The oath one takes at the citizenship ceremony is a living oath. It feels a bit like a wedding vow; to remain true to the promise – in sickness and in health, and especially in sickness. Because love, like citizenship, is tested not when things are easy, but when they are hard.
It was April 1st, 2000, the day I arrived in America. Yes, I arrived in the US on April Fool’s Day, which has given rise to much humor & many jokes in my circle of family & friends. In a way it is quite apropos; no matter which day you arrive in America; an immigrant’s life is in many way s a fool’s errand. Who but a fool leaves everything they know; their culture, their people, their way of life, their food, their own earth, and travels thousands of miles to arrive in an unknown land, their entire life-story packed into a suitcase or two and sometimes not even that much, their most precious belonging – “HOPE” – that the new land will give them refuge and be their land.
In 1568 John Sigismund of Transylvania became the first Unitarian king in Europe and the first European monarch to grant religious freedom to Catholics, Lutherans and the Reformed Church. When called to a religious debate, his opponents declared that if victorious, they would see David; the King’s leading advocate, condemned to death as a heretic. David replied in the truest spirit of being a UU, “If I win, I shall defend to the death your right to be wrong.”
Fasting is considered a form of Tapas, where one practices self-restraint, purification, and spiritual discipline to transcend physical desires and cultivate inner strength. The Sanskrit word for fasting, Upavāsa literally means “dwelling near” or “staying close”—specifically, staying close to the Divine through austerity (Tapas), meditation, and self-discipline. What comes to mind is “Nearer, My God, to Thee”.
I like to visit an old European city in the early morning hours, before the hum-drum of life, the noise of the vehicles, and the throngs of people pour in. It is a ritual that I am compelled to undertake at least one or two mornings during my travel. With no semblance of modern life – either visual or aural, and surrounded entirely with historic architecture – Classical, Gothic, Renaissance, Neo-Gothic, Baroque, it is possible to imagine myself as a time-traveler – albeit from a safe distance; Christianity and especially Catholicism was not known to be kind to Pagans in the 15th century!
Every year millions of people visit this Casa di Giulietta or Juliet’s House, families tour the house, lovers kiss on the famous balcony, single people touch the breast of the Juliet statue believed to bring luck in love. And they leave letters – thousands of letters – for Juliet, sharing their own heart’s yearnings, desires, heart-breaks and love-stories. Juliet, who lived a mere 14 year old in the Bard’s story has in death become a matriarch, a grande dame, a symbol to keep alive one’s faith in finding true love. Visiting Casa De Giuletta has become a pilgrimage.
Hike” Zack ordered, and the dogs obeyed, moving so fast that our bodies lurched backward then forward, as the dogs made their way up and down the snowy hill. “Gee”, “Haw , “Easy” went Zack; simple commands that a musher gives his dogs to turn right, left or slow down. Huskies don’t like to slow down, huskies love the snow and the cold and the speed.
How do we honor the life of a man who did the hardest work of all – his refusal to dehumanize his opponent, when many of us, may I dare say, most of us, at this very moment are dehumanizing someone in our own hearts; someone we don’t agree with, someone whose lifestyle we cannot stand, someone whose politics we abhor.
I was a peculiar child. I didn’t care for gifts or toys or clothes or sweets or anything of the sort. What I wanted most was stories – hearing them, reading them, and later watching them in the form of movies. I hadn’t the slightest idea then that one day I will be writing them.
he power of myth lies in its ability to communicate complex, profound ideas in a way that resonates on an emotional and spiritual level. Myths endure when they tap into universal truths and human experiences. And this myth from India has endured thousands of years and is still a living experience for hundreds of millions of people.
For Didi’s birthday night, I had planned a very special trip to the top of the Mauna Kea. The tallest mountain in the world when measured from its base, which is deep beneath the ocean. From its base on the ocean floor to its peak, it rises over 33,500 feet making it taller than Mount Everest. Measured from its base above sea level to its summit it is almost 14,000 feet. The most famous thing about Mauna Kea is due to its high elevation, clear skies and lack of atmospheric distortion, it is home to the world-renowned astronomical observatories and the home of the powerful keg telescopes.
We reached the opening. And stood spell-bound. In front of us was Hessian Lake – nestled at the base of Bear Mountain that was awash in brilliant hues of gold, orange, and red. Its reflection in the lake-water formed a perfect mirror, doubling the fiery splendor of the foliage. The stillness of the water enhanced the symmetry, and the scene felt like a painting, with the vibrant colors of fall blending into the soft blue sky above. The sun was jusssst coming up.
HOPE IS AN ACT OF DEFIANCE. DEFY WITH US.
“Houston, we have a problem”, said Didi; which means elder-sister in Hindi. In this case, MY elder sister, was in the passenger seat while I was driving our 2000 Dodge Neon. We were on the Interstate I-80 somewhere in the middle of New Jersey. It was 1st of July 2004 and we were in the midst of another big move of our lives.
“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 […]
“Mummy, Dada! I came top in my class of 800! Are you proud of me?”, the message pops up on my phone.
Mark texted back effortlessly, “yes proud of you – and missing you – love Dada”. I wrote, “ummm…only a little bit” with lots of naughty emojis. Later I confess to Mark – I didn’t know how to properly respond to Sophie’s question. Mark asks me why.
And I find myself breaking into tears.
