maintenance) with his headphones on. The filmmaker smartly takes us inside the 'phones, and gives us a blast of old school filmi music from the greats of Bollywood. I couldn't name the song, but I'd heard it countless times before while growing up, and as the images on the screen segued from a small town in the UK in the 21st Century to older 8mm film from India, I felt like I was traveling down the winding road of memories with him.

And it was at that point that I started to think about my parents, and by extension, many emigrants from India and Pakistan who left bright-eyed and ready to study or work in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. I don't know a lot about their stories beyond the touchstones ($8 in my pocket, going to Chinese markets to get Indian vegetables) that we always take for granted. But I do think that there are some things that lie just beneath the surface about their big trip out here, into the unknown and away from their loved ones and the reassuring feeling of belonging just because you look like everyone else.

It's nothing like what immigrants to urban areas in the UK and the USA face now. Even though the earlier generation was well-educated and/or relatively affluent, I imagine that the predominantly bachelor population had a bit of a shock having to do many of the household activities for themselves. They didn't have the option of going out for food and conveniences from home that most H1-Bs take for granted now, and had to either cook, or adapt to the new environment (with many bringing a less than climactic end to the countless generations who preceded them without taking drink, cigarette, or meat).

Nor did they have the regular communication back home in the years predating low-cost and accessible internet (or even international long distance). Forget that, getting the news of back home was probably quite difficult in the UK and nearly impossible in the United States of the 50s and 60s. So they were on their own, and left to their own devices to survive, to make a home for themselves, and find some comfort in what was likely a cold place. Imagining that time, and thinking of how much was changing in the United States, especially with Kennedy's election, his assassination, the war in Viet Nam, and the growing importance of political protest in the culture of the time, I just wonder what it was like for that generation of people who came to the U.S. to study or to work. What was it like for folks who came from inherently conservative backgrounds to be in the United States at the time when it was arguably at it's most liberal? When revolution was actually something more than the rhetorical exercise its become in the States. Many of my friends speak of the 60s and even early 70s as the time they wish they were around, and active, because of how many things were coming up at that time, and how much (at least in our looking back at their history) it seems like people were actually engaged and willing to be more engaged. But it seems that many of us forget that we likely know folks who were here during all of it. Our parents, our uncles and aunties, a family who we've been in touch with through our many informal desi networks. But have we ever asked them of their impressions, when Watts and other urban centers were burning... when the 4 students were shot at Kent State... when Fred Hampton was killed by the FBI? Or do we fear that nothing beyond the big assassinations really registered?

Anyway, aside from the context in which they came, they were probably met with curiosity in the U.S. (or downright racism), and I can't even imagine the range of reactions in the UK where the scar from the colonial "umbilical cord" was still fresh. Still, as curiosities, they were probably spared the virulent anti-immigrant rhetoric that bleeds into most mainstream media in the present day. But without their own media outlets, the earlier wave of desi immigrants missed out on more than just the news: they also missed out on music and the simple comfort of turning on the radio and hearing songs that would remind them of growing up, of their parents, of home. But for whatever reason, and in whatever way, their connection to that music is incredible. Songs that they haven't heard in decades come flooding back when happen upon them, and their memory of when they first heard the song, or when they first saw the movie, is often impeccable. Somehow, the ability to recall the year of release seems to be very prevalent with a particular generation, and it's not limited to just the men - the aunties can bring it too.

Perhaps their separation from their homes and the music that enveloped them through much of their formative years (whether consciously or not), and the shock of arrival created a more developed connection with that music. But is that explanation sufficient?

When I think of my family members and uncles and aunties I know from India, and their depth of recognition of popular songs from Hindi films, and the emotional ties they have to that music rivals anything I know from my friends or myself. The music and love of the songs from that particular time (40s, 50s, 60s) is not a casual exercise for many of these folks, even though they did not own much of the music while growing up. It was radio, maybe more than the movies themselves, that soldered the songs to their memories, creating a link that has stayed with them through the great journey over the ocean and into America.

