Exiled

A few nights ago, I lay in bed in the limbo between being asleep and awake, that time when you're not sure whether the blurred reel of images playing in your head are those of a dream or of conscious, willful thinking. I couldn't exit this state and return to a solid slumber because I really just had to pee. Half-aware of the fact that I was in a bed, somewhere, under the covers, I had the strongest, irrefutable sense that I was in my bed at home - my childhood home. But that wasn't the weird part, as I am frequently confused and disoriented about my whereabouts when I wake up. Rather, envisioning this me in my Briarcliff house included an archaic version of my bedroom, with one twin bed, instead of the two shoved together, pushed against the back wall. And next to me, on layers of stacked comforters on the floor, was Kiran. She too was hidden, with only her long black hair peaking out from beneath a blanket. That is how we slept. Sometimes, if we had watched a scary movie, she would want to sleep in the bed with me, and I'd say no :)

I believed this was where I was. At 6:39 a.m., I recognized the unmistakable urge to pee, so I finally set one bare foot after the other down on the cold wood floor, bleary-eyed and annoyed at the nuisance of necessary bodily processes. And then I remembered how far I was from the place I was so certain, mere seconds before, that I was in. The sinking feeling was like something plummeting inside my stomach. Again, just like the thousands of other similar instances, reality came flooding back to me... about what day it is, what year it is, what that means about who I am and where I am and all that has happened.

After I got back into bed, vowing to sleep for as long as possible, I felt the desperate longing that has become all too familiar, one that has grown to be a part of me. The longing itself is mine, but it is also for something that is, or was, mine. That is the worst part about losing something that was so yours that you never had to worry about it leaving you: you never rid yourself of your sense of entitlement to it. You forever wonder how that part of you chipped off, where it is floating in the world, and how to reclaim it. Even in accepting loss, we try, many times in vain, to fill a hole where what we once knew and loved existed. We are haunted by the strange, ever-present inkling that a part of us is missing.

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I am now at my parents' house in Westchester, and I woke up in that old bedroom this morning. With the anticipation of winter break, spending time with family, my first birthday and holiday season without Kiran, and the tides of sadness that swallow me whole, unexpectedly, every now and then, I've been thinking a lot about homesickness. Not just in the literal sense, but about the entire concept of the uncanny feeling that what you know is far, far away. I feel somewhat better and consoled in NY; the past few days have eased my anxiety - running around in the dirty snow on the Upper East Side, screaming for cabs in the Meatpacking District, Jamaal telling me the sounds from the street are keeping him up while, to me, they are my silence. I feel... somewhat normal.

Still, a part of what I know to be home in my heart is gone forever. Where do we go, where do we look, to find peace when home no longer exists?

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Later that day, last week in Chicago, I got an email from Meg, saying she was home sick. I responded asking if she wanted to talk about it, reassuring her that a few days in Vermont over Christmas would soothe her. She wrote back, saying "Oh I'm not homesick! I am home sick! I had to take the day off because I feel like total crap."

I laughed at myself for my silly misread. In spite of the correction, she continued to talk about her sense of ennui in New York, her rapidly growing, unsettling feeling that it can no longer give her what she needs. It's big and chaotic and has drained her of relationships. Yet, and we haven't discussed this recently but I know it to be true, moving back to Vermont is out of the question. She is not the person she was when she left. It could never take her back, and the Megan she is now would not want it to.

Meg's dilemma is a more modern and lesser-scale version of what I know to be the crisis of my parents' generation of Indians and all other immigrants who leave the only home they know for a place and a culture unknown to them. I learned much about this in a class I took at Duke about South Asian diasporic peoples. As we discussed, theoretically, the "un-homed-ness" that immigrants internalize as a part of their identities in a virtually alien world, I recognized immediately the elements of it: the way my parents have changed and adapted who they are to fit a society that makes no sense, making a circle of friends here of people who remind them of life in India, talking and laughing and reminiscing about school days in Mysore, the small villages they grew up in, all the things distant and unimaginable to me (for anyone who has read The Namesake, this is pretty much the point of the whole book). They do this, they hold on because it is who they are, but they could never go back. My parents, I know, never fooled themselves into believing that one day Rekha and I would grow up and have reaped the benefits of their long, grueling medical careers and then they would finally fly back overseas and return home. My dad wants a nice apartment in the city! I guess we all find those city sounds comforting :)

But they knew that would no longer be home. They have changed, and it has changed, and now where do they belong? They yearn for a world that has essentially disappeared.... Poof! It is gone.

