hope obama is safe during his mid east trip. god bless him. we need him if not for anything else as a symbol of the thinking, global citizen he is...he looks like ALL of us. now aint that great, for one.
wish the middle east characters would work out their situation once and for all. isnt everyone sick of this? yes to a two state solution. stop settlements. and ahmadijenad, stop touting nonsense about the holocaust. stop spewing your hate, Hamas. open your eyes world, Israel open your eyes. is everyone burying their heads in the desert sand?
to all -- so what if you all have gods. i like mine with a pinch of salt. does'nt everything taste better that way? try yours like that for a change.
slumdog kids - so their houses werent demolished. seeing photos of those children who got a taste of glory at the oscars, now lying sprawled in makeshift beds in their tenements...how do they deal with it? will they grow up hating the people who showed them what life could be, but is not? may they never hate themselves. may life be kind to them again. who am i wishing this for? after all, even god comes salty, not sweet. a school for slum kids. could i go back and do that? someone must have tried, surely. i am a fake. sitting here and typing but doing nothing.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
goodbye gan shalom, hello Summer Camp i dont like you.
jayanth graduated. for two weeks i would tear up in front of my computer screen thinking of how he was finally leaving his baby years behind. its a big day, a huge leap. the wide world beckons and i am not ready to let go. and all he's doing is joining kindergarten. i will never forget the sight of him sitting on the stage in the beth shalom temple sanctuary on a little chair with a balloon tied to it. and his dear dear teacher Regina's face flooding with emotion as each little 5 year old walked up to her and quietly handed her a bright, blooming peony and whispered "thank you".
basketball camp at the Y is truly daunting for J. "the ball keeps running away from me," he sobbed as he clung to me, arms wrapped tight around my hips, his little black head pressed into my body. Losing...not being as good as another...these are things jayanth cannot stand. he is acutely sensitive to any such indication and being of non athletic, average-build stock, the odds are not in his favor. but -- even kindergarten has not begun...life perches before him like a pliant flower, waiting for him to unfold its petals, one by one, and breathe the fragrance within. we all must envy our children their childhood, and they will surely envy their own children. Toward us, they will have pity or sympathy...reminders of what lies ahead and how much more beautiful and thrilling that must be than us, and all the other things they must one day leave behind. but, for now, i have my children to watch and learn and love -- and, going by their behaviour ('spirited' is a mild word) at home-- be thoroughly infuriated by!
when he is not in time out or being yelled at by me, he says i love you a hundred times, reminding me of how i don't say it enough. drinking milk the other day he said -- "this milk tastes beautiful, just like my amma. i give you my love amma." my mom says hes going to have lots of girlfriends. i think that is true, if not anything else, he knows to turn on the charm. his first real female friend is our little neighbor Mitzi. J's favorite things to do with her are (i) dance with the volume turned all the way up, to Alvin and the Chipmunks!
(ii) pretend to fall down and bang his head or some other body part while she watches and laughs. Hes a clown! he loves making his classmates laugh too. he heckled me when i read a story to his class. hes going to be standing outside the classroom when he does the same to Mr. or Mrs.Whoever
and his sister?....her update is coming soon! she's a bubbling little spring with the sweetest voice and skyrocketing vocab. all still in baby language - she might as well be speaking English, she sounds so believable. and when she roars, or lunges forward to scratch or bite or head-bang, shes a bear. (cue...the nuns and maria in "she 's an angel, she's a demon, she's a girl!!!" (or something like that).
basketball camp at the Y is truly daunting for J. "the ball keeps running away from me," he sobbed as he clung to me, arms wrapped tight around my hips, his little black head pressed into my body. Losing...not being as good as another...these are things jayanth cannot stand. he is acutely sensitive to any such indication and being of non athletic, average-build stock, the odds are not in his favor. but -- even kindergarten has not begun...life perches before him like a pliant flower, waiting for him to unfold its petals, one by one, and breathe the fragrance within. we all must envy our children their childhood, and they will surely envy their own children. Toward us, they will have pity or sympathy...reminders of what lies ahead and how much more beautiful and thrilling that must be than us, and all the other things they must one day leave behind. but, for now, i have my children to watch and learn and love -- and, going by their behaviour ('spirited' is a mild word) at home-- be thoroughly infuriated by!
when he is not in time out or being yelled at by me, he says i love you a hundred times, reminding me of how i don't say it enough. drinking milk the other day he said -- "this milk tastes beautiful, just like my amma. i give you my love amma." my mom says hes going to have lots of girlfriends. i think that is true, if not anything else, he knows to turn on the charm. his first real female friend is our little neighbor Mitzi. J's favorite things to do with her are (i) dance with the volume turned all the way up, to Alvin and the Chipmunks!