And the amount of music that they know off the top of their heads, and the connection between those songs, their memories, and who they are is astounding. For a long time, as an American/British popular music enthusiast, I scoffed at the relative paucity of music in India that was independent of the film industry. The link between the movies and the music, though, is making more sense to me, especially in the context of immigrants who are removed from the lives and worlds that they remember. While folks listen to songs/music many times, especially when linked to their emotions or memories, there's something more profound about the way that songs from Indian films end up having both a very personal connection for our folks, and also a visual element because of the films in which they were housed. It's difficult to separate the soaring duets by the famous singers from the actors/actresses who were likely in mind when the songs were conceived for the films in which they appeared. Take the interplay between emotional weight of the song from within the film, and then the emotional pull of that song within the listener's own life, and suddenly, you have emotional content that's far more potent than most pop music in other contexts. I guess the best analogue we may have is musical theater in the United States, for the folks who have the privilege of seeing really good shows and being affected by them - Rent is the obvious choice for me, but I have similar feelings for songs from Les Miserables, Sunday in the Park with George, and a few others. It's the combined effect of the music, the lyrics, the delivery, and the context. And getting context beyond the song itself is helpful to bond your emotions to those songs.

I remember going through my Dad's records while growing up, and just passing right by all the desi records to get to a Muppets 45 that we had, or later on, to discover the copy of Abbey Road that he'd bought, which now hangs on my sister's apartment wall. But I went back home recently and dug out the records that Mom had stored carefully, even though we hadn't had a working record player in the house for well over 15 years. I was amazed at what was there - more than just for the retro-cool of having Bollywood paraphernalia that didn't reek of the new schmalzy palette of the 21st Century, but because these records represented, for folks who were pretty modest in what they bought and kept, some kind of connection to home, to belonging, and perhaps even to their childhoods and adolescent years. I was suddenly filled with more regret that I didn't take the chance to go through these records and garner some of their stories when I had the chance.

Maybe some of the 45s actually came with my Dad from India when he first came here in the early sixties to study, though given how little money he had, that's pretty unlikely. Maybe they came with his brother, who he sponsored in the early seventies. Some of the 45s are in thin plastic sleeves that have a record store's name printed on them - a store from Bombay. Maybe some of the records were part of some prized collection that he took care of when he studied in Bombay. But that's incredibly unlikely as well, because he wouldn't have had a record player in India.

But sadly, the possibilities of where these records were from, and how they fit into the puzzle of my father's life in India and in the United States are not comforting to me. They are pieces of a relationship that I didn't put together quickly enough, when the time was in front of me. And I don't want to create fiction about something that is so hardwired into who I am. I want to collect and understand where these things fit in the past. I want to recreate what really happened. I want to see my father eye-to-eye through the few things that he left behind of who he was.

Ignoring our own histories in the effort to emphasize the injustices felt by newer economic migrants doesn't really help them. It just makes the middle class activist more likely to ignore stories of early immigration, acculturation, and resistance that don't fit the mold of "the most oppressed" group within the community or direct action or organizing. The motives for their resistance to discrimination and misunderstanding may not comport cleanly with our goals for critical analysis and desire for a break from the capitalism that brought them here to begin with. Their "making it" (economic assimilation, if not cultural) after initial difficulties may seem to argue against the whole project of discussing their history to begin with.

But denying their history or its personal import makes us somewhat rootless. Rootless in way that is unlike those people in poor communities with whom we want so much to identify, to work with and on behalf of (for non-organizers). We deny these stories from within our own families because we perceive that the minor injustices and difficulties that we think our parents faced register as less immediate, less pressing than what people are dealing with now. But I'd argue that we need to ask these questions. We need to document these stories, if not for some larger movement, then at least for our personal histories and to pay the proper tribute to our parents who made it through cultural upheaval in a way that few of us will ever experience. So even when we're talking about middle class privilege, and while we keep their experiences within the broader context of the different waves of immigration and the difficulty that poor and uneducated immigrants have in this American society, we should keep in mind that the stories of our parents are still interesting, affecting, and part of the mosaic of our communities in this country.

And I think that more than anything, I for India really recognized this, without overemphasizing their struggle in the UK or anything else. It was clearly a labor of love to her parents, and it made me think of how much time I've lost without asking some of these questions. Some of which I will never get to ask.

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Keep it in the Family (3)

My extended family frustrates me sometimes, as I've written before, but there is something so pure about the bonds that you feel with some members of that family. I don't feel like I have to try to be someone - they know and love me for being part of the circle of kin, for my broken Gujarati, and probably for my connection to my mom, who they love in a way I can't even begin to understand.

