Indian

JUST DANCE, GONNA BE OK, DA DA DOO DOO; THE SIMPLEST SOLUTION TO STRESS

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ARTS: JUST DANCE, GONNA BE OK, DA DA DOO DOO; THE SIMPLEST SOLUTION TO STRESS

Today’s Mood Ingredients: Euphoric, Free, Alive.

Stress. Overwhelming stress. It’s very rare that people today don’t have it. It varies in levels depending on a number of factors; career, family, emotions, personality, lifestyle, income, desires, etcetera, but it’s there. Silently waiting to attack when you least expect it, rendering you manic or crazed or depressed or angry. Let’s say you can’t quit your job to own a farm in California or live a spa life in Arizona. You can’t quit your family, you can’t shirk your responsibilities, you can’t overcome your sporadic but prevalent emotional tsunamis. So, what do you do? Release it. For me, the greatest and truest inanimate, intangible passion of my life is dance. Any form. Drunken, choreographed, impromptu, rehearsed, performed, jumping & booty-bumping with my 2.5 year old nephew, ballroom dancing with the puppy. ANY. If it was possible to bottle the feeling that radiates within and out of me when I’m dancing, I would be in direct competition with the Onassis family as wealthiest around. However, I cherish the fact that the feeling is so inexpressible for me because I get to have a sense of public privacy.

The audience sees a performer on stage expressing lyrics and movements to given music, but much of the time, the performer is in a whole different secret world. I have literally been brought to tears or euphoria on stage depending on the day of performance, & the people, who I don’t even register in my consciousness, applaud. They applaud for a technical performance that hopefully connected with them in some way. What they don’t realize is that the emotion that’s coming off in waves from the stage to the audience at such a high frequency is the tumultuous collage of my innermost fears, happinesses, struggles, tears, accomplishments, sadness, & stress being released. They are privy to something they don’t even know of, & for a hyper-private person like me, it’s my way of “talking about my feelings.” Dancing has saved me from a lot in life. It has protected me from a lot in life. It has given me a lot in life. It is the only outlet that still serves to shatter my anxiety, my founded & unfounded worries, & my fears. The best way to describe it, I suppose, is by using my favorite quote, also tattooed on my ankle: “In life, as in dance; grace glides on blistered feet.” When I’m dancing, I’m at my most euphoric. When I’m dancing, I’m at my most tranquil. When I’m dancing, I’m at my most giving. It’s a blind & frozen moment in time where everything is nothing and nothing is everything & I’m spinning along with the world in harmony.

Everyone deserves this. You deserve to feel this way about something in your life, if not necessarily dance. When things are piling up & suffocating you under their deadweight, find your own outlet. You don’t have to be good at it. Contrary to popular & incorrect belief, NO ONE CARES.

“Times of general calamity and confusion have ever been productive of the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace, and the brightest thunderbolt is elicited from the darkest storms.”-Charles Caleb Colton

Is splattering paint across a canvas therapeutic? Do it. Listening to music? Blast it. Playing sports (not my forte!)? Kick it, pitch it, run it. Writing? Scribble it. No one is expected to be the next DaVinci, Stevie Wonder, Jackie Robinson, Ernest Hemingway, but you are expected to somehow be able to enjoy this life without needing an industrial-strength antacid twice a day. I’m lucky that I found my meditation at the age of 3, but “too late” is a phrase I’m just starting to eke out of my vernacular, & I suggest you do the same for “life is short, but sweet for certain.”

Today’s Interlude: “Dance Dance Dance” by Lykke Li

         

Mindy, Mindy, Mindy, Can’t You See? Sometimes Your Words Just Hypnotize Me: The Difference Between An Admirer & A Creeper

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Today’s Mood Ingredients: Excited, Admiring, Awed, BFF-y.

If you know me, you know I love her. Like, LOVEEE her. I’m not a person who gets starstruck or flustered when meeting celebrities, ever, but when I recently had the chance to meet writer/director/actor/producer/fashionista/hottie Mindy Kaling, albeit for a brief 12 second span where I gave her Easter candy in a hot pink bag, my body apparently knew something my brain wasn’t caught up on because I was shaking like a Californian in an Alaskan winter & it wasn’t because of the 50 mph gusts of wind outside.

