Skin Under

Keeping in line with last year’s new year’s motto of spending time at volunteering, I ended up spending time doing the same thing I did last year. But with few exceptions.

Last year I met someone who I didn’t think I would have met. It all started through the online dating website and now we are more than friends.  I was just sent a general reminder that you should talk to the matches from the matrimonial website and it was almost like that I went online.

I had some of the matches to meet and to talk, all lined up for me. However I was fixated at one. I don’t know why. All I know is .. I was. I used to live in Paramus, NJ at that time and I wanted to meet someone who was local. It reduces the long distance feeling from the relationship.

We exchanged numbers on the website and then one night, he called. I was a little excited and a little scared both at the same time. I didn’t know what to do. I still remember, laying down on the bed after dinner, I saw his number on the phone.

I spent the new years eve with Bryan and friends. It was exceptional. We didn’t do anything great or different persay, but we liked what we did. We hung out and went to Maggianos in Hackensack, NJ. Why did we go there? Because his parents

Lately..

Lately its like a new life. Lately its like a new strength. Lately its like  a new opinion.

Lately, I have awakened. Lately I have. Lately the truth is nearer. Nearer to me than ever before.

He is infact not that far away after all. It all matters is how we work it out. I find Him everywhere, in every ybreath, in every view through my eyes, in every step I take, in every action I do and most importantly within me. I find Him.

John 10:9 is an interesting quote which I learnt being at the GEM event for Church of Christ the other day. I was skeptic but I guess now I am not. Not anymore.

And the struggle continues

Last year (2009) new years day, Jan 1, while traveling with a new met friend at Long Island Ashram, I said to him ” You know I kind of have an intuition, this year is not going to be a good year. Not at all” He said ” Have faith brother. Everything seems to be shaky in one instant and next moment it is all rosy, you never know”

And after 15 months of expressing my intuition, I am still struggling. Graduating with a good North American graduate level degree I found work which lasted only almost 3 months and I was laid off citing economical reasons. I held myself together and my friend circle was very supportive as well. Kudos

It took me alittle over 3 months to find another work outside of New York. I packed up my shit and moved to a new place. New job wasnt that exciting at all but I still continued to suck up because we all need to pay bills. Between paying bills and going to work, the main reason of the life seemed to be lost.

I found peace in the fact that I stayed connected to my spiritual side as intensely as I could. I found peace that I was eating healthy food and maintaining a yoga schedule. And I had time to maintain a very low profile social circle. I thought of going back to school. I hated this life, as much as I can put in simple words. I want to go back to school and teach. Taking a year off to explore my skills and interest, as it turned out, is not a good idea after all. I didnt like the wrok, the people and nothing that I learnt.

My parents decided to visit me for thanksgiving and early december month. It was good as long it lasted. I still remember the day I was coming home after dropping them at the airport. I entered the house, and I saw emptiness as big as the whole room and vastness as the whole universe. In a minute, I realized that not only they went back home, they took “me” along with them.

I continued to go to work for next two months and then I was laid off again. I was told, economic instability this time. New words same reason.  Before being laid off for the second time, I applied to my Grad school for Phd programs and also a local state school for phd program. My alma mater is taking time to evaluate my profile and local school should give the result soon.

Now after all of this turmoil and utilizing my time to evaluate job descriptions and apply to jobs, I find peace that I have done whatever I could with what I had. Everything hangs in HIS hands and I am wating for him to listen and respond. Yesterday I was gtalking with one of my good friend, who lives in PA right now, she said, why do you say “GOd doesnt listen. that is not good attitude”. I replied “I changed my stand. He listens just doesnt respond. He doesn’t respond”

For everything I do, I just didnt know if it will work or not. We never do.

Failed Indian Audacity

A colleague of mine who (would be called as Victor for now) met me the other day. The background is that I have been looking for a place for a couple of weeks now and so when I met him, I asked him about it and he argued that he knew this awesome place well in my budget and in the prime location ! What happened on that front is a whole different story all together .  J!

On the way, Victor said “Oh F***, I want to eat authentic Indian food so badly. I live so near to Journal Square and I am yet to eat it.” I didn’t say anything; just kept on listening to him.  He looked at me and said “How often do you eat Indian food anyways?” I still looked and said “sometimes, but not that often as you might expect!”

