One More Saturday Turns 2 Today!

~2 happy 2 b celebrating year 2~

Remember that scene in Gilmore Girls where Lorelai wakes up Rory on her birthday and snuggles into bed with her? (Here's the clip if you want it; have tissues nearby.) Lorelai whispers about how on this very day, many moons ago, her lil nug was born and her life since then hasn't been the same. Picture me, getting out of bed for the sole purpose of getting back in again to recreate this scene, snuggling with my lil Macbook and quietly whispering, "Two years ago, on this very day and in this very room, you were born."

Gilmore Girls references aside, OMS was the brainchild of a series of interactions with wonderful humans. It started with my high school economics teacher, who was supportive and encouraging about my writing and suggested starting a blog back when I was a wee freshman in college (and an econ major, nonetheless). I talked to my wonderful and supportive friend Danielle, the only blogger I knew at the time. And I bounced ideas back and forth with Alana, with whom I first started this bad boy. Two years later, this blog is all mine. 

And this sounds cliché, so sorrysorrysorry, but this blog would be nothing without all of y'all. One More Saturday has allowed me to write about the things I want to write about, and it has been an outlet for pieces that I can't really put anywhere else. It's helped me to write better, present my content better, photograph better. More than anything, I'm grateful for how this blog has helped me to connect and reconnect with all the wonderful humans around me. Over the past two years, I've received so many personal messages from friends, family, and strangers. Just as much as I value the friends who understand and value and appreciate my words enough to read and share them, I appreciate the strangers and near-strangers who do the same. I've had people I only met in passing message me years later to simply tell me how much my posts meant to them. That's nuts to me, and that's one of my favorite things about being a writer.

I love it when I read something – a novel, a poem, a blog post – and immediately feel like I connect with the writer. I want to be their friend, I want to buy them coffee, I want to thank them for just doing what they do. The fact that I can be that writer for anyone in the world, never mind multiple lil humans out there, is just so crazy cool to me. 

So thank you guys. Really. Thank you to all of you who have read any number of posts in the past few years. Thank you to my generous, loving, caring friends and family who read and comment and share over and over. I've said this before, but you really don't know how much your support means to me. Thank you to all the strangers, the friends' moms (I know you're out there!), the former classmates who care enough to click on the posts I share on Facebook, and everyone else. You guys have made this experience so rewarding for me. It's so gratifying to learn that someone appreciates your labor of love as much as you do; just know that I appreciate you guys, too.

P.S. Here's the song that inspired our blog name. I'll be out turning this blog birthday into a lifestyle. Hope you enjoy your Saturday, too <3

~ V

Sinking and Swimming and Other Things I Learned Post-India

In the weeks since I've been home, I've had dozens of conversations that all start the same way: "How was India?" 


My friends from abroad and I have bemoaned this amongst ourselves, sometimes getting a bit salty about how lazy the question can feel. One said, "How's India? How are we supposed to fit so many months of experiences after such a simple question?" And this is fair. But one thing I've been thinking about is that people tell you how much they care. Both in the general sense and in the context of the post-India, manic-depressive readjustment phase, it means that sometimes people are asking just to be polite and other times they really want to know.

In regards to the former, it's pretty simple responding to, "How was India?" You manage to shorten five months of experiences into a short, 30-second spiel, one that gets more direct — and reductive — each time it is told. Just like that, five months of traveling and taking classes and learning (because while the two aren't mutually-exclusive, they're certainly not necessarily linked either) and laughing and dancing and yoga and riding bikes (both with a motor and without) are diluted. And sometimes this is a warm welcome; it's nice to momentarily pretend that this experience wasn't as wonderfully exhausting as it was. It's nice to imagine my life as some cheesy Bollywood film with just a few themes and characters and outfit changes and musical numbers and even a dramatic montage thrown in for good measure.

Then there are those who when they ask about India, really want to know. After more than six months away, I went to D.C. last weekend and met up with some friends. When my friend Medha asked, "How was India?" she followed up with some more direct questions. "What was it like adjusting there? How were the other students? What was your daily routine like?" And my response, while a bit more rambled and messy and verbose, was more honest.

