XCI. Universal Uniqueness -

The new year, 2013, has finally rolled around. The anticipation that December brings for a countdown that is actually not inundated with tension and eminent punishment, (picture a parent advising their child to do what he/she says before he/she has finished counting to 10), quite literally rolled around and ended.

Truth be told, I had not thought too much about the profundity of having to write 2013 in the upper right hand corner of all my documents, a habit that pedagogues had instilled in me.

However, today, as if experiencing a delayed reaction, I thought about how great a feat a year passing truly was.

As mentioned in a previous post, I never superimposed a blank slate with January 1st. However, today, the prospect of utilizing a planetary benchmark as a blank pad of paper that is propped up on an easel in front of me, seems opportune and almost generous-like.

I am not saying that I will embark on the entropic path that is resolution-making. Instead, I’ll be taking a path that will be fruitful by acknowledging the present in tandem with the future. I don’t want to adhere to a repetitive mantra that is provided by resolutions.

I think most of our, now hipster-minded world, has denied the antiquated efficacy of resolutions. Resolutions are now diluted into 2 definitions:

1. A literary term used to describe the concluding part of a narrative that acts to remedy a conflict; also can be found on the tail end of a concave down parabola used to imitate the progression of your common narrative that is commonly found in English curriculums for middle school students.

2. The once trending new year’s eve and new year’s day tradition to make up for the lack of actualized festivities to mark the passing of three hundred sixty five days; a trending tradition that only serves to dampen the human spirit tomorrow, for the mainstream appetite for entertainment today.

Despite new year’s day’s universal quality, the day belongs to each and every one of us. There is a universal uniqueness to January 1st that enables each of us to purpose the day, and the year, as we choose.

I realized this new year’s day, that I want to not only continue to think but enact my already rooted desire to compete and accomplish as much as I can. I want to extend my fingertips farther and farther. It shouldn’t be an impossible task. It shouldn’t, but it seems as though it is.

Throughout college I would practice lifting up my legs, fully extended and in line with a pointed toe, a little higher with each passing day until the toes would be in line with my head. Four years later, and my toes reached farther and farther, until they finally came in line with my head, so why not my fingers?

Why is the climb always so steep?

2 factors seem to make the climb incredibly steep: time and place.

Today my delayed reaction has caused me to view this 2 factor explanation for the steep climb as nothing more than a defeatist attitude,

Time:

Before 2013:
With each passing class of new freshmen to the University of Pennsylvania, for example, a convocation ceremony is held on college green. The fresh faces in formal finery are praised by President Gutman for being smarter than the accepted class that came before them. The university newspaper publishes the statistics affirming the brilliance of these new freshman prodigies who became prodigious, perhaps, a year’s time before the freshmen that came before them. Class of 2016 is dumber than the class of 2017. The climb is steep.

Say you take a standardized exam in 2013 and score above the score in 2012 that could have gained you a spot in your choice of school, but falls below the mark for 2013’s admissions. The climb is steep.

In the 1980s, major American cities were akin to fiefdoms in medieval Europe. To be a landowner or homeowner, was more visionary than practical. I have been told many a time how affordable the beautiful brownstones in Manhattan were and how the ability to lay down roots on Madison or Park Avenues was very possible. However, due to the times, the prospect of owning those vine-covered townhouses were not taken into account. Instead, simply having the pleasure of being in such close proximity to the exquisite architecture reminiscent of the Dutch settlers in New York City, was enough during the 80’s. As locals, New York City was and is ours regardless. However, it is a steep climb to own these properties today. Today, a 1 bedroom, kitchenette-cum-living room space can go above 2 million dollars in Brooklyn Heights. The climb is steep.

January 1st view:
ना को मूरखु ना को सिआणा ॥ वरतै सभ किछु तेरा भाणा ॥
अगम अगोचर बेअंत अथाहा तेरी कीमति कहणु न जाई जीउ ॥३॥
No one is foolish, and no one is clever.
Your Will determines everything.
- Guru Arjan Dev Ji, 5th Guru of the Sikhs

Working hard is all anyone can do in order to ascertain his/her future, no? What is luck without effort? This is unanswerable. You can’t possibly eat a Lucky Charm marshmallow and determine a tangible result save for bodily excrement. Please excuse the crudeness, but it’s true. What is effort without luck? This question does have a tangible answer that can be yielded via trial and error. Time has nothing to do with the climb. It is all in our will to contribute to society in a positive manner.

Place:

Before 2013:
Apparently, to pursue a career-related endeavor in one of the countries that you have an ethnic connection to, is taboo. Despite the fact that you have only remembered this country from a 2-week trip and do not know the language and even though you plan to go to the complete polar opposite part of the country than the part you’re from, still, it is taboo. Even though this potential move, completely out of your element and comfort zone, can work to help boost your career for the better, above and beyond the people who will judge you, still, you will be judged. Reverse immigration is taboo and the climb is steep.

January 1st view:
The climb is steep, but not because of the place.

If anything, the opportunity to spearhead any type of activity is severely narrowed. Organizations tend to become overwhelmingly numerous with almost identical mission statements. Everyone is setting out to be their own boss and a new URL appears almost daily. Initiatives are becoming redundant so forgive me for my less than eager appreciation of yet another copy-cat proposal carried out according to your standards.

How do we set ourselves a part?

It is not the place, but our own need to rise up and produce something new and beneficial.

Here is to 2013 -

XC. The Rarity Placebo Effect -

The Rarity Placebo Effect - (n.) that which transforms normal achievement into something unworthy.

Something is oddly wrong as you sit there, hearing praise for something you have been doing, for, I don’t know, maybe 15 years?

It’s expected that you would do whatever it is you normally do.

With expectations also comes a higher standard:

If you usually push in your chair after eating, it is still necessary to call you out for perhaps not transferring the left-over food on the table into soon-to-be refrigerated containers.

If you hang the decorations on the Christmas tree every year, it is still necessary to call you out for not hanging them in an optimal fashion. Too much clutter here! Not enough tree covered facing the window!

These are just some examples of the ‘rarity’ placebo effect. That is to say, none of these examples pertain to me personally, however, they do function to exemplify the title of this post.

What does apply to me is gift-giving. You know, thoughtfulness. That is not to say that gift-giving is equivalent to being thoughtful; Quite the opposite, actually.

Christmas is a trippy topic to converse about with regard to who celebrates it, especially in the American culture, so we won’t go there. However, when you post on Facebook a department-store looking tree with no less than the amount of presents that would be accorded to 1 per person in a moving New York City bus, for a family of less than 5, that doesn’t seem thoughtful, that seems illogical, but I digress.

Clearly, this example is a personal one. I have been gifting personally-relevant odds and ends to the members of my nuclear family since I became competent enough to understand that money can be exchanged for material products. So I suppose you could say I was in my grade-school years. I believe the 3rd or 4th grade is a safe guess.

Now, however, my older sibling has aspired to the gifting enterprise and it is no less than a rarity.
Please allow me to insert one of Robert Barone’s many exasperated expressions in one of my beloved, no-longer-airing shows, Everybody Loves Raymond.

It is as if the commonality of an action, no matter how illustrious said action is, has caused the luster to be tarnished.

You’d think it would just be a matter of taking the lift up to the 6th floor of the 5th Avenue Tiffanys & Co. only to have your tarnished silver laid out on a velvet-lined tray for a nice polish.

That is not the case with the rarity placebo effect.

The rarity placebo effect can be an individual (1-party) situation.

In this case, say that you have picked up more than a vocabulary’s worth of a language that you have never spoken or understood otherwise. You know that it took years of music listening, film viewing, and a complete and total subconscious surrender to the language to attain the comfort level you do now.

However, now language acquisition is not a rarity and why not pick up a Turkish-English dictionary and start learning now? The belief that in some months’ time I would be able to pick up something that took me more than 10 years’ time is placebo.

The rarity placebo effect can also be a 2-party situation.

Remember the situation that had incurred with my sibling and I over the presents we gave? The person for whom the action, such as the act of choosing out and giving a gift, is a rarity, will be regarded as an extremely caring, selfless, and matured person; someone who takes into account a person’s likings and as a result, develops knowledge of something on someone’s wishlist without having to ask. It’s odd that such rarity is symbolic of maturation since I had been carrying out the action, like I said before, since I was in grade school.

