An Ode to Tamil pulp wedding - or- my wedding in Bangalore

The chaos of India, the Isolation of America

So I have not written in about oh 2 months. I have good excuses. I got married in India to Arun, and had hot summer honeymoon (no pun intended) in Thiland.
I just got back last night, and got blogger guilt.
So my next blog will be about the wedding but until then I feel I msut write about what I am feeling about today.
I woke up this morning at 7am (I am jet lagged this is the only reason I woke up this early) to complete and utter silence. oh my ganesha!! SILENCE.
After waking up to a month of cackling family and relatives in my house in Bangalore ,smells of toast and garam masala and MTV-kick ass mornings in the background- this is utter despair for me. I didnt have to dodge my family from eating enormous breakfasts of potato's soaked in oil ,no one is asking me why I am running out to get an auto rickshaw to to go to kormangla. No one asking me to come finish wedding shopping, no draping my to be wedding outfits and prancing about like rani mukherjee.
Outside my apartment it is cloudy, cool and silent. neighbors walk their dogs - no auto horns and people bustling. No stray dogs insight and I have to make my own damn breakfast. There is no milk in the house I cant walk to my corner store and ask for supplies. No bewilderment in the shopkeepers face when I tell him I dont want a plastic bag, I shall carry the milk packets in my hands. Oh god I shall have to drive to safeway and in isolation I will have to buy a carton of milk and other such choice groceries.
No floods to worry about , Colorado is expecting tornadoes I hear. Sigh. I log onto YouTube to play "emotional attyachar" from DEV.D to break the mind numbing silent whirring of the refrigerator. No shanti or Lakshmi maids to walk into my bedroom giggling at my salwar option of the day. My husband Arun - oh god husband. will be back for lunch. (what lunch?)
He too is homesick and jet lagged, and sleepy.
No I shall shower, and I dont have to put a geysor on to heat my bath water up. It is ready to go. No buckets of water and mugs. I dont have to walk and battle with a auto driver for a resonable fair. I have to drive my car around people who know how to keep "persoanl space". No pollution ,no carbon monoxide spewing from trucks and autos.my lungs are clearing up.
In the L.A airport while deboarding last morning there was a sign outside. " There are carcinogenic elements in the air that will be harmful for your reproductive system and such other bullshit" - I would like to point out firstly- after I laugh - India is the most populated country in the world,well after China. cancer causing pollution is India's middle name - there are no such bullshit signs there. If there were I would laugh again. HAHAHAHAHAHAH.
America oh America dont you see? you one day are going to have the weakest immune system in the world so very soon !! propagators of paranoia!!
Indians,and perhaps Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, and quite possibly Nepalis and some Thai people and Vietnamese and such inhale pure poison every day and they are reproducing just fine. There lungs are adjusted. Cancer will have to hold its horses.
Anyhow, now it is possible to enjoy the other things here. Such as gearing up to hike in colorados mountains (where isolation is acceptable to me). To enjoy the antics of the new college crowed that will infiltrate for the coming semester of my Alma matter Colorado State.
I also have a list of films to watch given to me by my best Friend paromita.
The isolation shall be bitten my bollywood music and my sprit lifted by one hour cardio sessions and my funny bone to be tickled with Fox news.
Till then, please remember to wear your seat belts.

CALIFORNIA COLLEGE OF THE ARTS LOVES ME

I got in!! I got in!! I could sing a wondrous song, devote a heart warming poem and write a sould bearing story on what I feel right now!!
Months of self doubt, worrying obsessive blog checking and it is accepted!!
I have been deemed valid to write by scholary writers!!
Now if I was not accepted I would continue to write, I would try again..but this is oh so better!! I am so crazy happy that writing this blog makes no sense.
Here are the fact-
Recived an email from CCA telling me I am accepted for Fiction for the MFA program!!!! ARRRGHHHHHHH!!! My acceptance package is in the mail!!
So anyway, I shall post later but...yes I GOT IN TO AN MFA PROGRAM.