But as I recounted details and experiences of my time abroad, I realized that it all felt so far away. My friend Shanice recently wrote to me, "India feels like a far-off dream most days." And while India is undeniably far with respect to geography, I hardly think a few weeks is enough to explain how distanced I feel otherwise, how disoriented I sometimes feel in this post-India life. 

When Shanice and I spoke about how we both miss India but are happy with what we've got going here in the U.S., I said I was "good at the moment," something that rings true because missing India comes in waves. There are moments of tranquility where everything fits and you're just flowing along in your new routine. And then something will happen to trigger what it feels to miss India. Something will remind you how much you don't fit in here, not that you fit in there either, because you don't fit in anywhere. And that wave will pass, and you'll try to make sense of whatever you can on the sodden sand, but it's just a matter of time before the next wave comes along.

The good thing though is that the waves are getting smaller.

So, how was India? I don't know. It's hard to say. Ask me when the tide shifts again.

~ V

Halfway there

{views from Golconda Fort at dusk}

Two weekends ago, I was in Kolkata feeling frustrated with my time here and even a little homesick. My cousin Darshana — who's been living in India for the past four years after ten in the U.S. — pointed out that she feels this way sometimes too, and that this is a feeling that comes and goes for her. I’ve (only?) been here for just under three months but I’ve noticed the same pattern in my experience here. And a similar thing happened when I was in Spain. In between the weeks, in between the days, you go through shifts where something strikes you the wrong way. Maybe you missed yet another bus, maybe the heat got to you more than you'd care to admit, maybe you had one more person make you feel unsafe or alone or unwelcome. And you started to miss home, started to wish that you had the comfort of being in a place of security and assuredness without having to leave the place you were in.

I'm starting to understand that this is just what it's like to be an in-betweener, to be a person who is forever moving back and forth — physically, mentally, emotionally, etc. — between two or more places.

But that feeling passes. And about a week after returning from Kolkata, I’m at a place where I’m nearly overwhelmed with how glad I am to have come to India. I’m big on appreciating the small stuff, so a few nights ago I made a list of things that I was grateful for. Academically, professionally, and personally, things have been going well for me right now. My life’s not perfect, not even close, but I’ve been making so much progress and I took the time to acknowledge that to myself.

And as I sat there making my list of things that had made my week amazing, I realized how happy I was to be here. I love one of the classes I’m taking, and am gaining at least something from the rest. My relationship with myself and all the bits and pieces of my identity has improved so much here, and I’ve been able to talk (and write) about things I was hardly able to think about a year ago. And I’ve met so many great people here.

And I realized today that I’m halfway in. I got to India twelve weeks ago, the exact amount of time I was in Madrid. Leaving Madrid was horrible for me. I wasn’t ready to go and I kept feeling like I had more to experience, more to learn before heading back to the States and to GW. Twelve weeks into my time in India, I’m so grateful to have about just as many more left.

Around this time in Spain, I published this post on how traveling abroad is at once isolating and unifying. On one hand, you separate yourself from your friends and loved ones back home; beyond the geographical distance between you and them, there is a separation of experiences. Your friends don’t know the street you’ve come to call home, the café you go for an afternoon bite, the people you now spend all your time with, and so on.

But at the same time — and this is one of my favorite things about traveling — you are reminded that you’re part of a bigger world. Not simply because you go to a new country and realize that when it comes down to it, we’re all the same. But instead because when you travel, you become part of new communities and you find ways to connect with absolute strangers. The lady sitting next to you in a packed shared auto. The children who wave to you on your walk home. The man sitting next to you waiting for the Metro. lt is in these moments that your life begins to feel like a movie, not because of how picturesque the cathedrals and temples and architecture and scenery around you is, but because of the way strangers become acquaintances with whom you share an experience no one else knows anything about, if only for a moment. And if you’re lucky, some of those acquaintances become friends.