But then again, I was born 2 weeks late, (true story), and so I suppose my maturation process was, for the desire of wanting to play with my diction, premature.

The rarity placebo effect can’t apply to everything, can it?

What if someone’s presence is no longer rare?

See, this warrants no sense nor truth.

Perhaps this whole rarity placebo effect is placebo in itself.

Perhaps this is characteristic of someone who has a complex? I highly doubt anyone answering affirmatively to the 2nd question.

So I suppose it’s a matter of just letting the rarity placebo effect pass.

Continue to strive for the best because if and when you decide that achievement and/or responsibility is coming too often and is just not rare enough, there is nothing worse than a downfall.

And a downfall is what the people want, hence the rarity placebo effect.

It’s a competitive world out there, and I’m onto you placebo-users.

LXXXIX. Tweet Baby, Tweet Baby -

*The title of this post is referring to this -

I am not confused as to where I am in my life.

Still, there are contradictory pulsations reverberating around me.

I am well aware of the fact that I’m twenty-two. I seem to be the only one who is aware of said fact.

We’re sitting in our regular, Punjabi-run eatery. I’m about to pop a gol gappe in my mouth after saying the following:

Me: “I think about these things because I’m at that age.”

      “You’re still a baby though -”

My gol gappe is held in mid-air and I can feel the shell about to give way under the onus that is the pani, or water, inside the shell.

The gol gappe was mimicking my own self; my composure was about to give way under the onus of the contradiction of being an adult who is also a baby.

When will I no longer be a baby? Do I have to be a complete and total rebel to be considered an adult? Do I have to remain outside of the house, like during college, to be permitted to think about future plans? Do I have to be able to cook up raw vegetables and meat, that also taste flavorful, in order to enter the toddler phase that has the one-up over the baby phase?

Am I just reading too much into this?

Most definitely, yes, I am reading too much into this.

“She’s confused”, you’re saying.

I am not. I have my plans. I am well aware of my habit of living in the future context instead of the present.

There is a fine line between what can be considered a habit that once again, goes uncontrolled, and what is a necessary action to be carried out that also just happens to be the aforementioned habit.

I live in the future now because the context of life warrants it.

I am older than how old my mother was when she got married.
Therefore, it is OK for me to plan out the degrees I want to earn, the week of wedding festivities I want to have, and the extracurricular I want to enroll my kid(s) in, is it not?

When I walk around my neighborhood on a day off from interning, I would avoid the morning hours and afternoon hours that coincide with the start and end of school days for 1st-graders, 12th-graders, and the in between.

I do not want to be mistaken for my past self.

When I walk around my neighborhood, as I had mentioned in a previous post, I do so as a form of exercise. As a result, I wear sneakers and sweats, (as much as I would love to sport a dress while working out, it’s just not practical), have my hair up in either a messy bun or side braid, and have on 1 of my 2 hands-free backpacks.

Mind you, 1 backpack is vintage brown leather with a large flapped-buckle that epitomizes equestrian-chic, inherited from my incredibly classy aunt who, like my entire maternal side, is a New Yorker to the core.

The other bag is a plum (dark/royal -purple) colored, distressed-leather, Andrew Marc that my mother saw me cast a loving gaze upon before senior year at Penn.

Outside of the city, Manhattan, or outside of UPenn’s Locust Walk, lined with students distributing the university-run fashion magazine, I am suddenly sporting the infantile look.

In my neighborhood, my backpacks are seen as the equivalents to the Jansport that I and the rest of America’s school-going children, used to possess in middle school.

Walking outside at the avoided times described above is to put myself in a position where I regress in time.
Indeed, I become a baby.

I become a backpack-wearing, headphone-imposed-deafening, side-braid/bun styling, baby.

I’m not a baby though. My university sweatshirt can attest to that.

I’m not a baby. My walking at a jogging pace while listening to music that is at a volume where people other than me cannot hear it, attests to that.

I’m not a baby. My coveted opinion at family dinners, attests to that.

I’m not a baby. My being in charge of keeping an eye on my new cousins attests to that.

I’m the baby for my parents, I suppose.

There - I have worked through the confusion that may have existed.

Me: “Here’s the type of embroidery I want for my wedding dupatta, mom and dad. I have to think about these things. I don’t want to get married after I’m 30!”

     Of course not! It’s beautiful, Reshmi. We’ll go to Chandigarh and…

I am an adult. My God, I am an adult…. and I’m the baby.

What a lovely juxtaposition, no?

Well I’ll be!

It seems that what I may have thought was a contradiction was a juxtaposition all along.

LXXXVIII. I'm a Claw Crane Arcade Game -

Ever feel down? Sure you have! If you’re human that is.

That’s OK though.

It is OK to feel stressed once a while or feel like you have to complain about everything because why not? If it annoys someone else, well, tough luck because it is either your time to vent or your time to have insufferable thoughts that do not get voiced, thereby causing you to develop a massive headache.

I think I have become incredibly less negative than I was before. For lack of a, purposefully, more concise articulation, I tended to expect the worst out of a situation. It was not at all that I didn’t want to set expectations high. I am the absolute antithesis of wanting to limit myself.

However, my venting has come across to some, as unwarranted negativity.

Why? I truly do not know. I am not a “Debbie Downer” or a “Nagging Nancy” by any means.

I feel that it is absolutely ridiculous to expect a giddy, giggling, and always rosy-cheeked young female after a day of ghastly traveling and bittersweet work which is interesting and reassuring, but nevertheless exhausting.

When I come out of that train station and step into the brisk air that is not tainted by the stuffiness of the subway, I am officially out of the work-zone. Therefore, I will be happy to not have to sport a fake grin.

You see, in the process of giving off a grim facade, I feel alleviated, relieved, and the facade will disappear just as soon as it appeared.

However, when the organic process, stated above, is disrupted, my grim facade resonates and permeates my body, eventually developing into a thought process.

In the event that a morning/day/evening, perhaps, is feeling grim, whether or not this temperament is the result of a system disrupted or not, I will attempt to remedy myself because remaining in an unhappy temperament for an extended period of time, is unhealthy.

What qualifies as an extended period of time, depends upon the context. If one is upset about a petty argument over a trivial matter for over half of a day, or even a couple of hours, then that duration of time can be considered an extended period.

Yesterday morning was not so pleasant. As I sat in the train, I closed my eyes, as per the usual, in order to block out my surroundings. I managed to get a corner seat in the first seat of the train car and so closing my eyes was not out of the realm of possibility since I did not have to be particularly vigilant of the bags that I was already clutching in my lap.

I utilize strategies that I have fairly recently developed, during my upperclassmen years as an undergrad, in order to attain a positive state of mind or zen.

See? I am not negative in any regard.

I am just sitting on a fulcrum that reacts to the slightest of belligerent air currents.

So I closed my eyes and told myself not to feel down.

As an individual, get to where you want to be, strive for the elite, and pick yourself out of this depth of sadness/anger/anxiety.

Suddenly I began to imagine myself to be one of those stuffed animals in those vending machine-type arcade games that are seen at bowling alleys and other places which seem to remain stuck in the early 90s.

I then saw my arm, the right arm specifically, go vertically above my head.

The wrist dropped, no longer in line with the vertically erect arm so that my right hand hung above me.

The fingers of the right hand were loosely hanging.

Yes, my right hand, hanging above my head, became the claw that would pick me, the proxy-stuffed animal, though still alive and well, up. I was picked up by myself.

My morning then became positive.

I’m a claw crane arcade game and so is everyone else who strives to lead a healthy and happy existence.

LXXXVII. Old is Tarnished Gold -

It is not that something that is said repetitively is old or worn.

I know I have said many a time that New York City is the center of the world. I know that I have seen myself in the fictional character Blaire Waldorf more than I’d care to admit; I believe I gave a standing ovation when she said that anyone who didn’t want to live in New York City was just kidding themselves; those cop-outs.

All of that is getting old.

Why?

It’s quite an ironic story really, because the person who catalyzed this story was old herself.

I travel on the train almost daily. The subway experience is not exactly pleasant, as I have pointed out in my last post, but you deal.

