Essays

I am the Child of Music

/ Aarati Kasturirangan / Leave a comment

“Sing. Sing a song.  Sing out loud. Sing out strong.  Don’t worry that it’s not good enough for anyone else to hear.  Just sing. Sing a song. “ – Sesame Street

I am the Music Hour Lady.  One hour of the day, one day a month, for the last two years I have led babies, toddlers, and other stay at home moms in song.  “Stomp your feet. Clap your hands. Everybody ready for a barnyard dance.” I talk to the children in a cheerful sing song voice.  I belt out nonsense lyrics at the top of my voice, with my son tucked on my hip. “I like to oat, oat, oat, opples and banonos.” I row my pretend boat around the room, going faster, and faster, and faster. I feel like I am 6 years old again, older than the babies, but still little enough to truly love this moment. But I am not 6 years old.  I am the Music Hour Lady.

I am the Hot Guitar Playing Indian Chick.  I sit in the stairwell of my dorm with my guitar.  I am learning to play my favorites – Dar Williams, Indigo Girls, Patty Griffin.  Sometimes I sing at the open mic night on campus.  I know I am not the best singer or guitar player.  My friends who play are serious and I’m pretty sure that they will keep Doing Music for the rest of their lives. My songs are for me.  “I fell in love with the man in the moon. And that man can ride a dragon.”    They are there for me when I need them.  I write songs when the mood strikes. “Turn around and your standing there, stalking me.”  but I forget to write them down. “Grandma wears bangles. Gold on paper skin.” They are just for now, just for here. 

I am the Drum Major.  “We’re not #5, not #4, #3, #2.  We’re #1. CHS!”   The football team is not doing so well this season, but it doesn’t matter.  The band will be there to cheer them on. I raise my arms up in the air. “Horns up!” Let’s give the crowd something to cheer about.  At halftime we march onto the field.  I step up on the podium.  I feel the eyes of a hundred musicians on me.  When I move, the dance begins. Bodies swirl across the field, and music pours into the stadium.  We are the screensaver for the game. We maintain the energy and enthusiasm of the fans until the second half.  We are the Concord high school marching band.

I am the Child of Music. It is late at night, but I am still awake. It is the summer after 1st grade. I am in an apartment in Madras in India. The air is heavy like a thick wet blanket. The room is open with very little furniture.  My head is resting on my mother’s lap. My father sits on the floor across from us, a guitar in his hands. There are a dozen or so others in the room,  women in colorful saris and salwar kameez, men in pants and short sleeve button down shirts.  Everyone’s feet are bare. Everyone sits on the floor. Some clutch knees to their bodies. Others legs splay out at their sides. Some sit cross legged and upright.  I am sleepy.  The room has been filled with music all night. My father finished singing and playing a moment ago. “I am just a poor boy though my story is seldom told. ”  Now it is my mother’s turn.  She clears her throat first like she always does.  She rubs my head gently. She closes her eyes as she sings.  “Mere ghar aye ek naan paare.”  It is a lullabye of sorts, my favorite. She sings of a beautiful fairy who appears at her window.  Everyone around her sighs.  I nestle my head into the space between her waist and her thigh and fall asleep. The night of music has just begun.

Indian, Western, or Fusion?

/ Aarati Kasturirangan / 2 Comments

Scenario: I am attending the wedding of a good friend.  He’s a White guy marrying a White girl in a traditional White American wedding. My husband is in the wedding party.  Therefore, I will be attending the rehearsal dinner, the wedding itself, and the brunch that follows. With so many events to attend, this question inevitably arises; should I go Indian, Western, or Fusion?

