Faith, Hope and Love

I was invited to be the Keynote speaker by Farmingdale State College Multicultural Committee at their annual gala. Following is my full keynote.

Good Evening Farmingdale State College, members of the multicultural committee, students, faculty & staff,

It is my honor to be standing among you and to share something of my journey. Thank you to the multicultural committee for this honor. Thank you especially to Ms. Sylvia Nicosia and Mr. Jon Goldstein for guiding me through the process.

My name is Swati Srivastava and I am an Indian-American immigrant, a writer-director-voiceover artist, a former woman in STEM now a woman in FILM, a software engineer turned filmmaker, an Indian woman married to a European man. In other words I am someone who has learned to make her home in that little tiny “dash” – which is the symbol of a hyphenate identity, something many or perhaps most of us in this room also may call home.

As I was drafting this keynote, I happen to come across an old saying.

“It is said that in the final conclusion only these three remain: Faith, Hope and Love.”

And I thought that is a good theme for me to address in these times. Being a writer-director I communicate best through story. So I will be sharing 3 stories today on this theme that I think would of value to this community.

My first story is one that I wrote a couple years ago, on the 20th anniversary of 9/11; the day of the terrorist attacks on the United States. It is called “Go back to your country”.

Here it goes..
—
“Go back to your f***ing country” — the words hit me like ice-cold water. I stared unblinkingly at the speaker, unable to process the words directed at me. My face still wore the awkward smile it had when I had rolled down my window to better understand what the passengers in the car next to mine were emphatically trying to tell me. We were stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Hackensack River Bridge, New Jersey, just a few miles from the gaping hole and smoldering embers of what used to be the Twin Towers. It was Sept 14th 2001.

I have never understood why when I need them the most; all my witty repartees vanish like a fart in the wind! I am a writer for God’s sake; I should know how to be funny in the face of first degree insult! Nope, never happens. Instead I stared at the 5 Caucasian teenagers — 3 boys and 2 girls gesticulating at me as if I couldn’t comprehend their verbal bullets. They seem to take this as further proof of my being a foreigner who didn’t understand English, so they did what any smart person ought to do — shout louder at me! “Go back to your country!”

I remember feeling pissed and horrified and ashamed all at once. I remember my mind racing with several logical replies — “You morons, I am Indian, and no Indians were involved in the heinous attack last week” and “I worked my ass off to earn the privilege of living in this country and all you had to do to earn the privilege of shouting at me was to be born here” and “I am with you in this, I feel your pain too.” But, none of the aforementioned thoughts took shape in my mouth.

Instead all I did was quietly roll up my window. “They are just kids, and they are hurting for their country,” I thought. I could hear them still shouting at me — their entire rage directed towards one small brown woman, who looked like she might belong to a geographical area close to where the terrorists originated from. “I promise I will do as you say if you could just point out my country or the one you are so pissed with on a freaking map!”, I muttered to myself. Besides, how could they know where I was from — for all they knew I was born & raised in friggin’ Hackensack! I breathed deep and tried to tune out their clamor, forcing myself to look ahead, blinking away tears that had formed in my eyes for then unknown reasons.
I had arrived at JFK in the year 2000 on a bright April morning, a wide-eyed young woman on a decidedly one-way ticket, with a heart full of hope and a head full of impossible dreams. I believed, like so many immigrants do, that I was going to find my destiny in America. When I arrived at the immigration desk, the officer checked my documents, flashed a big smile at me and said “Welcome to America!” I will never forget how warm those words made me feel inside…ok, the dude was really handsome, so that may have something to do with it too! But it’s not the entire reason, promise! It really means something when the first person you interact with at the border treats you as a welcome immigrant, it validates the story of America; one that is broadcast on a loudspeaker by the Hollywood dream factory to the world, that America was made by the sweat & toil of immigrants, that it is a country of, by and for the immigrants, so hey you, keep coming to America!

Sept 11th changed all that. Almost overnight, I saw the mood shift and darken. People’s personal boundaries hardened. The rules for acquiring and renewing visas became tighter and more tedious. Potential immigrants became potential terrorists. Borders started turning into walls. Welcoming America became Fortress America.

I finally received my US citizenship three years ago — yes, it took me 18 frickin’ years of paper-work, fingerprinting, more paperwork, and more fingerprinting! I could have raised a kid all the way to college in the time it took me to get an American passport, and it felt similar, with its countless moments of pain & uncertainty such as one associates with raising children, only none of the joy!

As I prepared for my oath of citizenship, my own swearing-in ceremony if you will, I thought about the day those kids swore at me, and why it had stung so hard — besides the fact that they were frickin’ swearing at me! And I realized it was because the day I arrived in America, on that decidedly one-way ticket, in my mind I had become an American. I didn’t pine for my “homeland” as many in my community do and I didn’t ruminate on the possibility that I should return “home” to India. As far as I was concerned, when I arrived in New York that bright April morning, I had come home; that handsome immigration dude might as well have said “Welcome Home.” When the towers fell, I wept for weeks and mourned alongside my fellow Americans. It took those kids’ fury to expose to me how I could be viewed by others — a foreigner, an outsider, even a potential terrorist. Those tears I blinked away were tears of not belonging.

So, that year, on the 20th anniversary of Sept 11th, I plotted my own final comeback; my own “Return of the Jedi” moment- I am a dramatic filmmaker after all! It appeared that the world was hell-bent on mourning, and sure, mourning is appropriate, for reasons far too many to count. But, we can’t mourn everything forever. Instead, I decided to throw what I called a “Melting Potluck”, inviting friends of multiple nationalities, ethnicities and hyphenate identities. I asked them to bring a dish that represented their heritage and a story/song/ poem to share their own American story. Some of us were born here, others naturalized citizens, yet others still on visas or Green Cards — but we all belonged to the American melting pot. Together, we celebrated the American spirit of inclusion and resilience.

And I thanked those poor, ignorant, hapless, rude, hurting kids for inspiring me to do exactly what they had asked me to — “Come back to my country”!

—

My immigrant journey in America started as a Software Engineer with the impossible dream to become a professional filmmaker. Impossible not only because of how hard it is to actually become a professional filmmaker – especially as a minority female, and especially before the waves of “Me Too” and “Black Lives Matter” finally started changing things, but also because my green card application was linked to my job and would have been canceled had I given up my job to study full-time. So I asked my employer in New York to allow me to work remotely so I could move to California to study film part-time. This was more than 15 years before Covid made “Zoom” a household word but my employer said yes. So I packed my life into my car and drove cross-country to Los Angeles where for the next four and a half years I worked full-time during the day and studied film part-time at nights & weekends at UCLA, learning from some of the best professionals in the industry.

It took me 10 years to get my Green Card. And if you are on a work visa now – from India and certain other countries – it can take 20-30 years or even longer to get your Green Card. So, those who ask undocumented immigrants to “get in line” – I like to ask “which line”? No “line” is available for the vast majority of immigrants and any “lines” that are, have a wait time of 25 years or more, so immigrants remain stuck in a limbo. Our immigration policy or – lack thereof – has caused and continues to cause untold anguish and heartache.

I have to admit that I have lied to you, or at least not told the whole truth. I have shared my journey so far as an “I” when the reality was different. I made this part of my journey alongside my elder sister. My sister and I were two halves of a whole. We shared everything – our grief of losing our mom as young teenagers in India, our struggle to make our way in a deeply patriotic country, and our dreams; of flying to America; the land of opportunity, of studying film, of becoming the first “Sister Directors” the world had ever seen! We arrived in America about the same time, applied for our Green Cards together, made the decision to move to LA together and studied film at UCLA together.

But during our last semester at UCLA, my sister got ill and was diagnosed with 4th stage cancer. She passed away within a few months. My life ground to a halt. I lost all meaning & purpose. I battled with nightmares, depression and PTSD for years. I had thoughts of ending my life.

I do not know how I really survived that time, but finding my husband and making a life with him was perhaps the biggest reason. That and my young cousin in India who made me promise I would go on for him.

“It is said that in the final conclusion only these three remain: Faith, Hope and Love.
But the greatest of these is love.“

And so I could say to you that LOVE saved my life. Love allowed me, forced me to carry on. It helped me bear a mountain of grief and not buckle entirely. It helped me pursue the dreams of my mother & my sister and become a filmmaker. It helped me take all those steps that brought me to stand here today.

I believe the greatest thing we’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.
But what about the other two pillars besides Love? What about Hope and Faith?

This brings me to my second story of the day for you. It is called “A Wall of Hope”. Here it goes:

—

“Delhi Burning” screamed the headlines of a major newspaper. It was November 2nd 1984, and riots plagued Delhi, after the then Indian Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi was gunned down by her own Sikh bodyguards. Sikh as in the religion. When the news of her assassination broke, mobs of Hindus filled with rage took to the streets in Delhi, seeking vengeance & killing any Sikhs they came across. Two days after her death, most areas of my city were under total curfew as the flames of communal fire erupted in neighborhood after neighborhood. Before social media or the internet, it was hard to get news. All we knew was that there weren’t enough cops to patrol every town effectively. All we saw was the smoke coming off the fire raging in our very own neighborhood; a bus had been set on fire along with its Sikh driver. All we heard were the police sirens and the recorded voice on a Megaphone telling all families to keep a packed bag in case the situation worsened such that we had to evacuate our homes.

I grew up in Delhi in a moderate Hindu family. We lived in a predominantly Hindu neighborhood in an apartment complex with 6 flats in each apartment block. I was just a little girl then but I remember those days clearly – my elder sister glued to the TV for news updates, and my mother navigating the challenge of being the only parent in our home as our father was away on a business trip to the UK. I saw her watch the smoke from our balcony; her face grim as the reality of the danger set in, packing our evacuation bag and spending the nights awake & on-guard, yet telling my father when he made an expensive long-distance call from the UK that everything was fine, protecting him from further anxiety. Everyone alive in Delhi during that time breathed the air of hate & fear, with friends & neighbors turning against each other in every neighborhood.

We had a close relationship with all the neighbors on our block- except one. I remember all the neighbors except that one family meeting at our home that evening to discuss the burning bus; our area was no longer safe and if a mob showed up, things could quickly become lethal. The one family not present was a Sikh family. People exchanged their worries – some blaming the Sikhs for being the culprits, others faulting the lack of adequate police protection as the cause of the havoc and yet others shared what they had heard on the grapevine – Sikhs were going to take every chance to kill Hindus in order to take revenge on what was happening to their community. Everyone looked at my mother at this point – she was currently alone with her kids and living directly across “unknown” Sikhs. The day after the assassination on November 1st, a Sikh family had moved into the apartment right across ours. We had barely said “Hi” to each other when the riots erupted and since then that family had not opened their front door.

I saw my mother, who had been mostly listening till this point take a deep breath and say: “If we are feeling so afraid of the one Sikh family living in our block, just imagine how afraid this poor Sikh family must be to be surrounded with five Hindu families.” There was dead silence as people processed her words. And then came a pivotal moment in my life. My mother proposed writing a note signed by all our Hindu neighbors welcoming the Sikh family to the community and telling them that no harm would come to them as any Hindu mob looking for Sikhs would have to first deal with the five Hindu families that would form a human wall. I saw the faces around us soften as her voice of reason, love and hope resonated in each heart. My mother proceeded to pick up one of my notebooks and wrote the note. A few minutes later, I saw that small woman with a large spirit open our front door, walk across to our Sikh neighbor’s flat and slid the note under their door.

It takes courage and a deep sense of conviction in the goodness of others to do what my mother did that day – choosing love & hope over fear & despair, building a human wall of hope and humanity. And by doing this, she planted the same seed in me.