If there is someone sitting next to me on the long seat that runs along the length of both sides of the car, and he/she is swaying with train, presumably sleeping, so that his/her body weight tends to bear itself upon me, it is ok. I won’t push the person. I won’t give subtle hints. We’re all human. We have all either woken up too early for work or are inexplicably exhausted on our way home from work.

If the train car is filled to capacity and there is a forearm in my face because someone has to hold onto the metal support above my head in order not to fall, that’s ok.

I may turn my head in the person’s direction a little in order to remind him that I’m standing there.
He had said, “I’m sorry” and everything was alright.

I switched from the conditional tense to the past perfect, purposely.
The context had actually materialized.

A couple days ago I was on the train. A woman had to get out of the train car before the doors closed. People were rushing into the car simultaneously. Blocking the doorway myself, I stepped to the side to let the lady pass whose facial expression I saw go from furious to less angry with a tinge of gratefulness because I made way for her.

This is the way of the New Yorker - always on the offensive but still able to put down the metaphorical spurs…
…. because who wants to be that New Yorker wearing spurs?

In the act of being a New Yorker, stepping out of the way with my naturally down-turned lips and furrowed eyebrows…

I felt a fist forced into the lower arch of my back.

Dressed in a pea coat pinched on my right shoulder by a shoulder bag and messenger laptop bag, my body already felt frail.

I turned around to find the source of this new pain.

I made eye contact with an older lady with a head full of eighties inspired, frizzy hair, fanned-out bangs and all.

Upon making eye contact she blinked and said, “Oh - sorr-”.

Perhaps my tights, bright red oxford shoes, my kara that she may have thought of as a harmless bracelet, and my side braid gave off the impression that I was Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz.

Little did she know that she would meet my pair of eyes.

I was shocked that someone had intentionally touched me, much less maliciously.

My head was pounding, my heart was thumping rapidly, I was trembling - I was absolutely enraged and all I could blurt out was: “You punched me!”

Her response: “Your bag touched my hair. Move!”

Are you serious lady? Are you freaking kidding me?

Expletives… about to come out.

Finger next to the one made for a ring given by my future prince charming… about to go up.

Head splitting, goosebumps appearing, hair standing, living by an eye for an eye….

I controlled myself.

I did not curse. I did not raise my voice. My fingers were kept by my side.

Reshmi? Where are you?

I’m right here.

I’m grounded, albeit in pain.

At least my pea coat shielded me from the full blow.

As my stop approached I told her: Learn some manners. You don’t shove people -

I was completely saddened. If this is what being a New Yorker means, I don’t want to identify with this anymore.

This is strike 3, this is the last straw, this is it.

I am applying to go abroad. I have spoken about leaving, knowing that the U.S. cannot be the know all and say all. I refuse to believe that we are the epitome of civilization and the rest of the world is barbaric.

I know in the U.S. every life is precious. We have amber and silver alerts. We have code blues and reds. We even have red, yellow, and green traffic lights.

However, are we so individual-minded that we refuse recognize humanity?

Look at India. The second most populous country in the world. Sometimes people are packed in buses or in trains. I never thought this situation was ideal. Like Kunal Kapoor’s character in the film Rang De Basanti had said, in India you have to constantly adjust - make 4 people sit on a bench made for 2. He thought this was backwards of the country to do.

Think about it - they adjust. Indians, perhaps not all, but most, adjust for one another so that everyone can fit.

That is humane. This adjusting that Indians do is necessary for a joyous living and for people’s minds not be muddled with nonsensical arguments.

Then go! Go somewhere else!

I want to see what is out there. I want to go and experience and then I want to come back because, regardless, this is my city, the place of my birth.

LXXXVI. Urban Mythology -

I’m sitting on a metal radiator-like ledge in Starbucks. I am balancing this laptop on the top of my crossed thighs that I occasionally have to uncross and then cross again in another manner so that the blood circulation in my leg resting on the metal radiator-like ledge, and that is holding up the other leg-cum-laptop, does not get cut off.

I am freezing and there is a warm-looking baby in a carriage in front of me and she’s off! And I’m here, waiting to go where I have to go in thirty-eight minutes.

This whole scenario is quite odd.

Since I left for college 4 years ago, all I wanted to do was graduate and become a New Yorker again, and furthermore, to embrace more of NYC than I had ever done previously.

My wish yearning has materialized.

I’m going through Metrocards like it’s no one’s business, I’m interning and learning. I’m traipsing through Manhattan, making trips to Staple’s, lugging 30 * 23.5 inch easel pads.

I am finding my trains not running spontaneously and find myself having to figure out alternative routes to reach home.

Yesterday on my 4th train ride, I was squished between a burly man and a self-proclaimed “crazy aunt” with her understandably upset nephew.

She was trying to cheer him up and asked everyone to join her in singing ‘Jingle Bells.’ The guy on the other side joined in and both started singing to each other while I was squished in the middle. So help me God….

I’m listening to holiday music in Starbucks. Now, usually I would put on my headphones and listen to sufi, Hindi, or Punjabi music.

Not today; Today I’m listening to the generic holiday music, sipping on my non-fat-milky Awake black tea.

I have to do this. I have to drink tea instead of coffee. I have to try and not resist the music coming from the large speakers with my comparatively small headphones. I have to reach a zen.

I am a New Yorker and truth be told, I am stressed about small matters, for lack of better words.

I am sick of smelling foul breath in the over-packed train or hearing the revolting gum-chewing sound in my ear. I do not want to see any more rats on the train tracks. I don’t want to feel my body tremble as the train screeches for a good sixty seconds, afterwards swearing I had incurred some kind of hearing loss.I don’t want to be squished against the train’s metal poles. I don’t want any of this.

So, let’s eliminate the problem.

No, I have to, and furthermore want to, do what I am doing.

I have to do what I have to do to be where I want to be.

I have to find a zen while receiving these battle wounds so that I don’t catch sepsis which I have only done throughout my academic life, so why not now?

Can’t I be a resilient twenty-two year old?

I think I can. I think I can.

I had a choice.

I could have gone home after working today, Saturday morning, but I didn’t.

I found my destination without the help of my smart phone. Instead, I had asked my fellow New Yorkers, most probably residents of Manhattan, where this street and that cross-section is.

15 minutes to go. Use restroom, make sure all 3 bags are being held, and take off just like that baby in the carriage.

I know I can. I know I can.

LXXXV. Shopping Schematic -

As a New Yorker, shopping is inevitable.

When I say shopping, I am not only speaking of your classic consumerism; waiting on lines to make purchases.

I am also referring to those days when you have off from work or school or have nowhere to go or be in particular, and so you decide to travel to your shop of choice.

I absolutely love walking into Anthropologie, smelling the candles, making mental notes of design aesthetic for a future room of mine, wishing I could cook so I could purchase one of the quirky yet tailored aprons that are reminiscent of old-fashioned modest dressing.

As much as shopping, defined above, is a detox from the stresses of life in general, there are some aspects of the shopping experience/sport that warrants modification.

1. The unwillingness of the salesperson to check within the shop itself or another location, for an item on sale.
Seeing as how the clothes are manufactured, despite being of high quality, they are not-one-of-a-kind, individually tailored pieces of clothing made for yours truly; Please have some courtesy and check when asked. When you roll your eyes or enunciate, “There - is - no - point - in - checking”, it seems as though you’re just asking someone to narrate your biography and no one has time for that.

2. The inability of the customer to touch merchandise in the way of taking, perhaps, a sweater down from a shelf.
“Tell me what you want and I’ll take it out for you.”

The above-statement is incredibly insulting; Ok lady who I encountered a few days ago?

If anything, I am repulsed by your dissonant wardrobe choices of fishnet stockings, too tight mini skirt, and unruly hair. Your need to style yourself according to the store’s imposed dress-code makes you equivalent to the man in the hot dog suit standing outside of Papaya King.

And if that analogy couldn’t communicate that I’m a New Yorker, nothing will.

I had spotted a coveted sweater and put my arm out to grab it when a petite woman working the floor, who is at least 2 inches shorter than myself, throws herself in front of me to take down the sweater from the top shelf.

Go ahead, throw out your back and dislocate a shoulder. That will just be karma at work.

3. Company-imposed dress codes -
This enumerated point is perhaps the most counter-intuitive action in the fashion industry.