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Rehearsal Dinne/Cocktails:  Indian

Why:  Sparkly ethnic clothes are good conversation starters, and I don’t have to be the one to start the conversation.  Also, White Americans usually don’t know whether the particular outfit you are wearing is worn everyday or for special occasions so there’s no danger of being over or under-dressed. The outfit is so eye catching, I don’t have to feel too self conscious about my face, hips, belly or butt or any of the million other things I am stressing about.   I can draw attention to myself and deflect attention from my flaws at the same time.  However, this plan can backfire if it attracts the wrong kind of attention. For instance, at one wedding I attended years ago, the father of the bride said to me, “So. Y’Indian?  Bet you’ll have a horse at your wedding. Or an elephant or something. Right? Ha, ha, ha, ha.” 

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Wedding:   American

Why: The wedding is the bride’s day.  I don’t want to stand out too much from the crowd.  I’ve already met people using my Indian clothes tactic from the day before, so I don’t need to worry so much about my outfit’s ice breaking qualities. My husband will be wearing a tux, and since there will be probably be pictures of the two of us together, I want us to look complementary. Since I will be drunk by the time we get to the real socializing, my normal insecurities about wearing dresses will be numbed (Is it too revealing? Not revealing enough? Does my belly stick out?  Is my bra showing? Is my skirt tucked up inside my underwear? How long should I wait to change out of these heel into my flip flops?).  Also, I plan to dance my ass off and Western dresses are often easier for me to dance in. I just can’t seem to figure out how to get down and dirty with six yards of fabric wrapped around me.  What’s the downside to going American? Many of the guests who see me dressed Indian the night before will be expecting an enhanced repeat performance. I may hear, “If I were you, I would only wear Indian clothes, they are so beautiful.”  There’s no quick and easy response to this one so I am risking a lengthy conversation with someone whose name I can’t remember, and who I never plan to see again.

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Brunch: Fusion

Why:  The brunch is at the bride’s parent’s home so I am guessing it should be  casual.   However, because they live in a fairly tony neighborhood I am guessing this crowd will tend toward “dress casual”. Dress casual is my most difficult dressing zone.  In my mind it’s really “casual for the wealthy”. I worry that the clothing I wear will not match the designer quality Western clothes that the other guests will surely be wearing. I am convinced that designer clothes are made for slim, tall, White, women and have never been comfortable even entering the stores that sell them.  Because of this, my style has tended toward the eclectic.  I like to shop at vintage stores, Target, inexpensive hipster boutiques, and my mother’s closet.  I mix it all together and get fusion!   I will distract these well dressed White people with my cunning pairing of a hipster knee length dress with an ironic cat on it,  leggings from a Indian outfit my mom just brought back from India, and some heels I picked up at payless.  They will not be able figure out where any of my clothes came from, so they will not be able to judge me!  What’s the danger in going fusion?  I am not really that fashionable. Sometimes I just don’t have the vision required to pull it off.  Instead of looking fashion forward, I look like a prime candidate for What not to Wear.

This question –  Indian, Western, or Fusion? –  is more than just a clothing choice.  My own hyper awareness of race, class, and gender related social norms makes me feel like I am engaged in a political act. It’s exhausting. Maybe that’s why I find the idea of a nudist colony so very appealing. Indian, Western, or Fusion? It’s all me.

 