People who follow me on social media are well aware of my adoration for her & they’ve asked me time & time again why she’s so awesome to me. There is a plenitude of reasons that we love or admire celebrities. Most of the time it’s their body of work & talent or because of whatever persona they (or their PR team) decide to show us, & since we’ll most likely never meet them, that’s how it stays. With Mindy (& I have a huge list of people who share my sentiment), it’s much more. It’s easy to pick her as the South Asian role model for women & entertainers and very easy to pick her as the spokesperson for every “Brown” person out there, but that’s actually last on my list of why I am awed by her in a non-creeper way. If you’ve read her book, “Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? And Other Concerns,” you’ll know what I mean (& if you haven’t read it, get on it ASAP. It’s a New York Times Bestseller & unless you’re a Jetsons-esque robot [but even Rosie had emotions], you’ll laugh until you ugly cry. I’ve read it 3 times, taking something new away from it every time, & highlighted about 80% of it). Mindy weaves humor & emotion seamlessly while telling her stories of being bullied about her weight, her childhood fears, unapologetically loving comedy early on in life, her botched Broadway audition, living in a shoebox apartment with her 2 best friends, her dating game, and so on. As she tells her stories, I don’t know if she realizes it or not, she connects with so many of us on a personal level. It’s easy to want to put those days behind you (& easily be able to) when you’re at nearly 3 million Twitter followers, over half a million Instagram followers, & being the star & show runner of your own network TV show, but the greatest thing about her is that she owns it & embraces it all. She’s never hidden from her roots or her history and that’s what makes her accessible to & adored by so many of us (her talent and hilarity help too, obv).

I have many celebrities I love, but I’ve never felt connected to them on a personal level like I do with Mindy Kaling. Perhaps it’s that we’re close in age, perhaps it’s that she is fiercely loyal in her close relationships & friendships, perhaps it’s that her greatest strength & love is the relationship she has (yes, present tense) with her mother, perhaps it’s that we’re both fashion freaks (her Instagram feed is to die for!), perhaps it’s that we had a similar childhood, & perhaps it’s just that she’s someone I aspire to be like; inspired, driven, sarcastic with a childlike exuberance but an iron work ethic. She’s a brilliant writer, an Ivy-League graduate, & has humorous self-deprecation down to a science. Someone somewhere (or at least definitely on Twitter) says that they wish they were Mindy Kaling’s BFF every day. And though I admit to having said that, I’m happy I’m not. Wait, what? Yes, I’m happy I’m not her BFF because I have my own group of BFFs (“it’s not a person, it’s a tier, Danny!”) who have been there for me through all of the winding roads of life & I love that she still has her core group of homies from college (& of course, BJ Novak from The Office) who have been there for her for the same. Don’t get me wrong though, had it been 2002 & I met Mindy & her friends (which was SO FEASIBLE since I was watching all of the Bombay Dreams auditions in real life & wish I’d gotten to know her when she auditioned!), I’d totally try & hang out with them.

For someone who has high aspirations for making it as not only a woman, but a person in this world, I can think of no one better to look to as a guide. She didn’t glide up on a who-knows-who method & she doesn’t rest on her laurels. She worked her ass off & had conviction in her work, her intellect, her talent, & herself and that’s something I sometimes forget to do for myself. She’s constantly striving (look at me, weirdly talking about her as though I know her personally..here is that line between admirer & creeper, you guys..I’m toeing it :P) to better herself & hone her skills, but doesn’t seem to beat the shit out of herself if something falls short. And for all of the times that people come down on her for not being the token South Asian who apparently should be shouldering all of our historical burdens, a quote from Elle Magazine says it best, “She doesn’t rely on being Indian, but doesn’t deny it either.” That’s an amazing thing, especially in Hollywood! This is 2014. Be proud that a “f***ing Indian woman [has] her own f***ing show!” A network television show. That, for once, doesn’t stereotype an Indian woman (or man, for that matter) as an accent-harboring, oily haired nerd searching long & hard for an arranged marriage that will make the family happy all the while toiling away at a profession they hate. And for those who say, “Yeah, but she still plays a doctor! How Brown.” Yes, she plays an OB-GYN as an homage to her late mother’s profession, not because of the Indian generalization associated with it. Mindy’s created a show for us single 30-something women that shows the real, if sometimes exaggerated, colors of dating & working (especially for us New Yorkers). I have known people my whole life who, despite being Indian, have only dated non-Indian people. It’s not Mindy’s job to make sure that every South Asian actor has a job, or to make sure that Dr. Mindy Lahiri dates South Asian men just because she is South Asian. That’s a reality that people really need to get on board with. Her job was to create a show that is funny, that people will enjoy, & that she’s proud of, and in that, she has succeeded tenfold.

