My Struggles with Nice

People have always told me that I'm a nice person.

What a nasty word that is. It always felt like an insult. Maybe because I am originally from India where being nice is universally considered a handicap. Nice there means stupid. Nice is a doormat that the world will wipe its feet on - and stamp its sins and muck on for good measure - on its way to take the things that you were too weak to take for yourself. What a loser.

Being described as nice has always pricked me like a secret thorn somewhere inside my ears where it's dark and secret.

In school, when my friends and I were matching ourselves to the Spice Girls, I thought I matched Ginger Spice with all her crazy. My friends promptly determined that I was in fact Baby Spice.

Baby.

Babies are nice.

When we were matching ourselves to Take That, I was matched with the baby-faced member of the group. But I really identified with the cheeky one.

Too late.

My family always feared my fate as a nice person. "How will you survive in this world?" they would moan, but of course in Urdu. It made me afraid.

Somewhere inside, even today when I have clearly survived to some degree in this world (with the kind of scars no eyes can see), I dread the next person telling me that I'm (still) nice. It feels like a secret shame that I desperately try to hide under...I don't know what.

I try very, very hard to not be known to be nice. Because it's easy for me. It takes no effort at all for me to be nice. It's my default mode. I absolutely loathe things that are the opposite of nice, the kind of person that wins praises in places like India, the kind of person that is called clever, smart, and someone who will succeed in the world.

But I want to succeed. At everything I do. I want to be the absolute best I can be. And if being nice, something that I have no control over, is going to hold me back, it will break my heart. I've had my heart broken many times by many things, by many people, but breaking one's own heart is worse than someone else doing it for you. I mean, one can't just walk out on one's own self. One has to live with oneself forever. How can I bear to live with my own failings? It is my secret fear, and it is always there, forever lurking just below my consciousness in the dark where ghosts live.

The past couple of years have been particularly challenging. I live in the United States these days where a lot of people who are the opposite of nice have sprung out of the woodwork. It's not just in the news; it's people around me whom I interact with to varying degrees. Seeing them at the very least be tolerant of ugliness (and at the very worst embrace it as if out of relief) has really sent me off-kilter because, if there's one thing I dislike more than being called nice, it's seeing others being awful. It's a time of the opening of great wounds, the whipping up of great gashes in the body of us, and we cannot escape. We are both the wounded and the one doing the wounding, and come to think of it, we are also the ones who have to watch, who are being forced to watch.

So imagine my surprise seeing my instincts for being nice snarling louder the more horrible people get around me. I had always visualized my niceness as something that was limp, soggy, and cold - basically pathetic - but these days it feels like a terrifying divine serpent, hissing and swaying maniacally at the flurries that have emerged from an eruption of nightmares. I never knew that nice could be strong. I never knew it could fight. I never knew that it could be awesome in its fury.

Nice in all its forms - silly, pathetic, outraged, helpless - is the reason humans exist. And that is its place. Being horrible can't be the right way - if everyone were horrible, we wouldn't exist. Each one of us exists because someone did something nice for us at some point. Nice is the fountain of all things. It is made of iron, it is made of petals. And it is my default mode. I am proud, I am here, I am ready.

A Requiem for a Song Bird

This is a piece I wrote in a graduate-level public health course in February 2017.


I have been thinking a lot about George Michael recently. He died alone on Christmas Day in his home just outside of London (“George Michael,” 2016). His body is still with the police (“George Michael,” 2017). They determined that he died of heart failure and that it was not suspicious, but they are still conducting additional tests (Reed, 2016). I don’t know what they are looking for, but I have a feeling it may have to do with substance abuse. He was only 53 years old (Pareles, 2016).

My earliest memories are of one of my older brothers dancing and singing in front of the television to George Michael’s Wham! era music videos. This was in the early 1980s when the singer was still a teenager. He went on to become one of the most famous (and stylish!) singers in the world. I genuinely loved his voice and spent many years singing along to his recordings. Since the late 1990s, however, he became known less for his music than for his run-ins with the law. He was arrested for a “lewd act” in a male public bathroom in Beverly Hills in 1998 and subsequently came out as a gay man (Lyttle, 1998). In 2010, he spent four weeks in prison for crashing his car into a shop while under the influence (Swash, 2010). In the decade before his death, he became reclusive and suffered a series of health problems, particularly an episode that resulted in hospitalization and near death (Walker, 2011).

George Michael was one of the most sought-after sex symbols of his generation. He struggled with his sexuality, however, and hid it under a veil of super-charged heterosexuality. He began to seek out sex with strangers while still in his teens (Newman, 2016), and as an adult, wallowed in depression during the AIDS epidemic in which he lost a much-loved secret boyfriend (Moore, 2016). In his words, he suffered from “grief and self-abuse” for most of his life (Newman, 2016).

So I found it interesting to read a 2015 report on the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) website about the incidence of substance abuse and mental illness in sexual minorities (Medley et al, 2015). This was the first time they used sexuality as a variable in examining these issues (“SAMHSA report,” 2016). According to the report (Medley et al, 2015), sexual minorities are more likely than those in the sexual majority to use illicit drugs, smoke cigarettes, and drink alcohol. Further, they are more likely to have substance abuse disorders and mental illnesses, and according to other material on the website, also more likely to experience issues such as heart disease, cancer, and even violence (“Top health issues,” 2012). Given how I feel like I am grieving for George Michael, this hurt.

I was also reminded of a project I am working on with a professor in my department about gay athletes in the United States. The project uses interviews to gather data, and I have heard one elderly gay athlete talk about how some closeted gay men use drugs like amyl nitrate in order to get through having sex with a woman. It’s upsetting – it’s not fair to have to live like that. As if life isn’t difficult enough.

I am currently taking a gender studies course, and I’m learning about the androcentric nature of science and society. Also, in this public health course, we have learned that the way our society is organized is bad for some people’s health (California Newsreel, 2014). With researchers now paying attention to the role of sexuality in health, they may find that our heteronormative institutions have been setting up sexual minorities to die early and to have a poor quality of life until then. I feel that the slides on racism that we saw earlier in the semester could help us understand how that happens (Jones, 2000). SAMHSA even has a dedicated page for LGBT health on its website (“Behavioral Health Equity,” 2016).