Given the stresses and general whining about things that I have no control over ( the economy, women bashing in Bangalore, MFA applications that don't want to get back to me and childhood trauma induced vegetarianism) I owe it to my blog to write something rather whimsical.
So I thought I would write a note on why I named my blog "glassbangle adventures". Glass bangles are synonyms with my Bangalore theater group Masrah, it represents our oddball semi ethnic semi hippie way of dressing. It represents the one thing I can still buy for 0ne cent in India, beautiful glass bangles in all colors from a cart sold to by a person who sells them cheap enough you almost don't want to bargain. Almost.
Glass bangles was something I wear everyday (well I have stopped now because my job requires me to remove my nose stud and clingy clangy things- fascists!!)
and they represent the colorful,pro active,positive and diverse things I enjoy in my bi cultural life. And given that life is an adventure in some given form the name is very fitting.
So there that is my whimsical note for the day.
I am going to get some interesintg info about the Bangalore attacks, and some pro community organisations that have sprouted because of this on this blog, and hopefully start a discussion.
Have a fabulous mid March.

Vent for march

New job.
Week one- learn to get up at 7am. Yes, I said 7AM. Gross.
step 2- Learn to sit through 9 hours of lecture and training.
my job?- Behavioral health advocate at a psychiatric hospital.
Yes, they was talk of a woman who walked around with her dead dogs head in her purse. No jokes. Seems to me I bag all the "interesting" jobs, while all I really want to do is give up this social work related counselor crap and be a writer and get into a MFA program. NO NEWS ON THAT YET!!
DAMN THEM ALL!! I am going crazy waiting.
Oh, and to fine tune the madness, I leave late April for my wedding in India..if that was not enough to stress me out.
So now for the next month I will have to deal with these three things-

1. Work with crazy people.(which I actually in some way look forward to and at the same time slightly scared, it is a slightly different ball game working with delinquent teenage horny boys and just plain crazy folk...but all the same)

2. Play the waiting game, for MFA news which more than likely I will be rejected.
at the same token I am praying like never before.

3. Prepare for wedding that will take place about 10,000 miles away from where I am right now.

Not to be a drama queen or anything, I am not pissed or angry or frustrated. But just putting it out there:)

then there are the Bangalore attacks on women,who are allegedly destroying the pure image of the Indian woman. talibanzation of Bangalore, another result of our growing economic gap. This is why I feel, writing, social activism and theater in blore is where my heart is.

and then , since this is my blog.
Fuck everything I am going to bed.

Peace

Veg Out?

When I was eleven I was harassed by my fellow classmates for bringing meat for my school lunch.
That morning my mother had committed the ultimate felony. She packed me an unholy lunch to open up in front of twenty odd conservative south Indian girls.(The boys missed the drama because we simply didn't sit in mixed groups at the time). I really didn't understand how horrific my lunch looked to them at the time ,but I soon found out

I was pretty much unpopular at the time. there were very good reasons for this. First off, I was already the confused recently U.S.A returned kid, who had just about gotten used to lumpy squares of lasagna and sloppy Joe lunches. Suddenly I was frisked to India and told lunches were now to consist of roties and vegetables spiced with things that stained my uniform. I was pretty accommodating of the changes ,and in fact dying to fit in.

The girls would bring their benign Idlis- the white rice cake, the substance of all basic south Indian breakfasts- that somehow became a quick and easy way for mothers to stuff into their children's tiffen and make it "lunch" by throwing in some coconut chutney and sometimes jam.
I had noticed this and had ordered my mother to pack me Idlies (as opposed to the much too north Indian alu dum and roti) . So she did, and their were some very memorable,bonding,normal lunches, where I didn't stick out like a sore thumb.