I think I may have been happier than Mindy Kaling & the cast and crew themselves when The Mindy Project was renewed (early) for a season 3. The show is my happy place. It’s found its groove (even though I personally have loved every episode since the pilot) & there are times you have to watch it twice to catch one-liners you may have missed because you were too busy laughing at something else that just happened. It makes me literally LOL (which only Friends & Gilmore Girls have done) with its quick witted dialogue, pop culture references, equally intelligent and silly humor, & incredibly individual characters; and to know that Mindy’s in charge of it all (with a great team, of course) just makes me wax poetic about her even more. I have been having quite a few shitty days lately & I’ll be damned if Morgan Tookers’ innocent creepiness or Danny Castellano’s curmudgeon-y behavior (red grandma glasses intact) or Mindy Lahiri’s insecure self-confidence don’t give me at least that full 21 minutes of reprieve from real life. If you haven’t given it a chance yet, I suggest you spend the next 9.5 hours watching season 1 & season 2 on YouTube in order to prep for the one hour return tonight at 9PM on FOX. I know I’m going to be sipping on strawberry ale in my TMP cup saying “HOW DARE YOU!?” to anyone that attempts to disturb my cloud 9 of comedy.

P.S. Mindy, if you ever end up reading this, I’m just kidding about the BFF thing. I love my tier, but I’m totally available, so call me! “Winky face.” 😉

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Today’s Interlude: The Mindy Project Theme Song

 

Are You There, God? It’s Me, Siddhi: My Friend & Foe Follies With Faith

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Today’s Mood Ingredients: Trusting, Trying, Anxious, Faithful.

I’ve always been a child of faith. Mostly because as kids, you tend to follow whatever path your parents are on, & in my case, that was a deep belief in Hinduism and our polytheism. They told me to go to temples with them, I went. I prayed because they were praying, & I mean, believing in God seemed like a normal life process. As I got older, the religious ceremonies and prayers became more time consuming activities, and not in a good way. I didn’t feel like going all the way to Pittsburgh or Queens to go to various temples when I thought logically, it made sense to just pray to all of the idols we had all over our house. I still believed in all of my Gods, but I didn’t want to take the time out of the rest of my life to go be grateful for something or to ask for something to someone who, at that point in my life, I wasn’t even sure existed.

At 17, I had a minor health scare which was a slight ordeal, but the residual (temporary) effect was an extremely swollen left side of my face & a crooked one-sided smile. At 17, we’re all narcissists and high school is a hall of mirrors reflected back to you in the faces of your peers. I was a senior; I didn’t quite process that my life had just been saved, I only knew that prom was coming, yearbook pictures were coming, & graduation pictures were coming. One day, I was so infuriated by the distorted reflection staring back at me in my mirror, that I threw it across the room & threw a nearby religious idol with it. I was so pissed off that any of this could be occurring, & naturally, I blamed God. I mean, if there were Gods, why would They ever let this tragedy happen to me? God isn’t supposed to allow for suffering, He/They (for me) are supposed to make sure that They protect you and take care of you. From that point forward, at a gradual pace that I didn’t even recognize until years later, my belief waned. The more terrible things I heard about in the world, the more (in hindsight, minor) things that came my way to overcome, the less I followed my parents’ customs anymore, the less I believed in prayer, & the more I sat in the car when they dragged us to the temple (by the way, this didn’t all just start because my face was a partially inflated balloon, I’m not that vain, but that is the first moment I recall really feeling a change). For many years following that, I became an atheist. I just couldn’t bring myself to feel that strength of faith or shift in energy or positivity in prayer or in God or the idea of God anymore. I had many “why me?” moments that we all have, but they didn’t propel me to seek a higher order; I just attributed it to “whatever, that’s life” & moved on. Sounds great when I write it that way, but when I look back now, those times in my life were when I felt the loneliest & most defeated.