Through my work, my writings and my life, I have chosen & committed to be part of this human wall. As trained moderator and Director of Visual Media for Crossing party lines; a national non-profit & bridging organization, I facilitate conversations among Americans across our political divide, so we can all be reminded of our common humanity. And to counter the mainstream media stories of hate & division, I launched a video series called “Choose Hope”; featuring stories of regular folks sharing a moment from their lives when they or someone they know – like my mother – faced a situation when it was easy to give in to the status quo of fear, hate & despair yet they CHOSE to take the high road of love, hope & goodness.
—

HOPE – the 2nd thing that remains.

And “Hope” it appears, is on our collective minds. No surprise – having had enough of despair and discord, our hearts are organically turning towards & looking for ways to find Hope. Several bridging organizations are creating programs around celebrating “Hope”. And I was told by Ms. Sylvia Nicosia that the theme of this Multicultural Committee for the year 2023 also was Hope.

Through my 24 years of living in America, I have learnt that no one carries hope like an immigrant’s heart does. That is because no one leaves their home, their community, their culture & everything they have ever known to travel to a foreign land, without packing a suitcase full of hope. The American story is the story of hope because it is the story of immigrants and as long as immigrants keep coming to America, America will have hope.

I had begun to forget this. I had begun to get jaded like so many others, the spirit of hope inside me pummeled by the story of our divisions and hatred and fear. I had begun to lose faith in America’s promise. But having faith in something larger than myself is essential to my life, and is to most of our lives.

Which brings me to the final story of today called “The Jazz Club”.

Here it goes:

—

“I want –to- be a part of it. New York, New York” – A group of 20 something men singing the iconic Sinatra song was blocking our way, singing and laughing, a little bit drunk, but mostly high on life. One of them spoke to us in accented English, “it’s a great show, you will love it!” There were other happy faces around. We made our way to the entrance of The Jazz Club. A lanky man in his 40s greeted us. “Good evening!” “We would like to buy two tickets for the Swing show.” I answered. “Sorry, we have just sold out,” he said.

“Oh no!” I was so disappointed.

The Jazz Club we were at, is called Reduta. It is located in Prague, which is the capital city of Czech Republic, and which is where I was exactly one month ago. Prague, called “Praha” by locals, is not merely a city; it’s a poem written in stone, a melody composed of history and legend. Europe’s art & culture has collided for over a millennia in Prague; its history, art & architecture a rich tapestry of Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Neo-classical, and Modern threads. Hilter – so loved Prague, he wanted to save it for himself, so Prague escaped the bombing that befell many other European cities during WWII, its medieval center is still mostly preserved. This didn’t mean Prague escaped heartache. Prague suffered some of the worst Fascism and Communism in the 20th century, most notably after the Prague Spring reforms of 1968 were brutally crushed when Soviet tanks rolled into Prague and quashed all attempts for democracy for the next 20 years.

But Prague endured. Czechoslovakia, as it was then, finally found its freedom through The Velvet Revolution; a non-violent transition of power, one of many inspiring examples of what is possible when ordinary people engage in nonviolent civil disobedience and do not give up no matter the odds –something I recommend all young people to learn more about if they want to find more Hope.

What also endured is Reduta; The Jazz Club in Prague. It became particularly famous for having hosted an impromptu saxophone performance by American president Bill Clinton in 1994, who had returned to Prague a few days prior to our own visit to mark their 30th anniversary of joining NATO, a day of celebration for the Czech people. Democracy is very new and precious for the Czechs and this is palpable. What is also palpable is their unease about the war Russia is waging on their neighbor Ukraine. The majority of people alive in Prague today personally remember the brutality and oppression of living behind the Iron Curtain as a Soviet satellite state. They see Russian aggression on the rise again and dread losing their hard-earned freedom. They see the NATO alliance as the bulwark against an existential threat.

And they look at America – as the beacon of hope – that many in the world still do, the same hope that immigrants still carry in their hearts. America was the country that helped birth modern Czechoslovakia at the end of World War I in 1918. America was the country that helped bring them freedom from the terror of Nazi Germany in World War II. And while they suffered under the boot of the totalitarian communism of the Soviet Union from the 50s to 80s, America was the country that gave them hope, its music – jazz, swing, blues continued to play in The Jazz Club Reduta & still does.

And now I was standing at the entrance of this very Jazz club and being told that the tickets to the Swing tribute I was there to see had been sold out!

“Oh no!” I was so disappointed. The lanky man offered a solution. “We do have another Swing concert next Thursday.” “But this is our last-night in Prague,” I answered remorsefully. “I am sorry, where are you visiting from?” he asked with a polite smile. “New York.” I answered. “New York, New York?!!” the man’s eyes grew wider and his smile got warmer. I nodded. “Then we must make sure you see the show!” He walked away into the music hall and after a few moments re-appeared, a big grin across his face. “I can organize 2 extra stools, so you can watch the show, would that be okay?” My husband and I, pleasantly surprised at the sudden VIP treatment, graciously accepted his offer.

He ushered us inside to an intimate hall packed with people sitting on sofas enjoying drinks, surrounded with walls decked with photos of the great jazz musicians who had all performed there. We spent the next two hours experiencing 4 phenomenally talented musicians who performed American classics by Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole and Ray Charles. When the lead singer led the sing-along for Frank Sinatra’s “My Way”, it was as if the Czech people were singing their own song. And his rendering of “New York, New York” brought the house down. I laughed and cried through it all, it had been a while since I had experienced such unabashed love and joy for America. It was as I had left America to find America.

As I experienced this profound moment, I suddenly realized that America is no longer just a nation – if it ever was. America has become a mythology, an idea, an ember that smolders in the heart of anyone who still aspires to reach a little higher, who still dreams a few impossible dreams and who dares to keep faith in the face of some overwhelming odds. We who live here may fight, bicker and doomsay as much as we want, but the ideal of America is alive and well in hearts all around the world. We who live here may doubt the promise of America; a luxury we can afford, but not those who live outside, their faith still strong, just like those singing their hearts out, in places like The Jazz Club.

—

FAITH – the final thing that remains.

We all need a little faith – in something larger than ourselves – to be our anchor for when things fall apart, to give us wings to reach for the stars, and to give our lives purpose & meaning.

Earlier this year, I had started designing a campaign called “Out of Many, One”, which of course is the story of America. Something else that appears to be on our collective minds. The theme of this Multicultural committee for 2024 is “United in Diversity”. “E Pluribus Unum”; the motto on the official seal of America celebrates the multicultural melting pot our country is. It celebrates our pluralism and our diversity. In other words, it celebrates YOU.

And YOU have to celebrate IT.

We have arrived at a moment in history when we all must learn not just to embrace diversity but to see diversity as our strength. And we must remember that the first & foremost form of diversity is the diversity of thoughts, ideas and opinions. This is a hard task, because we all like to think we are right and that we know better. Especially in a world where we can choose our facts, and social media algorithms profit by keeping us locked in our bubbles training us to “unfriend” anyone who remotely disagrees with us. It is harder than ever to listen to the other side, to understand why someone might think differently from us without “canceling” them, to see the humanity in “the other”.

Perhaps the most crucial thing we can do to make a difference in our world today is to make a friend of someone who has different ideas than us. And to protect ourselves from disinformation – and unless you learn about an issue from multiple sides & angles – it is ALL disinformation, which leads to despair. If you can engage in “disputatio” which is a tradition of discussion & debate, not with the intent to win but with the obligation to understand “the other side”, you are celebrating diversity – of thoughts & ideas. If you can have someone in your life with whom you have deep disagreements and still call them your friend, you are living the principle of being united in diversity.

You are keeping the faith alive for all those around the world who cannot afford the luxury of doubt.

—

I returned from Prague refreshed, my faith in the American ideal rekindled. And to the realization that “Choose Hope” and “Out of Many, One” aren’t two different projects. They are one and the same. They are connected by faith.

The hope of our country and our times is precisely that we are one, out of many, a beautiful kaleidoscope of hopes, dreams and ambitions. The love for our country requires us to ask the same question that President Kennedy once asked of his fellow Americans; not what our country can do for us, but what we can do for it. And what we can do first and foremost is keep the faith in America, that one nation indivisible shall not perish. Not on our watch.

It is said that in the final conclusion only these three remain: Faith, Hope and Love.

The story of faith, hope & love is what we need – in both our personal and our communal lives. And it is the story the world needs. We ALL need a new American Hope story. And that is the story I intend to build. I invite you to build it with me.

Thank you.

—

Introduction by Ms. Christine Larkin –

It is my honor to introduce this year’s Multicultural Gala Keynote Speaker, Swati Srivastava. Former woman in STEM now a woman in FILM, Swati is an immigrant and a multi award-winning writer, director, and voiceover artist. She has directed several short films, short documentaries, music videos and political ads that have gone on to win several awards including the “Most Important Story of the Year” award from CNN-India aired nationally in India at prime-time.

Swati is also the Director of Visual Media for Crossing Party Lines as well as a trained facilitator for Civic Discourse & Dialogue. She frequently facilitates both online and in-person discussions.

Originally from India and having spent more than half her life in the United States, Swati sees the world with a unique east meets west lens. She loves storytelling, especially through visual media. She has a penchant for politics, and has a heartfelt desire to be part of the solution for what she believes is the most challenging problem of our time; our inability to listen to each other.

Swati turns ideas into experiences. She is actively involved in her community and curates and hosts a monthly art and culture program called “A Box of Chocolates.” Swati is also an avid environmentalist and lives with her husband in a “Net-Zero Energy” house here on Long Island. It has been featured on mass media including the television station, NBC.

Please give a warm welcome to this year’s Keynote Speaker, Ms. Swati Srivastava.

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A Wall of Hope

“Delhi Burning” screamed the headlines of a major newspaper. It was November 2nd 1984, and riots plagued Delhi, after the then Indian Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi was gunned down by her own Sikh bodyguards. When the news of her assassination broke, mobs of Hindus filled with rage took to the streets in Delhi, seeking vengeance & killing any Sikhs they came across. Two days after her death, most areas of my city were under total curfew as the flames of communal fire erupted in neighborhood after neighborhood. It was found later that the reigning administration had willfully turned a blind eye dragging its feet on re-establishing law & order with the intent to teach the Sikh community “a lesson” leading to the murder of thousands of Sikhs. But we didn’t know that then. All we knew was that there weren’t enough cops to patrol every town effectively. All we saw was the smoke coming off the fire raging in our very own neighborhood; a bus had been set on fire along with its Sikh driver. All we heard were the police sirens and the recorded voice on a Megaphone telling all families to keep a packed bag in case the situation worsened such that we had to evacuate our homes.

I grew up in Delhi in a moderate Hindu family. We lived in a predominantly Hindu neighborhood in an apartment complex with 6 flats in each apartment block. I was just a little girl then but I remember those days clearly – my elder sister glued to the TV for news updates, and my mother navigating the challenge of being the only parent in our home as our father was away on a business trip to the UK. I saw her watch the smoke from our balcony; her face grim as the reality of the danger set in, packing our evacuation bag and spending the nights awake & on-guard, yet telling my father when he made an expensive long-distance call from the UK that everything was just fine, protecting him from further anxiety. Everyone alive in Delhi during that time breathed the air of hate & fear, with friends & neighbors turning against each other in every neighborhood.

We had a close relationship with all the neighbors on our block- except one. I remember all the neighbors except that one family meeting at our home that evening to discuss the burning bus; our area was no longer safe and if a mob showed up, things could quickly become lethal. The one family not present was a Sikh family. People exchanged their worries – some blaming the Sikhs for being the culprits, others faulting the lack of adequate police protection as the cause of the havoc and yet others shared what they had heard on the grapevine – Sikhs were going to take every chance to kill Hindus in order to take revenge on what was happening to their community. Everyone looked at my mother at this point – she was currently alone with her kids and living directly across “unknown” Sikhs. The day after the assassination on November 1st, a Sikh family had moved into the apartment right across ours. We had barely said “Hi” to each other when the riots erupted and since then that family had not opened their front door.

