#occupywallstreet

9/11 – Set Things in Motion

I was 24 on 9/11, and was making my way into the adult world, after some years of activism and overseas humanitarian work, when that seismic moment occurred. The immediate impact was visceral, apocalyptic, the closest I'd ever felt to having my world, as I knew it, fall part. Slowly, and soon after, the effects became psychological. 9/11's true legacy will probably be its lasting influence on our collective psyche. There was no going back to before. Everything was tinged with that event and memory, propelling us into a new strange world, filled with uncertainty, violence and paranoia.

Up until that point, I was a part of, what seemed like, a minority who felt something was deeply wrong with our world even though by all outward appearances everything was fine. GDP was booming, unemployment was low, and the Internet was nascent, but already there was a spirit of innovation and energy that many likened to progress. The prospect of war, or violence, was remote. The Soviet Union was gone, and no threats existed. It was the "end of history", and we were all going to be liberal, well off, well adjusted, if slightly bored, but extremely privileged people with mundane problems.

As a result, it was frustrating and often humiliating to be scoffed at by many people when I talked about injustice, when outwardly there seemed little to complain about. There was no Vietnam, or civil rights issues as in the 60s, or threat of nuclear doom. But I went ahead and talked about what I still thought was important anyway: Africa, and immigrant communities, and the inordinate power of global corporations and their growing influence over our sovereignty, and our environment. I kind of knew what I was talking about, though a lot of it was emotional and trying to express a certain unease about the world I was inheriting.

I also started reading voraciously at this time, about everything, though especially history, and I became aware and attracted to the great struggles of the past, that presented themselves to the generations before me. They all had wars, or some grave injustice to overcome. I read all this with an inner zeal to be a part of this continuum through history, and to not miss out on the great struggle of my time. But our struggles, before 9/11, felt abstract, and numbed by extreme wealth and apathy. There was a nagging doubt, that perhaps there would be nothing as meaningful to fight for as there had been in the past. This might have been good for the world, but it was terrible for a young rebel without a cause.

Many of us thought that if this was life at its best, then it was devoid of meaning, and that there had to be something more. We looked to the 60s, nostalgically, because I think many of our parents were boomers, and we still were deeply moved by the music and art of that era. I remember feeling as if I was born in the wrong era and wished for a time with clearer struggles (and better music) that would call upon sacrifice and courage. I had all this revolutionary zeal, and knowledge, and understanding (so I hubristically thought) and I couldn't figure out what our fight was about, and if it really mattered in the end.

Slowly, after some searching, I became aflame to the No Global movement, and I was involved in protests in Seattle at the WTO, and then at the Democratic National Convention in 2000 (Rage Against the Machine!). Pretty inspiring stuff. We started getting the word corporations and globalization into the mainstream lexicon. There was debate, and a challenge to the global order and I think the bigger joy was catching the powers that be off guard, especially in Seattle. But a movement was growing and it was incredible to be a part of it.

I crisscrossed the country (through 40 states) organizing, and working with a network of activists with code names like War cry and Wings. We communicated with encrypted email, with servers maintained in an unknown place. It all felt serious, and we took ourselves very seriously. I also went on to work on the Ralph Nader Presidential campaign. Special interests, corporate welfare, the 2 party system, the state of environment, became the campaigns that helped direct my discontent.

I also briefly flirted with radical politics for a time, Socialism and Primitivism thrown in with some Anarchistic thought. I made communion with the Redwood forests, I became vegan, and I also tried to bend the arc of my sexuality and gender. It was all very enlightening, and gave me a stronger sense of who I was. I even, through sheer luck, and some hustle, ended up gaining a fellowship to sub Saharan Africa to work in Hiv/Aids education, and came back a strong advocate for generic drugs for the region, and worked hard to raise awareness to the tragedy and suffering there.

By 9/11 I decided all that activism was fine and good, but that I needed to make the most of my talents, and I decided to finally enroll in medical school, which I has been delaying for some time. I was still extremely restless, and more moved by the social and policy issues that medicine touched upon, than clinical practice.

I wanted to continue grappling with the big ideas, and understand the truth of life more and build on the adventures and excitement I had experienced up until then. I didn't feel ready to settle down with the extreme sacrifice and rigid discipline that medicine required. But I resigned myself to it, to be practical and to eventually be an even better activist, with the power, privilege and respect an MD degree brings.

And then 9/11 happened, and I was sitting in a medical school lecture in New York City when it occurred. I was stunned, like most people, and afraid, as my mother worked close to the towers. She survived, though she was trapped in a building for 4 hours. The whole time I couldn't comprehend or process what was happening and was disoriented, in shock. And the media fueling the paranoia and fear didn't help. The repeated images of the planes crashing into the towers led to further anguish and confusion. It was a mind fuck of epic proportions.