He looked puzzled. He looked outside of the car and then looked back at me. He didn’t say anything but by now, I was amused by the doubts in his eyes for my “Indian-ness” ( if that is a word J!). He continued to finally ask me “You don’t like being called an Indian, do you?” I gawked inside but showed no reaction outside. I took a breathe of silence and I looked at him back.

It doesn’t matter what I said in response to that or what he said next, but what matters is that he touched at a bigger issue here –  “My failed Indian identity and/or the lack thereof” and “Audacity of failure of Indian-ness in people who live away from the motherland”

I was both amazed and puzzled by his allegation. The fact that my ethnicity is Indian is the premise he made.  Around five million of the Indian citizens or people of Indian descent live in different countries across the globe, the question that haunts some of the first generation immigrants is “how much of Indian-ness  is right for being an Indian living outside of India.”

I don’t wear ethnic Indian clothes every week. I don’t eat Indian food everyday. I don’t have that many Indian kids facebook-ed with me. I don’t speak Hindi that much. But still I listen to the “Give me some sunshine, give me some rain” song from 3 Idiots.

Is that enough Indian-ness that is the question Victor asked me in the background however.

Indian-ness as I say it, is nothing but how we feel about India, and how we carry India in our day to day life. My name is Indian, and so is my last name. My skin is a little lighter than others in my community but still is Indian J!  People across the world know India as – land of snake charmers. Most of the educated and techno savvy people know India as the “banglored” location (As President Obama said once)! Some of them know it as a more mystic India because of it’s diversity and religious pluralism.

Movies? Let me ask you two questions about them. Have you seen Indian movies? Any movie? Well if you have seen Slumdog Millionaire that hardly counts as Indian. Any and most of the people I know from India, vehemently disagree to Slumdog Millionaire and to the fact that it represents India in any form.

So you still can’t think about any movies? But still probably would know that Indian movies involve songs, dancing around trees, a lot of melodrama and crying. But ask any Indian, that’s not all we have in movies. Agreed I hardly watch any Hindi Movies ( yes it is not India movie) now a days, except some of my old favorites but doesn’t mean I don’t like them. I still have playlists on youtube for hindi songs and as I favorite-ly have named it “my hindi oldies : )“

Wearing different but Indian clothes will make me Indian? Eating curry with wheat bread three times a day will make me more Indian? Does the cup of wine and healthy Italian food tell my ethnicity as English or perhaps American? I think my friend Victor’s thoughts are misplaced when he says, just because I can speak his language better than he can, and wear English clothes and workout, doesn’t at all mean that I am not Indian and am away from my origin. Discover India!

As usual, this blogger enthusiast will continue to tell you more stories.  There is so much of India in each of us and yet we look for India on Wiki and Google. I believe Indian stories are going to be told day and day out for next decades to come. Why an Iraqi friend asked me ? Because I believe India is yet to be discovered in her true sense by this world !!

Recession for India, never happened! ! – An analysis

In my opinion, recession for people of India never actually happened as compared to many of us in the US.

India as a transitional economy, is very vibrant, resilient and to some extent, self sustaining. India enjoys the benefits of being a developing country with much-talked domestic growth, staggering internal consumption from its burgeoning 800 million strong middle class and the new spirit of entrepreneurship . So when the economic downturn started in the US two years ago, the India exports were still steady and imports increased marginally. However as the economic condition worsen over the months, it was only in December 2008, every other country felt the ripples as well.

Indian recession was primarily triggered by a mix of couple of factors. First, the global financial meltdown tailored by few at Wall Street brought the entire US credit market down. With Fanney and AIG going down, the two heavy hitters brought jitters to the people at Oval office.  Beginning of the year and the unemployment rate grew upto 13%, highest in the history of United States in this modern era. Higher credit crunch, means more layoffs. With more and more people becoming unemployment, the number of expats going back home to India rose sharply. The not-so-much expected “changes”  in the fields of money sent by expats to India as remittance exports diminished as the demand globally hit the bottom.

Thanks to the provisions of Stimulus bill and Tarp funds, bad assets were bought out and economic players were freed of the upcoming bankruptcy. In addition to the good work these funds did, they limited the ability to hire American companies foreign nationals. Indian software industry was the worst hit by this. For the ninth year in a row, India has been the top source of sending students to study in the US. Foreign nationals graduating from school, and also who were already here, heavily rely on H1 B visas and the provisions of the Stimulus limited this overflow. Slowly and slowly, as the credit crunch at the Wall street eases, US economy continues to recover from depression bruises.