(ii) pretend to fall down and bang his head or some other body part while she watches and laughs. Hes a clown! he loves making his classmates laugh too. he heckled me when i read a story to his class. hes going to be standing outside the classroom when he does the same to Mr. or Mrs.Whoever
and his sister?....her update is coming soon! she's a bubbling little spring with the sweetest voice and skyrocketing vocab. all still in baby language - she might as well be speaking English, she sounds so believable. and when she roars, or lunges forward to scratch or bite or head-bang, shes a bear. (cue...the nuns and maria in "she 's an angel, she's a demon, she's a girl!!!" (or something like that).
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
my latest article - a short travel piece on harvard square
http://www.hindu.com/mp/2009/02/16/stories/2009021650210500.htm
The city of Boston, unlike most American cities, is visibly historic. The North End teems with Italian restaurants and little red brick houses stacked against each other like squatters on either side of narrow roads. The row houses on Commonwealth Av enue bring to mind the gilded age and old family money.
Throw in Boston’s various landmarks as the centre of the American struggle for independence and a hurried tourist could very well overlook its little twin — the city of Cambridge — were it not for the college it houses: Harvard.
The first time I rode the subway system that connects Boston, it was by chance that I got off at Harvard Square. The station is situated in a circle of sorts, right in the middle of the square with Harvard College behind it, the Harvard Coop in front, and streets and shops shooting off from the remaining corners.
I returned to it after three years and remembered how the busy criss-crossing streets, plied by buses and cars and SUVs, seem to bear a historical grudge against motorised transport.
The cars that ply Harvard Square appear to be squeezing themselves between its only rightful occupants — the pedestrians.
A 10-minute walk from the station’s brick landing is the home of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It was here that George Washington took command of the army during the American Revolution.
The square’s unassuming 300-year-old Christ Church has bullet holes in it (safely, respectfully preserved), bringing to the fore the comparison that our old forts have too many bullet holes to preserve; the American independence struggle was a blink compared to ours. But above this short story of rebellion towers Harvard and it’s many offshoots in the Square.
One is The Grolier Poetry Book Shop, which, since 1927 has been frequented by the likes of T.S Eliot and Conrad Aiken. You can linger, if only to re-imagine what might have passed here between the greatest American poets of the twentieth century: which collection did Elizabeth Bishop pick up and where did e.e.cummings hang his art.
The Harvard Coop — short for cooperative — was formed, like most Harvard related groups, more than a 100 years ago in 1882 by students needing a place to buy books, wood and fuel for hearth fires. Today, its heavy, old wooden doors swing the visitor into an American college book and apparel store like any other.
Here, I met with a group of poets that gathered on Sundays at The Coop under the guidance of an old gentleman with a long beard and long coat who appeared to have modelled himself upon Boston’s grand old men of American letters.
Poetry, however, is not all that grows around Harvard. Punks and Goths in Mohawks, black attire and belly-piercings love the square too. A group of them once accompanied our every poem recitation with a squeeze of the Fart Cushion, an aptly named piece that emits the sound each time you sit on it.
Across the street from the Coop, bound in the curving belt of Massachusetts Avenue, is Harvard yard. Rising above it is the blue and white bell tower of Lowell Hall, former home of the Danilov bells.
They were purchased and brought to Harvard to save them from the Stalinists in 1929 and returned in 2008 to their home in the Danilov monastery in Russia.
Harvard college itself was established in 1636, only 16 years after the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth; it was named after a young minister named John Harvard who bequeathed half his estate and library to the fledgling college.
Entering Harvard yard through the tall wrought iron gates, one is immediately taken by the simple red brick buildings, the college’s deep democratic convictions that play out in faculty and students working and living alongside; the office of the President of Harvard in Massachusetts Hall is a few floors above a freshman dormitory.
Not here the heft and eternity of Cambridge University’s tall, silent spires.
Where Cambridge’s Trinity College stands grandly against a vast, uninterrupted green, Harvard’s halls are smaller; they ‘assemble’ around a crowded yard. But here too, there are Widener Library’s marbled pillars and the ornate, cathedral-like Memorial hall where Harvard undergraduates dine in the diffuse light of stained-glass windows from Tiffany.