I saw my mother, who had been mostly listening till this point take a deep breath and say: “If we are feeling so afraid of the one Sikh family living in our block, just imagine how afraid this poor Sikh family must be to be surrounded with five Hindu families.” There was dead silence as people processed her words. And then came a pivotal moment in my life. My mother proposed writing a note signed by all our Hindu neighbors welcoming the Sikh family to the community and telling them that no harm would come to them as any Hindu mob looking for Sikhs would have to first deal with the five Hindu families that would form a human wall. I saw the faces around us soften as her voice of reason, love and hope resonated in each heart. My mother proceeded to pick up one of my notebooks and wrote the note. A few minutes later, I saw that small woman with a large spirit open our front door, walk across to our Sikh neighbor’s flat and slid the note under their door.

—

It takes courage and a deep sense of conviction in the goodness of others to do what my mother did that day – choosing love & hope over fear & despair, building a human wall of hope and humanity. And by doing this, she planted the same seed in me. Through my work, my writings and my life, I have chosen & committed to be part of this human wall. As trained moderator and Director of Visual Media for Crossing party lines; a non-profit that is founded on choosing hope, I facilitate conversations among Americans across our political divide, so we can be reminded of our common humanity. To counter the mainstream media stories of hate & division, I have created a video series called “Choose Hope” featuring stories of regular folks sharing a moment from their lives when they or someone they know – like my mother – faced a situation when it was easy to give in to the status quo of fear, hate & despair yet they CHOSE to take the high road of love, hope & goodness.

YOU can become part of this wall too. If you are interested in telling your own hope story – or hope song or another form of hope art – reach out to me at Swati@TiredAndBeatup.com

Together we can build this human wall – if we can find in ourselves a way to “Choose Hope”.

Swati Srivastava is the Director of Visual Media at Crossing Party Lines. More than a filmmaker/storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. She is also an environmentalist and a first generation immigrant to the United States. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com

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The Ninth Planet

The Ninth Planet By Swati Srivastava

“There was a NINTH planet after all. 
Mercury, Venus, Prudukshin, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. 
The sister planet to Earth, Prudukshin is only 3 million miles away at its closest point. 
A planet that could be seen with naked eye all the way until the era of modern Physics on Earth, 
 when it traveled to the other side of the sun, and stayed hidden behind it for the next 400 years. 
Now, it is emerging from behind the sun and we will be able to see it soon. 
That maybe good news to us on Earth, but very bad news for Pruduskhin….” 

–Excerpt from my upcoming book “The Ninth Planet”; a sci-fi short story set on the planet we never knew existed. Stay tuned! 

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Mar 19th in Venice

“Close your eyes and open your hand”, I told my sister. She followed my orders. I placed a travel guide in her hand. “Open” I said. She opened her eyes and saw the travel guide in her hands. “Venice”, it said. She gasped.

“Happy Birthday, didi bahen” I said beaming. Didi means elder sister in Hindi and bahen means sister, so Didi Bahin meant elder sister sister, grammatically incorrect but that is how I called her.

“Oh wow.” She said as she flipped through the book at the picture perfect postcards of the city known as La Serenissima; the most serene one, the Queen of the Adriatic, City of Bridges, City of Canals, and to my sister and I, the City of Dreams. After our mother passed away, Didi and I had spent almost a decade living in Delhi in a family devoid of love and rife with emotional abuse. Our reality had been quite shitty and we had learnt to find joy from our dreams; first to go to America & make something of our lives, and second to visit Venice & ride a gondola. Now that we had been living & working in New York for a couple of years, I had planned a surprise trip to celebrate her birthday; Mar 19th in Venice.

Didi looked up at me, both our eyes brimming with tears. There was no need for words. We understood.

Stendhal was a 19th-century French writer. I do not know much about his writings, what I know is he gave the term “Stendhal Syndrome” , which refers to a collection of intense physical and mental symptoms you may experience while or after viewing a work of great beauty, art or architecture. Its worst symptoms can include dizzy spells, disorientation, palpitations and exhaustion. Some call it “Art attack”! More commonly it registers as a feeling of overwhelm, an incapacity to bear the beauty of the thing one beholds. Stendhal famously experienced it when he visited the city of Florence. To me and my sister, it was visiting Venice. The Grand Canal’s majestic waterway, the city’s architectural splendor, the narrow, winding streets, arched bridges, intimate squares, the soft, reflected sunlight on the canal waters especially during sunrise and sunset, the floating palazzos, the enchanting masks and the romantic atmosphere can be – literally -breathtaking. We stepped off the train & found – and lost – ourselves in La Serenissima. Of course we rode a gondola!

One trip wasn’t nearly enough to absorb our city of dreams. In the ensuing years, I planned another trip, and another, always to celebrate Didi’s birthday, March 19th in Venice.

Didi passed away in India after an intense battle with cancer. Half of me died with her; the half that laughed, that hoped, that dreamed. After her death I stayed in India for a while, my father insisting I give up on my life in America and move back with them. I felt like a ghost invisible to myself with no reason to go on without Didi, in America, India or elsewhere. I remember taking a shower one day feeling the water on my skin when the thought came to me “I must go back to Venice.” Amidst all the thoughts of death & dying, the first living thought that came to me was about Venice.

So I did. I left India and flew back to America to my empty life. I got back into work. Amidst nightmares of losing Didi and days of bawling with grief, I somehow planned a trip – to spend Didi’s birthday; Mar 19th in Venice. Human beings are strange.

I spent Mar 19th in Venice again – this time just me. I sobbed at every place we had visited together, in St. Mark’s Square, on the Rialto Bridge, in the cafes & restaurants we ate at, on a gondola. When I returned to the US, I did not know if I would live to see Venice ever again.

Then I met Mark. Mark was deeply sensitive and caring – just like Didi. And just Like Didi, Mark was a March baby. And as if all that wasn’t special enough, Mark’s dad was born on March 19th! After an LA to NY long-distance relationship, Mark & I moved in together. Over the next few years, we made a life together. If it was up to him, he might have proposed to me in the very first year. But he knew my heart had a lot of mourning to do. I think I even told him not to bother proposing, I wasn’t going to be ready to celebrate for a long time.

Someone wise once said, “Let mourning stop when one’s grief is fully expressed.” Years passed and the day came when Mark knew it was safe to propose to me. So he did. Now the problem was where to have our wedding. With family and friends on three continents; England, India and the US it wasn’t an easy answer. Amidst the pressures of my father; to have a big fat Indian wedding and Mark’s father getting diagnosed with cancer & expressing his wish to see us married while he was still alive, we knew we had to do something. But that something had to be right for us.

“How about – Mar 19th in Venice?” The moment I uttered the words, they felt right. We spent the next few months planning a ceremony with rituals that spoke to who we were. We decided to have zero guests, no show-off, no drama, just two hearts making a commitment to each other. I returned to Venice 7 years after I had last been there mourning my sister, saturated with death. This time I went to celebrate with my fiancé; the tenacity of life. We had the most beautiful ceremony with rituals honoring the lives of my mother and my sister.

As we disembarked the vaporetto for the train station, I looked back at our city of dreams and said to Mark, “how about we come back to celebrate our 7th wedding anniversary?” Mark said “yes darling!” Mark always says “yes darling”! 🙂

At the time 7 years felt like a long time. And yet here we are. It’s February 7 years later. We are planning another trip to celebrate – Didi’s birthday, Mark’s dad’s birthday and our wedding anniversary. On Mar 19th in Venice.

More than a filmmaker/storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. She is a loved wife, sister & mother – of cats as well as two daughters; her miracle-children. She is an immigrant to the United States and also an environmentalist. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com

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A ball, A cop and John Lennon’s Imagine

When we first came to America, my sister & I worked in New York. We were overcome – by the Statue of Liberty, the Twin Towers – it was before Sept 11, Broadway, Times Square, the museums, the art and the vibe of the city. It was if the pages of our Encyclopedia – this was before Social Media and Google– had come alive. I remember us walking around the streets of New York like kids who had found their hand, their toes and their mouth in the cookie jar! New York was it, and we had arrived!

As the year passed, we discovered a phenomenon called “New Year’s Eve at Times Square”. It was all anyone would talk about – the exhilaration of the countdown leading to the ball drop and the romance of kissing a lover under a rain of confetti to the tune of John Lennon’s Imagine reminding us to live for today. Some called it a once in a lifetime experience. So we researched it; definitely a thing to do IF one could get in line in the wee hours of Dec 31st to get a space close to the ball, figure out the logistics of being without a bathroom for hours on end and most importantly for our tropical Indian asses, survive the freezing weather for best part of a day. Our odds were slim. Besides we didn’t have lovers to kiss to the tune of John Lennon’s Imagine. So we did what any respectful wannabes or in this case “wanna-dos” do – we put The Times Square New year’s Eve experience on our dream list! And got on with our lives.

Fast forward 10 years. I was living in Los Angeles and had recently met a wonderful British man who lived on Long Island. We were like two pieces of a puzzle with 3000 miles in between. So far I had never visited him in New York, instead Mark flew out to LA once a month – not just to be with me, but to help me put the shards of my life back together that had been terribly broken by the loss of my beloved sister. The color in my life was gone. And so were the dreams I had once dreamt with her.

But I wanted to do something nice for Mark. I thought how about I make a surprise visit to New York to spend a weekend together in Manhattan. And then another thought – could we watch the ball drop TOGETHER?

I was convinced after losing my sister that I won’t survive for long, so I didn’t particularly care for money. I called the Marriott Marquis right on Times Square and asked to book a room for a couple of nights. The only rooms they had available were not the ones facing Times Square. I made the reservation. A few days later I told Mark I was coming to NY – to his delight of course!

On Dec 30th we arrived in Manhattan, I on a cross-country flight, Mark on the LIRR. We checked-in to our room at the Marriott. The next day Mark asked the concierge whether we could step out of the hotel onto Times Square around 10 or 11pm to watch the ball drop and were told NOPE. If you want to watch the ball drop, either get in line, wait in the cold meaning no bathroom & the usual routine OR pay the exorbitant fee to watch it from the warm comfort of the hotels’ restaurant that faced Times Square and was hosting a New Year’s Eve party. The concierge also cautioned us that if we were to go out, to not misplace our special room key which would allow us access through police lines back to the hotel.

We didn’t have any appetite for a loud, expensive New Year’s Eve party, and standing still for hours in the cold was still out for my tropical Indian ass. And – it wasn’t that important anymore – not for me anyway. Mark suggested dinner at an Indian restaurant he liked. We left our hotel around 7pm & spent the next couple of hours in the cozy comfort of the restaurant and each other’s company. Then we walked north, streets were cordoned off all the way up to Central Park so we went up to the park and made our way down to Times Square on the east side of Broadway until we were level with our hotel. Bear in mind the hotel is on the west side of Broadway. Now between us & the hotel was Times Square. Because we were on the cross-street, there was not much view of anything except an entire precinct of cops holding back anyone trying to get onto Broadway. It was about 11:40pm.

Suddenly Mark turned to me and said “I have an idea.” “Okay…” I said with no clue to what he was thinking. We stood where we were for the next few minutes listening to the sounds & music from Times Square. With about 6 minutes left to midnight, Mark charged ahead – my hand in his – approaching one of the cops stationed at the entrance to Broadway. Very respectfully he said “Officer, we need to get back to our hotel please.” The cop looked at Mark who was waiving the special Marriott Access card in his hand as proof. The cop looked at his watch and said “Follow me” as he started to lead us through the crowd cutting across Broadway to the entrance to the Marriott. We politely followed him.