George Michael, however, is still dead. That will not change no matter how much I want him to be alive and out in the world somewhere. It hurts, and I’m surprised by how much. I mean, I’m a media scholar, and I understand that people can form bonds with other people in the media, both real and fictitious. That probably happened with me somewhere over the years. My earliest memories of him are of a young, fashionable song bird, and really, all I ever wanted for him was to enjoy his life and be happy, the way I would wish for an older sibling, a cool uncle, or my own child. Maybe the way our society is set up made that impossible for him. Maybe all it could offer someone of his sexual orientation was a path of substance abuse and mental illness. It could have been different. And we will never know.

Rest in peace, dear, dear friend. I’m so sorry that I could not take care of you.

References

Behavioral Health Equity: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) (2016, November 9). Retrieved from https://www.samhsa.gov/behavioral-health-equity/lgbt

California Newsreel. (2014, October 22). UNNATURAL CAUSES – Trailer. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXBkOYMCAro&list=PLayHb3ehfKbfxdMAmIkFm2wlRikR4Ka6f

George Michael: Coroner yet to release singer’s body a month after his death. (2017, January 28). news.com.au. Retrieved from http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-life/george-michael-coroner-yet-to-release-singers-body-a-month-after-his-death/news-story/c03ca7a2fb727c2e3976c7d481ac90ec

George Michael: Pop superstar dies at 53. (2016, December 26). BBC. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-38432862

Jones, C. (2000). The impacts of racism on health [PowerPoint slides]. Harvard School of Public Health. Retrieved from https://blackboard.sc.edu/courses/1/PUBH700-J50-SPRING-2017/content/_10122663_1/camara%20jones.ppt

Lyttle, J. (1998, April 8). George Michael arrested over `lewd act'. The Independent. Retrieved from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/george-michael-arrested-over-lewd-act-1155246.html

Medley, G., Lipari, R. N., Bose, J., Cribb, D. S., Kroutil, L. A., & McHenry, G. (2016). Sexual orientation and estimates of adult substance use and mental health: Results from the 2015 national survey on drug use and health. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Retrieved from https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/NSDUH-SexualOrientation-2015/NSDUH-SexualOrientation-2015/NSDUH-SexualOrientation-2015.pdf

Moore, J. (2016, December 26). GQ. Retrieved from http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/george-michael-interview

Newman, V. (2016, December 26). Sex, drugs and self-destruction: The dark side of George Michael he couldn't fight. Mirror. Retrieved from http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/sex-drugs-self-destruction-dark-9515044

Pareles, J. (December 25, 2016). George Michael, pop superstar, is dead at 53. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/25/arts/music/george-michael-dead.html?_r=0

Reed, R. (2016, December 30). Autopsy: George Michael's Cause of Death 'Inconclusive'. Rolling Stone. Retrieved from http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/autopsy-george-michaels-cause-of-death-inconclusive-w458442

SAMHSA report shows higher rates of substance use and mental illness among sexual minority adults. (2016, October 11). Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Retrieved from https://www.samhsa.gov/newsroom/press-announcements/201610110100

Swash, R. (2010, July 6). George Michael arrested after crashing car into shop. Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/jul/06/george-michael-arrested

Top health issues for LGBT populations [PowerPoint slides]. (2012). Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Retrieved from http://store.samhsa.gov/shin/content//SMA12-4684/SMA12-4684.ppt

Walker, P. (2011, December 23). George Michael gives tearful account of near-death pneumonia ordeal. Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/dec/23/george-michael-reveals-pneumonia-ordeal

Nuzhat and Khattu See The World

We were on our way to the airport for that flight back to Muscat. I was in my 20s, a young woman who had been numb for a few years, weakened from the onslaught of womanhood, a shadow of the unrestrained child I used to be, somehow always in a haze, always elegant and struggling to conceal the rest.

The clunky taxi, smelling like petrol and grease like everything else in industrial Lucknow, made a chaotic stop by a dusty gali. My brother, mother and I got out and met a gaunt dusty man at the entrance. Pigs, an unusual sight in the part of Lucknow I knew, snorted and squealed at what I learned was the entrance of the Muslim cemetery. My heart contracted with the indignity – didn’t this bother anyone else? Maybe the world was too tired by now. I didn’t let anyone know. No one would want to hear me.

The caretaker led us through what looked like a large field, dusty and barren with pebbles and stones scattered throughout. Suddenly we stopped, and someone pointed to the ground in front of me. Nuzhat Bua. She lay buried under where I stood. I wouldn’t even have known if the caretaker hadn’t told me. There was some sort of makeshift marker, a piece of wood or stone half sunk in the grass as if left by an ancient child on the grave of a beloved pet long forgotten. My feet tingled, my heart contracted – shouldn’t I not be standing on top of her? I didn’t want to hurt her, even though I knew I couldn’t.

I said nothing. We said a quick prayer. The caretaker hurriedly pointed to a similar spot on the ground where my grandmother, who had died many years earlier, was buried.

We were soon back in the taxi, and my story continued while Nuzhat Bua’s and her mother’s lay at the bottom of the pig-ridden cemetery in some odd corner of Lucknow that I have never visited since and wouldn’t know how to find again.

Many years later, when I had wrestled with womanhood and flung it to the ground, I would think of Nuzhat Bua again and again. She supposedly wasn’t very well-liked. Some people credited her sharp tongue with her never being married. I was too young to understand, but she was the only adult who ever made sense to me. I’ve heard the same things about me too as an adult, although the times are changing and such women are praised.

The last time I saw her, she was championing my journey to America. I don’t remember our last words, but I hadn’t thought that they would be our last. She hadn’t either. She had recently started travelling for leisure – Muscat, Jaipur, and Hong Kong – and was beginning to discover a friend and accomplice in me, a teenager perched on the precipice of childhood, the country of adults and the rest of my life within sight. We had plans to travel together, my functioning as her English-speaking companion as she took me around the world. I couldn't wait. Neither could she. It was so exciting.