Then the ill fated day arrived. The morning my mother thought it was OK to pack Idlies that were speckled with MEAT....in them!!
I opened my box and began to eat these idlies while trying to cover the fact that they had
murderous brown spots of cow slaughter all over them.
It was futile. One girl squealed "Is that meat in your IDLI????!!!"
An uproar followed,gasps, mean spitted giggles and blatant pointing.
see, not only did I break the rule by bringing the dreaded "non veg" to school ,but I had dared to create a monster out of the soft,cuddly,safe vegetarian Idli.

A meat idli is basically an abnormality, a freak ,an oxymoron if you will.
The kids, wore disgusted faces, and then said something about my mother being "American" and this was the only explainable reason to have got "meat idlies" to school. The logic to this was profoundly stupid. I remember thinking that even way back then. But I shut up, since I was one against twenty.

The result of the above incident- I brought vegetarian lunches for the rest of fifth and sixth standard(grade). In the seventh standard for some reason -I owe it to being either being likable
enough for them not to care what I ate or them loosing their harsh judgemental nature- I ate meat, though I never brought meat idlies to school again.

Skip about a decade and a half I have actually thought that I should become a vegetarian.
I have many reasons for this- the first one is that I keep telling my self-
well If I am so dead against Capitol Punishment, and care about human rights and such then who am I to say - well I am human thus superior, thus I can eat you sweet little prancing chicken!And you too gentle cow, and you happy muddy piglet!!

All of them too have emotion, and are capable of feeling fear (the jury is still out on fish).
The problem is after being brought up a meat eater for twenty five years, it is just a tad daunting to eat without the meat. More than anything else I forget that I am eating chicken or fish on my "lets practice being vegetarian day".
All that said, I am now ready to move to the next step of being an actual practicing vegetarian.Well I shall eat eggs. Why you ask? Because I am pro choice- so I can eat eggs if I think a zygote is not a human right? In some sick way that does make sense.
I find it actually pretty damn easy to be a veggie in India, where everything yummy is usually veggie anyways, especially in Bangalore. Its the USA that so much harder, but I think I ll get it.
I am in no way being judgemental of happy meat eaters, but I did want to put this up as a personal affirmation.
So, bossy,immature, bully fifth grader girls- you win.fifteen years later I turn into the vegetarian school mate you wished for.
But I am sure half of you little hypocritical wusses are eating meat now- behind your mothers back!!!

A week of Blah

Nothing to say. I have been missing on my blog for this same reason. I will how ever give my this and that about random things. I went on a random trip to New Mexico with parents,brother,brother's girlfriend and Arun (fiance), it was pretty fun but I got car sick.(I always get car sick). Oh I got a job interview at this medical/psychiatric ward for a behavioural counselor. I pretty UN thrilled about it which is weird, since I have not been able to find a job. I guess I owe it to being too obsessed with my MFA crap(still no news).Anyways, that might be a possible job-or not coz I might very probably blow the interview. I watched forest gump after about a year and fell in love with it all over again. The economy and its rapidly declining health doest seem to hold my attention, in fact post Obama being elected, I have pretty much stopped watching the news,which is alarming because I was pretty good with that. I need to keep up.
and I shall end with a fun south Indian video, a song I first heard from my crazy friend Harsha in Bangalore- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7y7YdeLF-o

Wedding cards- tamil pop style

I

Thanks to Pallavi and Poornima, I now have a couple of beyond awsome desgins for my wedding cards. They all have elements of Bangalore(of course symbolised by the auto), south indian film hype,bright glass bangle colors(and telling from my blog's name you can see I love glass bangles) and some good old indian inspired art work. I have talented friends ;) Jai ho Masrah! (my bangalore thater group)

MFA -the devil

I am in a MFA state of mind.
For those of you who don't know, I made the sad mistake of applying to 5 MFA creative writing programs, to spend the next two years of my life as a "writer", where I would romance writing, the art of it all, coffee shop workshops and gabbing about literature.
I asked for it, now the self doubt,the waiting and the cruelty of it all starts.
Highly competitive it is this program, and I have no way of assessing my writing compared to others, never taken a writing workshop or have talked to a actual writer...but write I did and apply I did. Thanks to some very helpful people who I harassed to edit and provide feedback, and some lovely people who wrote me recommendations, I sent out those packages.
Jesus. I have been a wreck. here are my four possible outcomes-