And then – once we were smack bang at the center of Broadway, Mark pulled me away from the cop and into the crowd. “Take off your hat” he said. I took off my hat and Mark took off his, just as we melted into the crowd. It all happened very fast and as realization dawned on me, I started laughing. Whether the poor cop turned around, I do not know, there was no way the poor chap could have found us among the throngs of people.

But what happened next was exactly how my sister and I had imagined all those years ago – the countdown leading to the ball drop and the romance of kissing a lover under a rain of confetti to the tune of John Lennon’s Imagine reminding me to live for today.

More than a filmmaker/storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. She is a loved wife, sister & mother – of cats as well as two daughters; her miracle-children. She is also an environmentalist and an immigrant to the United States. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com

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To My Santa

“Maybe look under your pillow, in case Santa Claus left you a gift.” said my father casually while he stood shaving at the sink.

It was Christmas morning and I had just woken up. I was 8 years old and had never received a Christmas gift before in my life. This is because I grew up a Hindu – in India; a country with only 5% Christian population. Christmas was a minor holiday for the majority of the country and in an era before the Internet or Social Media, we had very little knowledge about this Christian festival. Indeed my sister and I had only that year found out from reading in an Encyclopedia that there is an entity called “Santa Claus” who brings gifts to children around the world on the night before Christmas!

I chuckled and removed my pillow to humor my father, entirely sure he was making a joke. To my utter surprise, I found a white envelope with my name on it spelled S-W-A-T-Y instead of S-W-A-T-I.

“Wha…t?” Didi (meaning elder sister in Hindi), my elder sister who was almost 14 exclaimed as she removed her own pillow. No gift for her!

“So Santa Claus gave her a gift but not me?!!” she complained loudly.

“Maybe you have aged out!’ said my mother, her nose crinkled, obviously pulling her leg.

“So what did Santa Claus get you?” Didi asked, her tone a mix of envy and curiosity.

Still shocked from the unexpected turn of events, I opened the envelope, it had a milk chocolate that was clearly not a regular Indian one, and a couple of postcards – from Finland. And a hand-written note.

“Go on!”, Didi egged me.

I opened the letter, written in curly hand-writing with a lot of flair, it said “Dear Swaty (spelled with a “y” instead of an “i”), you have been a great daughter, sister and student this year. You deserve good things. Love, Santa”

What a compliment! I started crying. Didi who was still sitting on the bed next to me, gave me a big hug. Then said with a complaining tone “So does it mean I have not been a great daughter, sister and student?”

“You have just aged out!’ repeated my mother, laughing.

That year began the tradition of Santa’s gifts for me. Every Christmas morning, I would wake up and look under or around my pillow. Every year I found something. As I got older, the gifts got more interesting, things I had really wanted that year. My wish list was simple; books, journals, pens. Santa’s note always had the same handwriting, the same flair and the same wrong spelling of my name! Somehow Santa knew me all the way from Finland but couldn’t figure out the correct spelling of my name spelling it SWATY with a Y at the end!

The year I turned 13, Didi got into college. For 10 days spanning Christmas and New Year, she had to be away on a college trip. “Don’t open Santa’s gifts until I get back on the 2nd…if you can hold it that long”, she had ordered me before taking off.

On Christmas Eve my parents and I had dinner together, watched TV, and then I went to bed. I used to be a heavy sleeper in those days, my mother used to joke she could beat the drums and I won’t wake up. So I only woke up vaguely when I heard my parents in my room, whispering, opening & shutting closet doors, apparently searching for something. And I only vaguely felt the crinkle of the gift wrapper from the gift being placed under my pillow.

I woke up on Christmas morning, my father doing his usual morning routine and asking me if Santa Claus had left me anything. I removed the pillow and saw my gift! But as soon as I touched it – the penny dropped. Suddenly it was all clear to me – it had been my parents the previous night looking for the gift in my room and it was them who had placed the gift under my pillow.

I burst into tears. The magic was over. There had been no Santa Claus, it had always been my parents. They let me cry and then took me out to change my mood. The next day my father sat me down and told me that there is no Santa Claus and that I was old enough to accept that.

Fairly depressed, I went to my mother. “What are we going to tell Didi when she gets back?”

My mother remained silent for a few minutes. Then she looked at me in the eye. And somehow I knew.

I left my gifts unopened as per Didi’s instructions. She arrived as scheduled on the 2nd of Jan. My father brought her home from the train station. She came directly to our room and asked me in her usual loving bossy way “And?”

“All the gifts are here.” I told her. “Let’s open them together!!” she said.

I do not recall at all what the gifts were that year. What I recall is this: At the bottom of the gifts was a note I had written for my sister, in an envelope that said “To My Santa”. Didi looked at me stunned. “Go on” I said. Didi read my note and started crying.

The year we had read about the existence of Santa Claus in an Encyclopedia; when I was 8 and Didi was almost 14, I had wished that Santa would bring me gifts, and she had decided she was going to do that for me. She had enrolled my parents into it; saving postcards from my father’s trips abroad and going to special shops in Delhi to find those international looking gifts. She had packed the gifts and written the notes in an unfamiliar handwriting. The year she had been away for her college trip, my parents couldn’t remember where she had hidden my gift and had to search for it in the middle of the night!

My note to my sister thanked her for being my Santa all those years. It ended with the words. “Dear Santa, you are a great daughter & student. And you are the BEST SISTER in the world. You deserve all good things. Love, Swaty” – spelled with a “Y”!

More than a filmmaker/storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. She is a loved wife, sister & mother – of cats as well as two daughters; her miracle-children. She is an immigrant to the United States and also an environmentalist. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com

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Ask and you shall find!

I started the Crossing Party Lines – Long Island chapter in Feb 2023. It has been an incredibly rewarding experience.

I am a filmmaker by profession and someone who craves human connection and community for sustenance. The isolation of Covid was hard for me. I had trained as a moderator with Crossing Party Lines (CPL) in 2022 and had got the experience of facilitating several on-line conversations. Lisa and I had discussed the potential of restarting CPL – New York City chapter and although I definitely desired that, the logistics of organizing & hosting a conversation in New York City felt prohibitive. Lisa connected me with Avrohom Zazac; a CPL member & NYC resident, and we started exploring potential locations that were not too far from the city but also from a bearable driving distance from my own home.

I am an immigrant to America and after moving around for decades, I had finally settled in Long Island. I had gotten quite involved in the congressional politics and had provided campaign housing to congressional candidates over the last few elections. I was increasingly worried about the bitterness & anxiety that my own friends & neighbors – from across the aisle – were sharing; I still had & continue to have friends across the aisle. My heart wanted to do something local, something that could make a difference that I could actually see.

On Dec 16th 2022, I had a meeting with Dylan Skolnick and Rene Bouchard at the Cinema Arts Center, Huntington. It was a long-due meeting with a filmmaker connecting with her local independent cinema. I was going to talk to them about my film projects and yet what came out of my mouth was my work with Crossing Party Lines; my passion about their intention, my concern about the polarization & acrimony in our own neighborhood and my desire to make a difference in our Long Island community. The next thing I knew, Rene and Dylan were whole-heartedly agreeing with me and before the meeting ended, I had a home for Crossing Party Lines – Long Island at Cinema Arts Center!

I worked with Avrohom to develop out first topic on George Santos; the Long Islander Congressman. I have since worked with Avrohom on every single topic. Avrohom and I represent the spirit of Crossing Party Lines, we often hold opposing views and come together across our differences to build a whole that is greater than the sum. One of my greatest pleasures of doing this work is our vigorous discussions when choosing the topic and developing its writeup. He is my ally and I couldn’t do it without him.

We had our first meetup on Feb 17th and was attended by more people than I had expected. We have had 10 more meetups since then on topics that have ranged from issues such as Affordable Housing, Asylum Seekers, Affirmative Action and Media Bias to more introspective topics such as Patriotism, Tolerance and Privilege where we explore who we are. There are those who came to our first conversation and come back every time – we have become fond of each other and are beginning to form friendships. There are those who occasionally drop by as their time permits. And we always have a few new faces. We start our conversations with music and food – that my friend & ally Rene organizes at the Cinema. I have seen people walk into our conversations feeling stressed & anxious about the state of our community & the country, and walk out lighter, more confident & empowered that there is another way of listening, of seeing, of being in the world. That there is a way to unlock the bind many of us find we are in.

It has not all been easy and we have had our share of challenges. We (I, Avrohom and Rakhee Kulkarni; another ally) have put numerous hours creating lists and writing emails to promote this new chapter. I have tried – unsuccessfully so far – to get us some media coverage so more Long Islanders know of our existence; a few months ago a journalist from Newsday came to one of our meetings, interviewed the participants and told me that we were doing impressive work & that it was a great story and yet the article never made it to press for unknown reasons. It takes many hours of topic development, social media postings, and other work for me to continue running & promoting the chapter. It takes energy & effort. Of course it does! Everything worth doing in life takes time & energy & effort & commitment. The enthusiasm and support I have received from the community & the allies that have shown at every step makes it an investment for me. I wanted to make a difference in my own community and I know I am.

Several members had reached out to me with topic suggestions for upcoming months and some with new ideas of things we can do together as a group that include potential book / podcast clubs, film clubs, game nights, blog posts, social media campaigns, video series etc. So, for our December meetup, instead of a specific topic, we will host a freeform discussion about where our CPL-Long Island members want to take this forum in 2024. Together we are going to celebrate our year-long journey and chart the path ahead.

Swati Srivastava is the Director of Visual Media at Crossing Party Lines and the chapter lead for Crossing Party Lines – Long Island. A filmmaker & storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. She is also an environmentalist and a first generation immigrant to the United States. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com

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“Earl Gray Moment”

“What tea would you like?” asked the waitress as she flipped open the top of a tea box in front of us.

“English Breakfast” said I AND Mark, almost in unison. “English breakfast it is” said the waitress – as she opened two bags, placed them in our mugs, and poured the hot water, with the agility of someone who does that for a living!

“I will be back with your orders soon” she said and walked away leaving us to enjoy our beverage in the beautiful café. We were in the heart of Big Sur, California, our first vacation together. We both sat in silence for a few moments watching the steam rise from our tea, the smell of English Breakfast in the air.

It was I who broke the silence, as always ;), I looked at Mark and said “English Breakfast?”

To understand the gravity of this moment, I have to take you to a flashback. Mark and I had met about 1 year prior, while I was living & working on the east coast taking a break from my life in LA. Or I should say my life in LA had broken – such – that I had decided to move temporarily to the east coast. Previously, I had been living in LA for 5 years with my beloved sister, both of us working full-time remotely as Software Engineers and studying film part-time at UCLA. When my sister got diagnosed with cancer and passed away in a matter of weeks, my life had broken irrevocably – at least that‘s how it felt at the time. My manager worried that my life in LA, so wrapped around my sister, was a little too dangerous, and invited me to work at our head office on the east coast surrounded with colleagues. And I did.

While in NY, I met Mark and we instantly felt a connection. Over the next weeks & months, we became best-friends who came to know each other’s hearts. Mark seemed to understand the devastation mine was going through. When I told him I was going back to LA – to face my life without my sister, he didn’t try to stop me. But he did offer to come over to be with me for a few days, saying “the first few days are going to be the worst. I won’t be able to offer much relief but I can stop the house from being empty.” I accepted his offer. I came back – to my intolerably empty life in LA – but not to an empty house.