Hollister Co. and Abercrombie & Fitch, I do like some selected items of clothing your stores carry, tis’ true.

Despite these shops not being my scene what with the bird logo at every seam, the too short/too tight shirts, the costume-like mini skirts, the sometimes hillbilly-inspired blouses with shabbily gathered necklines, I will once in a while buy something.

However, the need to standardize your pre-teen employees is an outright slap in the face of the fashion industry. Everyone must wear this shirt on this day and pant of this width and length. Everyone’s hair must be styled accordingly. Your fingernails must be colored and cut according to protocol.

J. Crew employees, some of you also dress according to perception. Invoking old-privileged golfers or soccer moms is offensive to the clothing the company endorses.

Also, walking into a store that does not make up your entire wardrobe and as a direct result, being met with unfriendly eyes, is an eye-sore in itself.

Permit me to walk out the door quicker than I came in - Deuces.

4. 1-2 Punch: The Long-Line Wait and the Quick Exit.
I and many others have all decided to shop at the same time. As a result, many others and I are standing on line, admiring/pondering/reconsidering, our purchases draped over our forearm.

At points in time, we’re grateful for this fail-proof need to wait in line.

We pride ourselves in taking the time to weigh the value of that off-the-shoulder, slouchy sweater or those printed skinny jeans.

When we finally make it to the check-out, the employee huffs, puffs, glances at you to make quick eye contact, and then takes a long-hard, exasperated stare behind you.

You’re holding him/her up.

With a quick swipe of the bar-code on the sensitive scanner, perhaps having rung up that pair of pants twice, he/she decides that him/her suddenly has an urge to play baseball and so bundles up your cashmere crew-neck into a nice volatile ball, and throws it in the bag, sending you on your merry way.

Here’s to shopping never going out of fashion - at least for me.

LXXXIV. The Life of Pie -

Imagine if there were pies filled only with pie crust.

Imagine if muffins only consisted of the tops.

______________________________________________________________

In the above picture, I was sitting outside of my house the Friday after Thanksgiving, imagining that I was elsewhere and alone.
My webcam was on and captured my expression, overwhelmingly pensive, slightly stressed, and approximately eighty minutes before a phone interview.

I was cold too. The air was frigid. With the cement underneath me and the canopy blocking out any sun’s rays that may have peeped through the already cloudy sky over head, my body was shuddering in my self-inflicted challenge to escape.

Wearing pink pajama pants that grazed the cemented porch, gray knee-high socks, a University of Michigan sweatshirt that was given for free at my brother’s college orientation 8 years ago, and draped in a large and soft shawl, with a tortoise-colored hair clip, holding my side-swept bangs away from my face, I was sitting outside.

I was sitting outside and I was escaping to a place where I was comfortable, more-so than uncomfortable. However, this place still provided a level of discomfort; enough for me to be an explorer traversing a new and unexposed landscape.

I was in a place where people were just as ambitious as myself, to the extent of them perhaps having been called a ‘dreamer’, once upon a time.

The place lacked obligatory socializing, so that I conversed with people who cared to make gutsy and politically incorrect commentary, just as much as they cared about watching the newest episode of Top Chef.

These people do not sensationalize their humble beginnings or alternatively flaunt their hand-outs, and these people absolutely do not wish to remain in the aforementioned niches which they apparently seem to love having occupied, as it were.

I don’t want to be around people who have no desire to move up, on whatever ladder that may be.

I hereby admit that I want to forever walk around in constant surrender to all things beautiful.

It is times like this one in the photo, when I miss the ivy-covered campus.
Then again, college was what it was.
Just like that, for the past four years, myself in reality or my 3-dimensional self, was identical to the 2-D, square photo in the upper left hand side of my university student ID.
I was safe in the status that was bequeathed to me by my University Card.

A couple of days ago, the same day captured in this photo, I was sitting outside.

I was starting to work on a study abroad application. Who knows what the outcome will be? After months of pondering over whether or not I should even attempt to try, I knew that to not do so would be worst than being met with rejection.
You know, the classic case of would have, should have, could have.

Taking in the periphery will not be a priority.

I don’t want to keep chipping away at the apple pie just to consume the crusty shell.

I don’t want to feel guilty at spooning away the cholesterol-saturated sweet potato filling covering the well-baked hidden treasure of a crust underneath.

I don’t want to have to buy an entire muffin knowing fully well that I will turn the muffin upside down on my plate and proceed to cut off the body of the muffin in one fell swoop. I don’t want to dirty a spoon just after I have dirtied a knife, to scrape away the vestiges of the cake-like texture of the muffin that is covering my coveted crusty and delicious muffin-top.

Modifying these baked goods is a daunting task.

Imagine if there were pies filled only with pie crust.

Imagine if muffins only consisted of the tops.

Imagine if we are able to live our life the way we wanted to because why not?

Why not do everything in your power to get to where you want to be?

Forget acknowledgement and just perhaps, shoot for proving someone wrong - it’s a most lovely feeling.

Remember? I surrender to all things beautiful.

Let’s disconnect. Does that sound severe? Oh well, so be it. Let’s disconnect from the extraneous.

Exploring the new does not mean peripheries have to be taken into account for a more expansive landscape of novelty.

Ignoring the periphery can make exploring novelty a lot less daunting.

Ignoring the periphery under the muffin top and fillings in pies makes for better taste, makes for a better experience, and is a lot less daunting.

LXXXIII. My Mind's Tongue - میرا دماغ کی زبان

میرا دماغ کی زبان
Meraa dimaag ki zubaan
My Mind’s Tongue or The Language of my Mind

___________________________________________________________________

As I have mentioned before, I am half Punjabi and half Puerto Rican.

However, growing up I only spoke English.
English is my native language and English is the language that I can most clearly communicate in.

I developed a strong love for the English language because it provided me with the ability to exchange knowledge.

*Let me make very clear that I love the language for what it is, a language, and not for it’s cultural and/or national context.
I am in no way an anglophile. If you were to ask my parents whether or not I am an anglophile, their eyes will most probably dilate. They will then  proceed to shake their head furiously so that all of you could start a new conversation.

My father told me, perhaps everything about my family’s history pre-partition 1947. He told me how my grandfather was educated once by a Muslim who taught him Farsi and the Urdu script. He wanted my father to learn the script as well, but with nationality came officiated languages, and as a result, boundaries were drawn everywhere.

I was fascinated with the Shahmukhi script, the first mode of writing for the language of Punjabi, which is the same script used for the Urdu language. (I find that Urdu sounds completely different from Punjabi, in sharp contrast to what many others think.)

Punjabi is a beautiful language and Shahmukhi, literally translates to, “From the mouth of the King”. This fact would make me swell with pride because all of Punjab, from India to Pakistan, is nothing short of majestic.

For this primary reason, (there were more reasons, that includes Urdu being almost identical to the Hindi or Hindustani spoken in North India), I had decided to study Urdu in my senior year of college.

It was one of the best decisions I had ever made.

Growing up my brother and I only knew English. On applications we would always, with certitude, write down that we only knew 1 language - English.

However, by junior year of high school I understood that I did not know just English.
I had confided within myself, the ability to understand and speak more than just 1 language. So it is true, coming from a mixed heritage can actually be a boon!

I actually started to think in a trinity of Spanish, Hindi/Urdu, and English.

I realized that I was no longer relying on the English subtitles at the bottom of movies. I also became fascinated with the Indian television serial, Kajaal, which had no English subtitles.

About six years ago, my brother used to make fun of me for “staring blankly” at the screen and actually shut off the T.V. when I  was watching Kajaal, causing me to cry.

I was devastated that no one seemed to believe that I actually understood the language and was sure that I could speak it if given the opportunity to be surrounded by speakers of a language other than English.

My parents laughed at my brother’s remark at first.

However, they realized that I did in fact understand the show.

I was translating how Kajaal had amnesia and couldn’t remember that the actor who also played in India’s version of Ugly Betty, (the Indian version is the original by the way), was her husband.

I mean, if I really watched the show only to observe Indian-ness and without understanding what was going on, as my brother had claimed….
I could have just stared at myself in the mirror.

Everyone acknowledges my understanding now.
Not everything is said so openly around me anymore.
My mom starts to whisper in Spanish and my dad goes to another room when speaking in Punjabi, Hindi, or Urdu.