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Pieces of this continued to come to me in various conversations throughout the week. From Lauren's visit to Todd School, where we spent nearly every day from kindergarten through sixth grade, and Pooja's nostalgic and wonderful weekend at Duke, to editing Jamaal's essay about his journey from Gary, Indiana to success at Wharton and Andrew telling me over margaritas about how his parents' divorce created that same inability to return "home" because that place, literal and symbolic, is gone. They can only remember these things for what they were because they are now things of the past.

I wonder how we assuage ourselves in these moments of longing. For the circumstances of Todd School and Duke, they are the result of natural and necessary progression in life; the longing likely comes in fleeting instances and then vanishes, leaving us with smiles of the way those memories shape the people we are today. But for my parents, Jamaal, Andrew, and now me, it is there... always.

It is too soon to know how it will shape me. I do not doubt that it has already, but I know it will continue to, maybe forever. In what direction will the emptiness steer me? I know my parents taught me to look forward because life is about the steps we take in front of us... because it is impossible to go back. For them, I know that coming here was hard, and yet never once were they those parents who reminded me of what they sacrificed and left behind to give me the American life. They never told me what they turned their backs on to open their arms to a strange new world. As Andrew said, what we do is the main dish; what we come from is the garnish.

Nevertheless, I think that in a life wrought with upheaval and change, it is what we see when we look back over our shoulders that serves as our anchor and defines our consciousness.

Kiran was that for me. Without her, I feel exiled from myself. Un-homed. I am unrecognizable to myself. I cannot go back to that bedroom with her lying on the floor at my side, breathing her soft Kiran snore. But it is that image, and the others like it, flashing on the insides of my eyelids, that I hope will propel me forward to something lovely. I may always have that hole... the missing piece... but perhaps it just something I will have to take with me. The way my parents did for me.

Until then, I will try to figure out, somehow, a way to calm the restless, shiftless anxiousness that comes from my searching for something that is not there. Thanks to friends, once again, who are helping me cope. And thank God for the holidays... and being home, at least in one sense!

xox

My last story! Yes, the quarter is over ;)

ARTillery: Fighting for change through art, culture and diversity

There’s a saying: “You’re fattening frogs for snakes.” In the swamp of gentrification, artists are often these frogs, providing the basis for economic change in a neighborhood but ultimately getting pushed out of an area that becomes more attractive and more expensive. In Logan Square, Chicago ARTillery is working toward a shift in this paradigm.

The organization of artist-activists, as they label themselves, is not just another group of painters and sculptors joining together to promote their work; there is a deeper cause they have in mind. “We are leaders,” said Victor Montañez, who formed ARTillery in April 2009. “We are not only providing aesthetics, we are providing political thought.”

When it comes to taking a lead politically, ARTillery is ensuring their voices are heard as prominent community members. Montañez represented the collective at a meeting Tuesday about the development of a vacant historical building on Milwaukee Avenue. The building, as decided by 35th Ward Alderman Ray Colon in November 2008, is to be restored with TIF money as a commercial and residential facility with the second floor allotted specifically for arts organizations and the third floor for affordable housing units, said Martha Ramos, Colon’s Chief of Staff.

“We believe in being at the table where decisions are being made,” said Montañez.

Ramos talked about the process of how the building was designated for these purposes. In November 2006, Alderman Colon held a public meeting for people to voice their thoughts on how to use the space. With 300 people in attendance, it was a diverse crowd representative of Logan Square, she said. Most of the ideas presented were for housing – assisted living housing, veteran housing, supported services housing, low-income housing – and some were for retail space, corporate offices and arts centers.

Ultimately, however, there were only two official proposals as putting one together can cost thousands of dollars, according to Ramos. Those who may have been against the option for an arts facility, based on the reasoning that it would affect rent, taxes, and the general cost of living, likely could not have submitted a proposal. Other affordable residential initiatives have been put in place in the neighborhood, but the project discussed at Tuesday’s meeting is the first of its kind. Attempts to reach the Logan Square Neighborhood Association went unanswered.

“This was the more viable option to stimulate the community, bringing in housing but also being a catalyst in an area where there is such a need for change,” Ramos explained.