My sister and I loved Chai!. We had a box of Chai, with various kinds of Chai in it. Over the years the “Chai Box” had turned into a “Tea Box” with various kinds of other teas that we liked. And although British and Indian people have historically had “just a little bit of differences”, they share their love of tea! Their love of tea is so deep that they both think that a cup of Chai or tea can fix pretty much anything. Indeed, the British have a phrase for it, they call it “giving tea & sympathy” right? So, not long after we had both flown back to LA, and on an evening when I had been sobbing for hours grieving my sister, Mark said the words that have become legendary in our household, he said, “alright, time for some mother’s tea”- that’s just what Mark calls it. He then walked into my kitchen, opened my box of Chai or tea, and after shuffling through it for a bit, looked up at my tear-stricken face, smiled and asked “how about some Earl Gray?” Realizing that he had found his favorite tea in my tea box, I nodded.

And that started our ritual of having Earl Gray tea together. Mark flew back to Long Island after a few days, but he would return every month, our friendship deepening into love. I ensured that I had his favorite tea in my tea box whenever he visited and upon his arrival, I would make a fresh pot of Earl Gray that we would enjoy together. A year later, my heart still grieving, he had moved-in with me in LA.

And we find ourselves back to where we started, in the café on our first vacation together, in Big Sur, where we had both just asked the waitress – for an – English – Breakfast – tea.

Now you know the gravity of the moment!

So I asked. “English Breakfast?”

He looked at me a bit worried and said, “I have to tell you something. I – don’t like Earl Gray very much.”

I was aghast. “What? Then why do you always want it when you visit me?” I demanded.
“I don’t. I drink it because YOU like it so much.”
“I don’t. YOU made me Earl Gray tea the very first time you made me tea in my house.” I exclaimed flabbergasted.
“That’s because YOUR tea box only had Earl Gray tea.”

And suddenly the penny dropped and I burst out laughing. Through fits of laughter, I explained that the reason why my tea box only had Earl Gray tea is because neither my sister nor I liked that tea so that was the only tea left, and because I had not done any grocery shopping after returning from NY to LA before Mark had arrived, that is the tea he found. And when he had offered to make it for the first time, choice of tea was the last thing on my mind.

“So the whole time we were tolerating Earl Gray tea because we thought – that the other liked it!” I exclaimed.

And that was a sweet moment as we realized how gentle and suggestible we could be to each other. Knowing this made us more mindful around each other. There have been many times since then when we would both be deferring to each other about doing something or not doing something, eating something or not eating something, when one of us will suddenly stop and ask “Are we having an Earl Gray moment?!!”

More than a filmmaker/storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. She is a loved wife, a sister & mother – of cats as well as two daughters; her miracle-children. She is also an environmentalist and an immigrant to the United States. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com

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This Little Light of Mine

I would like to preface my story with an excerpt from the poem “How the light comes” by Jan Richardson.

I cannot tell you
how the light comes.
What I know
is that it is more ancient
than imagining.

That it travels
across an astounding expanse
to reach us.
That it loves
searching out
what is hidden
what is lost
what is forgotten
or in peril
or in pain.

That it works its way
into the deepest dark
that enfolds you,
though it may seem
long ages in coming
or arrive in a shape
you did not foresee.

I cannot tell you
how the light comes,
but that it does.
That it will.

(You can read the full poem at many places on the web, one of them is here )

“You are the red in my painting, the color in my life.” I said to my sister.

“And you are the light in mine”, said she to me.

“This little light of mine, I am goin’ let it shine”, we both sang together and giggled – until Didi winced. She was in pain. She adjusted her position trying to make herself comfortable, as comfortable as one can get, in a hospital bed. I sat tall, as tall as one can possibly sit, in a hospital bed, so she could rest her head on my shoulder. She would be gone in a few weeks. But we didn’t know it then.

Didi meaning elder sister in Hindi, was 5 years older to me. My childhood was wrapped in her stories; she was one hell of a storyteller! When we were kids, she would read me stories from books she borrowed from the school library; in both Hindi & English, in English – stories of Amelia Jane, The Famous Five, The Secret Seven and Nancy Drew. As we got older, her stories changed; she was in her mid teens and I was only 11 or 12 but it didn’t stop her from telling me romantic stories she would read in novels; the romantic Mills and Boon series was all the rage in India in those days. I think she sanitized them a bit for my young ears! We got older but never stopped reading stories together; so much world literature & mythology and Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings; our favorite stories were those of heroes and heroines who fought great battles and somehow found their way home.

The story I miss the most was the one she told me many times; of the night I was born. Apparently a stormy night, I was born just after midnight. The hospital my mother was at, had run out of some urgently needed medication (yes this used to happen in India) and my father was asked to find the medication at a local chemist shop (like a miniature CVS). So my father, who rode a motorcycle in those days, took my 5 year old sister on his bike and went around looking for a chemist shop that was open on that stormy night. “Amidst thunder and lighting, we finally found a shop that had a little light on” – Didi was a bit dramatic. “Papa asked him if he had the medication, he looked hesitant but asked us to wait while he checked. We stood waiting in the pouring rain, papa trying to shelter me as best as he could under his raincoat. The man finally came back with the medicine. And we went back to the hospital”. She would continue, “The next morning, I went in the room to visit mummy and she asked me if I would like to hold my little sister. I said yes and very gently she put you in my arms. And this is how I felt.” At this point, she would break into song, singing a few lines from a classic Bollywood song “kabhi kabhi mere dil main khyal aata hai, ki jaise tujhko banaya gaya hai mere liye. Tu ab se pehle sitaro main bas rahi thi kahi tujhe zameen par bulaya gaya hai mere liye” “Sometimes often this is the thought I have, that you were especially created for me. Before this moment you were residing amidst the stars, you were brought down to Earth especially to be with me.”

She & I would always cry after she finished this story. Because we knew in our bones it was true. It was true the day I was born and it became truer the day our mother died. Although we grew up in a two-parent household, we found ourselves suddenly parentless that day; our father too consumed with his own grief and incapable of handling two teenage daughters. Soon after we were saddled with a step-mother who as my sister put it “was so loving to us that the day she arrived in our lives, we both magically turned into “Cinderellas”!” So we looked after each other and stood for each other, at home and as we carved our path to the US – first to NY and then to LA to follow our heart and to make our mother’s dreams come true. We had always been close but our shared grief and struggles of those years made us one whole person. That is, until death did us part.

The diagnosis of cancer came out of nowhere. The memories around that time are sharp and blurry, but I will never forget the words – 4th stage, rare, aggressive. We took the news in stride. We were just not the type to be fazed. “Beeee Positive!”, she would say, when asked about her blood group, with a naughty glint in her eye and a cheeky grin on her face; her gorgeous dimples deepening on her gorgeous face. We were not fazed when we were given the schedule for her Chemotherapy sessions. When she mentioned she might lose her long, lustrous hair to Chemo, I told her. “I will shave my hair too and we will both look cool, like Samantha and Smith in ‘Sex and The City’”, “We will both be ‘Bald and Beautiful!’”, she had quipped back joking about the famous soap on TV from the 90s “The Bold and Beautiful”. We had laughed through it all – until laughter itself became too painful for her. We never said goodbye, it was not an option.

When Didi died the color vanished, the only color I knew & felt for years was black. I thought the light vanished too.

And yet.

There is a saying in Hindi that roughly translates “as long as there is life there is world/light”. Incredible as it is, I found love again. I became the light in someone else’s life. And slowly, very slowly, the color returned. I do not know if I will ever know Red like I knew once, but I know I have seen a few rainbows.

I also do not know HOW the light comes, but I know that it does. Somehow.

I do know a way to seek it. As Didi would sing “this little light of mine, I am goin’ let it shine.”

More than a filmmaker/storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. She is a loved wife, a sister & mother – of cats as well as two daughters; her miracle-children. She is also an environmentalist and an immigrant to the United States. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com

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HOME


“I want to come home to Bay Shore”, says our daughter; our exchange student-daughter to be precise – on video call with me. She is crying as she tells me that although she has been back to her country nearly 2 months, she feels out of place in the very place she had called home all her life, a place she left last year to come to America for one whole year. She expected many things to happen during her exchange year – to make new friends, to visit new places, to have an adventure and to return a more experienced person who had seen the world. She got all that! What she didn’t expect was to have her sense of home expanded and transformed forever.

I want to say something to help her. But words fail me. There is nothing I can say. She is not stupid. Indeed she is wise beyond her years; she knows the logic, the reality and the logistics of her life. She also knows she can’t say this to anyone else but me – her Mummy & my husband – her Dada, she can’t say this to her family or friends or she risks hurting them, and she is not the kind to hurt people.

Instead I just look at her beautiful face that I have come to love so deeply. Tears sting my eyes too. I let her cry. She writes to me later on chat “Thankyou for staying strong for the both of us.” My wise girl, she knows how much I miss her. That I too found home with her. And now she is gone & we are both a little lost.

Home – what a simple word. A four-letter word. A 1-syllable word. A not-so-hard to learn or pronounce word. No matter what language one speaks, home has a translation in every language – well, at least I think it has!

I Google words that begin with the word “home” – Homeland, Hometown, Homemade, Homebody, Homebred, Homespun – Homesick, Homeless – Homework! I stop – IT IS true that we all have to do some work to find home, and especially to find our way back home if somehow we have lost it.

In his brilliant Ted Tak “where is home?” Pico Iyer shares how the meaning of home changes based on the type of question one is asked. For e.g. does it mean “where you were born and raised and educated” or is it “where do you pay your taxes, and see your doctor?” or “where do you try to spend most of your time” or is it “which place goes deepest inside you”. I think for many of us, and I could be bold & venture that for most of us, especially in this country of immigrants, the answer to those questions even though it is technically the same question, is varied.

I think of the refugees in the world who are forced out of their homes & homelands; trauma that lives in their minds and plays out on their bodies, sometimes for the rest of their lives.

I think of the down-on –their-luck who because of an ill-fated hand lose their homes & become homeless. My husband & I once gave shelter to a homeless couple who had been living on the streets, to help them get back on their feet. After we told them they could stay with us, Nicole & Anthony slept for almost 36 hours straight in our home, their bodies decompressing from the fatigue of sleeping in unsafe conditions for months.

I think of the immigrants who willingly leave home, their valiant spirits dreaming immigrant dreams but not yet fully aware of the cost those dreams are likely to exact; the health impacts of being uprooted from the land that is coded in our DNA are only just being studied. An Argentinean friend once told me a saying they have in Argentina. “Once an immigrant, always an immigrant” I have felt the truth of these words my entire life. The words that now apply to my immigrant student-daughter.

And I think of all those who don’t fall into the dictionary definition of homeless – people going through other forms of trauma – ancestral, societal, familial; traumas that lives in our cells and manifests in anxiety, depression and dis-ease, medically called “disease” – the world is brimming with people who don’t feel at home with their own selves, their own bodies, minds and spirits.

So ok – there are way too many forms of homelessness and feeling not at home with where we are and who we are. Surely there has to be a way back home? As my beloved sister used to say and my student-daughter has now learnt by heart – “If there is a way in, there is a way out.”
Or in this case it would be more appropriate to say “If there is a way out, there is a way in!”
I sit with this for a moment.

In several mythologies around the world, there seems to be an emphasis on the importance of labyrinths. In the Indian story of “Mahabharat”, in the great battle of Kurukshetra, the villain clan creates a labyrinth that the Pandav brothers – the heroes of the story have to crack. The objective is to get in, to reach the heart of the maze, to fight the enemy at the core, and then to find a way back out. In the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, the hero Theseus needs to get inside the labyrinth, slay the monster and return safely back. It is a near-impossible task and myriads have died at the hands of the monster and Theseus who is brave & sure he can slay the monster, is still lost at how to come out of the labyrinth, how to find his way home.