Much of my political education at that point was anti-American and highly critical of US foreign policy. There were murmurs within my progressive circles that America deserved this. I didn't agree or disagree at that moment, because I still could not figure out what it was that was happening. I needed time, reflection, and calm analysis. I couldn't fathom how quickly it was discovered that this was the act of Islamist fundamentalists. I was skeptical of the scenarios presented about flight manuals and Korans, and how the supposed perpetrators of this act didn't care to know how to land when they were in flight school. I still couldn't understand how anyone could fly a plane into buildings with such precision and calculation, without practice. Something didn't add up, and no one seemed bothered to step back to reflect and investigate, present evidence.

No, we had to take the word of our leaders, believe and follow them blindly down whatever path they choose. All other voices were deemed unpatriotic, crazy, and disrespectful. It should never be forgotten how small the space for dialogue and debate was at the time. We were turbo charged into War mode, and it was a sick and frightening sight to see and witness.

I remember reading the New York Times on September 12th, and that fine paper of record declared: NATION AT WAR. What? Wasn't this a crime against humanity?

It was surreal, as if I was in some dystopian novel, set in some absurd future, like 1984 or the Brave New World. Hysteria abounded, flags came out of nowhere and an empty, hollow, fascist patriotism had swept the nation and my city. People forget this scary part of 9/11. And then civil liberties were swept aside, with almost zero debate and somehow there was this consensus to go to war in Afghanistan and kill innocent people, to hunt down some fundamentalists in caves. It all seemed extreme and far-fetched.

But with time, I came to understand that Al-Qaeda was real, and that there were people out there who were determined to hurt us. In a resigned manner I came to support the War in Afghanistan, even though it seemed to be an impossible task to use conventional warfare methods, to fight a nebulous enemy.

I had thought that was the end of things, but then slowly the talk of Iraq began, and the internal logic used to justify Afghanistan seemed to wear thin with Iraq. Though it was acknowledged fact Iraq had NOTHING to do with 9/11, polls kept showing that the majority of the US public felt, however, there was a link, and the media played their part diabolically to promote this fallacy with misinformation and innuendo. The truth didn't matter, the polls did, and what people believed was enough justification to continue to perpetuate irrational policy. It was hard not to be dismayed and horrified, if you were a thinking person at that time.

At some point it became apparent that this was going to be an endless war, that would not only go into Iraq, but then Iran, and who knows wherever else struck our fancy. A very deep, fundamental shift in policy had taken place, though fortunately, eventually, many people woke up and organized to try and stop it.

It was around this time, after a year of medical school, that I decided to drop out and pursue my passion to live and act according to the urgency of the moment, to work to make things better. In some ways, I felt the moment I had been waiting for, that struggle of my generation, had finally arrived. I really didn't know what I would do concretely, but I knew I could not be looking at histology slides and sit in anatomy lab, as the world burned and everything I held to be true and good, slowly slipped away. Medicine would always be there, but history doesn't wait. I was ready for the struggle. And I may have had delusions of grandeur, but I sincerely believed that my time had arrived and my purpose was now clear.

Perhaps I was over dramatic, or maybe extremely sensitive, I don't know. Looking back, I don't know if I would react the same now, as I did then. And I am astounded I so readily gave up the secure and tested path, for some unknown quest. And if I am honest, I don't think my motivation was to make the world a better place and to fight injustice, only, though it was a part of it. A lot of it was also about not wanting to be an "adult", i.e., boring, responsible and focused on a bourgeoisie future. It was equally about excitement, and making your mark on the world, shaking things up, making things move differently than predicted and flirting with destruction, because it turns you on. There is something lustful, of that way of living.

Just after March 2003, I decided to leave the country, after having worked hard to organize against the war, culminating on the February 15^th protest where millions of people across the world marched against the impending invasion. I felt much solidarity, and joy, in this collective expression for peace. I remember thinking there was no way the Bush Government could invade after such a huge turnout.

It was a deep blow personally to see the Bush government, completely ignore this and invade on March 19^th. I had had enough. I couldn't take it anymore. All this along with 9/11 and the culture of fear, paranoia and stupidity became unbearable.

I reasoned that if US foreign policy was unjust, I must work to make it saner, and as a citizen, given it was my tax money killing people, I had a say and would work to stop it. I knew the Middle East was not a good time to go to or work with, in the midst of war, and perhaps it was too late with everything that was taking place. After some research, I realized that after Israel and Egypt, Colombia was the biggest recipient of US aid money, much of it used for repressive means. I somehow decided I must go there, and with some hustling joined some incredible groups working in human rights within Colombia. I spent the next 2 years there, on and off, and this slowly brought me into the realm of working in human rights professionally, eventually garnering a fellowship to study for a masters degree and then working around the globe on numerous humanitarian missions in disaster and conflict zones.

All because of 9/11. I almost look back at what I wrote here in disbelief. I suppose different people react to different events differently, for different reasons. But there was something about me that moved, and tried very hard to align the beliefs in my head, with my actions back then. That consistency was important, not just for some moral reason. It was about survival. I couldn't function back then, if I wasn't true to myself, and nothing seemed worth doing, if it didn't meet the ideals I had set forth for myself.