The building is especially significant to ARTillery’s goals. “Art is transformational,” Montañez said. “It has a domino effect. Some people say we bring in gentrification, but this could be different. We need to keep bringing art to public spaces, but we need institutional anchors to promote our objective, which is to maximize diversity.”

With this objective in mind, their definition of community is not restricted to artists or even to people of a certain socio-economic status or ethnic group. “I’m not talking about chasing one class out and pushing one class in,” Montañez said. “What we’re talking about is finding a new way to relate to one another so that we can all be successful and have a quality of life here.”

Familiar with the role artists can play in a given area, not just ones in transition, Montañez described the dichotomy between two models in which art operates. According to him, there are artists who feel they are the only defining factor in their work, fostering an elitist art world. Ironically, it is in this system, he said, that “the artist is exploited as a commodity that gets traded back and forth.”

ARTillery, with its public participation events where many people create together, functions under a different dynamic. For the 13 members, what they do is about “collaboration, inclusion and democracy.” Through involvement and relationships, they want to plant roots rather than be displaced and show that they are not only an economic stimulus, but a cultural and political stimulus as well.

So although the collective hopes to be a force of change for artists, their bigger mission is to be a force of change and empowerment for all who face the same crisis. Montañez feels the affordable housing section of the Milwaukee Avenue development is necessary since rents are going up for everyone in Logan Square. As new businesses spring up around the square and events such as arts festivals and farmers markets garner more and more attention, the neighborhood becomes an appealing option for residents with more money. In turn, it becomes less feasible for those lower-income families who have made a home for themselves there years ago.

While money certainly does help a neighborhood in many aspects, part of ARTillery’s purpose is to find a creative solution for the problem of putting roots down for one community at the expense of uprooting another. According to Montañez, the money is not the people’s true wealth.

“True wealth is what we have and what is lasting, and that is culture,” he said.

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So that is my story. Actually, this was my very first story idea at the beginning of beat reporting in October, but in a broader sense of gentrification and what the role is of the creative person, group, or business. I so fortuitously stumbled upon this organization, whose primary concern seems to be this very issue - how to sustain the communities that define a neighborhood while making it a better place in certain aspects that beg for change. Amidst reducing crime, improving education, and beautifying an area with gardens and sanitation systems, how do you avoid the inevitable? Making a neighborhood or district "better" brings in new people, and this is often considered positive for all parties involved. But what about those who lived there before? Do they get to benefit from the new, favorable changes? The concept of segregation is not a new one: whether it be along the lines of race and ethnicity or income levels, it is rare to find a section of any city where different types of people live together happily and comfortably. It is the reality of our society and economics. I've thought about this in the past when Jamaal discusses his desire to turn Gary around and encourage investment and business development there... is it possible to achieve that without simply driving the current residents out?

Anyway, it's not a question to be answered immediately, but one that requires serious thought over time. I admire ARTillery's commitment to facing this challenge. And although my time covering the arts beat on the Northwest Side has come to an end, I hope to continue to learn from this rich and interesting world that has defined my first experiences as a journalist. Oh! Aaaand I just realized, after having a drink with Andrew (classmate across the street), that I was THE feature article this week. I was complaining to him that the slot editors kept giving me crap about changing shit around, which I did, and I was like ughhh who knows how today turned out. And he said, "Um, I think you were at the top." And I just looked, and I am!! Yay for being the best. That's right, THE BEST.

XO

Oh and I just liked this picture I took at the art show :)

Lazy Friday During "Finals" Week. Oops.

Last night was the first Chicago snowfall (or flurryfall I guess), and it's nice and toasty in my little orange-walled, zebra-rug studio. Instead of filing a story today, I requested a research day to start my interviews with artists and their children for a story on the hope and even pressure that some artists/writers/musicians place on their kids to pursue creative paths. It's an interesting story considering my position. I guess you could say I'm not exactly an objective observer, but I don't believe in that concept anyway, so whatever.

So yes I am at home, in sweats, reaching out to artists on the Northwest Side, and waiting for my professor to give me direction on whom to talk to as an official source on the American ideal of having a career that makes tons and tons of money and shunning professions that many times are not even viewed as professions but are just as intellectually stimulating and require just as much, if not more, talent and smarts. I should mention that as it has suddenly gotten cold in the past few days, I have seen two disgusting, evil, crawling creatures in my apartment. One was a cockroach that I murdered with my flip flop yesterday, and the other was (I believe) a baby version of that enormous house centipede that my mom referred to as "an animal" when I was moving in. I killed that one too. This is a source of pride for me as I was tempted to call Andrew or random kid from across the hall whose name I still don't know but who came over for the glass of wine. So much for cozy apartment!! All the bugs want to join me :( Assholes.

