Bombay calling

How I miss my city as I stare out of the window into the cold streets and the snow covered sidewalks and the bare trees. How I miss my city as the sun sets and night takes over at 3pm.

For my city is unique. The sun sets and night approaches but it doesn't have to mean a wrapping up or the end of another day in our lives. No, it merely means that another universe has taken over for Bombay at night transforms into something brighter and more beautiful.

The lights around Marine Drive light up and sitting by the sea near Walkeshwar in those quiet moments of night reinstates a belief in the beauty of life. Sure, the cops might come and shoo us away, tell us we're women, we ought to be careful roaming around at 3 am but they haven't snatched the beauty away. They can not.

My city buzzes with people, with life, with humour, with joy, with dirtiness, with deceit, with anger, with frustration and with successes. It is magical not only because it claims to be but because it is a land of infinite possibility, just waiting to be discovered.

And maybe the fact that it's at a tipping point, that point where it's just about to enter greatness, makes it even more exquisite. Because being at this tipping point gives all us Bombayites (don't call yourself a Mumbaikar unless you are willing to submit to the games of the Shiv Sena) the honour of the challenge to plunge this city into greatness. A greatness devoid of the clanging loneliness of the New Yorks and the Tokyos but full of liveliness, gladness and a hope in life.

I keep my ears open as I walk this perilous path

These last few weeks I've been reading a lot about famous people. But not famous as in those that made it big from a capitalistic point-of-view but those that chased these huge abstract ideas and tried to ground it in a reality they themselves were struggling to accept.

Of course Nehru was first on my list for I can not imagine today's India existing without him. The 21st century Indian breed has quite readily forgotten his painstaking role in creating our secular nation. In fact, I sometimes wonder if he lives on more in the hearts of the Pakistanis albeit in a derogatory manner than in the consciousness of Indians. Martyrs are forgotten in today's swiftly changing world.

But then there is his legacy too. Indira Gandhi, a woman who remains an enigma to me and Rajiv Gandhi, an honest loving man who tried his best. But perhaps most fascinating is Sonia Gandhi, as she continues to rule the roost in her frank, if not blunt, manner. A young girl from a town in Italy chances upon a handsome guy in London and follows him to a country that ends up taking his life and along with it, all that she could have imagined for her future. Yet, she stays on and runs the show because she has found the courage to love.

There's Aung San Suu Kyi and Irom Manu Sharmila. There's Mehbooba Mufti and Nelson Mandela. There's Gandhi and the Dalai Lama.

Each one of them fascinates me because they make me wonder about the inherent strength of humanity that keeps them going as they struggle in a world attempting to prove them wrong. Who cares for them as they worry for their lives and their families and their freedoms? But it isn't about them. It never was. It was never about their limbs or hands or minds or bodies. No, for it was, they would have accepted defeat. But they don't. Suu Kyi doesn't as she is released from house arrest with no guarantee of a future or a life. Indira Gandhi didn't as she felt positive that she would be assassinated. No, it isn't each of their lives that is as important as...what?

It is difficult to articulate that commonality that binds these people together in their quest for freedom. It is difficult to truly understand their spirits. But it isn't impossible because I'm realizing, and I truly believe, that all they did was follow an inner voice, their gut, their instincts, their intuitions on a path of thorns. But the thorns could not deter them as they submitted to this subliminal meta realm and allowed the path to take them wherever they had to go.

They make me believe that there is strength in our capacities and hope in our futures. For hope and the earth is all we have to live by.

Happiness

To me, summer seems just around the corner. Truth of the matter is that it it's both very close and exceptionally far away.
I have numerous plans. Volunteering in Kashmir (fingers crossed), interning in Delhi, traveling around India. No, wandering, wandering around India. This latter is pretty much what has kept my spirits up all of today.
I was sitting with friends in a coffee shop planning out summer (because they want to visit this country I keep talking about) when I struck upon an idea for wandering. I guess I was planning to not be too planned.

For an entire month (July 2011, I'm thinking), I want to wander throughout a part of the India that I haven't visited. Which is a lot. The possibility of seeing an entire new aspect to my country is the most exciting thing possible right now.

So, my plan is to journey from Kolkatta to Delhi in the span of a month (with friends of course). Yep, this can take 2 hours by flight and a day by train but the idea of doing it in a month makes me so excited. I've already begun looking up possibilities for things to do, places to stay, people to meet. Most importantly, I want to volunteer throughout the journey and do homestays or work with WWOOF (which you must check out, because it's extremely interesting to volunteer with them). There's a system of madrassas throughout West Bengal that has actually been in the news for a while for their secular curriculum which would be a great place to volunteer.
Kolkatta fascinates me. A communist state consistently mired in poverty and corruption, a socially active community, a literary hub, the capital of British India, home to one of the biggest brothel scenes in India - to me Kolkatta seems like an enigma.
And then there's Shantiniketan and the Sundarbans to go to and little villages that I have yet to identify. Next is Jharkhand (I'm not quite sure where yet), then Bodh Gaya, Varanasi, Allahabad, Lucknow, Rishikesh, Haridwar, Badrinath and Kedarnath, Dehradun, Mussoorie and Dalhousie, Shimla and Manali, Amritsar and Chandigarh, and finally New Delhi (where I plan to intern).