Though its buildings might not, nomenclature at Harvard bespeaks tradition. The school of education stands on a street named ‘The Appian Way’ and an undergraduate social club named the ‘Porcellian’ is so exclusive as to make Harvardians crave.
Even Franklin D. Roosevelt was not invited to join! But exclusivity and excellence are bylines for Harvard. The closed-door libraries and unseen celebrities remain silent; no matter, for in Harvard Square, it’s awe that talks.
The city of Boston, unlike most American cities, is visibly historic. The North End teems with Italian restaurants and little red brick houses stacked against each other like squatters on either side of narrow roads. The row houses on Commonwealth Av enue bring to mind the gilded age and old family money.
Throw in Boston’s various landmarks as the centre of the American struggle for independence and a hurried tourist could very well overlook its little twin — the city of Cambridge — were it not for the college it houses: Harvard.
The first time I rode the subway system that connects Boston, it was by chance that I got off at Harvard Square. The station is situated in a circle of sorts, right in the middle of the square with Harvard College behind it, the Harvard Coop in front, and streets and shops shooting off from the remaining corners.
I returned to it after three years and remembered how the busy criss-crossing streets, plied by buses and cars and SUVs, seem to bear a historical grudge against motorised transport.
The cars that ply Harvard Square appear to be squeezing themselves between its only rightful occupants — the pedestrians.
A 10-minute walk from the station’s brick landing is the home of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It was here that George Washington took command of the army during the American Revolution.
The square’s unassuming 300-year-old Christ Church has bullet holes in it (safely, respectfully preserved), bringing to the fore the comparison that our old forts have too many bullet holes to preserve; the American independence struggle was a blink compared to ours. But above this short story of rebellion towers Harvard and it’s many offshoots in the Square.
One is The Grolier Poetry Book Shop, which, since 1927 has been frequented by the likes of T.S Eliot and Conrad Aiken. You can linger, if only to re-imagine what might have passed here between the greatest American poets of the twentieth century: which collection did Elizabeth Bishop pick up and where did e.e.cummings hang his art.
The Harvard Coop — short for cooperative — was formed, like most Harvard related groups, more than a 100 years ago in 1882 by students needing a place to buy books, wood and fuel for hearth fires. Today, its heavy, old wooden doors swing the visitor into an American college book and apparel store like any other.
Here, I met with a group of poets that gathered on Sundays at The Coop under the guidance of an old gentleman with a long beard and long coat who appeared to have modelled himself upon Boston’s grand old men of American letters.
Poetry, however, is not all that grows around Harvard. Punks and Goths in Mohawks, black attire and belly-piercings love the square too. A group of them once accompanied our every poem recitation with a squeeze of the Fart Cushion, an aptly named piece that emits the sound each time you sit on it.
Across the street from the Coop, bound in the curving belt of Massachusetts Avenue, is Harvard yard. Rising above it is the blue and white bell tower of Lowell Hall, former home of the Danilov bells.
They were purchased and brought to Harvard to save them from the Stalinists in 1929 and returned in 2008 to their home in the Danilov monastery in Russia.
Harvard college itself was established in 1636, only 16 years after the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth; it was named after a young minister named John Harvard who bequeathed half his estate and library to the fledgling college.
Entering Harvard yard through the tall wrought iron gates, one is immediately taken by the simple red brick buildings, the college’s deep democratic convictions that play out in faculty and students working and living alongside; the office of the President of Harvard in Massachusetts Hall is a few floors above a freshman dormitory.
Not here the heft and eternity of Cambridge University’s tall, silent spires.
Where Cambridge’s Trinity College stands grandly against a vast, uninterrupted green, Harvard’s halls are smaller; they ‘assemble’ around a crowded yard. But here too, there are Widener Library’s marbled pillars and the ornate, cathedral-like Memorial hall where Harvard undergraduates dine in the diffuse light of stained-glass windows from Tiffany.
Though its buildings might not, nomenclature at Harvard bespeaks tradition. The school of education stands on a street named ‘The Appian Way’ and an undergraduate social club named the ‘Porcellian’ is so exclusive as to make Harvardians crave.