One of my favorite quotes says – “Whatever the question is, the answer is LOVE.” And so it is for Theseus as the answer comes to him in the form of love. Wise Ariadne, who has fallen in love with Theseus gives him the “clew”; the Greek word for “Thread” and asks him to unroll the thread on his way into the labyrinth and use it to guide him back out. Theseus follows her advice and rest is history or I should say rest is Mythology!

We make this journey of life looking for a home – which actually appears to me is the place where we are loved – fully, wholeheartedly, just as we are. It doesn’t mean we don’t do the work – because finding home or love requires “home-work”. As Kahlil Gibran said “When love beckons to you follow him, though his ways are hard and steep.” World breaks everyone as almost everyone has to leave the innocence & safety of home someday either willingly or forcibly, but some return strong at the broken places. I think they are those who understand that our cracks are where light shines through. That nothing in this world can be perfect and all homes are fleeting. But the love that we feel remains the true shelter.

So maybe the only right response to my immigrant student-daughter saying “I want to come home” is simply “I love you too.”

Swati is a loved wife & mother – of cats as well as two daughters; her miracle-children.
More than a filmmaker/storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. She is also an environmentalist and a first generation immigrant to the United States. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com

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The Invisible String

Photo courtesy: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1241735219/heart-kite-art-cards-flying-kite-card


“Hold it gently – and then let it go”, my father said to me as he handed me the string of the kite he had been flying.

It was August 15th, Indian Independence Day; the day that thousands of Indians take to their roofs to compete in an unofficial kite flying competition. I looked at the sky – full of colorful kites in different shapes, patterns and sizes. The large terrace of my apartment building was full of kids – some accompanied by their parents, some with friends their own age – flying their kites. Most girls were standing on the side & watching the show. But for boys – it was serious business. They were in it for the kill. The cotton string of the kite called “Manjha” is coated with powdered glass or a similar abrasive & designed to cut the strings of rival kites. Every now & again I would hear a big cheer & applause which meant a boy from our terrace had successfully cut the string of a kite that belonged to a boy from another terrace. And then there were groans when “our side” lost; which meant the string of a kite belonging to a boy from our terrace was cut off by someone from another terrace, this was usually followed by loud voices as senior kite-fliers; the experts if you will, schooled the young ones on making a losing maneuver. Kite flying requires skill and August 15th is the day when Indian kite-fliers go to their World Cup!


I was a novice when it came to flying a kite. I seem to recall I was fascinated by the sport and wanted to learn. Just like I had wanted to learn Cricket. But in 1980s India, girls were taught neither Cricket nor Kite-flying – those were boy sports! My father who did know how to fly a kite seldom flew it; he was not very interested in sports – maybe because he was the intellectual kind or maybe because he had no son to teach sports to but only daughters. I had occasionally summoned courage & approached some of the older boys to teach me but the best offer I had been given was to hold the spool of string while a boy flew the kite. This was the first time anyone was offering me to fly the kite, I was excited and eager to show my father that his daughter; a girl could also fly a kite. So what if I had had no training?


“Ouch” I exclaimed as I enthusiastically tried to grab the string from my father and promptly got a nasty cut on my palm from its abrasive coating. The wound drew blood immediately.
“I told you to hold it gently. Now look what you have done.” My father took the string back from my hand, annoyed at my inept handling of the string. “Now go downstairs and ask your mother to put something on the cut.”


Ashamed, in pain from the wound and with tears stinging my eyes, I ran down the stairs to my apartment. My mother busy in the kitchen turned to me & saw my face. “What happened?” she asked. “I tried to fly the kite but I didn’t do it right,” I responded and started crying. “Oh poor thing, it’s ok, come here, come here. “ My mother dropped what she was doing, grabbed a pain ointment from her first-aid closet and took us both to the dining table. There she sat down close to me and applied the medicine to my wound while singing a little Hindi poem she used to sing often “Come my darling, come my heart, you are my silver, you are my gold, you are my key, you are my lock, you are my heartstring, you are my everything.” Words that neither rhymed well nor made much sense but somehow always managed to make me feel better. Words that I had almost entirely forgotten in the 30 years since I have been motherless. Words that somehow came back to me this year as I became a mother myself – for the first time – to our two exchange student-daughters, Sophie & Iara, who through the course of their year with me & my husband became so close to us that they started calling us Mummy & Daddy.


I have never remembered my mother as much as I have in the past couple of years, nor have I missed her as much, nor have I channeled her as much. Both my husband and our student-daughters look at my mother’s photos and tell me I look just like her – a compliment to me of course since she was a beautiful person – both inside and out. During the course of this year my own student-daughters have looked at me – their host-mom for love and support, for calming their anxieties and healing their wounds, for wiping their tears and putting emotional ointments on their abrasions. And through it all I have spontaneously channeled my mother behaving quite like her, it was as if the mother inside me lay dormant all this time and came alive when the time came. Like the aliens buried underground in their tripods in War of the Worlds! 😀

My joy was short-lived – as almost all joys are. I have heard friends say they blinked and their children turned from babies into adults. In our case, that blink went even faster. The year flew by and our student-daughters returned back to their home countries a few days ago, but not before many tears were shed, hugs & kisses exchanged and promises made to keep in touch forever. Our home is quiet and our hearts miss them. I do not know when we will see each other again. I do not know if the love that shines so bright in us right now will continue to shine even as we are separated by space & even time.


Then my friend Jennifer brings me a children’s story that I had never read before. It is called “The Invisible String” – the mother in that story tells her children that people who love each other are connected by a very special but invisible string made of love. We can feel this string deep in our hearts, and we somehow know that we are connected to the ones we love even when they are physically not with us.


And I remember the kites flying high in the sky and my father’s words reminding me to
“hold it gently – and then let it go”.

Swati is a loved wife & mother – of cats as well as two daughters; her miracle-children! More than a filmmaker/storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. She is also an environmentalist and a first generation immigrant to the United States. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com

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When the time is right

“How on earth are we going to find any men if we never go on any dates?”
“The doorbell will ring, we will open the door and there they will be…”

My sister responded to my frustrated question with a grin, the gorgeous dimples on her cheeks deepening, her arm dramatically making the wide gesture of opening a door. She winked at me and added in her usual know-it-all attitude “….when the time is right.“

“Of course!” I said, rolling my eyes.
“100% true,” she responded, adding “ If I am lying, may my tongue fall off.”

Then – after waiting a couple of seconds, she slowly stuck out her tongue at me. I laughed, there was no way not to, she was cute & funny & an insufferable wise-ass all at the same time!
Didi (meaning elder-sister in Hindi); which is what I called her, was always sure. She was sure we were going to find our destiny in America. She was sure we were going to be Sister-Directors; the first in the world. She was also sure we were going to meet two brothers – and they would somehow appear when the time was right.

And I believed her. I had no reason not to. After losing our mom as young teenagers growing up in India, we had learnt to depend on each other, stand for each other, and trust each other – implicitly. Together we had crossed the oceans to get to America, together we had driven cross-country to get to The City of Angels and together we were studying at UCLA so as to become the aforementioned “Sister-Directors”. So involved and busy in our ambition were we, working full-time at our jobs during the day and studying film at nights & weekends that we had no time for dating or putting ourselves out there! Thus my question. Thus her answer. And even though it didn’t quite make any sense in the logical world, deep down I knew Didi was right.

I was wrong.

I understood I was wrong as I sat outside the ICU and the phone rang announcing the end of my sister’s battle with cancer. She was gone. No doorbell was going to ring, there would be no brothers. Nor Sister-directors.

Francis Underwood ; the lead character in The House of Cards famously said, “There are two kinds of pain. The first is the sort of pain that hurts but makes you strong. And the other is the useless kind- the sort of pain that’s only suffering.”

Losing my sister was definitely not the first kind of pain. It was suffering – of the kind that feels like a live amputation, the kind that shatters your heart in so many pieces you know you will never be able to put back together, the kind that threatens to destroy your taste for life itself.

And yet. Someone once said to me that life wants to live. Perhaps that is the reason why I went on living.
And my heart which had learnt how to love found love again. I met the most wonderful man who held my hand through years of heartache. We were best friends before we fell in love and so I actually never had to go on any dates to find him…! After 7 years of companionship, we got married. It took us so long because my heart was still in mourning and not ready to celebrate a wedding. And when we did get married it wasn’t a double wedding – the elaborate affair with two sisters marrying two brothers – quite the opposite, a simple wedding with two people committing to take care of each other’s hearts.

My husband & I occasionally talked about having children. But that conversation almost always ended in tears. Memories of my sister & me dreaming about raising our kids – 2 children each – raising them together remained sharply vivid. “They would all call you Choti Maa and me Badi Maa”; she would say– Choti meaning Younger and Badi meaning Elder in Hindi. “You will be responsible for raising them and I will be responsible – for spoiling them!” She would add, laughing her wise-ass dimpled-cheek laugh.

Another thing she was wrong about.

Last year, I came across a post on nextdoor.com from a woman – let’s call her Barb – looking for families to host international exchange students for a few weeks. I was recovering from a major illness and seeking companionship & community. I responded to her – Yes, we could do it. Barb wrote back – could we host someone for the entire school year? Ummmm.yes??!! Before my husband & I could over-think our way out of it, Barb came over and held our hands as we filled a loooooong application to become host-parents for a year. It was Aug 31st – the last day to apply, we submitted our application at 9pm Eastern. Within a week we were driving to JFK; welcome sign in hand. We met our “student”; a courageous young woman who had just flown half way across the world to spend a year with strangers she had never met. Over the next few weeks & months I came to know of Iara’s heart, her hopes, her fears and her intense zest for life that reminded me of my own when I was her age. Before I knew it, we were falling in love with each other. Before we knew it, we were becoming family that had somehow known & loved each other forever. The “student” was turning into “daughter”.


And before we knew it we had another one! Our second “student-daughter” arrived without even filing forms. One day while at work I got a call from Barb that another exchange student needed a home urgently and I said yes. I came home that day to find Sophie standing in my kitchen waiting for me. This time it didn’t even take weeks. Our hearts already opened from the love of our first daughter swiftly fell in love with our second. That was not the miracle. The miracle was that hers did too. The miracle is that both our daughters call us Mummy and Dada and mean it. The miracle is that we all recognize this extraordinary thing that has happened to us.


A few weeks ago I found myself telling Sophie the story of my sister and the brothers and the doorbell. As I was coming to the end, I found myself laughing. “Maybe it wasn’t meant to be the brothers. Maybe it was meant to be daughters.“ I said. “And you didn’t even have to open the door; I was already in your kitchen!” Sophie responded cheekily and in perfect sync – just the kind of thing my sister would say.

So maybe all of it was true – BUT in its own unique way.
Love finds us in unexpected places. Life knows how to break our hearts but how to mend it too.
Maybe things just fall in place as Didi said – when the time is right.
Maybe – Didi was right.

More than a filmmaker/storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. Her work has been shown on national TV in the US and in India, at film festivals across the world, and won many awards including the “Most Important Video of the Year” award from CNN-India. She is also an environmentalist and a first generation immigrant to the United States. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com

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Go Back To Your Country (on the 20th anniversary of 9/11)

“Go back to your f***ing country” — the words hit me like ice-cold water. I stared unblinkingly at the speaker, unable to process the words directed at me. My face still wore the awkward smile it had when I had rolled down my window to better understand what the passengers in the car next to mine were emphatically trying to tell me. We were stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Hackensack River Bridge, New Jersey, just a few miles from the gaping hole and smoldering embers of what used to be the Twin Towers. It was Sept 18th 2001.