I'm also doing laundry, so I'm not totally worthless. The elevator worker men keep making cracks at me every time I go downstairs about how they also wish they were grad students who could "take the day off." I'm like BLAAAAH I'm working tomorrow and Sunday! Because of that, I am going to get a little drunk this afternoon. Oh, and I had two finals on Tuesday, so I deserve at least one drunken escapade this week.

Last night I finished Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar." I know, I know, I'm about 12 years too late. But still, I stand by my belief that many books fed to kids and teenagers would be much better understood - and more importantly, the lessons learned from them would be applied to real life - if read years later. My 180 degree experience with "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" (best book ever) continues to be my main proof of this point. Anywho, since I am a huge fan of the adolescent angst books, I finally delved into "The Bell Jar." I'm not sure I love Esther Greenwood's voice as much as I love Holden Caulfield's, but they are unique characters of course, so I guess I love them in different ways. However, the many descriptions of the book and the protagonist are so accurate; Esther's mindset and perspective are not merely convincing, but her slip into insanity seems almost proper. There is nothing "crazy" about it whatsoever. It's easy and tempting to follow her journey from success and silent, albeit disdainful, compliance with society to complete delusion, but it is impossible to identify any one moment when the bell jar fully descends over her.


My favorite part of books in this genre is always the astute analysis of teeny tiny events and circumstances. "The Bell Jar" in particular is sort of fragmented into a series of these, so you see less of the big picture, and more just little things that you have to string together yourself, and you think "she seems fine to me." But you then you realize that in the interim between her last clever observation and one you're reading about, she tried to kill herself. But even that, in the midst of it all, seems normal and fitting. I don't know, I just love it!

I laughed out loud at this part when she is with this girl Joan in her room at the asylum.

"I like you."
"That's tough, Joan," I said, picking up my book. "Because I don't like you. You make me puke, if you want to know."
And I walked out of the room, leaving Joan lying, lumpy as an old horse, across my bed.

Haha! And it's not even supposed to be like a conflict or anything; she just says that, as if she's saying, "Excuse me, I have to use the bathroom." Oh Esther!

Okay, so yea, if you like those books, and you're sorta feministy, and you, like me, have neglected to pick it up, do it now! Oh, and I also love Curtis Sittenfeld's "Prep," in spite of its criticisms. I did not love "I Am Charlotte Simmons." And f*ck that whole it's-about-Duke-thing. It's about everyewhere. That is all.

Happy wintry day. Pray for no more scary monsters in my house.

Rock and Roll

I am obsessed with this child. At first I was just obsessed with her outfit, but then I asked if I could take a picture of her (well, no, I asked her mom if I could), and she cheesed it up and posed, as you can see. I was like wow, what a wee little ball of sass. Her name is Madeline, which I also thought was adorable, and I noticed her tiny Converse high-tops and gold lame leggings as I left an interview on the North Side of Chicago. I had no idea that she'd be so thrilled to bless me with her bit of bad-ass-ness. I was quite pleased.

Maybe one day I will pop out a few of these myself. Only if they promise to be cool like Madeline :P

Beautiful Roots

Happy December all! It's a very happy month for a few reasons: the holidays, duh, which means tons of yummy treats and twinkly lights and all that good stuff, the grand anniversary of my oh-so-awesome birth, aaaaand winter break! I am in school, yes, I get a winter break. It's insane. But true. Be jealous, it's okay.

I've been thinking a lot about how I want to spend the break reading, writing, and once again designing for fun :) Someone who loves me, please buy me Bina Abling's "Fashion Sketchbook" as this is the the design illustration handbook.


So in anticipation of sitting down and getting some good drawing done, I started dreaming of all the fun Indian-inspired creations out there and doing a bit of research. One day, when I get married, I will design what I wear. I think this would be such a fun way to get my hands into fashion that symbolizes my history and heritage as well as my future. Okay, enough of that.

Look what I found!


It's from Marchesa Spring 2008 RTW. I love the way different designers infuse Indian design elements into their ideas, and this Marchesa, to me, is a masterpiece. So if you buy me the book, you can toss this in as well ;)

Fashion photo credit: style.com