Wouldn't this be amazing?

I would love suggestions and ideas, tips and recommendations. No negativity please. :)

P.S. I also read something about Nehru today. He honeymooned with Kamala in Kashmir and during his long stay there, he took off to Ladakh and climbed its mountains with a cousin of his. He wrote,

 'the loneliness grew; there were not even trees or vegetation to keep us company - only the bare rock and the snow and ice and, sometimes, very welcome flowers. Yet I found a strange satisfaction in these wild and desolate haunts of nature: I was full of energy and a feeling of exaltation.'


And with this quote that so beautifully articulates my own experiences in Ladakh, Nehru convinces me that I'm not astray...it's reassuring (albeit I do recognize the absurdity) to feel connected to a dead person who restores my faith and guides me through life.

I'm human, I like things

I go to college. Everyday, I learn something new - things I want to know and things I don't really care about. But everyday, I learn/talk/discuss something about that big bad C word - capitalism. It doesn't help that I go to a liberal arts school. Sometimes, it seems like part of a pointed agenda to bash on this C-word that no one can really (and that no urban individual really wants to) live without.

So I guess I understand the points-of-view there are and often I find myself supporting the cause of the leftist brigade. Then, I come across a wonderful pair of shoes, like the ones in the photo above, I fall in love with them, look at the price tag, feel a bit shellshocked and suddenly remember all those social forces and jargon I talk/study about. For some (sad) reason, when I look at large department stores, expensive things to buy and designer brands, I'm reminded of human greed, capitalism, recessions, currency wars, George Bush. My conscience stops me from splurging when all these thoughts do a little recce in my head but what remains completely unanswered within me is that sinking feeling of disillusionment.

No, I am not upset or disappointed or disillusioned that I can't buy a pair of beautiful shoes or rather, that my conscience stops me from. No, at the heart of it all, I don't really care about those shoes, no matter how beautiful they are. Yet, each time I see a price tag or I look at designer labels, I am saddened because I am reminded of the socialization and connotations that we have all been taught to attach to these concepts. What truly saddens me is the fact that the quest for acquiring things has made us forget the inherent value of beauty.

Each shop, regardless of whether it is a thrift store or a Hermes holds something that has the potential to be beautiful. There is inherent beauty to certain objects and I believe, it is often this beauty that leads us to want to splurge or acquire those beautiful things. But often, beauty has a price tag attached to it. In today's world, owning something beautiful as a means of truly appreciating it comes with a hefty price tag that a majority can not avail of. This isn't to say that inexpensive things aren't beautiful but exquisite items are rare and therefore reserved for a select few. So the lefty Communists stare down at capitalists because they can afford this luxury and indulge in an activity that is so entirely segregated. But don't these two seemingly opposed groups love beauty almost equally, simply because both are human? Does the ability to splurge on luxuries automatically negate the existence of a person's moral compass?

But more importantly I have been wondering as I walk through a shop and discover beauty and art in clothes and accessories, since when did it become so wrong to appreciate beauty? Since when did material beauty become immoral and wrong?

I personally do not believe beauty can create such a rift between humans as it does in the political and economic realms of our lives today. It goes against the very concept of beauty. But what is it about our decisions about society, what is it about our world, what is it about our ambitions that allows beautiful things to become such harsh representations of a human? What is it about us that allows us to degrade beauty in such a fashion?

For most the answer goes back to economics and politics and law. But I wonder if the answer ought to be found elsewhere, if the answer truly ought to be found in the depths of our own consciences. For I believe we must question our own true motivations before we decide to dismiss other individuals, ideologies or ways of existence. Because maybe the challenge doesn't lie in demonizing certain aspects of this overarching thing called life but instead, revolves around something much greater: reconciling the goods and the bads to come to a system that doesn't so cruelly diminish the value of the wonderful things we are meant to and have gained the privilege of experiencing in life.

How to love what we do

Today we had a fancy speaker come to college. She talked about what it meant to work in the public sector, to network, to go to a great graduate school and to have these credentials that makes one seem like a productive, capable, important human being.

It scared me.