Along the way, in Colombia, in sub-Saharan Africa, in India, in Haiti, with all my work, slowly the heartbreak of the human condition got to me. I became less angry and stopped looking at things through the lense of justice. I saw problems, and I did my best to provide solutions, and make them better, and just tried to do a good job of things and that was it. It became a job, and I was proud that I could do it, and felt privileged that I was called in to help (and often paid handsome sums of money), and then that was the end of it. I detached, I went shopping, and I became concerned with writing fiction, and women, and adventure in other forms (Peyote rituals, deep treks into the Himalayas, etc.)

But I still often think back, to that 24-year-old fresh-faced fiery-eyed medical student who gave it all up. All because 9/11. What destiny, and now I see what that day means to me, and to the future and everything else, 10 years later. This is just my story. I am sure many people have their stories too, if they stop, to think about it what 9/11 means to them.

When in France

Oh

Downtown

One of the elements of the downtown movement was the interaction with characters, true individuals, people you may even disgust you but you had to give them their due cause they were their own person. And after a while, what downtown teaches is for you to work hard to make yourself interesting and unique. In some people this seems contrived and after a while you get a homogeneity among non-conformists (ie, they look, talk and read the same books) but its still a worthy effort and a necessary one in America, where corporate culture takes on hegemonic dimensions and the greatest form of resistance is with your ideas and mind.

A beautiful spring day in Paris.

A beautiful spring day in Paris.
So much beauty. Beauty built once and maintained attracts the world. Through beauty, conquer.

This is quite novel, to jot down my thoughts on the phone. It can take some getting used to but I kind of like it for short pieces. I am finding that my desire to write is directly proportional to my desire to improve and better my life. There is a connection between words and reality making.

This is quite novel, to jot down my thoughts on the phone. It can take some getting used to but I kind of like it for short pieces. I am finding that my desire to write is directly proportional to my desire to improve and better my life. There is a connection between words and reality making.

The power of words. It all comes down to how we arrange these symbols in ways that speak to people, make them respond, change their thinking. And so many people do not write. They are left out and go about their lives in quiet disdain.

Intelligence = War

I am dazzled by intelligence and talent, though the end point of what many of them work towards is not always good.  The best and the brightest led us into Vietnam and Germany had all the philosophers and scientists, and they perverted morality for their own ends, power.  Israel, too.  

The US, the beacon of freedom it is now, rests on a foundation of genocide and systematic discrimination, yet somehow is immune to criticism given the concessions it has made over the years, excellent PR and also benefited from perpetuating these crimes in an era when the UN did not exist and media and solidarity with foreign causes was not fashionable.  They could never get away with something similar today.

This is the inherent distrust China, and other countries have with the West.  They put in place rules, after breaking them, and then hold others to a different standard, forgetting history and preaching justice.  Who is the biggest polluter, the biggest war maker and the most unjust and cruel to its own people in recent memory? The West.  And now they come along and tell others to behave? 

But it's neither so simplistic, as the West has also evolved, changed and made all efforts to learn from its mistakes and work to make a better society, from the ashes of injustice and war.  And by many accounts the transformation is historic, and unprecedented and innovative.  It' hard to deny the rights afforded to many minority groups and the progress made on many fronts.  It's hard to remain unmoved and cynical in the face of such great change. 

There is a contradiction, a paradox and a tension that pulls us in many directions about what is true and good about Western Civilization.  I think this debate, this constant reflection is a strong suit, and one that will ultimately bring us to a better place.

Where I am going

Haiti is a sinking ship.  Broken in irreparable ways. It broke me too.  I am usually content to be in forsaken places, working with forgotten people, doing my part.  I am always sustained by the belief, after rigorous analysis, that my work does no harm, that it may not save the world, but the little I do means that much more in such circumstances.  On tough days, I am not so sure, but I am still very proud of being in this field, and doing something that is bigger than myself.   

I have naively espoused the very American belief that through intelligence and hard work alone, one can solve any problem.  A tempting indulgence and one that leads a naturally energetic people into perpetual activity.  Sometimes the best thing to do is wait.  To observe and reflect and to act at the right moment rather than ceaselessly persisting obsessively with a problem.   

Disheartening to meet so many careerists in this field who make this a profession, who don't do it with a spirit of adventure and curiosity.  Wherever they go, they get drunk and hang amongst themselves.  They watch their laptops, call home.  Spend their money in big cities on holiday, basking in the glow of the prestige of being different.  This can be a dirty, dirty field. 

I don't understand them. 

I was a traveler, and I happened upon this work.  It is interesting for now, but then I will move on.  I do it on my terms.  And that is important to maintain.  This is more than just a job.  Most of us are in this field not for the money, and we are smart enough to be doctors, lawyers and corporate businessmen, with the house and the cars and the football on Sunday.  But we decided to leave it behind, to chart a new path for ourselves and the lives of others.   