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Soul Searchings

/ Aarati Kasturirangan / 1 Comment

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SOUL SEARCHINGS
 
My sister was born with a tooth in her mouth and a chip on her shoulder.  She was spoiling for a fight from the first.  She eyed us suspiciously. She lashed out at us mistrustfully.  She was born on the defensive.  I was 9 when she was born. It was then that I began to  think seriously about the possibility of reincarnation.  Maybe, something bad happened to my sister in her past life, maybe right before she died.  My parents and I loved the fight out of my sister. It took patience, and time, and a Fred Flinstone punching bag.  She remained angry through her preteens, and then she mellowed. Whatever had happened to her before, she seemed to have moved on.
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While in college, I traveled through Austria and Germany with the chamber singers. We performed hymns in old cathedrals.  In each of those spaces, as we began to sing, I felt myself disappear. My voice blended with those of my fellow singers. We became an instrument played inside a space that no longer existed in time.  We could have been singing a thousand years ago or on another planet.
During that same trip, we visited the concentration camps at Dachau.  I saw the ovens where hundreds of thousands of Jews were burned.  As I walked in that space, I was swallowed by the silent voices of a thousand screams.  I wept continuously. I could not see where I was, or where I was going. My friends took me back to our hotel.  While others went out to the local beerhaus, I sat in my room in silence. I wept. I slept. I awoke again, and was just me.
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After my second miscarriage, I had a dream.  I was in an empty room. At one end of the room, there was a small rectangular pool of water sunken into the ground. A little girl sat on the edge of the pool, dangling her feet in the water. She was plump, with dark curly hair, and tan skin. She saw me, and slid into the pool until she was completely covered by water. I stayed at my end of the room. After a few minutes, she pulled herself out the pool. I went over to her, but she turned away from me. She crossed her arms across her chest angrily. She was mad at me for making her wait. She was ready to be born.

I did not know I was beautiful

/ Aarati Kasturirangan / 4 Comments

I did not know I was beautiful when the photographer taking pre-school pictures said, “Aww.  Your hair is so long.  What a beautiful little Hawaiian girl. Say “Aloha”.

I did not know I was beautiful when I went to the beach and all of the other kids had to wear sunscreen to keep from getting too dark.

I did not know I was beautiful when it was fitness week in my fifth grade class and we all had to weigh ourselves and I weighed over 100lbs.

I did not know I was beautiful when my mother caught me looking nervously at my pre-teen reflection in the mirror and asked me, with fear in her voice,  if I wished that I was White.

I did not know I was beautiful when I was the only one of my friends who did not have a date to homecoming.

I did not know I was beautiful when my highschool boyfriend told me that he could not get too serious because I was not Christian.

I did not know I was beautiful when my Asian college boyfriend dumped me and started dating my White roommate.

I did not know I was beautiful, but I was.

So I started wearing my nose ring and the sparkle offset my eyes.

So I got a tatoo over my heart reminding me of what lies inside.

So I learned to care for my body with kindness, and attention, and movement.

So I surrounded myself with people whose beauty radiated from within.

Then my boyfriend said, “I choose you, and choose you, and choose you.

Then I heard friends say “Your daughter is so beautiful. She looks just like you.”

I did not know I was beautiful, so I made myself feel beautiful, and then people told me I was beautiful, and now I know that I am beautiful… sometimes.

Brown mustard seeds

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I spilled the brown mustard seeds.  They are tiny, brown, perfectly round.  The lid was not closed tight.  The bottle fell from the open cabinet and the mustards seeds leapt and scattered in droves.  They vibrate as they roll as if being held together by static even as they are being driven by the kinetic energy of the fall.  They are free, but together. They find corners to hide in, clumped together in dozens.

I use them to cook with at least once a week.  I toss a teaspoon’s worth into oil with some other spices.  As the oil heats up, they sputter, crackle, and pop.  The fragrance and flavor seep into the oil.  I pour the seasoned oil into whatever meal I am cooking that evening.  The mustard seeds, tiny, brown, round, have seasoned the meal and also are themselves still present, still feel round in my mouth if I think about them. I usually do not think about them though.  They become one with the dish.

Now, I am overwhelmed by their numbers.  I am fascinated by their desire to stick together.  I am annoyed by their tendency to find the most inconvenient place to roll under. I cannot clean them all up.  Though I gather hundreds in a small plate and send them to the trash, so many more remain, silent but present.  A few refuse to move when I sweep them up with a paper towel.  I give up and walk away from the counter.  There are other things to tend to.  I will have to tackle the mustard seeds another day.