It’s weird to see how much of my experience in India parallels my time in Spain. Beyond the fact that the two are very different countries, the parallels are shocking to me because I’ve been here before. I’m no stranger, no foreigner. In many ways, India has always been home whereas Spain only became home. There’s such a degree of familiarity to me here, and yet I found myself experiencing a sort of culture shock in the early weeks of my time here. And now, around the same time that I did in Spain, I find myself feeling isolated from a lot of what I consider home in America. Certain aspects of my life there disinterest me. They seem trivial to me, while others don't matter at all. And the idea of heading back terrifies me. I have so much left to experience here. It's not that I have cities to check off my bucket list or more souvenirs to shop for. It's simply that I'm not ready. I’m so happy to be here, right now, to be experiencing all that I am and to have learned all that I have and to have met the amazing people that make up my community here. I'm reminded often that coming to India is one of the best decisions I've made for myself. I don’t want to go back, at least not anytime soon, and I’m so glad I don’t have to.

So here's to being twelve weeks in, and here's to twelve more.

~ V

What I Learned in India: Week 5

The past few weeks here been pretty great for the most part. We celebrated my aunt's birthday over the course of a few days—the only way a birthday should be celebrated—and I started my classes. After the chaotic mess that is registering for classes as a SIP student here—a mess that makes the Hunger Games of registering for classes at GW look like an episode of Teletubbies—I've finally got a schedule I'm happy with. I'm taking Globalization and Communication, Communication and Social Change, Hindi, an independent study called Modern Indian Thought (which explores everything from Vivekananda to the contemporary Indian diaspora and is basically the greatest class concept I could've ever imagined), Yoga, and Kathak. And I have Fridays off!

And as the time has gone by, I've also gotten comfortable with commuting alone. I take rickshaws by myself nearly every day and although I'm admittedly horrible at bargaining, I know how much to pay for my ride to campus and back. And after having a little too much fun at the mall with some friends, I have plenty of kurtas and outfits for class.

I'm also loving many of the people I've met here. My program is run by amazing individuals who are more like wise friends than authoritative administrators. I'm loving being around my family and spending hours talking to my aunt or vegging out with my uncle. And I've met some amazing people from my CIEE group and have made local friends from my classes, too.

{the inside of a Dunkin' Donuts in the mall}

Beyond this though, the aftermath of Rohith Vemula's death has been very hard on our community. I can't imagine the loss that several students and professors feel, and for many of us in the Study in India Program, things are confusing and frustrating. Classes have been cancelled for a week and half and we don't know when they will resume. We can't travel, so we've just been trying to pass the time by exploring the city but there's only so much to do. I'm trying to remind myself that only the boring are ever bored, that I can find ways to have fun if I put in a little more effort, but it's hard to do so when this isn't a vacation—it's a time of loss and political unrest and chaos.

I'm still happy to be here, even though it seems like I'm already in a slump. It's just weird feeling this way, because it reminds me of the slump I felt halfway through my time in Spain and I really hated that feeling. What's different this time is that I'm not alone, that many of my friends feel the same way, and talking about it with them makes me feel less isolated and bored. Also, because I recognize the symptoms, I'm making more of an effort to be proactive and counteract what I've been feeling. I've been focusing on applying to internships, planning travel, working out, and writing. Hopefully this feeling will pass, and I'm hoping that returning to a routine will help that happen. Until then, here are a few more photos of my time so far:

~ V

What I learned in India: Weeks 1 & 2

{parrots outside my aunt's window, Mumbai}

I've been in India for two weeks but have been busy nearly constantly. In between spending time with family, sightseeing, and participating in orientation activities for my abroad program, it seems like I hardly have enough time to sit by myself and just decompress, never mind write. But writing has always helped me to process what I experience and so here we are, at the beginning of a new year and a new experience abroad.

Rather than always doing a numbered list for things I've learned in India like I did in Spain, I think it's best for me to write in paragraph form. In Spain, it was easy to understand what I had learned by finding what was new, what taught me through novelty. My experience in India differs—at least thus far—in that I've already been here, in that the culture is my own. Noticing patterns in the vernacular, picking up on behaviors and customs, and acclimating yourself to a new way of life is a bit different when these adjustments are familiar, when you've grown up knowing and then compartmentalizing them into a particular sector of your life. 