On pornography (even better than the real thing)

Used to be a time that a young man would come home alone drunk to himself and his loneliness, after a night on the prowl.  Rejection was painful.  Now, rejection is coupled with intense pleasure.  With a push of some buttons, the body awakens, though the conscious mind knows that it's not real, we engage almost in an involuntary trance. 

Modernity can make you feel so numb, at times.  And when something offers to move and make you virile, how can one resist?

The glow of the screen, the beep of a text message, the constant connectivity prey on our biology; our weakness for excitement and engagement. 

The high minded and civilized scoff at pornography in all forms.  The involuntary, the play to base instincts, horrify a person of class and dignity because elements of instinct and nature, need to be mixed with restraint and subtlety for them to have value.  It can't be enough that it feels good - that is not justification enough for action.  For if we only did what was initially pleasurable, all fecund pleasures would vanish.  Reading, music, architecture, combine  elements of passion and work.  No, animals do what they feel like, though civilized people enjoy things that are a result of work, sacrifice and craftmanship.    

And there is something about taking the easy way out that does not sit well with this civilized crowd.  There must be an element of impracticality - a risk, an indulgence, that separates and differentiates those with values and those without.  Thus, the liberal arts, the theater, the opera, high fashion, it's not just that they are expensive, it's just because their value is uncertain, and they constantly evoke a debate between what it's worth, to which many of this class assert:  That if you have to ask, then you don't know what it is worth and never will.  

From my side, as a philosophy student, and a purveyor of high culture and travel, I'll say that many things, especially beautiful ones, do much to expand the limited realm of mortality we find ourselves in.  No one but people from this class, more than any other, is as conscious of their own and the world's demise.  This adds an a special element of urgency, hedonism, and carpe diem, if you like, to the proceedings.  And constantly the line is drawn and smudged between self absorbed egotism, or truly rapturous transcendence - brilliance.  Modern Art is an Apt metaphor.  So much of it is BS, but then Jackson Pollack and Basquiat and Warhol shine though it to make us live and think in new ways.  Not always convincing and THAT tension, is what drives us forward.

   

Half a Home (Part 1 & 2)

Half a Home

Part 1

There are few things sadder than an arrival, after such a long journey, with no one to receive you. Rishi stood alone amidst the crowd outside Indira Gandhi Airport. Taxis came forth and people slowly, in practical fashion, filed into them. Other people met family, kissed children, smiles everywhere.

But for Rishi there was no family nor the pomp or celebration of years past, when he would arrive with his mother and father, to everyone’s embraces; the airport terminal turned carnival; flower garlands and laughter; hugs and tears of joy.

Return was a cherished event coupled with the visceral impact of the Indian heat. And the colors: As if a switch had been turned on to the kaleidoscope, merry go around and roller coaster – all at once. Though now, disheveled and with nobody around he knew, Rishi felt the ache only nostalgia gives. His stubbled face held an empty expression, looking for solace in some strangers face, though everyone unaccompanied waited for their taxi with distracted unease, looking at their cellphones. Airports can make you feel so, alone.

At the luggage carousel, he felt his spirit turn; he hadn’t expected such intense sadness. He had a feeling nobody would show. His mother said she had informed the family though something about the way she said it made him think twice.

Now outside, he still looked around. Perhaps someone had come? Maybe it was a mistake? Of course, a natural mistake, with the time difference and all.

Back home, in his parent’s Queens apartment, the time difference used to be ingrained through the two clocks upon the mantle; one Indian the other New York time. He could never look at one without looking at the other, even outside the house; he would always know exactly what time it was in India.

The clocks were a constant reference point for Rishi's father, who would work overtime in the 70s to make one 5 minute phone call a week, to hear distant voices that haunted his memories and dreams.

Rishi's father was a man’s man; rarely shed a tear, generally unexpressive. But those phone calls were what he lived for. The rest of the time was just in anticipation of that moment or in planning a return visit. Gifts constantly collected, life was suspended till that very moment of return - in the airport terminal- when life truly bloomed, transforming Rishi’s father; from a man who read the New York Times in brusque silence; watched Peter Jennings in a trance, into someone who had purpose again; India, family.

Whenever things got tough, his father planned a trip; it slowly became the solution to all problems. And it worked. Upon returning, for months, his father would have renewed energy to pay bills and go to work, only to slow down again, get into a rut and plan another trip. India, India. Repeat ad infinitum. Not a bad life.

New York was purgatory, a grand waiting game, for that moment of return. His father enjoyed New York; it mesmerized with its energy, opportunity and edge. But something about being in- between, in the greatest city on Earth (he sincerely believed this) made him feel more alive to everything. In, but not of it - nowhere and everywhere at the same time. Debilitating for some, exhilarating for others.

His father had come over on scholarship, to study at NYU for his masters in Math, and stayed on to work and gain citizenship, the typical immigrant story of its time. But he was never at ease in this new dreamland, even though nobody waxed more poetic about it; about the subway; the 5th avenue library; the jazz clubs in the village; the New York Times, even.