 

Going home

/ Aarati Kasturirangan / 2 Comments

Delaware:

The kids sleep in my old bedroom.  I sleep in the guest room.  There are rooms to spare and we spread our things  across the house knowing it will take hours to find them again when it is time to leave. My parents get up in the morning and do the same things they have always done.  Dad’s arms sway up and out and down to the floor.  He stretches to get the blood flowing.  Mom lights the candle on her altar, says a quick prayer under her breath as the kettle sings its insistent song.  “I am ready! I am hot!”  She makes the first of three cups of morning coffee. Each one will be left in an unknown location in the house, two-thirds full, stolen away by the coffee elves.  The kitchen smells of incense, and cumin, and burnt toast.   The floor is cold.  My kids run around, and around, and around from the kitchen, into the hallway, into the dining room, and back into the kitchen.  Outside, I hear leaves rustling, acorns drop, birds twitter.

Delhi:

For the first week I am groggy. Day is night and I cannot keep my eyes open. I have never been good at dealing with changes in sleep.  The air is thick with the smell of dust, and sun, and people.  Vendors sell vegetables and hot chai. They sing their insistent songs, “Hot chai!  Ready! Good price!”  I roll out my mat to sleep on.  The floor is hard, but I soon become accustomed to sleeping this way with my cousins nearby.  I wander the streets during the day, to market and back.  I am absorbed into my uncle’s family.  We catch auto rickshaws to go to see a movie.  The roads are jammed with people and cars and motorbikes and animals. I can hardly hear myself think.

D.C.

The sun pours in through our windows into our living room, amplified by the yellow of our walls.  It is a cozy apartment.  Living room bleeds into dining area into kitchen.  Two tiny bedrooms tucked away at the back of the apartment hold all our things and all our dreams.  High shelves keep cherished books away from tiny hands.  On nice days, we choose which playground to go to.  Our playground? The school playground? The far away playground?  On rainy days, the children roam the hallway in our building, imagining worlds behind doors.  Outside, birds, sirens, hammers, helicopters, and neighbors all shout for attention.  “We are here! See us working!”

La India

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She called me La India.  She was a tiny brown nut of an old woman with a crinkly hard shell.  She only wore house dresses. Her silver hair hugged her head with tight curls.  She called me “La India”  because she could not remember my name.  She was right to save that space in her brain.  I only stayed in her boarding house for two weeks.

She called me La India because I was from India, and that is all she knew. She did not call me La Americana. I spent the summer of 1998 in Puerto Rico.  It was a strange trip, a trip that came together quickly and haphazardly.  I had some contacts.  Names, addresses, and phone numbers.  I had some vague, amorphous goals.  I had a plane ticket.  When I arrived in Puerto Rico,  the telephone workers went on strike.  I could not call the people I was supposed to contact.  So I wrote them a letter.  I found a boarding house to stay in and I waited.

The old woman called me La India and I called her Senora.  Two other girls were living in the house for the summer and taking courses at the University of Puerto Rico, a few blocks away.  They were friendly but busy, and my Spanish was limited.  I spent the days wandering San Juan.  I took the bus to the beach. I walked around campus. I read books and took naps in the library. I went to the market and bought canned macaroni and cheese.  I waited.

She called me La India and it fit.  In Puerto Rico, I passed for Puerto Rican.  People were surprised when my Spanish came out in fits and starts.  They looked at me and saw una India – a Puerto Rican with native blood, indigenous.  In Puerto Rico, I passed.  My head hurt from trying to understand, trying to communicate, trying to find my way around.  My head hurt, but something else was at ease.  Eyes did not pick me out and wonder.  It felt like being in India.  It felt like another home.

She called me La India, and so often, that is what I am.  I am the Indian friend, the Indian on staff, the Indian at the party.  But for a few months in Puerto Rico, I wandered the streets of another place and was just me – alone, unobserved, free.