Acknowledgement is so sweet, it sometimes makes me blush.

Yesterday I had a daydream - all in Urdu. Everything I said was in Urdu. It was crazy. Usually I would blend Spanish and Hindi or Urdu in my head. Never did I isolate a single language, so suffice it to say, I was mindblown.

I really do not think I am comfortable speaking out loud, anything but English.

Besides English, I only know how to read and write in Urdu and it is a blessing:

Whenever I am in a meeting or was in seminar, frustrated beyond belief at the artificiality of people, I would just write in Urdu on the paper in front of me:

یہ انسان ایک بیوکوف ہے = This person is a fool/idiot

واقعی؟ = Seriously? *Exasperated*

اوہ میرے خدا، میں یہاں سے باہر حاصل کرنے کی ضرورت ہے = OMG, I need to get out of here!

رب رکھ = May God be with you.

Venting in 3 different languages all at once makes me immensely happy.

Here’s to expanding the language of my mind -

LXXXII. Human 'Independency' Syndrome (HIS) -

Humans are dependent on each other. It is only natural.

When a human decides to ignore a RSVP, or perhaps finds him/herself wanting to to be the sole benefactor to a two-sided opportunity, this human disrupts functionality of a well-manufactured, and one could even say, natural, system.

We all understand the practicality of hierarchies.

Sometimes it is OK for us to admit that the Emergency Room - Trauma physician, may have a work schedule that is slightly more demanding than the administrative assistant who can definitely be equally as stressed with his/her work.

Sometimes it is OK for us to say, yes, this physician is not answering my e-mail because he/she must attend hospital meetings and read up on scholarly studies so that they are knowledgeable on the advancements made to save human lives.

I hereby acknowledge your lengthy schooling, sleepless nights, willingness to take the Hippocratic Oath, and sacrificing your sense of style and fashion sense that is hidden underneath your authoritative white coat.

However, almost 1 month has passed since a physician agreed to be interviewed by me and by interview has never been conducted.

My article is still in the works.

The only physician to respond to the interview inquiries I had sent out…
This physician quickly replied that yes, he/she would be interested - If I remember correctly,the physician’s reply was not even 24 hours after I initially asked him/her to be interviewed.

The benefit of having your name disseminated into the world as someone who is knowledgeable and has authority is without a doubt, incredibly cathartic.

Now, for yet another article that has yet to be written…
I had asked someone if I could interview them. Within 2 hours of me asking, the person responded and agreed to be interviewed.
It has been 11 days and still no interview.

One would say writers feel this way; (As was described in the last bold-faced statement.)
Having our name out there and published, is cathartic, yes.
_________________________________________________________________

However, as a writer, authorship is cathartic for different reasons;
These reasons include being able to disseminate knowledge that is not necessarily your own, and more times than not, is not your own.

The voice is your own.
The frame in which the knowledge is presented is your own.
The writing style is your own. 

Authorship enables you to transport your reader elsewhere and that is cathartic.
_________________________________________________________________

I understand hierarchy of professions because there is an underlying hierarchy of education.
I understand acknowledgement for one’s willingness to sacrifice income and maybe a large part of one’s social life, in the attempt to rid him/herself of ignorance.

However, there is a limit. We are all human.

I hereby diagnose you, interviewees, yes, you too doctor, with HIS - Human Independency Syndrome.

As humans, we strive to be independent individuals.
I will never consider myself the subordinate intern.

My “boss”, per se, and I are mutually co-dependent, as are your bosses and yourselves.

There is no subjugation when everyone does what they are supposed to do and are doing what they have agreed to do when they applied and accepted whatever position they hold right now.

Yes, you may be an employee for someone.

Yes, I may be an intern for an organization.

Still, we are all our own bosses. We do what we need to do to get the job done. We use our own discretion and have our own idiosyncratic ways of typing, organizing, an communicating.

We’re independent as individuals.

Remember, from previous blog posts, I cannot even stand the sight of a couple holding hands and blocking the sidewalk:Refer to hand-holding anecdote.

As a society though, there can only be mutual dependency - a network where only positive results are reaped, from the negligible passing of a tissue to someone sniffling, to the greater benefit of perhaps landing a dream job.

There is no parasite-host relationship in society without someone falling sick and going to the hospital.

Here’s to diagnosing persons with HIS.

It’s high time they get treated.

LXXXI. O mind, reform yourself, and forsake your aimless wandering.

During the summer months of 2012, there was a cleverly narrated doodle that was going viral. This doodle was a Princeton graduate’s explanation for how most students got admitted into and graduated from, the Ivy League.
Indeed, the humorous simplicity of the explanation almost perfectly reflects the complexities needed to attain a seat at such a prestigious institution of higher education.
The parts focusing on parenting was fairly identical to my own experience.

Growing up, we dream - a lot, and we also have a lot of nightmares.

Keep in mind that I am referring to dreams in the most colloquial and base-sense.
I am not going to delve into the semantics of dreaming being to the intangible verus “thinking catalyzed by ambition” being to the tangible.

More specifically, I am referring to daydreams.

I would discuss some of the daydreams with my parents. I would discuss the next steps I would make that would take me from here to the coveted elite status.

I want to be a contributor to society! My daydreams show me what happens when I do contribute. There is a flux of acknowledgement by kin and strangers alike.

I want to leave my positive mark, be interviewed for TIME Magazine, own that Bentley, and live on that Manhattan city street. I want to go back to India, to a house in Punjab, so that my kids won’t be devoid of culture and legacy.

I am going to have kids -yes.

I will fall in love with an amazing intellectual and handsome, preferably Sikh Punjabi. The love will obviously be requited., and…
These are the day dreams I feel less inclined to share, by the way.

Anyway, he and I will get married. The full customs will be carried out just as they have always been.

At my sangeet, day of dancing and singing festivity prior to marriage, all the female guests of all ages will have mehndi applied to their hands.
There will be no rehearsed and staged performances. No, all the dancing will be organic. The females will be doing traditional Punjabi dance, giddha, and not masculine bhangra moves as is forced by the Indian-American dance culture.

(I am still irked by how my Punjabi culture is being butchered by dance teams across the nation. Our, asli Punjabi, dancing is not robotic or violent and I absolutely hate that my own peers are doing this, but I digress.)

My husband and I will have our honeymoon in the best country in the world, India.
Our marriage will be blissful and pure and so completely perfect. I will become a mother and the first time around I will be pregnant with twins: one boy and one girl; Perfection.

Reshmi! There is no hot water! You’re using it all up! GET OUT -

The above scenario played out hundreds of time up until I moved away from home to the iridescent isles of the Ivy League.

I knew my day-dreaming was partially what caused my need to constantly go up some self-constructed ladder - to keep striving for higher rungs.

However, I also knew that it was time to keep day-dreaming to a minimum.

__________________________________________________________________

5 years ago: I was going off to college…
There will be so much to do and accomplish.
You’re going to have to be in charge of your dietary schedule and the quality of what you eat. You have to do laundry and clean your own living space.
No time for day-dreaming Reshmi.
You have to save hot water for your roommates!

Yearbook planning time came around during my senior year of high school. Us seniors had our own mailboxes on the senior-designated floor, the 3rd floor, decorated with the senior color, blue. In each of our mailboxes was a form that had asked us to write our name exactly as we want it to appear next to our senior picture along with any quotation of our choosing.

I wanted my quotation to be taken from my heritage because I still cannot harbor any type of sentiment or connection to an anglicized couplet or transcendentalist poem made by the well-read white man. I then concluded that in the next phase of my life I would increasingly rely on my faith, just as I always had.

And with that, I had decided to turn to gurbani, and find a fitting and guiding idea that I could take with me.This would be my yearbook quotation.

O mind, reform yourself and forsake your aimless wandering.
__________________________________________________________________

2012 - Present Time: The past 4 years, day dreaming was kept at bay.I believe the whole aspect of daydreaming had been non-existent these past 4 years.

At some point, crestfallen, I thought that daydreaming corresponded to the ages of 13-18 and that I no longer qualified as a daydreamer.

In fact, only until a couple of months ago, officially a degree-holding graduate, did I realize that I still had the ability to day dream.