I feel a level of comfort that I still don't fully understand when I'm around certain cousins and nieces/nephews. It is so bizarre to me that the person who I am generally is not who I am in their company, and even the majority of my conversations don't reflect the things that I care about or focus on in the rest of my life. But yet, it feels like something beyond just small talk. But I wonder what they all think of me, given that what I do or what I'm studying doesn't really ever come up. I find myself incredibly boring in that context - but I guess that's why family is great: they don't seem to think the same.

And every once in a while, I get to connect on a different level. Last night, I reconnected with a cousin who really mattered to me while I was growing up, and with whom I felt very close. It felt nice to retouch that connection that we'd had from our childhood/adolescence. I don't know what happened along the way, but it was just nice to find some path out of the thickets that had grown between our lives.

I feel blessed that my immediate family are who they are, even though I have less patience with them than I should. But I realize after these family events, when I'm alternately pleasantly surprised that people even speak with me still, and thankful that there is so much laughter, so much joy. I just wish I could be a better presence for my many nieces and nephews... I wonder what they are learning through their suburban upbringing, and what they could learn from my mistakes and minor life lessons.

***

But I still have reservations about the way that my cousins are raising their kids. This new generation of suburban brown kids has a built-in guju posse in their cousins, but beyond the convenience of age-matched playmates while growing up, they also have the potential for a built-in superiority complex about Gujaratis in the broader food chain. And there's more than a little competition going on between their parents, although I have seen how much they take care of their siblings' kids.

I'm just not sure of what values the 1.5 generation in my family - many of whom came here as adults (in their early 20s) bring to the mix. For some cousins in particular, the biases, dogmatism, and small worldview from their parents are being passed along directly. For others, their exposure to the system in the United States is incredibly limited, and their kids are calling them out on some things - which is interesting, but then how are their parents dealing with it? Do the kids have the compunction to work through these aspects of their parents' personalities?

It's very hard to tell, and sadly, I see some of the pitfalls that I reference when I speak about the next generation of desi kids generally. My parents' generation worked very hard to enter the middle class in the United States, and our period of second generation kids has its own range of issues. But the technical class that entered the United States in the 80s and even 90s, have settled down and have kids. Their kids, while second generation as well, are being raised in more upscale neighborhoods, by parents who are more removed from their humble beginnings, and from the India that our parents knew.

Their perception of "making it" is reflected in the general movement in Bollywood films from depicting the social aspects of modernization as the fledging democracy took its first unsteady steps towards free flight as a nation, to the mass consumerism and coca-colonization that has taken invidious and perverse forms by interspersing "hip" English-language phrases, hyper-gendered and sexualized musical numbers that are supposed to represent some new freedom but just come off as parody, and vacuous plots, dialogue, and actors.

Name brands and status symbols abound, and the parents seem to be showering their noveau wealth all over the kids, who know little to nothing of discipline, of struggle, of the valuation of material items vs. honest work and thoughts. While the kids may be able to go through the motions regarding religion, how much of it is filio-piety, and how much of it is real engagement with the philosophy that drive the machinations of so-called faith?

Then again, that can be said for any group, I guess. I wasn't raised within some shroud of poverty or difficulty, but I also didn't have an entitlement complex when it came to material possessions or station in life. I overheard one of my cousin's husbands speaking with another about the kids, and how without the feeling of urgency that comes from coming out of a disadvantaged background, the kids will not have the same drive as people who come from India. I tend to agree with that. But the problem arises when the parents still refer to the same system to judge success and "making it" for their kids - what possessions they have, what their parents can provide for them, and where they end up in school and as careers.

Even the pursuit of education is not seen as an end in itself - the education is only a means to get the gold at the end of the rainbow. My expedition into a second career in public interest law, after working for a number of years and getting married, doesn't make sense in this calculus filled with derivatives and permutations of wealth and earning potential. Success is the nest egg you've built for yourself and the assets you can accumulate and pass down for the next generation.

Of course, I'm essentializing their experiences and lives after only brief encounters, but the threat of such moral bankruptcy still scares me. And more than anything, the clannishness can be suffocating. Expanding beyond the tiny concentric (or overlapping) circles of faith, language, and culture in which they find themselves could be a very good thing for their kids. But I guess, just like it was for some of us during our period, that's up to the kids to work out.

For me, I'll continue to offer up my own unorthodox opinions for anyone who takes the time to listen in my family, or read here.

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The Future and Loss.