I’m not sure exactly when I started to believe again, which is interesting in its own right because I just told you the exact moment when I stopped. Anyway, over many years, in a “slow & steady wins the race” kind of mentality, my faith slowly began to resurface. I didn’t throw a tantrum when we had religious events at home (my parents would always kick my ass anyway, but at least now they didn’t have to go through that whole absurd process anymore), I walked into the temple & paid my respects at least, and I did pray here and there for my family’s well being and for myself as well. Fast forward what I presume to be 10 years later to the present day. At 32, I can say I’ve become faithful again. Over the course of the past 4 months, both of my parents almost lost their lives and in the process, I nearly lost my everything, including my mind (thank God[s], they are both doing well now). In what is something that I deem entirely inexplicable, during this time, I experienced a pure faith resurgence to a level that I didn’t even have as a child, but we’ll chalk that up to less experience & understanding back then. While in the hospital with my dad for 3 days in late October and in two hospitals for 5 days + 3 weeks with my mom from January-February, I dug out the little Zip-Loc bag holding what had been labeled my “crew” almost 2 decades ago. A little plastic baggie that I had been carrying on & off for years filled with pocket-sized religious hymn books, small deities, etcetera, that had only ever been taken to exams in college or medical school and on plane rides. I [barely] slept on a recliner at each hospital with it attached to my side, one earphone plugged into my ear playing religious songs on an iTunes loop, and just imagined that these deities were in front of me in real life, from all different walks of life, & I would simply pray for one thing; that my parents would be okay (I still do this every night, only now, I thank Them all). In the beginning, it was more of a mind-diverting activity, just something to do to keep my mind off of the scarier things that were happening. But over time, I felt a palpable shift in energy within myself & outside of myself. I suppose it’s something you can only explain to someone else who has felt it, or actually in that case, you probably wouldn’t have to explain anything at all, but it was there. I began to have the depth of a feeling I had never felt before and I still couldn’t tell you what it is now, so I just keep calling it faith, but it’s more complex and intuitive than that (it’s like an Ivy Leaguer in the institutional hierarchy of emotions). It’s moved me to a point where I’ve been in tears because of it, it helps curb impressive anxiety attacks at times, it gave me the actual inner desire to go to the temple three times a week, & it has provided me with an overwhelming sense of gratitude that I cannot soon repay; and I can honestly say, I cannot remember the last time I prayed for myself. I inherently know what is most important to me & as long as I can graciously express thankfulness and gracefully ask for protection for my beloveds, I’m pretty sure Someone(s) up there or out there has got my back. (I completely forgot how much I loved that “Footprints In The Sand” poem until I started writing this post & I think my family has been “carried” a lot lately).

This isn’t meant to be an insane preachy Peter Popoff post. Let me reassure you of that right now. And also, sorry if it came off that way. But I promise I will not attempt to change your beliefs, I will not ask you to donate to my life fund, & I will not mail you Holy Water vials of any kind. You will also not be a witness to any miraculous occurrences, & for that one, I apologize! It’s simply a sentiment that I wanted to bring to light because I have an inkling that there are probably many of you out there like me. You may have suffered a hiccup in your faith in something, whatever it may be, and it may remain long gone or it may have resurfaced, but I’m sure (I hope!) plenty of people out there have had this experience and sometimes it’s nice to put something out there that may make someone else feel less alone. I know I felt extremely alone and even somewhat guilty in my faithless phase. That’s why I just urge you to put your belief in something. In anything. Believe in religion, believe in a higher power, believe in energy, believe in gratitude, believe in meditation; hell, believe in logic! But believe, wholeheartedly, in something..because it may help you find something you didn’t even know you were looking for.

P.S. My brother is an admitted atheist and while we don’t understand each other in that respect, his unwavering belief in logic and practicality is a spectacular thing to experience.

And if you’re not in the mood for any of the above, fear not, for in the immortal words of Diana King: I’ll say a little prayer for you.

“Today’s Interlude” is an excerpt from a New York Times article (linked below) that really hit home for me. But though there are no instruments, this poetry is still just as melodic.

“Dear God,” I begin,”Whatever we call you / Wherever we find you / in the laughter of our children / the tenderness of our parents / the strength of our brothers and sisters and friends/the closeness of our companions and husbands and wives. / In the arc of the pelican/the leap of the mullet, / the perfect sunny day / or incoming storm / In whatever ways we understand you, / in a church or synagogue or mosque, / or on a beach beneath a starry sky, / we offer gratitude for this day.” -Roy Hoffman, “Remembering To Pray”

Below, some art pieces I did during bouts of questioning, insomnia, and belief.

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