Even Franklin D. Roosevelt was not invited to join! But exclusivity and excellence are bylines for Harvard. The closed-door libraries and unseen celebrities remain silent; no matter, for in Harvard Square, it’s awe that talks.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
jayanth's poetic statements
we come home from a long, tiring trip back from columbus, ohio. we get home and he's sitting on he carpet, kneeling. i flop down on his little lap and say, "would you comb my hair? i am so tired." he's never enthusiastic about this, but today he somehow thinks it s a good idea. so he starts playing with my hair, messing it up, but its sweet. i enjoy my little boy fussing over me. then he offers to 'rub my back;' because he knows i have back trouble. so he makes me stretch out and proceeds to 'massage' me! i am a little embarrassed; i ask myself if its ok to make a little kid massage me, but when i look at his eager face i know he really wants to help me. "why do you massage me?" i ask him and he says, "because my hands are soft. so they can help you by rubbing out your lines. see, feel my hands, are'nt they soft" and he puts his palm on my cheek. and when he's done, he tells me, "amma, when i massaged you i was sending you my feelings." he adds, after a little thought, " we exchanged our feelings, you sent me yours and i sent you mine. and i take your feelings and make them new and give them back to you. i make them golden, umm, with a little silver mixed in, and give them to you."
what could i say? "you're my little darling," to which he replies, "you're my big darling". when he's full of love, hes a butter-ball, constantly melting. i made a mental note, to remember his little offering of love, of making my feelings golden the next time i am fuming and exhausted. for example when he decides that i am the root and the reason for all his problems--thats when i am usually about to lose it. but let me not sully this moment.
and nirali--shes a madcap! she runs into the playroom where the birdie-dance in playing on the music system, turns up the volume and waves her arms above her head...its her way of dancing! jayanth and i are in splits watching her. she just wont stop!!
what could i say? "you're my little darling," to which he replies, "you're my big darling". when he's full of love, hes a butter-ball, constantly melting. i made a mental note, to remember his little offering of love, of making my feelings golden the next time i am fuming and exhausted. for example when he decides that i am the root and the reason for all his problems--thats when i am usually about to lose it. but let me not sully this moment.
and nirali--shes a madcap! she runs into the playroom where the birdie-dance in playing on the music system, turns up the volume and waves her arms above her head...its her way of dancing! jayanth and i are in splits watching her. she just wont stop!!
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
jayanth diary
to a guest about appa's contrarian habits - "my grandad wants the opposite of everything"
overhearing me complain to the folks at the neighboring table--this is a high blood pressure meal--at a dinner outing with the kids in a restaurant, he asks me with great concern - "is the food not good for you, amma?"
nirali - screaming in the car. in spite of kidsongs, my songs, FM...until i turned on some classical piano - really beautiful intricate playing on the radio, and she quietened, immediately!
overhearing me complain to the folks at the neighboring table--this is a high blood pressure meal--at a dinner outing with the kids in a restaurant, he asks me with great concern - "is the food not good for you, amma?"
nirali - screaming in the car. in spite of kidsongs, my songs, FM...until i turned on some classical piano - really beautiful intricate playing on the radio, and she quietened, immediately!
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
W., the movie—after Barack, why watch it?
W., the movie—after Barack, why watch it?
The Nov 4th election that delivered the American presidency to Barack Obama speaks volumes. For one, it signaled the American people’s readiness for the end of the Bush era, an era that has been chronicled in tell-all books by ex- White house staffers, mock-news shows, media exposes and a hundred varieties of anti-Bush bumper stickers.
In ‘W’, Oliver Stone and Stanley Weiser’s cinematic chronicle of George W. Bush, the president’s character has been explored well enough, but through the narrow lens of his relationship with his father. Bush Sr.’s disapproval of Bush Jr.’s poor grades, drinking and general instability plays a disproportionately large role in defining his son’s motivations. What follows--his conversion to a born again Christian, for example--are all in one way or the other a reaction to Bush Sr.’s disappointment in him. Bush struggles with a deep sense of inadequacy. As president though, surrounded by a team of advisors that is smarter and better informed, he is lost and hardly aware of it. When in doubt, he looks to religion and the grand picture of American freedom and power.
The movie begins with Bush (played by Josh Brolin) alone in a baseball stadium, hailing rows of empty seats to the soundtrack of a roaring crowd. Symbolic as it is of Bush’s failing popularity, this motif is overused. A two term American president apparently derives his confidence from an empty baseball field full of imagined cheering. If that is not patronizing, nothing is.