I have never understood why when I need them the most; all my witty repartees vanish like a fart in the wind! I am a writer for God’s sake; I should know how to be funny in the face of first degree insult! Nope, never happens. Instead I stared at the 5 Caucasian teenagers — 3 boys and 2 girls gesticulating at me as if I couldn’t comprehend their verbal bullets. They seem to take this as further proof of my being a foreigner who didn’t understand English, so they did what any smart person ought to do — shout louder at me! “Go back to your country!”

I remember feeling pissed and horrified and ashamed all at once. I remember my mind racing with several logical replies — “You morons, I am Indian, and no Indians were involved in the heinous attack last week” and “I worked my ass off to earn the privilege of living in this country and all you kids had to do to earn the privilege of shouting at me was to be born here” and “I am with you in this, I feel your pain too.” But, none of the aforementioned thoughts took shape in my mouth.

Instead all I did was quietly roll up my window. “They are just kids, and they are hurting for their country,” I thought. I could hear them still shouting at me — their entire rage directed towards one small brown woman, who looked like she might belong to a geographical area close to where the terrorists originated from. “I promise I will do as you say if you could just point out my country or the one you are so pissed with on a freaking map!”, I muttered to myself. Besides, how could they know where I was from — for all they knew I was born & raised in friggin’ Hackensack! I breathed deep and tried to tune out their clamor, forcing myself to look ahead, blinking away tears that had formed in my eyes for then unknown reasons.

I had arrived at JFK in the year 2000 on a bright April morning, a wide-eyed young woman on a decidedly one-way ticket, with a heart full of hope and a head full of impossible dreams. I believed, like so many 1st gen immigrants do, that I was going to find my destiny in America. When I arrived at the immigration desk, the officer checked my documents, flashed a big smile at me and said “Welcome to America!” I will never forget how warm those words made me feel inside…ok, the guy was really handsome, so that may have something to do with it too! But it’s not the entire reason, promise! It really means something when the first person you interact with at the border treats you as a welcome immigrant, it validates the story of America; one that is broadcast on a loudspeaker by the Hollywood dream factory to the world, that America was made by the sweat & toil of immigrants, that it is a country of, by and for the immigrants, so hey you, keep coming to America!

Sept 11th changed all that. Almost overnight, I saw the mood shift and darken. People’s personal boundaries hardened. Borders started turning into walls. INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) ashamed of having granted easy visas to terrorists, reincarnated first as BCIS (Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services) and again as USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services), all in the name of “improved efficiency” but also, it felt, to remove the stain on its reputation. With each iteration, the rules for acquiring and renewing visas became tighter and more tedious. Potential immigrants became potential terrorists. Welcoming America became Fortress America. Traveling abroad and returning became a pain in the rear. Instead of smiling faces of immigration officers, you were (and often still are) greeted by TSA security agents holding back fierce looking German Shepherds. What used to take 5 -10 minutes at immigration now took several hours. And when you thanked your lucky stars to have made it back inside the country, you still had to deal with kids who couldn’t keep their shit together!

Over the past 20 years, I too have had several incarnations. Through various life transitions that entailed exhilarating wins, excruciating losses and everything in between, I finally received my US citizenship three years ago — yes, it took me 18 frickin’ years of paper-work, fingerprinting, more paperwork, and more fingerprinting! I could have raised a kid all the way to college in the time it took me to get an American passport, and it felt similar, with its countless moments of pain & uncertainty such as one associates with raising children, only none of the joy!

As I prepared for my oath of citizenship, my own swearing-in ceremony if you will, I thought about the day those kids swore at me, and why it had stung so hard — besides the fact that they were frickin’ swearing at me! And I realized it was because the day I arrived in America, on that decidedly one-way ticket, in my mind I had become an American. I didn’t pine for my “homeland” as many in my community do and I didn’t ruminate on the possibility that I should return “home” to India. As far as I was concerned, when I arrived in New York that bright April morning, I had come home; that handsome immigration dude might as well have said “Welcome Home.” When the towers fell, I wept for weeks and mourned alongside my fellow Americans. It took those kids’ fury to expose to me how I could be viewed by others — a foreigner, an outsider, even a potential terrorist. Those tears I blinked away were tears of not belonging.

So, this year, on the 20th anniversary of Sept 11th, I plotted my own final comeback; my own “Return of the Jedi” moment- I am a dramatic filmmaker after all! It appeared that the world was hell-bent on mourning, and sure, mourning is appropriate, for reasons far too many to count. But, we can’t mourn everything forever. Instead, I decided to throw what I called a “Melting Potluck”, inviting friends of multiple nationalities, ethnicities and hyphenated identities. I asked them to bring a dish that represented their heritage and a story/song/ poem to share their own American story. Some of us were born here, others naturalized citizens, yet others still on visas or Green Cards — but we all belonged to the American melting pot. Together, we celebrated the American spirit of inclusion and resilience.

And I thanked those poor, ignorant, hapless, rude, hurting kids for inspiring me to do exactly what they had asked me to — Come back to my country!

More than a filmmaker/storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. Her work has been shown on national TV in the US and in India, at film festivals across the world, and won many awards including the “Most Important Video of the Year” award from CNN-India. She is also an environmentalist and a first generation immigrant to the United States. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com

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Human No. 1

It was love at first sight. There she was, walking surreptitiously across the garden, up the steps of our deck, watching every movement around her; ready to scuttle away if I so much as breathed. She was tiny and I guessed no more than 6 weeks old. She was also skinny and wet and bedraggled, but her eyes had a fierce look to them, her demeanor of a warrior resolved to survive against all odds. All my life I had believed and told the story that I was a “dog person”, and definitely not a “cat person”. But, in that very moment, I knew that my heart was making a special place for this warrior feral kitten that had showed up on my deck.

I bought my first ever cat-food and started putting it out for her. Notwithstanding my growing affection, I did not want to separate a kitten from her mother who I expected would show up for the food as well. She didn’t. I put the food out every day for the little warrior, getting increasingly worried for her safety; it was late October, the weather was getting cold especially at nights, and if a raccoon, opossum or another feral cat attacked her, she didn’t stand much of a chance. I waited with baited breath every day and thanked life when she showed up each morning & evening for her meal, tiptoeing up my deck with the stealth of a Navy Seal!

The mother never appeared. I called up the local shelter and was advised that if the mother hadn’t showed up in two weeks, the kitten had been abandoned. I drove around to the shelter to pick a humane trap. That evening the kitten walked defenselessly into the trap my husband and I set for her.

Even before we brought her in, I had chosen the name for her – “Grace”, in appreciation of life’s grace to have bestowed another being upon us to love and care for. So imagine our surprise when we took “Grace” to the vet for her first visit, only to be told “it’s a boy!” Why on earth did we think it was a girl? My husband says he did that because people often refer to cats in the feminine. I think I did it because I had always wanted a daughter. So, this “pet-baby” who had miraculously showed up in our garden and walked into my heart at first sight; my little warrior had to be a girl!

Well, I was already head over heels in love with her– I mean him! I asked the kitten what he wanted to be called.

Mummy: “my sweet little kitten, my lovely little fur-ball, what shall Mummy call you now?”
Kitten:  “meowwwooo-oo-oo-oo!”

I decided to let the name come to me. In the meantime, the kitten; my gorgeous little tabby with his luscious brown coat dotted with specks of gold, this mini-tiger who a friend suggested we name “tiger”, had decided I was his mother. He was “picture-perfect” cute; the kind that you see on pet calendars and go “awwwwww”! the kitten had decided I was his mother. His favorite spot in the house was the little gap between my butt and the back of my chair, so while I spent my days working, he spent his days sleeping behind me, nestled up in the warmth of his human mommy’s body. When he awoke, he would jump on my desk and sit on my keyboard demanding I play with him – which I was only too happy to oblige! My husband who was still warming up to the idea of being “daddy”, jokingly called me the kitten’s “Human No. 1” and himself “Human No. 2”! The kitten spent most of his time with Human No. 1 and occasionally went to play with Human No. 2.

I do not remember exactly when the roles changed. Maybe the kitten understood that having conquered mummy’s heart, he had to do some “cute-work” to convert Human No.2 into “daddy” to secure his position in the household. Or maybe it was a “boy” thing, you know, “sons & fathers” hanging out; watching a game or doing their “thing” together, which in this case, happened to be the kitten scratching his chin against daddy’s stubble. Or maybe it was the cat just being fickle. Whatever the reason, one day I saw the kitten waking up, stretching himself, jumping off the couch and walking straight past mommy to daddy’s desk, jumping up to daddy’s lap to first rub against his stubble and then sat there comfortably. Over the coming weeks, this behavior became the new norm. Daddy was well on his way to becoming the NEW Human No. 1.

I come from a broken family. I had lost my mother to stroke as a teenager, and my sister to cancer as an adult. The fractured relationship I have with my father; my one living relative in my immediate family, and his preference for his other family with my step-mother harbored in me a certain kind of lonely knowledge that I was now first for no one. Although if I think this through for just a minute, this is actually not true at all; I am definitely FIRST for my very loving husband (and also I am told now by my very loving exchange student-daughters)! BUT emotions are not logical and family trauma shows up in unexpected ways. And so it was, that one day as my warrior-kitten walked past me to nestle himself in daddy’s arms that I burst into tears that stung with rejection.

Mummy: “my sweet little one, are you angry with mummy? Did Mummy do something wrong?”
Kitten: “meowwwooo-oo-oo-oo!”

My husband, being kind and considerate, tried to re-establish Mummy as Human No. 1 by occasionally ignoring the kitten when he meowed at Daddy for attention. They say that it’s the only way to train or re-train a cat. I say “occasionally” because daddy is a softie, and finds it hard to ignore the kitten. Besides, you ought to have a heart of steel to be able to ignore the sweet sound of a kitten. The ignoring works sometimes and then it doesn’t. Time passed – the cat following his new routine. He definitely knows I am mummy, comes to me when he wants food rubbing his body gently against my legs, and often blinks softly at me offering me what is called the “kitty kiss”, but when he wants a real cuddle, Human No. 1 and No. 2 seem to have reversed, for now anyway.

One of the remarkable things about life is how transformative seemingly small events can turn out to be. A little kitten can become a mirror that shows the wounds of one’s childhood. But it can also be a conduit for healing and emotional maturity. Loving my furry boy is a reminder that love is a gift, not a transaction. And having heard numerous stories from friends about both their furry and human children’s fickle whims, at once endearing and frustrating for the parents, I have come to believe that there is much in common between human and furry babies. Both are bundles of joy who rule our hearts. And both tend to break it from time to time.

I finally decided to name the kitten “Evan”; Welsh for “God is Gracious.” So, “Evan” is the masculine form of “Grace”. Because no matter which human Evan prefers on any given day, I am thankful for life’s grace to have brought him into my life, he will always be my Cat No. 1.

Mummy: “So, little one, what do YOU think of your new name – ‘Evan’?”
Kitten: “meowwwooo-oo-oo-oo!”

Swati is a loved wife & mother – of cats as well as two daughters; her miracle-children, whose given names are Sophie & Iara, but to Swati they can all be called “Grace”!
More than a filmmaker/storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. She is also an environmentalist and a first generation immigrant to the United States. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com

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Re-thinking Ginger Rogers

I am listening to my brilliant and menopausal acting coach as she goes through another one
of her hot flashes. “For a couple of minutes my brain shuts down. All I can think of is I am
on fire. And I am panicking because I am in the middle of an audition which makes me feel
even hotter…“

And I am thinking of “Ginger Rogers” – the woman who not only did everything Fred Astaire
did backwards and in heels, but also while menstruating, cramping, menopausing. How the
hell did we forget to include all that? How the hell did we agree to compete with men at their
level, on their terms, at their speed? By pretending of course and hiding and lying.
By pretending that periods, and cramping, and hemorrhaging and peri-menopausing and
hot-flashing and menopausing are aberrations to be ignored or sidelined as we go through
the “real” business of – taking care of “business”. By hiding our aches & pains in order to
look desirable, competitive, perfect. By lying to everyone that we can do it all despite our
gender, despite our bleeding/ sagging bodies begging for a reprieve. By lying to ourselves
that we can be just as fast, just as productive, just as equal. We can be men, please pretty
please, just let us in.