1. Miracle or all miracles - I get in to a program with complete funding.
2. Cherished hope- I get in a program with some sort of scholarship boost.(no way-GPA-2.9)
3. begging to the almighty - I get in to a program, no funding what so ever,but I get in.
4. Probable reality- I get 5 rejection letters at the end of March, causing slow,painful and early death.

If either outcome 1-3 happens, I will give 5o dollar gift cards to who ever was so kind to read this piece of crap. You can hold me to it, just refer to this blog posting :)

If outcome 4 happens - well fuck.

Well then , other than that, these 3 months before my wedding are passing slowly I cant find a job, not even at a mall, not even where a high school degree is optional.
but I have a roof over my head, food to eat, friends and a kick ass fiance who keep me going.

That's all for now
peace

So in regards to my writing- here is a brand new piece. It is a short and playful one. Hope you enjoy!

Bhelpuri

What would you know of the actual taste? Yes you see the rickety wooden trolley, and the array of steel bowls. Yes they are smeared with left over chutneys and pieces of cilantro and carrot.

You look so disgusted. why? Perhaps because laddo the stray dog (I named him myself just now) Is to close in the vicinity of the food in question? Or is it because the man behind the trolley is throwing ingredients into the bowl faster than your eyes can comprehend what the composition of the snack is?

He starts with two unwashed handfuls of puffed rice, then the onions and cilantro, brown and green chutneys and those chopped carrots. Mix, mix, mix and clang, clang, and on a steel plate you have it. A pile of deliciously spicy, sweet, crunchy and sometimes tangy assortment of savory.

What? You won’t try some? You took a shot for malaria, but this is just asking to be plagued with diarrhea, or worse cholera. You really think so? Why? It is nothing but crunchy veggies with an assortment of tamarind pulped with chili powder (now you are the one who said you could take it spicy.)

I have eaten it all my childhood, every other day after school; it would enter my mouth and explode with flavors. It would drop on my uniform and stain the already mud splotched blue shirt. Tamarind and chili powder create the worst stains you know.

I tell you, I ate it all my childhood and it is what I craved for when I study oversees. I crave it in the middle of the night when I have made a half hearted version of daal and rice.

"If you crave it so much back at university,why then don’t you make a more hygienic version back at home?"
You ask me this question so genuinely; it makes me actually want to explain it to you.
So I will- now look at the man, yes he wears a dirty wrapped cloth around him for pants, his white undershirt is marred with pollution and speckles of his culinary delights. Now look at the craft, his unwashed hands might actually give us half the taste. Look at the bowls so methodically spread out.

Yes they are uncovered, and yes flies may sit upon the colorful ingredients. Agreed upon ,that the man has scratched his groin in front of you . I will even tell you that I too saw him wash the plates with that old water lying in a orange tub. Yes, friend, yes I saw Laddoo the stray lap water out of it too.

I take into account all the “unhygienic elements”, but then look at the box of macaroni and cheese you carried all the way here, it is loaded with things you cannot even pronounce. How can you call that chemical orange powder –cheese?

Alright, alright, I admit it tastes quite good, and I too enjoy it now and then, but you see these questionable elements ad flavour to thethe food, may it be macaroni and cheese or this delicious bhelpuri this man has offered you, while disregarding your foreign hesitancy.

So if I can indulge in your orange cheese powder, and you spending thousands just to come see my world – you must let me spend this mere 10 rupees on you so you can taste this memory of my childhood.

Just once I ask you to try it.

You will? Really? I am so glad! I promise you will enjoy it!
You take a spoonful, half of the snack falls to the ground but it is inconsequential since the remaining amount will suffice for a good first taste.