The film’s most rewarding, satirical moments are the several meetings President Bush holds with his core team of advisors in the run up to the Iraq war. Each character is a caricature but Cheney and Karl Rove take the cake. Rove brings to mind Gollum from the Lord of the Rings film trilogy--small, round and devious. Cheney patiently presents agendas to a bemused president, his cynical smirk so pronounced, you could spot it in his baby pictures. Condi Rice, lifeless at the conference table, occasionally grows lips and a mouth, only to murmur, ‘Yes Mr,President.’ Though ‘W’ is packed with satire, even sympathy, it lacks punch. But it establishes (like others before) that the American presidency has been tainted.
Flash forward to November 4th and the American public arrived at the same resounding conclusion. W., the movie does promise its liberal audiences some luxuriant wound-licking, but at around seven dollars a ticket in a recession, many Americans would hesitate. Instead of hitting theatres, they went to vote. And how they have voted. In droves, braving downpours and huge delays, they have made their choice.
The town I live in, Bloomington, Indiana, is a small college town, but a democrat bastion in a historically republican state. Though the polls favored Obama, everyone remembered the past two presidential elections. The election process had been subject to such shrewd politicking, it was difficult to retain faith in its ability this time around to actually deliver victory to the real winner. On Nov 4th, election day, I simply could not sit at home anymore watching reports of voters lining up for hours, of poll booths not opening on time, news that reminded me of the possibility that 2004 would repeat itself and the election could be stolen or worse, lost for all the wrong reasons. I drove to the local Obama for America headquarters. The office was crawling with volunteers, almost all students. I could not park in the back of the building because I arrived a little before noon and SUVs were pulling in driven by women bringing lunch for the volunteers. There were home made cakes, fruit platters--entire trunks full of food. I parked on the street and went indoors to offer my time.
I was asked to canvas students, reminding them to vote. “Did you vote?” I asked as I strolled around Indiana University with flyers and stickers, craning my neck out to students rushing from building to building. ‘Yes, ‘ I heard almost every single time. Wonderful I thought, but I did not believe it. Yet on that day, after 44 years of voting republican presidential candidates into office, Barack Obama became the first democrat to win Indiana by a lead of only 26,163 votes, less than 1 percent of the votes cast, according to the New York Times. College students are often apathetic when it comes to elections; but Obama’s campaign has fired an entire demographic. Bloomington’s enrolled college students alone showed a 287 percent increase in turnout from 2004, as reported in the university newspaper. Perhaps all those students who nodded their heads to me were indeed being honest.
As I stood in my living room, watching Obama greet a euphoric 220,000 plus crowd in Chicago’s Grant Park, late on Tuesday night, I believed. Indeed, this is a land where all things are possible. Unable to contain my excitement, I got back into my car, leaving my husband with our sleeping children, and drove around the city. It was a cool night and the first revelers were out, cheering. I remembered arriving in America when the skies were blue, jobs aplenty, the information technology revolution beginning and the Lewinsky scandal lacing the air-waves with laughter. Three years later came 9/11 and the beginning of the Bush era—a time of suspicion and aggression that culminated this September in the markets crumbling to sheer penury. Has there ever in recent memory, been a longer nadir in the American ethos? The United States was sinking and we non-citizens and citizens alike, could find no salve. No hope that change was possible. With this election that despair has begun to be erased. No doubt Obama was the more viable candidate than McCain, given his youth and his selection of a wise and experienced running mate. No doubt he was a better candidate if only as a democrat with an ascending political star after eight years of republican arch-conservatism. But it is what Obama the individual embodies, that makes his election to president so enormously meaningful. Black, biracial, of modest means, with no legacy but that of his own hard work and ambition—this is the hope I latched onto.
Driving around alone that night, I realized that for the first time in my eleven years in America, I felt like I would not mind being called an American. Visiting India, I flinch when friends and family teasingly call me ‘American’. At this moment though, the word sits pretty well with me. My husband and I have long postponed our plans to apply for citizenship, if only because our children were born here. The prospect of a McCain win made us draw our breaths. Now it might not be such a bad idea after all. I could call this my land, maybe even my country at some point. After all, my son or daughter could be president, someday.
As for Oliver Stone’s story of W, it has faded inevitably against the fairy tale of Obama’s victory. Once upon a time…that time is now.
-- Shaleena Koruth
The Nov 4th election that delivered the American presidency to Barack Obama speaks volumes. For one, it signaled the American people’s readiness for the end of the Bush era, an era that has been chronicled in tell-all books by ex- White house staffers, mock-news shows, media exposes and a hundred varieties of anti-Bush bumper stickers.