“Your daughter is the best thing that ever happened to my son.” Mark’s dad said as he shook my father’s hand. “She is just marvelous. You must be so proud of her.” he added. My father looked surprised, confused, mystified. He appeared to be at a loss of words; my father is never at a loss of words. One thing he didn’t appear was proud.
“You must be so proud of your dad”, the lady in the dazzling white sari said at the award ceremony. “He is a very smart man. Are you as smart as he is?” she asked me. “I am.” I answered without missing a beat, I was 9 years old. This evoked laughter among the adults around me. “She is your daughter indeed, Srivastav”, the lady said to my father with a chuckle. My father smiled benevolently at me, neither acknowledging nor refuting my statement. Maybe he thought I was as smart as he was. Or maybe not.
But we were sure – Mark & I – that we wanted to adopt. We looked into adoption, even international adoption – from India – and all of it felt like a tedious, bureaucratic affair that took years out of one’s life.
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.
I was invited to be the Keynote speaker by Farmingdale State College Multicultural Committee at their annual gala. Following is my full keynote.
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.
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.
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..
I started the Crossing Party Lines – Long Island chapter in Feb 2023. It has been an incredibly rewarding experience.
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.
I looked at Mark and said “English Breakfast?”
“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.
“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.
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.”
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.
“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.
“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 […]
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, […]
I am listening to my brilliant and menopausal acting coach as she goes through another oneof her hot flashes. “For a couple of minutes my brain shuts down. All I can think of is I amon fire. And I am panicking because I am in the middle of an audition which makes me feeleven hotter…“ […]
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 […]
Our mindset is still locked in old forms of warfare, but a new form of war is right at our doorstep. Albert Einstein famously said, “I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”We know now that a key weapon […]
Once upon a time, there lived a little girl who dreamt to fly,
so very high
that…errrr…uhmmm… yes…very high indeed.
Little did she know, the highway to the stars was bumpy,
pitted and lumpy
this was told in some tales, the ones she didn’t’ read.
The intersection of caste, class and gender make Dalit women the most unsafe women in India, their official rape figure of 10 rapes per day is NOWHERE near the truth. Another day, another gang-rape story. A victim, whose biggest fault is being a woman, in a culture that regards women as lesser humans. Several perpetrators, […]
My earliest “memory” of America is of my father telling me about the moon landing. “ John F Kennedy said we will put a man on the moon in 10 years and the Americans did it. “ As a little girl growing up in India, I imagined a country called America whose presidents were visionaries, whose people […]
Remember the scene from the movie “Titanic”? The ship has hit the iceberg and taking-in water rapidly. Rose: Don’t you understand? The water is freezing and there aren’t enough boats. Not enough by half. Half the people on this ship are gonna die. Cal: Not the better half. Now re-imagine the scene such that the iceberg is […]
A hyphenated identity doesn’t mean we always get to play on both teams. As an Indian American, it is hard to escape the cacophony of diatribe for and against four more years of President Trump. Indian-Americans have traditionally affiliated themselves with Democrats but today their loyalties are split; two seminal events — the election of […]
I imagine us living on Broadway, both of us
She uptown, I downtown, I could take the train or the bus
And even if no train or bus would take me to her place,
there is at least a straight, known path to her space…
I sit down to write. Never really sure if I weave a story or if it’s the story that weaves me It is creative some days but agonizing in many ways Some agonies just agonies of the art but others are peculiar to my heart. They say good stories come from heart’s deepest recesses whence […]
When she died, I thought I had an ocean in my eyes an ocean that would never dry up no matter how many salty tears it cries. Years passed. The wound sealed. Somehow I lived. My innards steeled. Yesterday I cried again the ocean in my eyes spilled the taste of tears on my lips […]
“Mere desh ki dharti sona ugle, ugle hire moti, mere desh ki dharti”(“The soil of my country produces gold, produces diamonds and pearls, this soil of my land”)[1]” I remember watching the song from the film “Upkaar” by Manoj Kumar on TV when I was a child, growing up in India in the 80s. The hard-working farmer-hero carrying […]
In 2008, India appeared before the U.N. Human Rights Council as part of the Universal Periodic Review process, an important human rights procedure in which States review one another’s human rights records. The Human Rights Council explicitly called India’s attention to the suicides of Indian farmers as a human rights issue.India responded to questions about […]
It’s been almost 50 years since Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri gave India the slogan “Jai Jawaan, Jai Kisaan” (Hail to the Solider, Hail to the Farmer). The father of our nation, Mahatma Gandhi famously said that “the soul of India lives in its villages”. Yet, today, every 30 minutes a farmer commits suicide. It […]
“मेरे देश की धरती सोना उगले, उगले हीरे मोती, मेरे देश की धरती”. जब भी भारतीय किसान के बारे में बात छिड़ती हैं, तो मन में यही चित्र उभरता है: एक आदर्ष किसान, एक परिवार- पत्नी, माँ, बाप, एक लड़का, एक लड़की, कम से कम एक जोड़ा बैल जिसे प्यार से किसान बुलाता है – […]
WE are “We The People”, “We The Voice”. We can reclaim our democracies, stand up for our rights, fight against the wrongs. It is true that too many of us are sometimes too weak, too oppressed, too young, too old, too tired, too busy. Yet, every time, one small voice says, “I shall not be […]
