Category: Personal
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Desi Parents Adopting: What I Typed Into Google in 2009
In 2009 I searched Google for “desis adopting non Indian babies” and got nothing. Here’s what I wish I’d found.
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Where Angels Fear To Tread
Gigi and Grandpa E came into our lives in the spring of 2012. They are my older daughters’ birth great grand parents. I know it’s a mouthful. It started with one email that burgeoned into over five hundred emails and well over a thousand text messages over the course of thirteen years. Our relationship was…
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Behind the Camera: Crafting Our Family Story on Film
Have you ever wondered what it is like to be the subject in a documentary? Here’s your inside look.
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Internalized Misogyny
“Question for you. I don’t wear lipstick. If I want a light tint, any recommendations? Something that will suit my face.” I text my good friend first thing in the morning. What ensues is a conversation that lingers long after I have said my byes, made lunch, washed my hair and mapped out the rest of the day.…
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Joy As Resistance
It’s a little past my usual breakfast time. I open the pantry and decide on an English muffin. I pick the yellow serrated knife slicing it cleanly in half and pick up the crumbs left behind. I set out the butter and debate for a moment before settling on strawberry preserves. Breakfast is a ritual…
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Democracy To Dystopia
The sun glinting off the packed snow on the sides is blinding me. The roads are a hazy white, a fine layer of salt ground to dust by the cars that ply on them incessantly. I am driving slowly. My mind is heavy. I am heading back home after dropping my youngest at her school…
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Yin And Yang
“Ooh! I forgot to give mom kisses…” Ammu runs to me and smothers me with kisses all over my face. When I pause to catch my breath, she removes my glasses and attacks me again until I am bent over, wheezing with laughter and desperately trying not to pee. “Screw off” Ammu grumbles when I…
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Leaning Into Joy
I walked around my home in the dead of the night, long past the time the kids and spouse went to bed, with only the twinkling warm lights of the holiday decor for company. I lingered by the nativity, pausing just a bit before the tiny lighted ceramic tree by the doorway, lingering just enough…
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Finding Solace: Writing Through Political Disappointment
Tuesday, November 12 reads the home screen of my phone. I feel sucker punched knowing it has been a week since the election and, we have already settled into a new normal. None of this is surprising yet, I feel a sense of loss I can’t articulate. In the wake of the election results becoming…
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Woman In Flux
At a recent gathering at a friend’s house, I sat at a table with two people I had not met before. As introductions go, I leaned into my corporate identity first. Over the course of the evening, references to astrology, interest in k-culture, reading and, writing came up. Politics dominated the evening. I left sated…