I am again reprimanded with taking a bath last because I use up all the hot water.

I am day-dreaming again… I saw myself in salwar kameez, light and airy.
My hair was in a sublime stupor of layered waves, covering my already covered shoulders by my dupatta, or scarf.
I was traversing the Punjab in Pakistan, revisiting the galis, winding paths or alleys, that my ancestors had traveled.
With my leather book-bag on, I crossed the border by train, or was it bus?

Now I am in Amritsar, and I see myself looking around.

I look around to make sure no one sees me and then I swiftly swipe the fingertips of my right hand on the earth below me, and just as swiftly swipe my fingertips across my forehead. Jai Hind -

My writing career is based in Northern India and I am primarily covering the states of Punjab and Kashmir.

__________________________________________________________________

The day dream was put to an end by myself.

I am still a daydreamer yes. However, I think I am a matured daydreamer.

Perhaps my mind has heeded the gurbani. That is to say….

My mind has reformed, perhaps, such that my wandering is now just short of aimless.

LXXX. Diya's Lesson: Light that Fire -

10/29/2012:

The hurricane is enthralled right now.

The windows are creaking, the phones are a-ringing, and this singsong-like tone I have can only mean one thing: The holiday season has arrived.

Yesterday my parents and I went to the supermarket for last minute, adrenaline-induced, grocery shopping.

A loaf of olive oil bread here and a Pepto Bismol chewable tablet pack of 30 there, (last one left!), we made one of the many intersecting lines as the supermarket filled to capacity. With a few light-weight bags -

*The power just went out. There is no internet and now I’m typing on a Word Processor from my now 90% charged laptop.

- in hand, we were on our way home.

Prior to our trip to the generic American store, we had ventured to the Little India in Queens to eat parathas and gol gappe. Since we were there already and we were off from work for the foreseeable future, it was almost mandated that we buy a pound and a half of mithai, Indian sweets.

We then made our way to the fairly new Little India, where I live.  

Multiple diyas, earthen clay bowls that when looked at from a bird’s eye view, ARE roughly in the shape of a rounded tear drop, were purchased.

There I was, crooning my head over the array of colorful diyas, past the thalis and deities, for a more secular aesthetic. 

I was surrounded on all sides by uncles and aunties, wide-eyed babies with the most luscious sets of eyelashes, carts filled with masala spice mixes, bags of almonds and pistachios, bhindi or okra with the tops already split off, jars of ghee, containers of dai or yogurt, and necessary cardamom and fennel for chaa or tea.

Everyone was buying staples for the upcoming stormy days; Everyone but me.

Diwali is 16 days away! In 2 days, that will be 2 weeks.

I was getting ahead. I was not procrastinating like everyone else, despite the fact that I was that foolish larki, picking up diyas in earnest, as if that would help me during the storm.

In a way, all that the diyas mean could help guide me, could it not?

This was not my original intention though because, like I said, the holiday season has arrived, and that is why diyas were purchased.

I am at home, waiting on responses from 2 interviewees for whom I have contacted for 2 separate articles I am writing. I have to pursue them further so that my articles can get published sooner rather than later.

Everything is happening in slow motion, but I am patient. I have to be. I am patient because I am only “starting out”, just as was when I got admitted into my high school, just as when I got admitted into my college, and now with my degree in hand, or more accurately, hanging on my bedroom wall. Still, I am “starting out.”

After this past summer, writing cover letters, making a LinkedIn profile, and applying to places all over New York City, I felt blessed to finally receive responses, though mostly generic computer-generated negativity. I felt an anxious elation that I had three interviews, and then I felt so appreciative for a full-fledged commitment for the next three and a half months to a new discipline that I had not yet familiarized myself with.

However, now has come the time to apply once more.

So that makes five major tasks to perform: Interview transcription, article-writing, research for internships that I qualify for, and the tailoring and compiling of application materials.

*It is now the next day. 24 hours later and the power just came on.

10/30/2012

Anyway, I have 5 major tasks to perform.

I had been putting everything off:

A study abroad application cannot be filled out until I can add my plans for January and my plans come January were put on hold because well, individualizing cover letters and writing samples struck me as daunting.

I don’t know why exactly, but the tasks at hand seemed daunting and as the days passed, everything was weighing heavily on me.

 ___________________________________________________________________

Light that fire, Reshmi.  
Once the fire is ignited, it will keep burning until you put it out yourself.
The more likely possibility is that the fire will go out when the wax of the candle becomes a puddle or the wick absorbs all the oil … until you have completed what you need to.

_____________________________________________________________________

The diya has given me so much warmth, faith, and pride over the years.

It’s amazing how it is, now 15, days until Diwali …

It is amazing how no diyas have been lit, and yet they still guided me towards my goal.

LXXIX. Rooted in my Ruby Shoes -

(My personal Op-Ed/journalistic coverage of the 2nd Annual Sikh Leadership Summit)

At the cusp of sunset, traffic into the west side of Manhattan on a Monday night was mild and yet heavier than usual, redolent of the upcoming holiday season.

Upon entering a large and open lavish lobby with floors that act to enhance the sound of even the smallest heels, the well-suited doormen directed me to turn left and up one flight of escalators.

The 2nd floor provides just the right amount of exclusivity while also being inviting.

I was attending the Sikh Art & Film Foundation-sponsored 2nd Annual Sikh Leadership Summit.

Dressed in a colorfully paneled dress, black blazer, patent leather back heels, and a cross body bag that possesses the right combination of utility and aesthetic, I was initially surprised that the doorman knew what event I was attending without me wearing any ID or flashing the e-mail invite.

Initially, I had smiled in spite of myself: He must have identified me as Sikh or Punjabi!
Clearly, kinship and being identified with a people makes me content.

I quickly realized that this may very well be the only event taking place in the building hence the doorman’s quick instructions for how to navigate the lobby.

Regardless, with registration out of the way, I had entered the “cocktail and reception” area.Here, I stepped onto the red carpet.

Mind you, the red carpet was not those associated with award ceremonies and celebrity dwelling. The red carpet was not an isolated rectangular piece placed on top of of a visibly barren ground. No, the red carpet ran from wall-to-wall.

That is not to say that celebrity-status was lacking.

Indian leaders in the United States were in attendance: Ex-Citibank President, Mr. Victor Menezes, Ambassador and India’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Manjeev Singh Puri, and Mr. Ajay Banga, President and CEO of MasterCard, were all there. I only became aware of their presences after they had introduced themselves at the start of the panel.

As the night progressed I was content that the Indian nationality was not separated from the Sikh faith, as it sometimes is.

Still, as the night progressed, I realized that I disagreed with 50% of what was discussed during the panel with reference to unwarranted praise of a country and mindless talk of the going-on of academia without the speakers actually having been students at an American university for at least 2 decades.

Slowly but surely I developed a pounding migraine.

These successful persons were speaking to and about the youth in a nonsensical and somewhat patronizing manner.

The panelists offered challenges for the Indian-American youth to pursue discourse within U.S. Politics.

        I do not want to be a civil servant! I choose not to pursue a political, (in the traditional sense of the discipline), career, thank you very much.

The moderator suggested that my generation is into “gadgetry” and will not go to the library and take out a book.

      False Ms. professor! I can speak for myself and attest to inhabiting the library on campus for the past three years where I had checked out a number of books.

The discussion was smart, however, and I truly appreciated the discourse… and aside from the aforementioned, there were parts of the panel that I wholeheartedly agreed with.

For example, I agreed with Mr. Ronald G. Weiner when he said that you are only making a difference if you are appreciated for it, the difference you made; if you think you are making a difference but are not being acknowledged for it, you were not making any positive contribution to society but were instead, wasting time.

Another point of discussion that stuck with me was Mr. Menezes’s remark about parents giving their children “roots and wings.”

Parents must ground you such that you are rooted in your culture, heritage, and value system.

Parents must also provide you with the wings to embark on necessary entrepreneurial instinct, so that you can travel and adapt to new environments.

_________________________            ◊            _________________________

I think I am rooted to the nth degree.

How do these successful Sikhs, Punjabis, Indians, take off and leave without their families by their side? We share a culture and the values that come with it.

Will there be a gurudwara nearby? Will there be an Indian restaurant?