Less people working in the US means less money sent back home as remittance to India. As a result, the Indian earnings dropped for fiscal year. The world must not forget that US is of course $13 trillion economy and whereas India is expected to reach $2 trillion by 2020. There is a whole lot of dollar gap even if that happens. So developing countries will continue to line up for US’s business.  And as more and more companies recover from red lines in the balance sheets, the business will struggle back to come back to it’s “expected state.”    This means more business for the countries like India, who depend heavily on imports and are in the process of becoming industrialized nations.

Another important dichotomy to be noted is that, many in the BRIC countries didn’t experience negative growth. Indian economy never went down to a negative number in the recession, however the world’s biggest economies did. Japan, UK, Germany and the US contracted by atleast one percent of their economic size during this recession. At worst, the Indian economy declined to a figure near 6.5 % and NOT negative. So I m very convinced that recession for India never happened.

I could have easily bought the argument that Indian economy slowed down in the midst of the economic meltdown, but recession never came to the people of South east transitional economy.

Guy is, I believe.. a racist!

Having a bias is an easy thing to be a part of and when you are in the media, it is even more enticing. So what is Fox news is ( out loud) biased against the Dems!

It was only yesterday we were discussing the classification of US presidents. One would Bill Clinton in one of those orator kinds and Bush into some lower level then that. Don’t blame me for that, his English ( remember the time when you get news saying “InternetS”) is terrible for being American. But the fact is for Obama you can’t find a category.

If I could go in the future and see what category future generations of US have put Obama in, it would most expectedly be in the ranks of Lincoln. I am super sure about it. And fox ended up saying that Dems, especially the comment that Obama is racist.

I am out and proud that I like Obama. But atleast I am not slave of my prejudice and I can stand upto him and say you are wrong here or you need to do this better! Grow up Fox!

Adopting a child

 

Sponsoring lifetime education

Are you like me?

 

Hoping, audacious, audacity to hope, everyday, changes, life is how you respond to your life events and not what life events do to you.

My god and Your God

I inherited a faith based belief system ( and not religion) from my family and as one of its tenets is to not question the existence of supreme being ( One might think that this is not true, however). As I moved farther and farther from “Home”, my limited accessibility to visit similar or exact faith worship institutions decreased and decreased. And slowly, I saw another method of salvation.

A nearby Sikh temple called as a Gurudwara in Rochester was it. I started going religiously to its prayer sessions every Sunday and sometimes more. If there was some special prayer session, I would take time and go. As an outsider in this new religion, I was a little nervous about fitting my own life long faith into this new found interpretation of religion.

It has been a little over a year now and I love how my own life long faith blended so quickly into the tenets of Sikhism. I think I know the reason, but that is not the motivation I am writing here.

My parents are visiting me this year for thanksgiving and seeing them after almost 20 months is a good development for me. During the time I moved out of home and out of country, my parents however were very comfortable in their own world and there is nothing wrong in that!  J But I grew up into a different person and my faith is also blended and I m very proud of that!

But sticking upto a stereotype is not my idea of God. My family including my mother is very passionate about our faith based system and I would have ideally liked to keep it very close to myself and respect that, but the over all fantastic blend of my faith with new religion is just exhilarating.

My god is omnipresent, can’t be defined in size, shape, or matter, He is neither He or She, or both who knows. I don’t know what he looks like, I don’t know what he likes of me, I don’t know why people would create stereotypes of him- you either see a 16 hands deities or you see mother Mary with Jesus! But I do know is that he loves me irrespective of his color, my color, my shape and my language. God loves me, he has promised me!

Where is the Change ?

As I ponder more and more about what I can do for this world that I inhabit in this time reality, I see who needs my help more – People who have access to state funded medicare or people who die because of malnutrition and droughts? Fairly easy to judge.

 

Being at such a position where I can sit back and actually think of helping someone out in the 6 billion population of the world, I want to help. The opportunity is huge and can’ t be ignored at any cost. The future generation is at stake and it is essential for us to act on what needs to be done in order to create a world full of opportunities and a world which was given to us.