Your face contorts. Your eyes seem to bulge. You chew. You smile hesitantly. It is different you say.
Very different. You take another spoon almost to bribe yourself out of this trolley infested street. You tell me you might need time to actually really enjoy it.

Oh gosh, you didn’t like it as much as I thought you would. Well at least my friend you tried.
You tried to taste something just for me and for that I feel special.
But friend, one thing eh- I wish to god you had enjoyed it completely. That way you wouldn’t curse me as much when you do get that diarrhea.

I am in the mood to rant about something now. I have had a hot shower and put some quality lotion on. It makes all the difference. So I thought I would talk about the Mangalore incident. Shive Sene has given us something else to talk about. OK for those who don't know- shiv sene radical right wing Hindu group (AKA- HINDU VERSION OF TALIBAN), got 40 of their sexually frustrated men(who believe they are pious and must save Hindu womankind) to barge into a Manglaore pub and create havoc.By havoc I mean pull their hair, push and shove them and also some room to molest. If that were not enough there was name calling involved. Such as "whore" "sluts" etc. All very fabulous.
Actually what is fabulous is the fact that India..finally took some action. I mean the people. I have been asked to join to less than 5 groups on facebook linked to the recent events such as "moral police kiss my ass" and there are actual protest walks and such. The youth is up in arms. Finally.
Here is the thing- India is a prime example of getting riled upabout things when in affects them ,and by them I mean a certain privileged group.
Garbage on the roads- who cares not in my house. Bribe the cops-who cares I got the extra 200 to drive without my damn helmet. Injustice to kids much much much poorer than you?-not my deal. Terrorists attacks in Mumabi- yes lets talk about that- mainly because it hit the Taj(or at least that is what the news flashes when a reference is made about the attacks)-the train station where most of the people died..oh sorry I meant"poor people" is barely mentioned.
Why? because their voices seldom count. For all practical purposes the attacks really hit the upper middle class the ones who thought-damn I could have been there.
So great- I say light the damn candles, show support for one another, protest those barbaric men who try to define women and propagate their version of the "Indian culture". the problem lays here- India is to dramatically diverse in its socio economic status. I might get an invite to a protest walk, and I will gladly do it- but is that invite open to a uneducated women who might not have a voice or even a chance to think for her self? Could she join the "solidarity" we are trying to have? Can she raise that glass of beer with you in your favorite pub saying "fuck shiv sene". Does she even care? No, but that does not mean she doesn't have a set of her own problems
Don't get me wrong- I love this change in India, the youth getting riled up taking responsibility as citizens to protest something. I just ponder at all the injustices my country faces on a daily bases, and then think-how come we don't get riled up about that too? Why are we so hesitant to fight for things that might not so directly affect us -but could disgrace and traumatize a person as much as I would be if I were kicked out of a pub because I was a woman?
Walk, India, walk. I just want to remind us all to make sure we can give vioce and legs to people who dont have as many resources. That said- Shiv Sene can kiss my ass.

Incredible. After dabbling in writing, being half passionate about every other issue of the world and having an opinion on everyone and their grandmother,I choose now to start a blog.
Well I guess I have had a couple of rants on facebook, but then on facebook it is not really a "blog". Who cares. I have nothing to say today. It is horrible that my first blog is one that is completely uninspired. No news article has got be particularly excited or offended( there are plenty that should) but Chinese food has slowed down my body (MSG,it hasto be the MSG) and waiting for my grad application reject letters which is bound to come, given that I only applied to 5 schools, for a very competitive program has left me a nervous reck. I still with some self harm instinct check my emails every two seconds,maybe there will be the rejection in you inbox, there the pain is over. The wait is gone.Oh well.Pessimistic I know, but it is better that way for now. I am digressing. In fact I never actually made a vaguely acceptable point here to even digress from. I shall keep shut for now.
Stay tuned for more interesting posts. I am sure they will come.
see? I ain't that pessimistic.