And then Rishi was born, unexpectedly, or so his father said, after they started frequenting Atlantic City, leaving his sister with family friends. His father gambled while his mother walked the boardwalk, and “that’s where you were conceived, Lucky 7”, referencing Rishi’s year of birth; 1977.

Given his father’s eccentricities, he wasn’t sure if this was some joke or not. His parents did obsess over Atlantic City; it was almost always where they wanted to go whenever a long weekend came. But he never really saw his parents touch, so it heartened him to think of time when they did. Whether or not it was true, the very idea of them together made him happy. His mother in a sari by the Jersey shore, holding his father’s hand, as they looked over at the sunset. Care free, gambling, eating together. Probably not true, but hey, who knew?

He asked his mother about it once and she just laughed. But then she laughed whenever his father did anything crazy because if he wasn’t doing anything crazy he got depressed. He closed the lights in the living room, put a blanket over his head and never spoke to anyone for days. And then he’d watch old Benny Hill episodes on VHS and this one dance video of Sridevi, over and over. We all have our unique ways of coping with our frustrations and losses. But these episodes were intermittent and if they got really bad, there was always India if something didn’t pique his interest first.

Like how one day, after school, his father gave him a cutting of a restaurant review from the New York Times. It was written in that floral style only the Times gets away with. “Read this article, look at how divine they make it sounds.” Divine, his father had taken to improving his vocabulary during Rishi’s SAT preparation but had retained his loose pronunciation and grammar.

“We must go there, we must eat there, right now right now!” He got into the car, revved the engine and blasting the horn to make Rishi hurry. Rishi would feel a mad rush of energy and joy in those spontaneous moments. His father thrived on unpredictability. “Surprises, good surprises, are a precious thing. Our lives generally have bad surprises but good surprises make up for the bad ones.”

His father was different than the other Indians, less “practical” and too showy, with tastes a bit too refined for a new immigrant. Though he earned no more than his colleagues, he spent more, and feared less. Looking at old pictures of his father you immediately noticed the well-dressed handsome man amidst a sea of tackiness and anxiety. The corduroy blazer, the disco shirts and gold chains, it’s as if his father belonged on the Amalfi coast with movie stars instead of ugly modernist Queens with a bunch of square engineers as neighbors, colleagues and friends. All Indian, all so uncool.

Rishi always wondered what it was that made his father different than the rest, and with age, and some life experience, realized it was because his father was already quite well to do before coming to America. He was the main breadwinner for his joint family and as a result the go-to man for all problems. Money, prestige, respect, and already married to Rishi’s mother; he had it all. Only to leave it behind for a dream - or was it ambition?

“I wanted to study and come see what all the fuss was about,” he said to him looking at him through the rearview mirror. Rishi in the backseat, his mother up front organizing the tapes in the glove compartment, “Why doesn’t anyone put the tapes back in the right covers?” This was a pet peeve of hers, though nobody ever listened.

His father usually opened up driving, on those trips to Atlantic City, with the New Jersey Turnpike spiced by Bollywood soundtracks. It was as if the road ahead and the movement made him relax and look Rishi directly in the eye, albeit through the rear view mirror.

It was on these trips that he learned that his father rented not a room, but a dirty mattress on Roosevelt Ave, for 8 hours a day. He worked nights at a candy store, and took over the mattress from someone else, on his return, from a person about to do exactly what he just did; a low paying shift if not in a candy store, in a gas station or restaurant.

His father could have gone back to India, and everything would have been fine. He wasn’t from a small village, or supporting a family, or any of that sacrificial stuff that paralyzes or motivates many an immigrant. It was curiosity and adventure that drove him. The same spirit of adventure that was bringing Rishi back, to India.

Being of Indian origin allowed him to feel connected to something more authentic than his drab American life. He saw in his Indian family a love and spontaneity few had in America. The absence of absurd consumer comforts made them stronger, healthier and more alert to the visceral aspects of life. Or, so he thought, in his romantic escapism.

We all want to be somewhere else, and that far off place helps us make sense of what home means to us. For Rishi, his dismay with America was always a result of having India to compare it to. It became a deeper fissure, an unwashed wound, that as he got older, held him back from ever being comfortable with who he was; where he was.

Rishi’s father understood all this. He knew that excesses and absurdities of the West could only be curbed and tempered by the East. That is why he wanted Rishi to fall in love, with India - but as an American. “India needs a De Tocqueville” he would absurdly say. Rishi didn’t expect such highbrow political philosophy from his father. That’s what the New York Times did to him. It made him memorize trite phrases that surprisingly worked within the context of what he was talking about. “America is the greatest son, trust me. The opportunities, dignity and possibilities. The endless possibilities of being. You don’t know how lucky you are, you have choices, and options, that I never fathomed or thought about. The problems in America are a result of bad choices. Eating too much, drugs, sex, over-spending, but at least people have the choices and the second chances to make it right. In India there are no second chances. People are condemned to their fate, and lament and whither away wondering what could have been, if only, if only...”