 

 

 

Big City Love

/ Aarati Kasturirangan / 4 Comments

I need the Big City.  I need towering spires of steel and glass glimmering in the sun. I need feet, hundreds of feet, pounding miles of cement sidewalk.  I need my feet to pound that pavement, feeling the rhythm through my soles, into my soul. I need the Big City voices, young, old, Black, White, Brown, swelling around me into the day.  I need the push, the rush, the flushed sensation, the vibration of hundreds of thousands living en masse.  I need to feel the beating heart. I need to see poor next to rich next to me. I need to smell human beings living around me.

When my husband and I were looking to buy our first home, I spent a few days in my hometown of Wilmington, DE. My mother and I chatted about their decision to buy the home I grew up in.  My mother said, “I remember the trees, and the quiet and just feeling so good and peaceful. I just loved it here .”   I listened to my mother and in that moment, years of my own internal monologue suddenly shifted.  They LIKED living here in this suburbany neighborhood on the edge of a small city limit.  They CHOSE to live here. It’s what they WANTED. 

In my mind, the silence of my old neighborhood was a vast isolation.  The quiet of the trees echoed my own loneliness, my sleepiness, and my laziness.  I never felt truly awake.  I lived to escape to the hustle and bustle of school.  I became active in extra-curriculars because to be home was to sink down into the silence, the cool oblivion of home.  It was not a bad place. My parents were loving. I was safe and cared for in my home.  So safe that I could not be fully alive. I was dormant at home.

Things were different in India. I have family in New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, and Bangalore, all big cities.  Those trips were like a jolt from an enormous battery.  I couldn’t get enough.  I thought it had something to do with reconnecting to my roots, getting in touch with my Indian self.  Some of that was true.  Now I see that most of that feeling came from the energy I got from being in a Big City.

I got my  fix after I graduated from a small, rural, liberal arts college. With no job, I moved to Chicago, city of Big Shoulders.  Chicago was my power source.  The skyline fed my dreams.  The people moved me to play, and dance, and scream and fight.  I reached into myself and sent blazing trails of me out into the Chicago streets.  I laughed with the El train as it moved haltingly from the elevated tracks of streetscapes and sunshine down into the rumbling belly of darkness.  I peered out the window atop the John Hancock Tower and gazed at the solid grey silence of Lake Michigan kissing the controlled chaos of the city map.  I was in love with life. The Big City was my power source.

Now, I have two children.  The siren song of suburban life is everywhere.  “You will be safer.” “More space.” “Cheaper housing.” “Better schools.” “Everyone is doing it.”   I am not doing it. I now understand that my mom chose to live in a quiet neighborhood because it fed her soul. That was right for her.  She needed that space to reflect, to find solitude.  I need the Big City to pull me out of myself.  I need to hear the voice of the city calling me out onto the street.  I need to know my children will see humanity in all it’s messy glory every day. Maybe they will think I am crazy for  choosing that.  That’s OK too. When they grow up, they can find their own way, their own true home.  Until then, they will have to learn to respec the Big City. Maybe they too can feel the Big City Love.

 

 

 

My secret identities

/ Aarati Kasturirangan / 5 Comments

When you see me on the street alone I am: woman, 30 something, brown-skinned, able-bodied, cis-gendered, middle-class.  If I am with my husband and kids you may also see: mother, heterosexual, and married. Hear me speak you may think: American. These categories have meaning as I walk through the world, it’s true. But I have some secret identities too. The ones that tell you who the “I” inside is.  Here they are in random order:

1. Singer of Songs: If there were still bards, I would be one. I spend one morning a month leading a Music Hour for one year olds. I can sing every word of every song in Mary Poppins, and will do so without provocation. I am the annoying person who sings along to every song on the radio, even the ones I don’t know.  I learned to play guitar just well enough to accompany myself when I sing. Song is in every cell of my body.  I am song and song is me.

2. Meddler Extraordinaire:  My favorite character on How I Met Your Mother is Lily because she cannot stop meddling AND she’s awesome at it.  Tell me your troubles and I will try to find a way to fix them. If I can’t fix them, I will find someone who can.  If you don’t know what you’re troubles are, I will tell you in the sweetest, kindest, most condescending way possible.  What can I say? I am just cool like that.