Why is it so hard for me, born and raised in New York City, to go out of this ‘comfort zone’, so to speak?

Did my wings’ growth get stunted?

So much for my daily dose of Flintstones vitamins.

I want to travel, yes. However, I feel uneasy at the prospect of living in another country for a lengthy period of time, alone and without anyone to call my own. Yes, I know we’re all human but strangers are strangers and if I don’t know you, well then, I don’t know you.

TODAY:
I went on the train as usual and was almost swallowed up by people everywhere. The train car was full and yet with each stop made, more people squeezed their way in.
It was a horrible morning and the whole staying positive bit wore off with each passing second of numbness that crept up my right arm as I strained to hold onto a metal bar approximately a foot above my head.

This NYC subway transit experience is no longer fun. Was it ever? Maybe I was more tolerant of inconveniences before. Maybe, but I highly doubt it.

I think my wings grew quite a bit.

I should take an opportunity outside the U.S. if available. I need to see and experience novelty steeped in history.

A lot of growth needs to happen.

In the event that I want to come home, I will always have my ruby shoes.
I will click the heels of said shoes 3 times and I will say thrice:
“There’s no place like home.”

LXXVIII. Respect's Invocation -

O Respect!

You are only found when you cannot be.

You’re missing-in-action repertoire validates that you are active.

Indeed -your presence exists so long as you remain unseen.

_______________________________________________________________

When not here but there, your dignity remains untainted.

Behold the honor that remains intact,

     always underneath the surface, and never elated.

Behold the exclusivity that I have created without regard for fact.

_______________________________________________________________

Mystery has bequeathed distinction upon -

Yes, “upon”; As you must not exert any energy.

Only passivity for our human actions, otherwise you’re forced to fawn.

Never must you have to prove your great mind, I plea!

_______________________________________________________________

You’re ardent quest for standing your ground is admirable.

Whether you stand or sit, are hunched or upright, it does not matter.

All these options, pray good person, take whatever it is you will!

One move of yours conjures hundreds of others; your climb nay a ladder.

_________________________________________________________________

Lo! You are a muse who dislikes music.

You’re uniqueness is ravishing and your glory glows.

May you never fall sick.

Otherwise, absorb your healing power, already used way into the ‘morrows.

________________________________________________________________

Hello, poser of the almighty Respect,

prove yourself to us, lest you covet my judgement.

My judgement is static regardless, so just accept,

that you were given home-court advantage, but it seems you may just rent.

LXXVII. The Real World Called & They Want Their Blazer Back -

I should make a Google Alerts, keep my flash drives by my side, write up cover letters, keep track of references, make connections on LinkedIn with calculated measure, and make sure to use my fingertip every once a while to tap on the phone’s e-mail icon.

I tap the keyboard furiously and with authority, channeling my energy into my cover letter, as if a pleasant scent that gives off, you can count on her to be well-dressed, thoughtful, hard-working, and punctual, will begin to emanate from me electronic submission.

My vestiges of clipped nails and skin, are tapping continuously while I read over all my application materials, each individually tailored as they were because recycling does not do justice to my value.

As I sit at my desk, an unpaid intern, frustrated with the isolated times when inactivity presents itself immediately after I have completed my previously documented tasks, I think to myself:

I am not being graded. Why am I stressed? It’s not like I have to mentally prepare myself every time I open the bookmarked pagethat stares me in the face as it is forever and always on my browser, the browser that is open so long as my laptop is on.

School suddenly seems like you’re being proactive in reaching that ultimate goal.

Sitting in that library, behind that desk, cocking that pen ever so gently amongst those non-tapping fingers…This all succeeded in displacing me to a place but a few miles away from that long awaited income.

I thought my blazer would have the same effect, but it doesn’t.

The blazer dresses me up, makes me feel executive-like. The blazer dressed me up, even when I was wearing my “2012” Ivy sweatpants and walking around campus after midnight.

The blazer is quite luxurious, yet it seems to hold in the cold more than it heeds the law of physics which mandates that the friction between the blazer’s lining and my skin, provides warmth.

The blazer is like the real world - both are blatantly ill-conceived identities.

__________________________________________________________________

The real world called and they want their blazer back -

Though I felt closer to the career goal, ideal income, and perfect standard of living, while a student, that too was ill-conceived.

This is the real world: you can keep the blazer.

Thanks!

__________________________________________________________________

Midway through this first dual, post-grad-internship season, and preparing for the next two seasons, it seems that the education, graduate school, which cues in career can only be attained via: the accumulation of subway stories and lapses of time where my e-mail is refreshed every two minutes in anticipation of carrying out the boss’s spontaneous demands.

The blazer brought me outside of the daydreaming realm, the realm in which studying into the wee hours of the morning(s) induces a delirium where I am having pseudo-interviews in war-torn countries, writing in a home-office with a wedding band on my right ring finger, and am sooner or later reading an acceptance speech for winning the Nobel prize.

The blazer has brought me into the borough of Manhattan, physically closer to the goal then before.

The blazer has set me apart from the errand-going crowd using the New York City transit system -

So, no matter how young I look, I am still a twenty-something-year-old working (unpaid) woman in the land of my birth, my home forever, and the center of the hybrid professional-academic world, New York City.

LXXVI. Fatalistic Fate -

A mantra is defined as a Vedic meter style that aims to translate a human will or desire into a tangible action.

I still regard mantra with cynicism because verbal monologue only seems to perpetuate inaction. Inaction paves way for mantra to be classified as an annoying habit. The annoying habit then becomes promoted to the only remaining rung on the step-ladder, and that is placebo. Meditating on a self-imposed doctrine, mantra, boosts the ego.

How sweet is the sugar cube that provokes thought.

My mantra, since having embarked on a career path of journalistic writing:
CHECK YO'SELF -

The above bold-faced colloquial phrase is short, concise, authoritative, and quirky. It was and is my own.

What the statement invokes is the need to edit. I needed to extract the substance and rinse out the excess cerebral fluid that consists of every micro-detail that I find necessary to give the reader for him/her to relive what exactly had provoked me to write that which they are reading.

The basis for journalism is to craft my experience in such a way that rather than acting as the lens of a camera which is controlled for magnification and exposure, thereby cropping out or including in certain features according to some bias, I must act as a completely transparent, (though inevitably speckled by the motions of the air), lens that serves to project.

I was asked recently if I believed a picture was worth a thousand words.

I was jolted from my otherwise lethargic stance on the floor, partially due to the cut-off blood circulation of my legs that were being sat on underneath my own weight in an attempt to retain modesty since I was wearing a slightly above-the-knee dress.

No, I said. Clichés do not hold any weight for me; they mean nothing and in turn, a picture is a picture, not writing. A picture is not interpreted, but presented.

Writing is undoubtedly interpreted, assessed, and when it serves a journalistic purpose, writing is crafted.

‘Crafted’ does not necessarily mean to embellish, or add more of. Crafted means edited by someone, in an attempt to communicate, or share knowledge.

I was then asked if I could write a thousand words about a picture. Without hesitation, I said yes, but as it stands, clichés are but the annoying preachings of people who manage to create impact despite not being respected by at least one person, who is in all likeliness, myself.

I could write a thousand words about a picture.

These words would be random and ill-conceived. It would be fluff, and a commitment made in service of the person who created the cliché.

But, as I told my father just the other day, I will not be a civil servant.

There is a vast difference between a foreign diplomat and a foreign correspondent.

There is a vast difference between an image and text.

There is vast difference between line about to give way to the letter “I” and a line about to give way into a square.

There is a vast difference too, between a line about to give way to the letter “L” and a line about to give way into a square.

The letter is finite, the hand must, at some point, be lifted off the paper.

LXXV. The Gridlock Privilege -

Yesterday, President Obama, Governor Mitt Romney, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, some of the few major players in global politics, had crowded New York City streets due to the annual United Nations General Assembly.

The car-parades wind their way up and down the streets, marking New York City as their own territory, while the locals are forced to dodge frozen zones and drive down the otherwise avoided, tourist-dotted, main streets

I suppose this situation gives us local New Yorkers the opportunity to again appreciate the landmarks we usually regard as nuisances.

After watching the somber traffic news update prior to the Today Show yesterday morning, it struck me that we should learn from history and re-create a past example.