Not because I don't think I can follow that path but because stopping me from actually wanting to follow that exact path she laid out to seem like a surefire way to making it big, was a little part inside of me that was telling me to do something I could wake up in the morning and feel passionate about. And that path, that structure was just not it.

So now as I sit and worry about what I'm going to be and do in the future, a random thought flashes in my head. This is actually a thought I've been mulling over for a while but now given the reality of growing up being plunged in my face, I'm realizing more and more that this world is not as easy as I once thought it was. No. Everything, almost everything, must be fought for. There has to be some degree of violence in claiming what you think it is you deserve.

That's what scares me.

I've always been a somewhat creative person. I love writing. I love reading. I used to play the clarinet. I absolutely love watching well-made movies. I love music. I love how all these different dimensions of art can make one feel so much closer to a divine power.

But I also love politics and world affairs. I love analysing the economy and understanding what went wrong or how things could improve. I love policy and I adore anyone who can appreciate the fine art of productive discussion. Most importantly, I love being able to bring in ideas, thoughts and resources from one end of the world to the other in order to allow social change and transformation.

I'm fascinated by social change. I'm fascinated and in love with ideals, particularly those that the Indian nation was founded upon because the founding fathers seemed adamant on preserving that sense of national values.

So as I sit now and think about how I can go about these three somewhat different passions as potentials for a particular occupation, I wonder about the other possibilities through which this beautiful intersection can be arrived upon.

I'm a little stumped for ideas. It's your turn. Anyone?

As we stop and stare

I'm deeply compelled to believing there is a right and a wrong way of doing things, or even one particular path that will lead to ultimate goodness. In my day-to-day life, I don't think I view situations in such black and white terms but when I think about the world, the existence of humans, the future of our civilization, my subconscious somehow seems to gravitate towards believing in this unclear, unfair dichotomy.

And maybe that's exactly how we were trained to be. For doesn't every unit of social existence depend upon some form of value system, rooted in religion or philosophy or ideology? Hasn't each individual been indoctrinated with some form of moral code. Isn't even our legal system an extension of a larger social morality that obviously exists only because we will it to?

I have no problems with morality or philosophy or religion. In fact I'm fascinated by all of them and believe that they're important in our world. But what hurts my somewhat idealistic view is that these abstract things are so deeply polarized in the way they view the world and suggest how people live their lives. More importantly though, the inherent beauty to each of these 'truths' is lost as we seek to fulfill them solely in their superficiality rather than embrace the esoteric meanings behind their existence. For I do not believe that the commandment 'do not kill' is wrong or unjust yet we approach it in such a passe way that it has lost its inherent value. These values, ideals, these virtues exist not for the sake of existence or because they are right, but because, I believe, there has been deep thought and compassion poured into its evolution. With the intensity and purity of emotion that went into creating these ideals now forgotten, what is the point of even following them?

Yet I have been trained to follow a certain system. So automatically, I have also been trained to recognize, criticize and judge myself and other people who do not seem to follow the value system. It startles me then, to see how a value system, a mechanism that is meant to further so-called good, can polarize people to such a degree, and create such divisions.

As I struggle to understand who I am, who I want to be and how I want to interact with people, I see myself searching for answers in those value systems that were instilled in me but also in books, thoughts, ideas and ideologies that I happen to come across. Yet I'm realizing that everything I can ever do or think is part of a longer trajectory that doesn't ultimately depend on my attempt to be 'good' based on a deep commitment to believing in the 'correctness' of a value system. To believe that it is, would be almost too naive and self-aggrandizing of a perspective. And what is the point of that?

Maybe, ultimately, what can truly guide us is compassion that forms the basis of human virtue. Honest compassion to resurrect the beauty of the world.

The consequences of not understanding ourselves

A friend and I just had a conversation over coffee and muffins. It was a conversation about a lot of things, very Macalester-ish of course, which made me realize the opportunity cost of being here. But our conversation ended almost too soon, but possibly rightly so because it has left me with a new idea that I haven't really thought of too much before.

The future of the West seems to lie in some sort of right-wing ideology that is growing only more extreme. In fact, maybe, the entire world is heading down that trajectory. At the risk of subjecting myself to a harsh leftist discourse, I'm wondering if it would be too naive to term this trend an inevitable result of capitalism. Anyhow, this trend in the West is becoming characterized by racist slurs, anti-immigration movements and laws, Islamophobia and a general fear of the other.

Human fear has always existed, particularly racist, otherizing claims yet in our 21st century world, we like to believe we have overcome these divisive ideologies. And maybe this is exactly the problem - the fact that we believe in having achieved a sort of 'enlightenment' in this realm only because the world is too globalized to be otherwise. What fails to be possibly noticed is the ways in which we view globalization.