Nuzhat Bua would die in six months, and I never saw her again except very suddenly years later at that cemetery where she still lies, possibly some of her genes part of my body as I move forward in life and see the world we were supposed to discover together. Since then I have seen many things. The Grand Canyon, Hollywood, the White House, Native American reservations, and the Ku Klux Klan. I have even been to Jaipur, straining my eyes to catch Nuzhat Bua still amongst the mass of humanity that is Anywhere, India. But I only see her in dreams, always telling her, “you shouldn’t be here, you are supposed to be dead.” I wonder when those dreams will stop and what it all means.

How To Bloom

My dear potted plant,

I love you. I bought you for cheap at WalMart a few weeks ago, but I loved you before then. I loved you when I was transplanting you into your new pot and packing fresh new soil around your naked roots in your new home, the patio of my apartment. I didn't hurt you when I did that, did I? When I had yanked you by your stems out of the broken little plastic cup you had come in, your roots looked so frightened, like a shivering little kitten that had got wet in the rain. You had looked so settled in the cup you had come in, decrepit as it was, but I knew you needed more space to grow. It must've startled you, having no soil to hold on to for a while. It must've taken your roots time to grasp your new soil and get used to the new watering schedule. Could you feel my love when I patted you down with rich, new soil in your new pot? I love you. All I want is for you to grow, for you to be happy. What else is there?

I know what it feels like to be uprooted. I know what it's like to have to transplant yourself time and time again. Maybe you were like me, a young sapling that had never known the soil its parent tree had come from. Maybe you were always the exotic plant whose foreign name no one could pronounce, the plant that no one knew what to do with. Maybe you won't take to your native soil again the way those who were never uprooted do. But that's okay. One can only be where one is, one place at a time. The best you can really do is give yourself some time to get used to your new home. I can promise you that one day your roots will grip your new soil and that your stems will rise crisp and fresh again. There is no shame in adapting to your new environment, and you will flourish if you let yourself just be where you are. It doesn't matter if people can't pronounce your name - they will come to you themselves when they see how comfortable you are in your own pot.

Your mother in all seasons.

My Husband and My Son

Sonal and I were walking arm-in-arm outside his parents' home in Delhi. We were still boyfriend and girlfriend in those days. It had been a difficult relationship - he was training to be a neurologist in America, and I had just finished my year-long internship with New Delhi Television. We talked everyday over the phone, but sometimes that wasn't enough. I was so happy that he was visiting Delhi. At the time, he was the only happy thing in my life. I had started noticing then what I know now, that in his presence my mind would quieten and I wouldn't feel anxious anymore. I wouldn't feel like running, running the way I had felt my whole adult life. By then we'd only spent a few weeks in each other's presence. Our long-distance relationship would last for two years.

The sun was setting, it was getting cold. Diwali was only a few days away. Sonal and I were walking around his colony. He was telling me stories about his friends from school, from med school, about his favourite movies, his all-time best jokes. He was making me laugh. I had my arm around his and was smiling at him as he laughed at old memories that he wanted to give to me. I felt so pretty and delicate.

I suddenly felt like time had sped forward. I was still here, a happy bent old woman with white hair and an impish twinkle in her eye. This handsome young man full of promise and potential and goodness and kindness looked a lot like Sonal but was my son. I felt so proud of him. He looked exactly like his father had when we had walked arm-in-arm outside his parents' house in Delhi. We had been young then, the way my lovely son was now.

The Hated One

On October 30, 2011, some young people I had met at the NDTV media institute became one:

""One year," the old man almost growled as he wagged a gnarly finger at his daughter. His son, his younger more menacing version, darkly looked on. "One year, and then you are back."

The young woman stood looking down at the ground with her arms crossed over her chest. She had been leaning against the wall, and if she had had eyes at the back of her head, she would have noticed the chalky whitewash stains that now ran down her back. Her armpits burned, her forehead had been knotted for a few days.

The old man put his finger away and eyed the Sphinx before him. He didn't trust women, particularly silent ones, even if it were his daughter, especially if it were his daughter. She never listened. Well, she'd hear what he'd tell her, she had no choice, but she never listened. She never confided. She always held back. He could tell. It's when those knots would appear above her black eyes, and when a shadow would pass over those eyes, like as if a dark curtain had been drawn between him and her mind. He knew this about his firstborn. He could never break in. She wouldn't let him. She wouldn't let him reach in and touch her thoughts, guide her thoughts. How he hated the woman she was growing up to be, it disgusted him. He didn't like those kind of women. They were ungodly, sickening. They had too much will, they could never be possessed because they'd just lock you out. It didn't matter if you pushed or bought them things. It was like forcing someone to acknowledge that you existed. It was more like pleading. Pleading with someone who was supposed to be obeying you instead. It was insulting. Humiliating. It made him feel like the tempestuous child, it made her the one with the power. She would have the power to deny him an audience. Him. The father. Repeated humiliations from this child since the day she had been born. Her mother, Allah bless her departed spirit, had not been like this. She would listen to him. She would protest but at the end of the day he was the head of the family, and she knew her place. She never questioned his judgment. She did what he told her, what he knew was good for her. She was a good woman. But this daughter of his, how he hated her. If only she would just listen before she ruined herself, ruined herself, and shamed them all. It was only a matter of time before she did, whether she knew it or not.

"If Zafar knew better, he would not permit this. You must keep your honour, or what shame, what shame you shall bring upon yourself."

Shame. Zafar. The things that had been planned for her. The things she wanted to do. All the things she wanted to do, all the thoughts, all the possibilities that were always in her mind. She could never share them, there was no one here to receive them. No one listened to her. No one had ever listened to her. Zafar?  Would he listen to her, would he see her? She remembered the first time she had stopped herself from telling her father the things that had been on her mind. She felt the same about Zafar. And her brother? They were all the same. There was no one here. No, she would have to do this. She would have to step out and see if there were others like her out there."

Dream Tenant

On October 3, 2011, I fictionalised myself because I thought it would help me make sense:

"The short, fat, smelly landlady had never had a stranger tenant. The girl went to work and came back, she paid her rent on time, she was always polite and spoke in an old accent the landlady had only heard in her childhood. Lately the girl had stopped going out. She still paid her rent on time, but sometimes the landlady could hear her crying in her room. In the middle of the day when all the other girls were out at work or at school. The landlady didn't know but the girl would cry at night too, but on the terrace where she wouldn't disturb her roommate. That strange foreign tenant in that room. Not really foreign, the girl was Indian but had never lived in India. Until now. Now she cried, she howled locked up in that room. She talked to herself sometimes. The landlady once thought she heard the girl say, "what is real?" between sobs, but she couldn't be sure. What kind of a person talks like that anyway, it made no sense.