Went to a conference on lawyering that has got me thinking about what I want to do while in school and beyond. Blogging is not really one of these things, unless directly connected with a campaign. I anticipate a slow decline in my posting, or at least a focus on keeping the posts more closely related to work that I want to continue in the long run.

Got half-way home when I was met with the sad news that my baa passed away today. I'm so glad I got to see her one last time before she did, but it makes me remember also how quickly time is passing, and how much I have yet to do to approach the legacy of my parents and their parents. It is sobering, and a reminded to stay on track and away from distractions.

Peace, y'all.

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Loss.

It has been a harrowing 2 weeks, first with my brother-in-law's very serious accident, and then the sudden and unexpected loss of my Masa. With other life events pushing their familiar heads up to remind me that time marches on, I feel like I haven't had the time to really process all that's happened.

Death is never an easy thing to process, and with my Masa being in India, it still feels very distant, very unreal. Unlike other relatives, I've been quite close to him over the course of my adolescence and adult life, and his example has helped to shape my aspirations of a life worth living. He went through tremendous hardship while growing up, made a life and a name for himself through his own business, raised 4 intelligent and loving children, and supported both the full extended family and the general community in Ahmedabad. He actually knew my father while they were in college, which connected him to my Mom beyond the fact that he was married to her sister for nearly 50 years. My father had respected him so much, and I will always remember the times that they were able to spend together, and the things that Masa told me about my Dad after he passed away years ago.

Masa was the kind of person who would ask you about your family if you were Gujarati, and almost always come up with someone who is either related to you, or would know your family well. He was even able to do that with non-Gujaratis. His grasp of current events, his ability to stay in touch with current developments in his neck of the woods and abroad, his incredible ability to stay in touch with everyone via phone, email or letter, even at 70, and his clear vision concerning Jainism and seva for community members who weren't as fortunate as he are all things that I will always remember.

Masa had a booming voice that filled a room almost as much as his laughter, which came from deep inside. He was the first person to explain the Namokar Mantra to me, going syllable by syllable to explain this central piece of Jainism to me. He was a gentle soul, one who would shed tears when he heard of others' pain, had a legendary temper before he conquered it, and organized a great deal of social good on a small scale in Ahmedabad.

I will miss him so much, from his periodic emails in large typeface, to his Yahoo! Messenger notes that just let folks know that he had logged on. I associate my trips to India with him. Sometimes it felt like he would be more concerned about my schedule and making sure that I was all set with my agenda than I was. He took such care of us, and welcomed us into his home and heart as if they were our own.

Previously, I've written about my family in a tone that isn't altogether positive, but it's at times like this when I realize how much I value having a network of relatives who care for one another the way that they do. Politics will always be a difficult area to traverse, and political consciousness has to grow gradually, but that bond that comes from blood is very hard to replicate with friends or other acquaintances.

Losing someone close to you is never easy. But when it's someone who has touched so many members of your family, and touched you in so many profound ways, it almost feels like you're in a collective mode of disbelief, waiting for the dawn of the next day to break, waiting for the sudden realization that you are a little more alone now. Waiting for the cold empty feeling that comes when you realize what you've left unsaid.

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Keep it in the Family (2)

I've written about the 'rage clan a couple of times, most memorably in the aftermath of Modi-less Midtown. After that post, Saurav gave me a shout for "trying to organize" my diasporic family. I definitely wouldn't go that far, at this point, but I do see how I have been trying to influence my cousins slowly. I also see how my periodic outbursts about family, which I am sure many others share (see here for a particularly funny outburst - trust me, I consume more than DDA, but it is pretty filling on its own), are connected with the love that I feel for my kin. The frustration that I feel is more of self-measure: if I can't convince those who will actually give me some time to air out my opinion, what chance to I have with the world of strangers?

So I'll try to break this down. With my cousins:

1) The first challenge is turning the conversation from the usual domestic chitter-chatter. If they haven't seen me for some time, their concern and interest is in the minutiae of life with my partner, the inevitable personal-timeline questions with which they can easily measure my progress on the life-o-meter. Now that I'm in a committed relationship - they have made the enormous leap in life decision and judgment and decided that it is now time to hint about expanding the family. "Hint" is a very weak word for the outright extortion that we experience at some of these events. But the years of pre-marriage talk have enhanced my endurance and given me reliable tactics to maneuver from even the tightest spots.