These diatribes were a common fixture in Rishi’s upbringing, often colored by his father’s constant unease for those he left behind. Not guilt, just plain and simple longing. If family defines a man’s life, little else can substitute it. If his father every knew love, or was ever pressed to describe it; it would be this one desire; to return to touch again his land and people.

Rishi knew this meant more to him, than being with himself and his mother. In this regard they were similar to families of artists, rocks stars or politicians, all of whom work for something bigger than themselves, only in Rishi’s father’s case, what filled that god-shaped hole was a huge, poor country, on the other side of the world, filled with smiling, adoring, pandering family. Family.

Part 2

The sky slowly turned a deep electric blue. It was 4am and a loud hush had fallen over the airport crowd. In the past, at the same hour, Rishi remembered more hubbub or perhaps it was the perspective of being older that made things feel different.

In the commotion of an earlier return someone touched his feet, a gesture of respect for elders on the sub-continent. He was fifteen and his younger cousin nephew of seven the culprit. The smudge marks left on his brand new Reebok shoes perturbed him.

Now it was different: Nobody paid attention to his presence, not even the coolies. He was alone, older and trying to solve his problems like his father used to, with a trip to India. It had been five years since he’d been back. The last trip had been short, two weeks, and a teary eyed blur, to submerge his father’s ashes in the holy river.

He hadn’t had the inclination to return after; it didn’t feel the same without his father. Time passed and he got caught up in his university studies, while his mother worked ever harder to run the household alone. Yes, those were tough times. Life without his father had become mundane, mechanical, about survival. He forgot about India. It only occurred to him when he started faltering and was unable to cope with the profound malaise over-taking him.

It was during medical school and by all measures everything was going well. A beautiful girlfriend and on path to becoming a doctor; the dedication to success he harbored was paying fruit. Rishi focused ever harder after his father’s death, if only because the challenge and the difficulty of his situation motivated him. He was always like this, even as a child. He looked for difficultly; disdained comfort. He never questioned what the task meant or what it led to, he just wanted to succeed and in turn, make his father proud.

He worked to see his father’s face light up in doing complex algebra problems at 7. Or when he was considered too short for the basketball team, he became a 3-point specialist; shooting baskets from afar, deep into the night he would practice. “Make your weakness your strength”, his father would say often.

Success was no longer enough. With his father gone, nothing made sense. For the first time he had to examine what he was doing; what things meant, where he was in the world. It tormented him, to have the responsibility of his decisions and life weigh on him, when in the past all he had to do was be successful and not question or think, just make his father happy.

Rishi did not understand how he got to where he was. Nothing appealed to him. People looked at his life in envy; awed by his accomplishments, though they seemed meaningless to him now. Something wasn’t right, and he couldn’t figure it out.

I know what you may be thinking, dear reader, that our protagonist is “depressed”, in need of counseling and coddling. Or perhaps this is the normal process of mourning and one can easily explain away his existential crisis through psychology and biology. Rishi was aware of all this and actively rebelled against such explanations.

He was aware his crisis was related to his father’s death, but he felt its solution – his rising up and overcoming – was paramount in honoring his father’s memory. He didn’t know how he would over-come; he just knew he had to. Besides, with his father gone, he felt that somehow he was carrying the burden of what his father always felt – that state of unease, the longing, the searching for ecstasy through the senses, travel, something new, always trying to fill that endless void. It’s what made him love his father, and now he knew he had to as gracefully and recklessly follow suit.

A feeling of restlessness eventually started to take a hold of him. At first he couldn’t sleep, then he would disappear for days, riding the subway endlessly to every last stop on every subway line in the city, to feel the limits.

“Last stop, last stop, this is the last stop. Everybody off.”

Rishi would get off, walk around and talk to random people and ride back, looking off into the horizon, constantly in a daze.

The New York City subway comforted him, with its swaying rhythms and familiar sounds. Like the ringing bell before the doors closed. And then watching all those people: Couples kissing, old people reading, children transfixed by the moving skyline in the distance. As a child, he always insisted on taking rides on the trains even on weekends, and his fascination never ceased. It’s where he did his best thinking.

One day he saw a little boy with his bicycle and father. The bike had training wheels, was cumbersome to look at and the boy was quiet as the father sat next to him with a gentle smile. “Today, today is the day, we are going to take these off and don’t worry I’ll hold you, but you got to believe in yourself.” The little boy had a faraway look in his eyes, his attention focused inward.

Rishi discreetly followed father and son, as they got off somewhere in Brooklyn. It was a clear and sunny autumn morning. He was supposed to be in class, but took to riding the subway more often. In the nearby park the father removed the training wheels as his son got on. “I am going to hold you, don’t worry.” And he did, up to a point, he ran along holding his son as he pedaled.

The rays of the sun slanted as they beamed in through the leaves falling from the trees. Effervescence took hold of the scene and, as if in slow motion, slowly, the father let go and for a brief moment, his son moved alone. Balancing, only to fall shortly after. His father still smiled, walked slowly over and gave him a hug, and picked him up in his arms. The boy tried hard not to cry. “One more time.” His father said “one more time.” Rishi welled up watching this.