The girl had first started asking that question 5 years ago. "What is real?" she had asked her mother, but her mother had not understood the question. "Amma, tell me what is real?" They were in America then, the girl had been a success - American degrees, an American job, a green card on the way. An American accent, an American attitude, American dollars in the American bank. But lately, it had all started seeming unreal. The popcorn at the theater had started tasting chalky, her mascara had stopped helping her once sparkly eyes pop. She'd started realising that every hot, young, new Hollywood starlet had fake lips and fake breasts. She'd tried so many things, but before long they'd run out. They weren't real. The female role models on TV weren't real, all the makeup she had bought wasn't real, her beautiful apartment that no one visited wasn't real. One day she realised that soon she was going to stop being real too.

What is real, what is real."

Method Writer

Newspaper cutting from Muscat about an opera set in ancient Egypt

 

I'm writing a book on ancient Egypt, and while I am not allowed to say much more about it, I want to share that this project is different because it treads a fine line between fiction and non-fiction. It's difficult making a setting come alive when no one's really seen it, and I have found from experience that whenever I have to write about an era gone by, it helps to immerse myself in as much everyday detail about life back when. Seems like I write best when I can shut myself in a room and feel like I'm walking amongst the people I am making up and eating the food they are eating and feeling the fabric they are wearing. When I was a little girl and used to live mostly in my head, I had become a little obssessed with ancient Egypt and had wanted to live there. This was in the time long before the Internet or easy access to books, but I still remember a children's book about ancient Egypt that I had borrowed from the British Council library in Muscat, Oman. I can still see the book open before me to a page where the artist had drawn the picture of an Egyptian home. The artist had also drawn people walking about the mud house - through the door, on the stairs, in the kitchen. I felt like they were my friends, that if I went outside I would run into them. Of course I knew them. These little people made of ink, they had names and hobbies.

I later went and rebuilt the house using a shoebox and used my miniature animal toys to play in it. My favourite was the cat that was of the colour of the chicken curry my mother would make. The cat was always the heroine of all my games, and often another animal would be in love with her, but she would be too alone in her great thoughts and adventures to notice.

These days I feel like I'm living in ancient Egypt again. I've come across similar drawings of houses in all the research I've been doing about that time, and I think I've lived in all of them. Everytime I research this way and after my project has been finished, I carry with me a feeling of fondness for that time, that country, those people lost in the dust. I think of them often like I would of an old lover I once sparkled my eyes at because he smiled at me. It almost makes me cry sometimes.

No Pet of Mine

I hate keeping birds in cages. The whole time I was growing up in Oman my mother and I would clash over the sort of pet our family could have. I wanted a hamster, but my mother wouldn't let me have one. I then wanted a cat (I'd called many places that had cats up for adoption but my parents never helped me get beyond that point) but my mother wouldn't allow an animal indoors. So I took to making friends with the neighbourhood alley cats. Over time they figured out where I lived, and one started regularly giving birth in our ground floor balcony. Every 6 months for a few years. I'd bring those kittens inside to play with when they got older. Those were my happiest moments. Kitties playing with me, lounging about in my lap because they trusted me. Because they wanted to play with me. Because we were different animals but we understood each other through our eyes and body language. I miss them. My lap has been empty for so long.

My mother thought the safest pets to get were birds. Over the years we bought single budgerigar pairs - I always got to pick the colour - because we'd heard that they'd lay eggs and have families. We knew other families whose budgies bred like rabbits. And smelled like them too. Now that I think of it, I don't know why it was so important that we have birds that breed and have families and generations. In cages. What was the point? So that it would amuse us? Oh, look, they're like us too!

I never felt attached to our birds. We would bring them home from smelly bird shops in a shoebox that had holes stabbed into them with a knife or scissors. I remember sitting in the back seat of our car with the shoebox in my lap and feeling the birds scraping across the cardboard as they blindly slid around in the dark. Then we'd move them into their cages. Were they supposed to be pleased about that, their brand new cage? I hated seeing them sitting all day long in there. There was no room in there for them to properly fly even; how suffocating would that be, how maddening. I'd wonder how I'd feel if I was made to sit in a cage my whole life, even if I got all the food and water I needed.

I never took ownership of our birds, I left them for my mother to tend to. I'm not the one who put you in that cage, I think I was trying to say, your imprisonment is not on my head. I'd stop by to say hello to them every once in a while though. I liked my cats because they were free, because they didn't make me feel guilty, because they could do what they wanted and come back to me when they needed me.

At least the birds weren't alone. We always bought single pairs, so at least they had each other to talk to. Sometimes they'd chirp so much and for so long that my family would want them to stop, to let us take our afternoon nap in peace. Sometimes they'd chirp all night long, so we'd have to drape a cloth over their cage to put them to sleep. But at least they had each other. I liked it when they talked to each other, I wondered what they were talking about. I always wanted them to have something to talk about. I always wanted them to nibble each other's beaks, it made me happy to see them have each other. They were technically not my pets, but I still felt bad for not setting them free. What would my parents say if I just shook them out of their cages and let them go? We must've had at least 20 birds over the years, and I kept an emotional distance from every one of them.

And they'd always die. They never seemed to lay eggs in our house. It was always the same story. The chirping bird couple would chitter-chatter for a few months, then one day when I would go to say goodmorning or howareyou then I'd find one lying dead on its side at the bottom of the cage. The other bird - the husband/wife, I could never tell - would be sitting quietly in the corner farthest from the dead bird. And it would never sing again. I would feel bad for it and spend more time talking to it, but it never really noticed me. It would just sit there by itself and not move much. Definitely not say much. I'd bring my cats over to meet it; at first the bird would feel frightened and move away into a corner, but over time it learned to not fear my cats even if they were lying sprawled out over its cage.