In 1978, the first-ever international conference on primary health care, the universal-insured right of access to healthcare, per se, was held in Alma Ata, present-day Kazakhstan, then U.S.S.R.

Maybe it is utopian of me to say that perhaps world leaders should have their summits convened in corners of the globe that are impoverished or under-developed.

As the son of victim of the Wisconsin Gurudwara shooting had said, hate can be combated via solidarity. If the President stands alongside the people belonging to a community that has been targeted, and word of this juxtaposition in mind and body spreads, the nation as a whole will recognize the target and communities will coalesce.

So why not have the world’s leaders stand upon soil that is targeted by the forces of nature? Why not propel change to a place that is unbeknownst to the people outside of it’s geographical region?

Security - In the United States, there are parades of cop and secret-service cars following and surrounding people of power, authority, all in the public eye.
Why not build up security personnel elsewhere?

I guess another critique of my idea as being absurd and implausible is the Olympics. The Olympics’ arrival into places that only have an epicenter of robust socioeconomic proportions, causes forced evictions of the impoverished in surrounding areas.

However, what has to be done is to make sure that evictions occur with scaffolding - That is to say, eviction is already, in itself, an act of coercion. Instead of using violence, people should be relocated to a place that is better. Why not build up the slums?

It’s not that easy, Reshmi.

I know that it is not easy. But ideas cannot be defeated because they are not complex enough.

“I was just determined to get the facts right and to simplify the argument without being simplistic… I didn’t want to talk down to people. I wanted to explain what I thought was going on.”

                                                                                - President Bill Clinton

(Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2zYxElCy6E)

I have never been more sure of this than now.

Politics never fails to be motivational.

LXXIX. Self-Inflicted Strife -

Superstitions are potent enablers that, ironically, prohibit exploration, experiences, and moving on.

As a child I remember my father’s early lessons about Sikhism; Ritualism is an unnecessary preoccupation; superstition a habit that prevents a peace of mind.

I understood even at that age how beneficial this philosophy could be. I didn’t think I was capable of truly believing such a lofty thought.

I used to think that only a selected few had the strength to do so; to believe and live without superstition.

Recently I had rejoiced in good news and just as quickly, I had provoked some god awful thought so recent good tidings wouldn’t expire… as if one could only be allotted a certain amount of happiness.

This cannot be true.

If it were true then perhaps no matter what my action, the outcome will occur regardless and superstitions would be concrete and need to be heeded.

That is to say, if I were to have stood outside the subway station instead of taking one train, walking and boarding the next train, I would have stood outside, and somehow ended up at home.

Believe it or not, I had been seriously contemplating standing outside in the pre-Fall chill of downtown Manhattan, hair flying about, and with one shoulder cocked an inch lower than the other by the weight of my laptop, books, and bag.

I was off balance. For clarity’s sake, I had looked off-balance.

I’m balanced now.

I’m balanced because I have begun to shun any superstitious thought. It became annoying to look over my shoulder while walking, out of precaution, and then feel the need to look over my other shoulder just in case I had missed something in my lopsided periphery.

This obsession with symmetry is disgusting.
Just refer to that woman in Europe who, according to scientifically-sound proof, has a perfectly symmetrical face and therefore qualifies as the most beautiful woman in the world. It’s absolutely absurd.

I’ll take what happens as it comes.
Everything is willed, yes.

Everything is willed by one’s self because only me, you, us, can be the agent for change, not the medium by which change magically occurs.

I cannot magically have myself teleported from the dwelling space of analysts and investment bankers, some of who, despite wearing impeccably tailored suits, look like members of the equivalent to a Mean’s Girls table.

We all have to keep at whatever “it” is. Only functionality can reap tangible outcomes.

I suppose this means that I have to be proactive in the pursuit of my Indian-film-like-life as well, doesn’t it?

LXXIII. A Dosage of This & Taking That in Stride -

I have just begun embarking on a career in journalism.

I wrote my first article that still has not been published yet, attended my first editorial meeting in which my editor conveniently failed to mention my article at all (did she even receive it?), had my first reporting experience, have set my first feature deadline, and am set to take off in two weeks, (that soon!), to make good on my long awaited desire mentioned in Post LXXI.

I feel incredibly appreciative.

I found myself grappling with not committing the same mistakes I made while at college and concluded that there are 2.

Professors, you are not off the hook;

College Academia Faults =

1% Reshmi + 99% Ideologically-biased professors hungry for infinite tenure.

Enter - 2 mistakes that encompass the 1%:

1. Live and do… in the present -

There have been many times at Penn when I felt like time was moving as slowly as the viscous silk hair serum left after multiple uses, that refuses to vacate it’s mostly empty bottle.

I think I would sometimes rush to finish something in an attempt to will the future’s presence, or conversely, take all the time in the world in an attempt to master an essay, only succeeding in handing in a heavily-edited and reflectively overworked piece.

Time will pass and then you’ll look back and realize that if you just had remembered that the future will come eventually, perhaps your craft and skills could have been honed.

2. Remember the end-product -

Anecdote: In chemistry lab in sophomore year, there was one lab where a solid precipitate had to be produced. This solid had to weigh within a range that only spanned, maybe 5 hundredths. All I remember was getting so caught up in the procedure and the corollary arithmetic that I forgot that what mattered in this ill-conceived lab was the end solid. My crystal could not fit in the vial we had to hand in and clearly, was completely out of range in weight.

What I mean to say is that at the end, you need what it is that you need; you cannot lose sight of this. Recommendations, accolade, and publication acquisition - you are forever on a conquest to retrieve what is rightfully yours.

It is not the first day of school for me. No, instead, it is the first of the firsts for me with regard to the professional realm. This is that “blank slate” that I always disregarded as being a defunct cliche.

Now is the time to construct, build, and design.

It is time to not only think long-term; It is also the time to act for the long-term.

LXXII. A Memoir in a Collection of Cassette Tapes -

I’m not sentimental but I am nostalgic, and no, ‘sentimental’ and 'nostalgic’ are not synonymous.

I don’t know if this is common or not, but I associate songs and smells to seasons and have, in my head, a kind of Hindi/Urdu/Punjabi soundtrack to my life.

Now that the sky seems to be getting darker some seconds and mere minutes earlier with each passing day, and the weather becomes extremely cool one day, before reverting to 85 degree days once again, the nearness of Fall has become more and more apparent.

The previous sentence you just finished reading, I hope, has read musically. After all, I am trying in earnest to describe how certain songs remind me of a seasonal event; a seasonal feeling or event previously experienced within said season. While writing this bold-faced sentence, I purposefully included alliterations to describe the time passing by because I wanted to reflect as accurately as possible, how I feel time to be passing before the full-fledged arrival of Fall. I also hope you take out of my repetition of the word “more”, my impatience with the future arriving - a habit that  I have possessed forever.

My habit of wanting to live in the future and never fully being content in the present, has followed me since my departure from outside the womb.

From being born two weeks late, a mature baby, to having a full head of hair that could be tied in a pony-tail by 7 months, I was always eager to gain knowledge and age beyond my years.

I do not know why.

One Hindi film’s songs in particular that I associate with Fall weather and scenery, are from Rockstar, directed by Imtiaz Ali.

Ironically, I think this verse from the Rockstar song, Jo Bhi Mein, perfectly identifies my attempt at describing how I superimpose songs’ musicality with the musicality in the happenings of my life.

___________________________________________________________________

Jo hai bhi aur nahin bhi hai yeh,
fizaa, gataa, hawaa, bahaarein -
Mujhe… Kare… Ishare…. Yeh!
Kaise kahoon… kahaani mein inki -

Translation:

Everything that’s there and those that aren’t,
These mild breeze, dark clouds, the air and the seasons themselves -
They make this gesture…and how do I narrate their tale?

Song:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXtkrpNmQy8

___________________________________________________________________

How do I narrate my tale about how my life has a continuous soundtrack, beyond what I have written thus far? 

My soundtrack is continuous and is changing.

The film Rockstar and the music for it was just released only last year. Prior to this, I had other songs that had played in my head, and I have had other movie stills juxtaposed alongside my observed reality.

My observed reality, as opposed to my unobserved reality?

Right, because my unobserved reality is the future and who knows?; The future may bring a new soundtrack.