We women can be great liars. It’s not surprising, given that our survival often depends on it.
Some of us pop pills to stop the cramping and migraines that come with our periods, in order
to finish the shift on the factory floor or deliver the corporate report on time. Because
having a period-migraine or PMS is not a valid excuse. Others juggle the demands of work &
family with IUD appointments, D&C and endometrial ablation, omega-3 & estrogen
supplements to stem the non-stop bleeding that often accompanies peri-menopause. And
yet others put on fake smiles in the board-room and sit through meetings never breathing a
word about the night sweats, the hot flashes, the bodies & brains on fire. Because God forbid
we paused the meeting for a few minutes while we let the hot flash pass. Will the board stop
and wait for us to recover? Or will it decide that women are a burden, a drag, a liability?
Women need too much time out. Women hold “’productivity” back. A woman’s place is in
the house!

I look around at the NY Subway station – at the women rushing about, multi-tasking, hyper-
achieving, ignoring the cries of their bodies. My eyes mist as I see ALL women as super-women.
Learning to suffer her pain in silence is almost a design feature of being a woman.
We don’t dare complain because we are afraid the grip on our hard-earned seat at the table
is slippery as it is. We are guarded and on-guard because our victories in the world are new &
fragile. We are scared of being pushed back “for our own good”. So, we try to compete in a
male world, shaped by male bodies, on a male idea of time and productivity. We try to survive
in a world shaped by the male gaze, such that even our blockbuster heroines like Wonder
Woman and the new Captain Marvel are masculine in every way except the shape of their
bodies, which is dressed or shall I say, half-dressed, in clothes that fulfill male fantasy. Never once is
their femininity with its messy problems even hinted at. Does Wonder Woman’s large
breasts ever interfere with her arrow-shooting skills – Amazonian women were said to have
cauterized girls’ right breasts to solve that problem, but the movie never mentions it – afraid
the problems of female reality would be too unpalatable to a hyper-masculine society? Does
U.S. Air Force pilot Carol Danvers AKA Captain Marvel or “I am no man” Éowyn in Lord of
the Rings or the time-traveling nurse Claire in Outlander menstruate when she is hanging
out with an army or brigade of men? Forget the women in Game of Thrones; that hyper-masculine
orgy of sex and violence, its heroines are much too larger-than-life to contend
with the mundane problems that come with actually being a woman.

Growing up, I used to love reading stories of adventure whose heroes were invariably men.
On the rare occasion when there was a heroine involved, she was often pre-occupied with
dressing up like a man, pretending to be a man, mingling with men. This often left me un-
satiated as I found myself wondering – what if she had bigger breasts, how would she strap
them down? What does she do when her time arrives each month? Does she have an ever-
lasting supply of pads/ tampons in the middle of the forest? And what about peri-
menopause? Even daring to imagine any of these effervescent ever-youthful heroines to be
older than 40 is a heroic act! But if through some sheer miracle the heroine does live to be over
40, does she ever go through what many of us go through; bleeding straight for 10 – 20 – 30
days, being at our wits end? Never mentioning something doesn’t make it disappear but it
does trivialize it, as if the concerns & pre-occupations of an entire gender can be something
worth easy dismissal. It’s sad how our society loves hyper-sexualizing women’s bodies but
actually never tries to peer beneath what it feels like to be inside one. As a result we dwell in
fantasy and hide the actual nitty-gritty of life, when the real marvel of story-telling, as the
great writer Aaron Sorkin puts it, is in exploring “how does it happen when it really
happens”. I am still waiting for one of these modern day rendering of heroines to lay it out
for us.

Back in real life, I wonder why is it that my doctor has been recommending Colonoscopy
and breast self-exams to me for years but never once mentioned how to prepare my body for
the onslaught of my peri-menopausal years? Why is it only now when I ask my girlfriends
older than me that they share stories of their bodies’ trauma and their struggles juggling the
balls they always juggled but with the added pressure of “the change”? Why is it that the
only solace my doctor had to offer me about the sudden anxiety and struggles that have beset my
life is the statement “Welcome to your 40s” and a wink? Why are such profound changes treated as afterthoughts? Why are such enormous challenges dismissed as mere inconveniences? Where are the women’s circles to initiate and guide? Or for that matter, where are the men’s circles?

Overwhelmed by the unfairness of it all, I am overcome with the feeling that all men are
complicit in the state of affairs (women too of course but mostly not by choice). The best of
men are compassionate to their own wives, and give massages and make tea. It is a great
start but not enough. The needle needs to be moved; it requires having a dialogue with
others, and influencing others. It requires questioning the status quo of maximizing “fake
productivity” that constantly threatens to leave behind the gender whose perceived slowness
stems from being the carrier of “real productivity” – the productivity of life. After all, much
of what makes us different from men and shapes our lives is because nature made us the
bearer of children. And whether we bear those children or not, our bodies tell us where we
are in the circle of life far more acutely than do men’s bodies. Besides, what has this quest
for fake productivity, this insistence on being fast and hyper-competitive delivered us? A
race to the bottom? A devastated planet? A growing disconnect with our fellow beings? Tech-bros?

One could argue nature itself is unfair, it has no interest in the individual well being or
personal achievement or happiness, all it cares for is evolution. So, as far as nature is
concerned the female gender is simply the vehicle for the next generation – her personal
dreams and happiness be damned. But as a society the male gender has long claimed to
care about fulfillment of dreams and the pursuit of happiness. It’s time we as a society
include the happiness of all genders in the conversation. It’s time to slow down not just so
that one gender can take a breath & walk through life with grace, but so all of us can breathe
& walk through life with grace. It’s time to have a conversation about what it really means to
be a woman.

More than a filmmaker/storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. She is also an environmentalist and a first generation immigrant to the United States. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com

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J.K. Rowling f***ing ruined my life

I stood in the corridor of a Delhi hospital watching the live feed of a Colonoscopy in progress. My sister; the love of my life, the red in my painting, the bread on my plate; was in the exam room getting a Colonoscopy. For the first few minutes of the procedure, everything had looked as it should as the probe made its way through a moist, pink passage into her large intestine. And then came the moment – you know the kind which splits your life into “before” and “after”, that moment came for us when the probe found an obstruction in her colon, the size of a child’s fist, blocking almost the entire passageway. The probe stopped, it couldn’t proceed any further.

My sister often used to say that she & I were born twice – first the biological way, a few years apart from each other; and a second time, the day our mom died leaving her two teenage daughters behind, we were re-born as spiritually conjoined twins, forged to look after each other.  Even though we grew up in a two-parent household, we found ourselves suddenly parentless the day our mom passed away; our father consumed with his own grief and incapable of handling two teenage daughters; and soon after saddled with a step-mother who was so loving to us that the day she arrived in our lives, my sister and I magically turned into “Cinderellas”! It was an abnormal way of growing up in India at the time – no one other than us had lost a parent to death or divorce, we knew no other children with step-parents, every family seemed to be a picture-perfect postcard of parental love and devotion, it was as if they were all trying their damndest to star in a Bollywood movie; you know the kind where the entire family dances together on the same fucking beat? We were the odd ones out.  Our family was the only messed up one we knew. We were the special ones, but in all the wrong ways. Into this chaos, my sister and I were re-born, alone but together, unloved but loved – by each other. We had always been close but our shared grief and struggles of the years that followed made us one whole person, that is, until death did us part.

When she woke up after the Colonoscopy and after I had helped her shit out little specs of blood from the wounds caused by the biopsy; her first but not the last experience of shitting blood, I told my sister they had found a “mass”, a “growth” in her colon – the word “tumor” stuck in my throat for unknown reasons. I shouldn’t have bothered, she was not fazed. She was not the type to be fazed. She was not fazed when her biopsy came back a couple days later as positive for cancer.  She was not fazed when she was told she needed several blood transfusions to help her prepare for potential surgery. “Be Positive!”, she would say, when asked about her blood group, with a naughty glint in her eye and a cheeky grin on her face; her gorgeous dimples deepening on her gorgeous face. No, she was not fazed through any of that. And honestly, neither was I, at the time. We were not fazed when we were given the schedule for her Chemotherapy sessions. “I will shave my hair too and we will both look cool, like Samantha and Smith in ‘Sex and The City’”, I joked with her when she mentioned she might lose her long, lustrous hair to Chemo. “We will both be ‘Bald and Beautiful!’”, she had quipped back. We had laughed & laughed, with her in my arms, both of us lying together in her hospital bed that was designed for only one person, laughed until she had spasms of pain in her gut, those awful & literally gut-wrenching spasms that wrecked havoc on her increasingly frail body. Ever since our mom died, we had shared everything – our grief of losing the one person who had selflessly devoted her life to us, and we shared our dreams; of flying to America; the land of opportunity, of traveling across oceans, of studying film, of becoming the first “Sister Directors” the world had ever seen, and of finding “the brothers” who were made especially for “the sisters”! We would say that we were two halves of a whole – both 50-50. We shared everything 50-50. But when it came to the most important battle of her life, that hypothesis failed miserably – I could neither split her cancer 50-50, nor share her physical trauma 50-50; she went through all of it on her own, while I stood on the outside watching helplessly.

Extended family members; well-meaning relatives who had never given two hoots to our well-being all those years we had lived in India, struggling to survive in a motherless, struggling, broken family, now suddenly came out of the woodwork, visiting us in the hospital, asking us how & why it took us so long to find out my sister had cancer, and especially when we now lived in America. I would wince with guilt & shame, as I repeated the same answer – my sister had never exhibited the classic symptoms of colon cancer, no bleeding from the rectum etc., she had had trouble digesting milk for the previous year which an American doctor had diagnosed as a simple case of “lactose intolerance” and recommended Lactaid that she took for several crucial months as the cancer grew in her gut. More recently another American doctor had recommended an endoscopy which had come out normal. He had mentioned Colonoscopy in passing, but had also said he didn’t expect to find much since there had been no history of cancer in our family and my sister was a healthy young woman in her 30s. So, technically our genetics fucked her, in the wrong way. And so did the fractured American Medical System that misdiagnosed her twice.

Yet – while this was the truth, it was not the whole truth.  The whole truth was that we could have pushed the doctors more to investigate if something was seriously wrong with her, especially when she started feeling tired and losing weight, but we hadn’t. Why the hell not? Because we believed with our might & souls that we were special.  Like Harry Potter – our favorite fictional character, whose mother had given her life protecting him, and in death, watched over him and shielded him from harm. His story was our story. We were Harry in flesh and blood. We had learnt how to light our Petronus through years of darkness. And believed that like Harry’s mother, our own watched over us and would shield us from any real harm.

I thought of her – J.K.Rowling I mean, as I sat outside the ICU when the phone rang. One of my childhood friends answered the phone. I didn’t have to be told what was said. I knew. Over the past few weeks, I had first fought with death, then prayed at his door, then begged at his feet to spare my sister’s life. But the asshole wanted her like a cat in heat. So he took her. And all I was left was a hole in my heart the shape of her gorgeous face and a lifetime of coulda-woulda-shouldas.

And the thought that somehow it was all J.K.Rowling’s fault.

Swati is a sister, storyteller, a filmmaker, an environmentalist and a first generation immigrant to the United States. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com

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