But it was always a matter of weeks before I found the bird dead too, lying on its side with its eyes shut. Have you ever seen a dead bird? Have you ever held it? It feels light, like it's made of wood chippings and sawdust. I was always surprised everytime I held a dead bird because it felt like it ought to have been heavier. The closed eyelid of a dead bird always looks like it belongs to an old man, a tired old man who is tired of life and tired of blinking and wants to sleep. It's wrinkly, it's thick and thin at the same time. The claws are always curled into a loose tired fist. It looks asleep. It looks too still. Too still.

I hate keeping birds in cages. I hate it. I want them out there, living out their lives, flying wherever they are supposed to go. I don't want them dying on my watch, not on my watch, not on my conscience.

The Bombay Girl from Elsewhere

"Where are you originally from?" I asked the young Times Now graphics producer who had been raised in Kolkata and gone to college in Delhi. She wore seeing glasses, a dark blue summer dress, black Roman-style sandals, and her long dark brown hair was loose about her shoulders and back.

"Oh, you will have never heard of it," she had said, "it's a place called Saharanpur in UP."

She was ready to move on to the next subject, but I didn't let her. "Saharanpur, of course! I've stopped there before while travelling between Lucknow and Delhi; they're known for their pottery!"

The girl perked up, and we chatted for the next half hour about our experiences as women in the anachronistic Avadh Dust Bowl. I will now always think of her everytime I see the mug I bought from a roadside street shop in the middle of nowhere in Saharanpur in 1997.

We Called Her Ruby

The last time I met Ruby Baaji was the night before I was about to fly out to the US for university. It was August 1999, and I had recently turned 18. She was married by then, the mother of 2 young children - a baby girl and a boy - and she gave me a present that I kept for a long time. A pouch full of makeup brushes. A blue, yellow, and green pouch. The brushes inside had pale white handles. It was a rather grown-up present for me from a person who symbolised my childhood. Our relationship had always been that way. I had no elder sisters, and she had been to me what I think one is like. I still remember her giggling in that tinkly laugh of hers as she handed me the present. Ruby Baaji used to laugh everytime she felt like it. Her eyes would grow small, and she'd slightly lean back and hunch as she laughed from head to toe. I'd felt slightly embarassed and self-conscious about the make-up pouch. It meant that she was looking at me as if I were a young lady and not a gender-free school kid (we still had those in those days). I had not been ready for that. Our relationship had been changing as the both of us were growing into our 20s and the things that can mean, and this was another new thing for me.

Ruby baaji died in a car accident a few months later in early 2000. I was in my second semester at university in the US at the time. That's around the time I bought my first lipstick. A dark brown one. Browns were in in those days. Ruby Baaji had been about to move to Canada with her husband and children but had decided to accompany her family and her in-laws for a quick umrah in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. They had all been returning to Muscat by road when one of the tires of the car had exploded. Ruby Baaji had been flung out of the fast-moving car with her little daughter who had been sitting in her lap. I was told that they had both been found lying by the road outside, her little daughter unhurt, still shielded by her mother's body. But Ruby Baaji had already passed away from internal injuries. She was eventually buried in a cemetery somewhere near Riyadh. That was 12 years ago. Was it really? I think Ruby Baaji was 8 years older than me. She was born on May 1st; I remember because I had made a big deal about it being the same as Labour Day. I had had a 365-days storybook - one story or poem for every day of the year - and I had made her read the story that was listed under her birthday. It was about a caterpillar that felt ugly and wanted to be beautiful until it went to sleep and woke up a beautiful butterfly. It was crowned the May Queen by all the insects, the most beautiful of them all. The moral of the story was that some people may not be born beautiful but they can grow beautiful.

Ruby Baaji had once cut out butterflies for me from a pretty writing pad she owned. She had put them in an envelope for me to take home. It was on one of those evenings when my parents would drop me off at her house because they had a serious grown-up event to go to. I spent many days like that with her. Ruby Baaji was very popular with the younger kids she knew, myself very much included. We were all in primary or middle school and she was in high school. We all used to bounce around her at parties or whenever we stayed over at her place. And Ruby Baaji used to talk to us like we were the most interesting little people ever. She used to laugh with us all the time.

I guess you could say that Ruby Baaji was one of those soft, feminine kinds of girl, the sort that wears red on Valentine's Day and likes babies. She was thin, not too tall, and wore glasses (contact lenses weren't common in those days, I only got mine in high school). She had pale skin, the kind that grows yellower the lighter it gets. She had a long smooth face and long delicate limbs. I remember her feet, they were very beautiful. Long delicate light-looking feet with very clean skin. Sometimes I look at my feet, and when they're in their best shape, they almost look like hers.

Ruby Baaji was very talkative, and she used to laugh a lot. Her voice was husky but not raspy, you could call it a girly breathy. I, like all the other little girls, used to follow her around like a tail. Our mothers used to shop together a lot, and I have a memory of Ruby Baaji and I sitting together on the dirty worn-out carpet that covered some wooden steps in that store and her singing the title song from 'Chandni' to me. "Khaali haath nahin aate, khaali haath nahin aate..." she tinkled in her sweet voice. I think we were sitting next to a wall with a poster of Sridevi's, possibly in one of her signature tight chiffon saris from that time. I have since stopped by that store a number of times or just simply walked by, and every single time I can see Ruby Baaji and I sitting on that dirty carpet and singing songs from that old Hindi (the word 'Bollywood' hadn't been invented then) movie. The Sridevi poster has long since gone, but they always do.



Sometime after a spate of Salman Khan starrers had been released in the early 90s that I noticed that Ruby Baaji used to talk about him all the time. I remember one dinner party where she was explaining to us clueless younger girls that Salman Khan's character was more noble than Sanjay Dutt's character in 'Saajan' because he had decided to sacrifice his true love. Everytime I now see that old Salman Khan - thinner, swifter, a better actor - from 'Saajan', 'Pathar ke Phool', 'Maine Pyaar Kiya', I think of Ruby Baaji at that table in that restaurant I don't remember.