In ‘W’, Oliver Stone and Stanley Weiser’s cinematic chronicle of George W. Bush, the president’s character has been explored well enough, but through the narrow lens of his relationship with his father. Bush Sr.’s disapproval of Bush Jr.’s poor grades, drinking and general instability plays a disproportionately large role in defining his son’s motivations. What follows--his conversion to a born again Christian, for example--are all in one way or the other a reaction to Bush Sr.’s disappointment in him. Bush struggles with a deep sense of inadequacy. As president though, surrounded by a team of advisors that is smarter and better informed, he is lost and hardly aware of it. When in doubt, he looks to religion and the grand picture of American freedom and power.
The movie begins with Bush (played by Josh Brolin) alone in a baseball stadium, hailing rows of empty seats to the soundtrack of a roaring crowd. Symbolic as it is of Bush’s failing popularity, this motif is overused. A two term American president apparently derives his confidence from an empty baseball field full of imagined cheering. If that is not patronizing, nothing is.
The film’s most rewarding, satirical moments are the several meetings President Bush holds with his core team of advisors in the run up to the Iraq war. Each character is a caricature but Cheney and Karl Rove take the cake. Rove brings to mind Gollum from the Lord of the Rings film trilogy--small, round and devious. Cheney patiently presents agendas to a bemused president, his cynical smirk so pronounced, you could spot it in his baby pictures. Condi Rice, lifeless at the conference table, occasionally grows lips and a mouth, only to murmur, ‘Yes Mr,President.’ Though ‘W’ is packed with satire, even sympathy, it lacks punch. But it establishes (like others before) that the American presidency has been tainted.
Flash forward to November 4th and the American public arrived at the same resounding conclusion. W., the movie does promise its liberal audiences some luxuriant wound-licking, but at around seven dollars a ticket in a recession, many Americans would hesitate. Instead of hitting theatres, they went to vote. And how they have voted. In droves, braving downpours and huge delays, they have made their choice.
The town I live in, Bloomington, Indiana, is a small college town, but a democrat bastion in a historically republican state. Though the polls favored Obama, everyone remembered the past two presidential elections. The election process had been subject to such shrewd politicking, it was difficult to retain faith in its ability this time around to actually deliver victory to the real winner. On Nov 4th, election day, I simply could not sit at home anymore watching reports of voters lining up for hours, of poll booths not opening on time, news that reminded me of the possibility that 2004 would repeat itself and the election could be stolen or worse, lost for all the wrong reasons. I drove to the local Obama for America headquarters. The office was crawling with volunteers, almost all students. I could not park in the back of the building because I arrived a little before noon and SUVs were pulling in driven by women bringing lunch for the volunteers. There were home made cakes, fruit platters--entire trunks full of food. I parked on the street and went indoors to offer my time.
I was asked to canvas students, reminding them to vote. “Did you vote?” I asked as I strolled around Indiana University with flyers and stickers, craning my neck out to students rushing from building to building. ‘Yes, ‘ I heard almost every single time. Wonderful I thought, but I did not believe it. Yet on that day, after 44 years of voting republican presidential candidates into office, Barack Obama became the first democrat to win Indiana by a lead of only 26,163 votes, less than 1 percent of the votes cast, according to the New York Times. College students are often apathetic when it comes to elections; but Obama’s campaign has fired an entire demographic. Bloomington’s enrolled college students alone showed a 287 percent increase in turnout from 2004, as reported in the university newspaper. Perhaps all those students who nodded their heads to me were indeed being honest.
As I stood in my living room, watching Obama greet a euphoric 220,000 plus crowd in Chicago’s Grant Park, late on Tuesday night, I believed. Indeed, this is a land where all things are possible. Unable to contain my excitement, I got back into my car, leaving my husband with our sleeping children, and drove around the city. It was a cool night and the first revelers were out, cheering. I remembered arriving in America when the skies were blue, jobs aplenty, the information technology revolution beginning and the Lewinsky scandal lacing the air-waves with laughter. Three years later came 9/11 and the beginning of the Bush era—a time of suspicion and aggression that culminated this September in the markets crumbling to sheer penury. Has there ever in recent memory, been a longer nadir in the American ethos? The United States was sinking and we non-citizens and citizens alike, could find no salve. No hope that change was possible. With this election that despair has begun to be erased. No doubt Obama was the more viable candidate than McCain, given his youth and his selection of a wise and experienced running mate. No doubt he was a better candidate if only as a democrat with an ascending political star after eight years of republican arch-conservatism. But it is what Obama the individual embodies, that makes his election to president so enormously meaningful. Black, biracial, of modest means, with no legacy but that of his own hard work and ambition—this is the hope I latched onto.