Rishi never cried easily, and this bothered him. The only thing that made him cry without fail were Italian films from the neo –realist period. He discovered this by chance in a film class in university. Bicycle Thief. It moved him so much that he had to run out of the cinema, uncontrollable sobs.

Neo-realism was a break from fantasy, poignantly raw; it tugged on the soul harder than the melodrama produced by Hollywood up to that point in time. And now Rishi was feeling things in real life. He was now in the film, rather than outside, as a spectator.

This was part of a revelation that came to him after a bong hit, watching Easy Rider, with his best friend after the summer he graduated from NYU. They came up with their own philosophy of film, of how reality is siphoned into three categories and our lives are basically spent shifting between these realms. The first one is as spectator, the other as actor, and the third and final is as director/producer. None is better than the other, but we all find ourselves in one of these realms, all the time. And the trick is to move in and out fluidly, and not get stuck in any one realm.

And now he had shifted. He was in, and was feeling the part he was playing, stronger than ever. And the scene with the father with his son and the bicycle is what did it. He thought to himself while watching father and son:

“What more can one want out of existence but those precious moments, the rites of passage and moments of kindness in the face of failure? “

But now Rishi was alone, and had no one to pick him up. He didn’t have his father, and an ache deep inside him awoke for the first time watching this scene, on a sunny morning in Brooklyn. Something about this newfound pain didn’t scare him, he felt intuitively that it was better to feel and be aware of it than run from it, or pretend it didn’t exist.

The idea of going to India came to him later. It was during a during a histology lecture, looking through slides, identifying mitochondria. The exam preparation required that he review numerous slides, which to the laymen look like various abstract shapes. Somehow, he could have sworn, he saw the images speak to him. It was late at night, perhaps he was sleep deprived. He saw an image of India, and the goddess Durga. Rishi never believed in these “signs” and never thought about god or mysticism. But then nobody really does until they are in trouble.

The message was clear: He had to go back to India, get in touch with his roots. Leave this terrible place behind.

He dropped out. He was going to go to India like his father used to. If he had his father, and his father had India, and if he no longer had his father, then he had to go to the source of that goodness – India. Circuitous logic, yes, but desperate times call for such measures. He went in search for that renewable force that always gave his father life, fulfillment, and energy.

Now, he was back and he could have been anywhere, but he wasn’t just anywhere. He was in the land of his ancestors and Gods, he thought melodramatically. He looked around at all the empty tired faces. Some of them had people to receive them, but they were small muted receptions. Proper, middle class, as if someone was watching and everyone had to behave them selves.

“I am from here, I am from here,” he repeated to himself, in his mind. But he didn’t believe it; feeling no connection to the people around him. He absent- mindedly took his prepaid taxi receipt and made his way to the curb. A car came; the driver without saying hello took his bags and loaded them in the trunk. Rishi, about to get in the back, hesitated. He went around to the front to sit next to the driver.

He lit up a cigarette. Dawn’s light and the smoke gave him a glamorous glow. His brow furrowed in deep thought, he sighed and looked over at the driver, at his blood shot eyes, probably awoken while in a deep dream and now he drove along mechanically, as if sleep walking; driving. The cool pre-dawn air and that smell, that earthy smell, hit him with exhilaration. Some things never change.

Rishi told the driver in Hindi how beautiful the morning was. The driver smiled, and instantly, as if by magic, his entire tired face grew awake and lucid, more attractive and less hostile than it had been before. “Yes sahib, it is,” he said, looking back at Rishi kindly. Rishi felt better, a steady smile took over him, and he looked ahead with greater clarity.

Slowly, he started remembering where he was. As they made their way into South Delhi, familiarity and old memories came rushing in though his heart began to sink, as they got closer to his family house. His mother had informed his uncle of his arrival, but he also knew that his uncle was never the same after his father’s death, expecting Rishi’s father to finally bequeath his half of the family house.

It was a constant source of anguish and tension in the family. His uncle could not understand why his father would want to keep half his house in India. “You live in America, you are rich and well to do why do you need two houses?” But Rishi’s father never budged, a good-hearted person though he was, and nobody more generous in the family, he wasn’t naive. He understood how India worked; with no property he had no status, a nobody, only a guest to be coddled and fed on vacations, but forgotten about once gone. Keeping his part of the house allowed him to come and go as he pleased and maintain control and importance within his family. It had nothing to do with money.

Now this half a house, half a one-time home, was a point of contention. What made matters worse was that this house was not just anywhere; it was in a posh South Delhi colony. Estimates of what the house was worth varied, but even conservative estimates made it rival Manhattan property values.

The house was no mansion: A one floor, four-room house that had sheltered at one time the entire joint family; four families in total, one per room. Doors always open, children everywhere, cooking constant, as kitchens were communal, amongst all his aunties or “mummys”. There was always action, and noise, it was only during power cuts that everyone quieted down, gathered in one room, and over candlelight told stories.