Ruby Baaji left Muscat for university in India, and I began to see less of her. I remember the first time she returned on a holiday; I'd visited her at her home with my mother, but I'd been nervous and awkward. So had she. We'd had less to talk about. We'd become more formal, and she was getting along better with our moms. Something had changed between us. I guess we didn't have as many things in common anymore, and I'd only met her after a long time. I had brought my Arabic test paper from school with me to show her the way I used to show her every small thing before; I'd aced the test, and I had wanted to tell her that, but it somehow felt stupid and unimportant when I did. I told her about how I was angry with my parents for not letting me visit my Jain best friend's house just because in India the Ayodhya Masjid had been demolished by a right-wing Hindu mob. I must've been in 6th grade then. Eleven years old. I told her that it made no sense. I didn't think she agreed, but she didn't say anything. I think I stopped talking to her too much after that, it all felt too awkward. And I just felt ridiculous, I don't know why. But it was alright.

And the years sped by. I discovered boys and menstruation and my own movie star crush (Shahrukh Khan, right after 'Baazigar') that lasted me well into high school. Ruby Baaji entered her 20s, got married into a family we also knew in Muscat, and had kids. I only saw her at grown-up parties where I had to wear grown-up clothes and behave myself. My hair was longer, and I had learned how to wear liquid eyeliner. Ruby Baaji looked like light, like she was truly made of light. She was young, newly married, and always laughing. She looked wonderful and glowy and dressed so beautifully. I remember running into her at a party when I was in high school. She wore a gharara, I can't remember what colour, but she looked like light. I was shy and only spoke to her formally, but she was still very friendly. I didn't know how to behave with her - like the 10-year-old I used to be or the chirpy 17-year-old I thought I was supposed to be. But she was still very full of life. And happy. I think she was the type of person that has a clean heart. Everyone doted on her. All the aunties and uncles and even the young ones. She'd grown up around all of us. Even her two little children would call her Ruby because that's what they heard everyone around them call her. Ruby, Ruby, Ruby. She once sent me a card that I think I still have with me somewhere. It had two ducklings, one blue and one pink, cosying up together on the front. The card read 'I like it when you're nice...' on the outside and '...but I love it when you're naughty!' on the inside. It was adorable. It was only many years later that I realised that at that point, when I had just finished high school, that neither she nor I had realised in our innocence that it was not a card that was meant for friends.

Her real name was actually Masarrat. I remembered her very strongly yesterday because of a glowy young wife I saw in a Pakistani drama the other day. She had long hair like Ruby Baaji's and was very light-skinned. She wore a white gharara that made her glow. She had very little make-up on because she didn't need any, she glowed without it. I've been meaning to write about Ruby Baaji for such a long time. I'm 31 now, she would've been almost 40. After Ruby Baaji died, her mother found an old friendship band in her belongings that I had made for her as a kid. Did she really die 12 years ago? I can still hear, see her giving me that make-up bag.

Star Parents

Watch the short film at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSMtNX-hXJ4

Dueling Partners

My parents satdown to test our new carrom board, and I decided to test my new DSLR.

Malcolm and Betty X

"The unease Malcolm had shown toward marrying Betty almost immediately manifested itself in their lives together as man and wife. The challenges they faced were linked, in part, to the general problems that many black Americans encounter when adopting Qur'anic standards for marriage. Many basic beliefs Muslims have about its purposes and duties are at odds with Western Christian values. Another serious issue is the concept of machismo that some African-American males carry into Islam. The Nation had long drawn its converts from the lowest rungs of black society, and many of its flock came from difficult or self-destructive backgrounds. Those who, like Malcolm, had converted while in prison often continued to bear painful scars, both physical and psychological, from that experience. Trauma can last an entire lifetime, and the Nation had no self-help program to assist men in overcoming such emotional problems. Malcolm's prior sexual history had been largely defined by encounters with prostitutes and women like Bea Caragulian. Now he would have an obligation not only to provide financially for Betty but to address her emotional and sexual needs."

- Manning Marable, 'Malcolm X'

The Men and Women of the Nation

"Elijah Muhammad's views about gender relations would be set out in this 1965 manifesto Message to the Blackman in America. To Muhammad, males and females occupied separate spheres. Black women had been the mothers of civilisation, and they would play a central role in the construction of the world to come. Metaphorically, they were the field in which a mighty Nation would grow; thus it was essential for black men to keep the devil, the white man, away from his "field," because the black woman was far more valuable than any cash crop. There was no question that all women had to be controlled; the question was, who should exercise that control, the white man or the black? He also warned against birth control, a devilish plot to carry out genocide against black babies. It was precisely a woman's ability to produce children that gave the weaker sex its value. "Who wants a sterile wom[a]n?" he asked rhetorically.

What attracted so many intelligent, independent African-American women to such a patriarchal sect? The sexist and racist world of the 1940s and 1950s provides part of the answer. Many African-American women in the paid labour force were private household workers and routinely experienced sexual harassment by their white employers. The [Nation of Islam], by contrast, offered them the protections of private patriarchy. Like their middle-class white counterparts, African-American women in the Nation were not expected to hold full-time jobs, and even if Malcolm's frequent misogynistic statements, especially in his sermons, were extreme even by the sexist standards of the NOI, it offered protection, stability, and a kind of leadership. Malcolm's emphasis on the sanctity of the black home made an explicit promise "that families won't be abandoned, that women will be cherished and protected, [and] that there will be economic stability."

Temple women during those years rarely perceived themselves as being subjugated. The [Muslim Girls Training] was its own center of activity, in which members participated in neighbourhood activities and were encouraged to monitor their children's progress in school. At the Newark NOI temple, not far from Temple No. 7, women were involved in establishing small businesses. They also took an active role in working with their local board of education as well as other community concerns. It is likely that Harlem's women made similar efforts. As with those who were working in civil rights, women in the NOI had in mind the future of the black community. What attracted them to the Nation was the possibility of strong, healthy families, supportive relationships, and personal engagements in building crime-free black neighbourhoods and ultimately an independent black nation."

- Manning Marable, 'Malcolm X'

Those Black Kids at School

"The Little children were constantly drilled in the principles of Garveyism, to such an extent that they expressed their black nationalist values at school. For example, on one morning following the Pledge of Allegiance and the singing of the national anthem at school, Wilfred informed his teacher that blacks also had their own anthem. Instructed to sing it, Wilfred complied: "It began with the words...'Ethiopia, the land of the free...' That creates some problems," Wilfred recalled, "because here is this little nigger that feels he is just equal to anybody else, he got his own little national anthem that he sings, and he's proud of it...It wasn't the way they wanted things to go."