But even when things are familiar, they allow you to learn from them, to gain and to grow. And even though I've been to India multiple times, even though I was born here, even though the culture lends itself to my own hyphenated identity, I find myself learning new things and experiencing the growing pains that come with doing so. 

{Shilpramam}

Adjusting to India was hard for the first few days. But seeing family and focusing on my abroad program kept me focused and soon enough, I acclimated myself to life here. My university is definitely different from GW, and although I haven't started classes yet, I'm really excited about my tentative course load and some extracurriculars I've already found. I love having Indian food every day and I love riding my bike around my ginormous campus—3,000 acres and two lakes! Beyond this, I've met some amazing people. The staff running our program is just incredible and is going above and beyond to make this experience the best it can be for us. We're well-fed and taken care of and we've had some really interesting lectures and guest speakers.

{Chowmahalla Palace}

I definitely wasn't as excited when I first got here though. For one, being in India and around family brings out another side of me. For a few days, I found that I behave a certain way when I am here, or at least I am expected to. And when I was around the other CIEE students, all of whom are American, I reverted back to who I was in DC, the "American" version of myself. It's weird, flip-flopping especially in this setting. Indian-American kids learn quickly and early on to compartmentalize aspects of their lives and personalities. Doing so in India is so unfamiliar to me because for once, the Indian aspect of my identity is the dominant culture. For once, I take pride in speaking Hindi and knowing who Shah Rukh Khan is and not being fazed when I see cows on the street. 

Growing up, I was definitely made fun of for being Indian. I wasn't bullied or anything, at least not in the traditional sense, but I learned quickly to not discuss Indian music or bring Indian food for lunch or speak in Gujarati with my friends. I didn't want to be the weird Indian kid, I wanted to be "normal," to fit in. It's weird having those same things I suppressed now carry cultural capital, to now be things worth mentioning or at least having pride in.

{sunset from Hussain Sagar}

I told a new friend about how ironic it was to travel 8,000 miles and still end up the only brown girl in a big group of kids. I felt like I was the only one with a dual identity, the only one navigating through which parts of myself to hide and which to share, the only one deciding how Indian to be or how American. 

But now after a short-lived transition period, I'm so incredibly happy to be here. For a few days, I found myself reconsidering it all. Who the hell goes to India when they can go to Amsterdam? I asked myself. I looked at the streets and the university buildings and the heat and the inability to travel or even wander by myself and freaked out. Why did I come here? Was coming here truly necessary to learn what I wanted to learn? Could I have just come here for winter break in between semesters or before studying in Amsterdam or Cape Town? And then I sat down in my classroom of the first day of orientation and calmed down. I was going to be fine, I told myself. Everything was organized and planned and orderly and I could handle whatever was new or uncomfortable or uneasy. 

{vendors, Mumbai}

So an hour into that first day, I got really, really excited. I bounced in my seat a little and grinned and told myself to calm the hell down—I was in public for god's sakes. Had I had too much coffee that morning? For once, no—I'd had none. I was just excited for my amazing classes and to meet all the cool students and spend more time with my family and really, really experience living in and acclimating to India. 

And now, two weeks in, I feel like I've adjusted. While I'm still a bit overwhelmed at times, I don't find myself scrambling to adjust. I feel like I've regained a balance, that I've found some great friends, and that I have some cool classes and extracurriculars to look forward to. I'm already thinking about how leaving will feel like, but I'm excited to be here for whatever time I have. Until then, here are some photos from the past two weeks:

{the sweetest welcoming from my Mami}

{the hospital in which I was born}

{excuse the nails but look at these chikoos!}

{friendly stray cat, Mumbai}

{home circa 1995-97; ours was the window on the top left}

  

Believe it or not, these are only 38 out of 675 pictures I've taken so far. I can't wait to bring my camera with me as I explore the city. Stay tuned from more from Hyd!

~ V