The candle would flicker and the through the shadows and his elder’s words, Rishi would feel the history of his collective past come alive. The partition, Pakistan, his grandfather and grandmother who he never met but could feel, through those stories, into the night. It was in such moments that Rishi felt connected to something bigger than himself, some grand past, a feeling of belonging.

This was India in the 1980s. When there was one brand of car, 2 state owned TV channels, no commercials, and the stagnation that comes from being a closed economy. Joint families, living together, was cultural as much as it was an economic necessity. The economic reforms of 1991 changed all this. And with each trip as a child, Rishi saw greater wealth and materialism take shape. First came cable TV, and then McDonalds, followed by the usual slew of multi-national brands. And then he noticed the confidence and independence that a booming economy provided his middle class family mixed with an indifference towards himself, his parents, and America.

Slowly, and surely, the nuclear family became the norm, and people saw each other less and less frequently. Crassly, he interpreted it as the inevitable triumph of the material over the spirit. The domination of Western over Eastern culture. Simplistic assessment, yes. But then it is hard to be objective when your analysis is colored by nostalgia, identity, post-colonialism and - most importantly – the heartbreak that comes from the acknowledgement that nothing lasts forever. Not youth, nor love.

As a child, his old toys and clothes were constantly sent to his cousins in India. One of the first things done when they arrived was to open up the suitcases around a crowd of family, as they awed and oohed over used Sony Walkmans and Levi jeans. Now he just got word that one of his cousins took a holiday to Paris. Paris! He had never even been to Paris.

And now, as the taxi pulled up to his old house, all he felt was isolation. His side of the house empty and locked up, the other side decrepit and unkempt. He rang the doorbell. No answer. He rang it again, while the driver waited. Finally, his Cousin’s wife came to the door, and forced a smile at him. She had been informed she said, and was waiting. Her face was not only older it was if the scowl she now wore was permanently etched on her face. Especially made worse by her trying to hide it by forcing a smile. But her face betrayed her. She opened his side of the house for him, and said, in the most formal of manners, that if he needed anything, to eat, anything, to come over their side, and that they would talk in the morning when everyone was awake.

Rishi paid the driver, who brought in his things. The living room was dusty, and the house was in need of a good cleaning. It was awkward to be all alone on his side of the house. He wanted to wake and hug and laugh with his cousins and uncle, like times past. But something held him back, an invisible, unspoken, mutually acknowledged barrier.

He went to sleep almost immediately from the exhaustion of the journey, but also to escape this new sense of heartbreak. Before drifting off to sleep, he remembered his mother, back in New York, working at the office. She was probably at this very moment returning home, alone as well. She had told him to forget about India. That it had changed. She was here a year back, and fought bitterly to preserve the house, though all feeling of love was gone. She was treated poorly, and harassed by Rishi’s uncle. Rishi couldn’t believe it could be true though his mother insisted things had changed. It slowly was becoming apparent what was happening. Nobody at the airport, a scowl instead of a genuine smile, their side of the house locked up; abandoned.

Rishi fell into a deep sleep. A sleep so deep, a dreamless sleep, the kind that makes you forget where you are. He awoke to the sound of birds singing, and a hot afternoon sun caressing his handsomely worn face. He had heard somewhere that the face you have at 30 is the face you carry with you the rest of your days. How honest and true the face of a person is. He recalled his sister in law, it was clear that bitterness and anxiety had ruined her face. She was not happy to see him. To be unwelcome in ones own home, motherland, by ones own blood. What did it mean? How he yearned for warmth again. An India without family love, what was the point and why had he come?

He arose, and walked onto the veranda. The trees were just as green he remembered them. In front lay the colony park, clean and pristine, much cleaner than before. A sign said “No cricket playing”.

His sister was married in this park, about 20 years ago. His father’s funeral ceremony also took place there. Throughout his youth all he remembered were weddings and funerals, and when it was empty, it was over-run with children. Now, servants lay about languidly, everybody was somewhere else, there was a silence that perturbed him. Pristine mansions left empty, servants watching soap operas all day and enjoying leisure. This was new.

Weddings and funerals were now also prohibited in public spaces. The chaos with the noise disturbed people and brought down property values. People wanted to be relax and live in peace in the little time they had free.

“Change is a part of life” he thought. But could India still be a savior for him as it had been for his father? And if it wasn’t, how was he to deal with his own frustrations and failures?

Wishing you a magnificent New Year - 2011

The future is here.  Don't give up the good fight.  We're about to lift-off, and GaboWorld wants to thank all its dear readers, former lovers, and lovers to be.  I write for you, and only you.  

This past year saw less activity than imagined.  The earthquake in Haiti, and dealing with its aftermath, took up most of my time.  I also have been hard at work on a Novella, when not saving or jet-setting across the world.  GaboWorld carries on.  I spend many a nights going through my first entries from 2006.  Almost 5 years of blogging and I slowly, see the evolution of my voice and craft.  Would not have been possible without the Blog.  Would not be possible without you.  

A hearty thank you.  Don't let me go.  I need you.  

Gabo