...

"When Malcolm went to Mason, you could see a change in him," Wilfred recalled. "Some for the better, some for the worse...He would complain about some of the things the teachers would try to do - they would try to discourage him from taking courses that black people weren't suposed to take; in other words, keep him in his place." It hadn't bothered him particularly during the previous year when white students who had befriended him continued to call him nigger. But now Malcolm was keenly aware of the social distance between himself and others. An English teacher, Richard Kaminska, sharply discouraged him from becoming a lawyer. "You've got to be realistic about being a nigger," Kaminska advised him. "A lawyer - that's no realistic goal for a nigger...Why don't you plan on carpentry?" Malcolm's grades plummeted and his truculence increased. Within several months, he found himself expelled."

- Manning Marable, 'Malcolm X'

What Happened to Eduard

"Eduard sat for long hours staring up at the sky in Brasilia, watching the clouds moving across the blue - beautiful clouds, but without a drop of rain in them to moisten the dry earth of the central Brazilian plateau. He was as empty as they were.

If he continued as he was, his mother would fade away with grief, his father would lose all enthusiasm for his career,  and both would blame each other for failing in the upbringing of their beloved son. If he gave up his painting, the visions of Paradise would never see the light of day, and nothing else in this world could ever give him the same feelings of joy and pleasure.

He looked around him, he saw his paintings, he remembered the love and meaning he had put into each brushstroke, and he found every one of his paintings mediocre. He was a fraud, he wanted something for which he had not been chosen, and the price of which was his parents' disappointment.

Visions of Paradise were for the chosen few, who appeared in books as heroes and martyrs of the faith in which they believed, people who knew from childhood what the world wanted of them; the so-called facts in that first book he had read were the inventions of a storyteller.

At supper time, he told his parents that they were right; it was just a youthful dream; his enthusiasm for painting had passed. His parents were pleased, his mother wept with joy and embraced her son, and everything went back to normal.

That night, the ambassador secretly commemorated his victory by opening a bottle of champage which he drank alone. When he went to bed, his wife - for the first time in many months - was already sleeping peacefully.

The following day, they found Eduard's room in confusion, the paintings slashed and the boy sitting in a corner, gazing up at the sky. His mother embraced him, told him how much she loved him, but Eduard didn't respond.

He wanted nothing more to do with love, he was fed up with the whole business. He had thought that he could just give up and follow his father's advice, but he had advanced too far in his work; he had crossed the abyss that separates a man from his dream and now there was no going back.

He couldn't go forwards or back. It was easier just to leave the stage."

- Paolo Coelho, 'Veronika Decides To Die'

Madwoman

"She had understood perfectly what Dr. Igor meant, just as she understood that, although she had always felt loved and protected, there had been one missing element that would have transformed that love into a blessing: she should have allowed herself to be a little madder.

Her parents would still have loved her, but, afraid of hurting them, she had not dared to pay the price of her dream, the dream that was buried in the depths of her memory, although sometimes it was awoken by a concert or by a beautiful record she happened to hear. Whenever her dream was awoken, though, the feeling of frustration was so intense that she immediately sent it back to sleep again.

Veronika had known since childhood that her true vocation was to be a pianist.

This was something she had felt ever since her first lesson, at twelve. Her teacher had recognised her talent too and had encouraged her to become a professional. However, whenever she had felt pleased about a competition she had just won and said to her mother that she intended giving up everything and dedicating herself to the piano, her mother would look at her fondly and say: 'No one makes a living playing the piano, my love.'

'But you were the one who wanted me to have lessons.'

'To develop your artistic gifts, that's all. A husband likes that kind of thing in a wife, he can show you off at parties. Forget about being a pianist, and go and study law, that's the profession of the future.'

Veronika did as her mother asked, sure that her mother had enough experience of life to understand reality. She finished her studies, went to university, got a good degree, but ended up working as a librarian.

'I should have been madder.' But as doubtless happens with most people, she had found this out too late."

- Paulo Coelho, 'Veronika Decides To Die'

Do You Know This Woman?

"It's true that in her life she had seen many things through to their ultimate consequences, but only unimportant things, like prolonging a quarrel that could easily have been resolved with an apology, or not phoning a man she was in love with, simply because she thought the relationship would lead nowhere. She was intransigent about the easy things, as if trying to prove to herself how strong and indifferent she was, when, in fact, she was just a fragile woman, who had never been an outstanding student, never excelled at school sports, and had never succeeded in keeping the peace at home.

She had overcome her minor defects, only to be defeated by matters of fundamental importance. She had managed to appear utterly independent, when she was, in fact, desperately in need of company. When she entered a room, everyone would turn to look at her, but she almost always ended the night alone, in the convent, watching a TV that she hadn't even bothered to have properly tuned in. She gave all her friends the impression that she was a woman to be envied, and she expended most of her energy in trying to behave in accordance with the image she had created of herself.

Because of that, she had never had enough energy to be herself, a person who, like everyone else in the world, needed other people in order to be happy. But other people were so difficult. They reacted in unpredictable ways, they surrounded themselves with defensive walls, they behaved just as she did, pretending they didn't care about anything. When someone more open to life appeared, they either rejected them outright, or made them suffer, considering them inferior, 'ingenuous'.

She may have impressed a lot of people with her strength and determination, but where had it left her? In the void. Utterly alone. In Villete. In the anteroom of death."

- Paulo Coelho, 'Veronika Decides to Die'

The Saddest Girl in the World

I recently came across this photo of mine from 2007. I was 26. I don't much remember my 20s, and I don't think about that time of my life too often because there is nothing to think about. I don't even look at any of my photographs from then, not that there are very many. It just seems like a long stretch - 10 years - of nothing. A badly-focussed poorly-exposed photograph that you don't even want to look at because you can't make anything out. A waste of film.