3. Accessory Navicular Survivor:  Why do museums make me sleepy before I’ve even gotten in the door? Why does shopping make me want to throw a tantrum? Why do I always say, “Is there a rabid dog chasing me? Then I’m not running.”   I always thought I was just too lazy to run, or too stupid for museums, or too unfashionable to care about shopping. Turns out, I have this extra bone in my foot that causes intermittent foot pain. I’ve had this recurring foot pain all my life. It sucked and still does, but at least now I know what it’s all about. True story.

My secret identities  are much better predictors of what I will do in a given situation (i.e. sing “The Rose” in the middle of the playground, ask about your relationship with your mother, sit on a bench at the Van Gogh exhibit) than any of those other things.  What are your secret identites?

Island of Misfit Toys

/ Aarati Kasturirangan / 1 Comment

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“Why am I such a misfit? I am not just a nitwit. Just because my nose glows, why don’t I fit in?”-  from Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer

We had my first Christmas when I was six: a tree, lights, and presents, the whole shebang. I asked for Christmas because Christmas was everywhere. At school we had a tree with pretend presents under it. We made ornaments out of paper. I colored mine and brought in a picture of me from home to put in the middle. Where would I hang my ornament if there was no tree at home?

Even our Indian friends had Christmas. For as long as I could remember we had spent Christmas day at Aunty and Uncle’s house. They were Christians, as were a majority of the Indians in our community.  As far as I knew we were the only ones who were not Christians, in the whole world even maybe. Why did we have to be so different from everyone else?  We didn’t celebrate any Hindu holidays.  Hinduism is a vast religion, practiced differently by different sects, casts, and states.  There were not enough Hindus in the community  from the same region of India, with the same holidays to gather together. Anyway, I wanted presents, and trees, and cookies, and milk. I wanted a stocking, and candy canes, and a My Little Pony doll.  I wanted Christmas!

That first Christmas, my dad and I sat together on the couch in the living room watching Christmas specials on TV.  The claymation Rudolph the Reidnosed Reindeer was my favorite.  In that one, Rudolph gets teased by the other reindeer and teams up with Hermey, an elf who wants to be a dentist. They run away from Christmas Town and end up on the Island of Misfit Toys. The toys there are sad because no one wants to play with them.

I thought they were beautiful and funny: a Jack in the Box named Charlie, a water gun that shoots jelly, a toy bird that swims! The Island is ruled by a beautiful lion with wings named King Moonracer.  Rudolph and Hermey want to stay on the Island  because they are also misfits. King Moonracer tells them that they are living things and cannot hide on an island like toys. In the end, Rudolph earns his place on Santa’s team and they take the toys from the Island to children who will love them.

That first Christmas Eve, I looked out of our front window, up through the big bare tree in our front yard. Through the branches I could just make out a flashing red light in the sky. It was Rudolph coming to bring my presents. In bed that night, I heard noises on the ceiling. Rudolph! Rudolph! I thought. I shut my eyes tight to try to bring on sleep. I didn’t care about Santa so much. He never seemed very nice in that Rudolph movie.  Rudolph would know what I wanted for Christmas. Maybe he would bring me that elephant with spots. He would understand that I just wanted to fit in too.

“We may be different from the rest. Who decides the test of what we think is best?  We’re a couple of misfits. We’re a couple of misfits. What’s a matter with misfits? That’s where we fit in!”  – from Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer

What have I learned since that first Christmas? I am still always searching for the Island of Misfit Toys.  I want to live there, even though King Moonracer says I can’t. Rudolph and Hermey were right -that’s where we fit in. My closest friends have often been misfits: the tomboy, the bi-racial girl, the not-quite-out-of-the-closet yet gay boy.  We misfits just seem to get each other, at least more than other people do.  We don’t quite belong anywhere, not even with each other,  but we can at least feel different together.