So I have to find ways to drop in references to current events - "yeah, we are still getting used to a household of two... but it's really crazy that the Senate GOP may use the nuclear option to neutralize the final resort of those crazy Dems, isn't it?"

2) Usually, I have to go with the issue that someone else brings up. If you are around certain folks long enough, they are bound to say something that will tick you off and give you a door through which to begin some re-education. I find that with my family, it is usually around race or religion. Like many desis, they have had limited exposure to other communities in the United States, remaining fairly insular (my immediate family, due to the suburban environ and the preference to socialize in English, had "Indian" friends, but many other folks stick to their own ethnic group). So at some point, I'll hear a comment, intentional or not, about one or more third world communities, to which I choose to respond, at least so that they stop and think once in a while about the ignorance that they may be passing to their children.

But my favorite has to be about "Americans" - or in other words, white people. Never a disparaging remark (except perhaps about their melanin-deficiency? Wait - that's me), I hear many a comment about "he's an American" or she married "an American", and wait for some qualifier, with none to be found. This used to drive me up the wall, and I'd state "I'm American," which would have some impact, but usually would result in the uncle or whomever assessing my Indianness based on my language-ability, my impetuous lack of respect, and my limited discipline to choose a "sensible" career. "American" in this context is not a good thing.

As the club scene in Bombay explodes, Valentine's day is all the rage (on either side of the Hallmark holiday), and Bollywood films continue to distort hypersexuality in some bizarro version of an MTV that I've never seen, the older NRI community laments "Americanized!"

I've since become more nuanced (or perhaps just more academic) in my approach to my American identity. First of all, the United States is not the only America. On top of that, do I even want to be identified as "American" anymore? And was I ever truly "American" in the sense of what American is supposed to represent? Can we not pledge our "patriotism" to ideals rather than nations? Must we identify our individuality with the rigid (and shrinking) American definition of what that should be - when I also believe in group identities that the United States can't even begin to deal with? Let's all move to Canada, where canucks can actually dream about recognizing Punjabi as an official national language.

3) Two weekends ago, though I was having a good time, I felt the need to exclaim to no one in particular "Good thing that Modi, that nutcase, isn't coming here" in hopes that my uncle would take me up on the challenge. Sometimes, that's a tactic that I have to resort to, but it makes me look feel like an idle American rather than someone trying to plant tolerance and more expansive thinking in my family tree. D called me out on it, and no one else heard me. Back to the drawing board. I guess picking ideological fights at family functions is not the best way to "organize" the family.

4) But it is not all about confrontation. For example I was touched when, as I walked into the space for the family event, one of my cousins and her husband came to greet us and said that they'd been talking to their son about me just earlier. They said that he should speak with me for five minutes, and he would learn a lot. That is a pretty hefty compliment, though the boy did not seem equally impressed by it. I guess somewhere along the line, particular cousins of mine are listening more than I give them credit for. When I think about it a little more, I realize that there have been a handful of times when I've been able to help them out with questions concerning services (especially for a couple of women friends and distant relatives) trying to escape batterers. I thought that was all forgotten, but I guess that it isn't. And in some way, those emails that I keep sending out to my family do sink in to some level.

I just have to keep my own level of propaganda generation (and forwarding) to some reasonable level. However, the last note for now on this whole concept of "organizing" (or even just engaging) my cousins around issues that they are either already have a conceptualization of or that they know nothing of is that I find small ways to subvert otherwise harmless exchanges. Our many cousins receive an email every Diwali that someone starts to wish well upon everyone. This time around, Diwali coincided with the end of Ramadan, so in my reply to the mass email, I wrote "Wishing you a peaceful Eid and a Happy Diwali". The reactions were interesting. Some of my cousins actually wrote back something similar. Some were clear about the "Happy Diwali" part and gracefully ignored the rest of the message. At least they didn't get into a flame war with me. Progress?

This spring, a message about Holi went around. Not to skip a beat, I responded with "Happy Easter, Happy Holi, and Happy Phagwah"... with a hyperlink on "phagwah" for those who may not know the parallels and generations through which the tradition has crossed oceans and seas and found a permanent home in Richmond Hill. Macro-diaspora and my family's micro-diaspora crossing neatly over the information superhighway. I love the power of the internet.