I was going back in time on all the photographs I've been tagged in on Facebook when I came across this one. It made me jump. It made me jerk away from the laptop screen. It made me pull my fingers away from the keyboard. It was the saddest girl I'd ever seen. Her sadness was overpowering. She was looking at me. And she had my face. And my clothes. And my costume jewellery. And my red purse. I liked that red purse. I even remember thinking back then that I looked really nice in this photo. But the first thing I saw now, 5 years later, was the weak smile and confused eyes. Despite the makeup and the hair and the bag.

The photo had been taken on my 2007 trip to New York. On that particular day I had been visiting cousins in Poughkeepsie, and they had taken me to a club in the evening. I hadn't really wanted to go. I had started finding clubs too noisy and too much of a bother. Clubs can be the loneliest places where you can stand there looking like a thousand bucks, surrounded by other beautiful looking people, the music from the loudspeakers making your ribcage vibrate like the glass of water from Jurassic Park or when a dog barks at you, and yet, and yet, and yet, all you are really conscious of is how your clothes just don't seem to fit you right and how your feet hurt in your party shoes and how your smallest toes will once again have no feeling in them for the next couple of days.

My life in those days was materially comfortable. I had a good job with a Big 4 firm, and I was financially independent, living all by myself in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In America. Where everybody wants to be. I had a nice car, a nice apartment, and a green card application on the way. I was supposed to be the picture of the happiest girl in the world.

I had been planning my trip to New York for months. I only got a certain number of holidays in the year, and I had to coordinate it very carefully. I never took any time off even when I was sick because I wanted to keep as many days as possible for my annual trip back home to Oman. I had been able to take off for a full 9 days to New York because of a national holiday + bookend weekends + minimal leave days. It was great! I needed it. I hated being in Tulsa. I had been there by then for 2.5 years, my life still the same as it had been when I had first moved there. It had felt like this was it. This was really it? But it felt so empty. I'd hated being in Tulsa so much that I'd started going to Oklahoma City (an hour-and-a-half away) over the weekend, just to have lunch or dinner. And the Big Apple was supposed to be the biggest meal of them all.


My parents in Oman had been furious about my trip. They had told me at the last minute that they had wanted me to go to Chicago instead where I would be taken to the Islamic Society of North America's convention to be paraded around in front of other single Muslims and their parents. But I had wanted to go to New York. Not only had they told me at the last minute but I didn't think they had the right to tell me how to use my precious holidays when I wanted to use a small portion of them to be with friends somewhere else where I wouldn't feel lonely. And I refused to be paraded around at some religious conference in front of the kind of people I despised. My parents had been furious. They had said a number of things to me over the phone which had hurt. They had asked me if I was chemically unbalanced, if there was some medical problem or physical deformity I was hiding that would be exposed if I got married. I was even asked if I was a lesbian.

No. I had just been living by myself in America for 10 years without any social support and wanted to use a small part of my holidays to visit my best friend from my school days who was the only person around whom I could drop my defenses without fear of attack.

My best friend lived in New York City, and all I ever talked to her about that whole trip was how I felt like I was supposed to be elsewhere, doing something else, helping people, I just didn't know how. A few hours later we had our palms read by a large Romanian woman dressed like a sweaty trucker in a soggy white tanktop and crushed shorts in the basement of a dirty building in a smelly street in the Village. She had charged us 5 dollars for her service. She had told me that I needed to be somewhere else. She had asked me what I did for a living. I had lied and told her that I was a writer. She had looked confused, shaken her head, and said, "well...whatever, you're supposed to be helping people." Two years later I visited another fortune teller on Gerard Street in Toronto, Canada. He'd looked at my palm and then given me a piercing look with one eye that seemed larger than the other. "I've seen hands like these before," he had said, "you have been hurt a lot, but you need to be helping people." What did that mean, why did people say that to me, why did I feel like that all the time too. Why didn't someone tell me. Was I supposed to change my occupation? Was I supposed to become a nun and move to Calcutta? Start med school in my late 20s? Start a non-profit? Start my own religion??

A number of people had remarked to me at various times in my 10 years in America that I had sad eyes. An old White man from Texas who'd lost his wife to Alzheimer's had even written a poem about my eyes. He had said that his wife had had dark hair and eyes like mine because she had had Native American blood in her. He had told me that he had pursued her to marry him for a very long time when they had been young, and that he had almost lost her to someone else, but that she had finally picked him. He had loved her like crazy, he had completely devoted himself to her. Now, after a lifetime, after her illness had made her forget him little by little over a long period of time, he had really lost her. He'd shared some of their old photographs with me. She had looked like a movie star from the 50s.

Khadija's Eyes

Joe Rigsby

The unfathomed depth of those dark, dark eyes,

The Poet would say ebony orbs.

What I see in those bottomless pools

could engulf my soul.

I stare unashamedly.

I see a deep sadness.

She smiles at me,

but

the sadness remains.

Her whole being smiles.

She makes the room glow.

There are no dark corners.

The glow penetrates

the recesses of my heart and soul.

I feel warm and full.

Peace flows to my innermost parts.

The emptiness is filled

by her presence.

The sweetness of her smile

washes away my bitterness.

I can laugh with her

despite the abyss between us.

She is not ashamed to call me her friend.

I knew I was a sad girl in those days, but I never really understood what people saw in my eyes. A boy I had liked in America had once told me that he hadn't liked looking into my eyes because he could see everything I was ever feeling in them. He had said this as he had turned away from me. I hadn't known what he had meant. I wanted someone to tell me what all these people were talking about. I wanted to shake everyone who said these things to me, tell me what you see, tell me properly, because I don't knowww, because I know I'm sad but I don't know what to doooo!! Tell meee!!

Please...

I spent a-year-and-a-half in Delhi recently, and I felt alive and bursting with life for the first time in years. I would feel happy, I would feel angry, I felt naughty, cheeky, outraged, afraid, jealous, delighted, guilty, humiliated, insulted, impish, turn by turn, rinse and repeat, but unable to rinse completely because the water supply was bad there. So many things that I hadn't felt in years. So fast. Like a computer booting up. Like the first time you get high and you think, heyyy, what is this new feeling, let me feel it some more, hand me another shot. A girl I had known there had later told me towards the end of my time in Delhi that something in my eyes had changed, that when I had first arrived in Delhi my eyes had been still and soft and slow and that now they were glinty and bright and twinkly and piercing and quick.


See for yourself.