Driving around alone that night, I realized that for the first time in my eleven years in America, I felt like I would not mind being called an American. Visiting India, I flinch when friends and family teasingly call me ‘American’. At this moment though, the word sits pretty well with me. My husband and I have long postponed our plans to apply for citizenship, if only because our children were born here. The prospect of a McCain win made us draw our breaths. Now it might not be such a bad idea after all. I could call this my land, maybe even my country at some point. After all, my son or daughter could be president, someday.
As for Oliver Stone’s story of W, it has faded inevitably against the fairy tale of Obama’s victory. Once upon a time…that time is now.
-- Shaleena Koruth
Saturday, May 31, 2008
the night jayanth (and me and appacha) all lost our rocker
the prayer meeting by itself was a foreign prospect, i should have been wary of smooth sailing at the start. but which of us is that wise? we went, father's tension rising like mercury in a hot tub. then we were at the prayer which went on and on and jayanth got hungry.i ask the hostess if i can give him something to eat off the well laid table that i too contributed to, and she says wait. for what? the priest she mumbles. the priest? i mumble back. oh and spoons, she mumbles again. so i, overcome by my sons hunger and a little confused/irked, give him a cutlet. i think she did not like that move. but, who will deny a 4 year old his meal for the sake of blessed propriety? the priest is 70+ for all you know and is a good man who would not care if jayanth ate before him. so why her fuss?
and then, J began tumbling, running from wall to wall. i was ready to pop. then he opens the deck door and joins the old men and the priest himself, at their table? i can see these mallu octogenarians furrow their brows and peer at him. god knows what he said to them. i mean really, the way my dabbu goes on sometimes, only god can know what he means. but to save their AC bill, which BTW they did not turn on until a grand old lady began fanning herself, they started getting after J to close the Deck door. he kept forgetting, or did not understand, or did not care, being a preschooler. i saw the host beginning to frown. then father began to get upset. i could see the anxiety build. then my little rivkah began to get upset. and to top it all, jayanth started performing for a crowd of women who were laughing so much he thought it was cool to hop onto the hostess' sofa. that was it. with father literally smoking through his ears and a son who looked like he had drunk two Red Bulls, i was ready to scream and run. Fleeee the AC saving, priest fawning, close mouthed Gorges. FLeeee. but society (a minor detail)....sigh! gracefully i packed up and left the scene, smiling goodbyes, my only solace, a hug from the grand old lady and the thought that i was on my way home.
whoa what a day. but dad apologized (upon whcih i did too), i gave J a very hard time (part deserved, part not at all) and rivkah cried and cried. so i prepared my sunday school lesson over a glass of wine that did little for me except in a symbolic manner.
whew~~~!!!
my crazy family, where would i be without you? WHO would i be?
and then, J began tumbling, running from wall to wall. i was ready to pop. then he opens the deck door and joins the old men and the priest himself, at their table? i can see these mallu octogenarians furrow their brows and peer at him. god knows what he said to them. i mean really, the way my dabbu goes on sometimes, only god can know what he means. but to save their AC bill, which BTW they did not turn on until a grand old lady began fanning herself, they started getting after J to close the Deck door. he kept forgetting, or did not understand, or did not care, being a preschooler. i saw the host beginning to frown. then father began to get upset. i could see the anxiety build. then my little rivkah began to get upset. and to top it all, jayanth started performing for a crowd of women who were laughing so much he thought it was cool to hop onto the hostess' sofa. that was it. with father literally smoking through his ears and a son who looked like he had drunk two Red Bulls, i was ready to scream and run. Fleeee the AC saving, priest fawning, close mouthed Gorges. FLeeee. but society (a minor detail)....sigh! gracefully i packed up and left the scene, smiling goodbyes, my only solace, a hug from the grand old lady and the thought that i was on my way home.
whoa what a day. but dad apologized (upon whcih i did too), i gave J a very hard time (part deserved, part not at all) and rivkah cried and cried. so i prepared my sunday school lesson over a glass of wine that did little for me except in a symbolic manner.
whew~~~!!!
my crazy family, where would i be without you? WHO would i be?
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