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Modi & Jainism (1)

Good news on the home front. The application for a diplomatic visa was denied for Gujarat CM Narendra "the butcher" Modi since his imminent visit was not of a diplomatic nature. And his business/tourist visa has been revoked on the grounds that he has denied religious freedoms at home. Thanks to Saurav for fast and furious writing on this news. I thought about it for a short while, amazed that this government would take such a strong position on this issue, but I felt very quickly that this was about the Christian Right flexing its muscle, as Modi and the BJP had been in power during the most egregious attacks against Christians in India in recent memory. From some initial research, it doesn't seem that that is too far from the truth. The Christian Right has made it an institutional priority to pressure the Administration on religious persecution of Christians around the world. We've seen it in East Timor, in Sudan, and elsewhere. I'll have to post links when I get a chance.

However, I am not fully satisfied with this news. I was half-hoping that I would have the chance to send an email out to my family members in NJ, many of whom harbor their own biases in favor of Modi and against the diversity of Gujarat. We have a family event on Sunday morning, and I wanted to send an email to announce that shortly thereafter, we would be leaving for the protest at Madison Square Garden that had been planned to deny Modi the benefit of a quiet acquiescence from those in the U.S. who don't agree with his policies of hatred and genocide. I wanted to open up the remaining seats in our car to anyone who would like to join us in this fight to reclaim Gujarat as something other than the place where intolerance reigns, or "the Hindutva laboratory".

This was my hope, because on the whole, I worry that my family is filled with Modi-sympathizers, and I wanted to out some of them in this fairly jarring way (although even as I type this I am composing a victory email with the title "Gandhi prevails over Hitler as Butcher Modi denied entry into U.S."). While I don't condone their compliance and complacency to accept the RSS-driven status-quo feeling of NRGs who think that "Gujarat Shining" should be the motto of the land, I can occasionally move past the older generation's defense of the progress with the BJP in power. I still try to confront this line of thinking, but I operate within some parameters of respect and balance, in deference to my parents, upon whom my uncouth behavior would unnecessarily be blamed.

However, to my cousins, I show little patience for their angry responses, unaware that I am onto their game: "passing" as part of the Hindu-majority when in Gujarati circles, yet strangely adamant in their preservation and observance of Jain traditions, and accumulated rituals within the home. And this is the true irony - even as they become more removed from the Gujarat that they knew, they continue to develop a zealous community here to mirror the imagined community at home that they have come to believe once existed. A "pure" community, of sorts, in which groups only interact with their own, and the lines of difference become even more hardened than they once were.

My mother was a high school teacher in Ahmedabad in the sixties. Her family was educated, but quite poor. She taught a class that was ~60% Muslim. Daily interactions in formal settings were taken for granted, and as in the United States or any other society, it seems, there were invisible and visible lines that people didn't cross often, and I'm sure that there were biases and harbored feelings of mistrust. But it was not state-endorsed, nor mob-driven, and the ideological hatemongers did not dominate the bandwidth of public discourse. The Jain identity of my mother's community was quite strong, but I don't feel that they were as willing as they are now to just fall in line with the Hindu majority with whom they broke rank more than 2,500 years ago.

But now, it is harder to draw that line between the Jain and Hindu communities, this realm of thinking and questioning is now almost entirely limited to the academician and the monk. The layperson merges the two easily, shifting between customs that have been adopted in Jainism to the familiar rites of Hinduism. We pray to "God" now, though Jains do not technically believe in omniscient, omnipotent deities. What happened to the introspection and meditation that is supposed to be the root of Jain philosophy? Have we become co-opted into a culture of ritualism that believes that rote religious tasks and habitual praying will cleanse and save the soul, divorced from our karma?

How can Jains stand idly by as hundreds are killed, and tens of thousands are put deliberately in harm's way, be it in the Northern border conflicts, the streets of Gujarat, or wherever else? Worse, how can they allow Hindutva-driven neo-nationalism to blind them of their responsibility and quest to "live and let live"? Am I being too idealistic? Instead of a strong center for social justice, does Jainism only offer solace for an individual to find her own path, as she moves towards personal enlightenment, and detachment from the material world, as I was informed at the JAINA Convention of 2000? This is the first of more posts on this topic.

I know that I have not gone into detail about Jainism, and just broke into this stream of consciousness, but I'll post some links and background for anyone interested soon. I did find out that the SAJA Stylebook doesn't have a listing for Jains, which I'll have to inform them about.

Next post on this topic.

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