Academic discussions suggest that globalization is not only a transformation of the world economic system to make it more connected but also a force that enables more rapid exchanges of ideas and value systems in order to form a tolerant universal one. But the increase in the fear of the other in the West, particularly, makes me rethink the claim of tolerance and universality. For the state of these trends right now makes it seem like globalization is primarily a new economic system with ideological change only a by-product, almost like an afterthought of the analysis that academics and liberals decide to throw into the mix. Because if ideological change really was as important as the economic one, would we necessarily be facing this increase in fear of the other? Would we have to struggle so much to resist the conservative nature of these value systems?

So maybe, I'm thinking, the world has globalized so rapidly and deliberately in favour of economic progress that people and cultures and traditions have had no time to catch up. For it is extremely challenging and presumptuous to believe that merely the existence of a new economy can provide a liberalization of thought and belief systems. Just because globalization has allowed Indians to study in the US and earn in dollars, and the Hispanics to seek security in the US, and the Turks to find job opportunities in Europe - that is really a bid to increase efficiency with the by-product of providing refuge to immigrants - does not mean that this tangibility of the new economy has really created a shift in the way that we see these communities with respect to our national identities. Our communal immaturity to resist what we do not see as part of a shared understanding can't be erased solely by tangible shifts in jobs, lifestyles and capabilities.

This trend in events then suggests how wrong the pure capitalists are in believing that markets will always create a better ideology for the world to follow. To undermine the prominence of existential questions in society is to strip away the humanity of just living. If this isn't addressed, there almost seems to be no point in contributing to this global economic system that seems to further the cause of the fearful and insecure. So maybe what we need then is not a movement against politics, not a movement against the economy, not a movement against globalization but rather a positive movement for the resurrection of the human spirit, one that allows us to embrace the ideals that govern our coexistence.

Resistance is beautiful, but maybe it's time for something with more constructive elements rather than those that have motivations of opposing or destroying or dividing.

Maybe it's time to create, to spread, to accept. Maybe, then, the responsibility of this generation is to posit construction as its objective of social transformation rather than destruction or overthrow, for that may just follow naturally.

Hopefully the attempt towards having these positive motivations could result in more good than has ever been achieved before.

Let me go

My stomach growls.

I'm thinking about traveling. I want to point on a map, pack my bag, take my friend along and go. If I wasn't a girl, I could possibly hitchhike my way to Mexico. Sleep on the road or on beaches, take rides from random people, be penniless to the absolute depths of what the word means. If I was a sanyasi, I would feel comfortable in my discomfort. If I was American, I wouldn't need a visa.

My stomach growls some more.

Where do I want to go? No that's the wrong question because really I want to go everywhere. Correction: Where can I go? Now, that is somewhat vague too. Possibly the best question to ask then is, where must I go?
Anywhere, regardless of safety, urban civilization, language. Little towns or villages anywhere in the world? No mobile, no money, no guarantee.

I have 30 minutes to class. My stomach just made a very loud noise.

I'm thinking of the exhilaration of fear and insecurity that accompanies any sort of un-structure. I've felt it at US border control, while walking in a dingy alleyway in Ladakh, while smoking behind a rundown building in Veles. They are not all the same though. Fear isn't unilateral.

It is 1pm and lunch is waiting. I must go.

I am obsessed with beauty. I seek it everywhere - in a flower, in a raindrop, in a disfigured smile, in silence, in busy-ness, in almost absolutely everything. I am filled with despair when I feel like my quest for beauty isn't respected. It often isn't, especially nowadays. There is no time to wait for beauty to strike us. Yet isn't beauty characterized by its unwillingness to bloom instantaneously? Isn't beauty essentially beautiful because it manifests completely of its own will? Not enough space for beauty in a world where time is money and money is all we ever aspire for.

I sound utterly disillusioned with the world we live in and the generation I come from. I sound like I'm about to take off on an anti-capitalist rant. In some ways I am. In many ways though, I'm simply attempting to reclaim what is essential to being human, since those are the very aspects that are absolutely beautiful. My life these days is a struggle depicting that reclamation. But when I think back to my teenage days, I recognize that my life has always been that struggle. I have always craved to dwell in a beauty that defies the systematic life we've created for ourselves. From time to time, I've dismissed my quest for this beauty, terming it a fetish, a naive child's romanticism, a teenager's idealism but now, for some reason, I feel like the only way forward is to completely embrace it. My willingness to accept my own search for beauty makes me feel at peace albeit somewhat uncomfortable in the ways of the world. Yet, I realize the absolute worth behind such honest sentimentality when I observe the trajectories of individuals and societies that have dismissed so quickly their own quests for beauty in the human experience.

In a way, the sullenness of the boxing up of the day-to-day makes me believe more firmly in the beauty of the visceral nothingness of moments. It is a feeling I shudder to let go of.