The Ass Anomaly

It started as a slight pain, which I easily brushed aside as a result of the hard wooden chairs that all unfortunate students in our country are forced to sit on for endless grueling hours. 

It grew a little more, making me a little nervous, as one of my friends was recently diagnosed with a tailbone problem and had to undergo a rather painful recovery process.

After a few months, it really started to hurt. While I enjoyed using it as an excuse to not have to show-off my skills in performing crunches, I was starting to get a little apprehensive. I confided with the only two doctors in the world I felt comfortable talking to about - that place. But for the moment, I was met with blank stares. Cardiology and Oncology didn't exactly cover the nether regions of the body I guess.

My first year in college was almost over when one day they frantically called me with a diagnosis - pldijlfonidsns! Wait, what?! Pilonidal sinus. Again, what?! I thought sinuses happened in the nose…

In any case, they had their suspicions, but they needed confirmation, which apparently could not be received via telephone. And so, for the first time in my life, I was instructed to go to another doctor - a stranger - and pull down my pants. Mortified does not even begin to describe it.

I didn’t know at that time that it would be the first of many. Three years, three surgeries, and countless dressing changes later, the only thing that had changed was that I could now confidently pull down my pants in front of any doctor without a hint of embarrassment. 

When people are asked what stood out for them during college, they would say partying or friends etc. I think all my college friends would agree that for me it was just one thing - my ass. And of course, the pain, the daily dressing changes from the now-familiar team of doctors at my university clinic, the penguin waddling, the secrecy, the embarrassment of "others" finding out, the pretence of "back pain", acting like a snob and refusing to sit on the ground, refusing to sit, period, afraid of the slightest tinge of pain, fearing what it might bring, the relief of hearing those two words "it's closed", the dread of hearing those three words "it's open again", the depression, the acceptance, the weak attempts at humour.

Needless to say, it got to me.

I was tired of going back and forth between healed and not healed. And at some point, I started using it as a crutch to not do things: “sorry, I can't go to the gym because my ass won't permit it;” “sorry, I can't do a summer internship because I have to go back home and get a surgery.” Valid or not, I was almost glad to be sick so I had an excuse to not do things - and that thought scared me the most.

Thankfully, TFI was the one thing I did not allow myself to give up - the day I left for India from Canada and Kuwait, I was told by doctors in both countries that I would need a surgery soon (for those who are counting, it was surgery # 4). After three years of this routine, I was prepared – for surgeries, daily dressing changes, spending half my days in the waiting line of clinics – whatever it was, I was determined to face it.

This is the part where I want to stop writing, because a part of me is still afraid – afraid of jinxing the spell, afraid that it will all come back to me again. Because the moment I landed in India, it stopped hurting.

I pulled my pants down for a doctor in India two days later in India, and she said there was nothing wrong with my ass. I spent the next one month sitting for most of the hours on hard floors and rickety buses, yet it never hurt again.

I don’t think there’s any medical reason that could explain this anomaly – or rather, the lack of an anomaly. Was it because of the mantras that I refused to recite that my parents and my friend recited on my behalf? Can a few sanskrit words really heal my ass? The idea sounds completely bizarre to me. But then, so does the idea of my pain disappearing simply because “I came back home to India.”

I spent four years of my life being the butt of jokes, hearing wise cracks about ass holes and bottomless backsides and acting completely anal. Four years is not something you just forget. Even now, I’m scared of sitting on the ground. I prefer standing to sitting at any given point. I’m shit scared of feeling even a twinge of pain, afraid that it might unlock pandora’s box.

But there’s one thing I don’t feel anymore, and that’s embarrassment. Hence the blog. For all the propriety and acceptable topics of conversation, I have learnt from my uncle that the best conversations are the ones that include “gas” or “bum” and other synonyms, because those are the moments when you laugh your ass off – the moments that you truly cherish.

So if anyone wants to call me up and discuss my butt over a cup of coffee, I’m all yours!

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This post is dedicated to my awesome family and friends for enduring my butt and me for four years.

This post is inspired by a fellow writer / friend / cousin who unfortunately broke her butt recently. 

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Update:
The ass problem returned. I had another surgery. Since then, thankfully, it's not come back. But I guess only time will tell.

Chasing the Y

It must have been a tough fight, I tell myself. I can just picture the two of them engaged in a major wrestling match, trying to make room for themselves by pushing the other out. “There’s only room for the one of us,” they said to each other, while they fought over which of the two would get to take the empty spot next to the impatiently waiting X chromosome. Would it be another X, or would Y finally show its balls and make it through?

After a long and grueling struggle, the whistle was blown. X walked victoriously and took its place next to the original X, while Y dejectedly stepped away from the cell, ashamedly remembering a similar fight that had taken place 2 years ago, a fight his Y-ancestor had won. It blamed its ancestor for setting such high expectations. I think I blamed my brother too, for stealing the obviously stronger Y candidate and leaving me with the weak one.

But as it trudged away from the wrestling ring, it did something few people would have expected. It pulled a stunt so low, that to this day, I want to hunt it down and rip it apart.

*** 

Nine months later, as I came into this world crying loudly, the doctors looked down to confirm that yes, XX had in fact won.

Bur apparently, the absence of a penis wasn’t confirmation enough.

The first thing that most Indian families do to a baby girl is pierce her ears. Sometimes I think they do it at the hospital itself. Why? I suppose so that nurses can identify the baby as a girl (because it would be too much of an effort to actually lift the cloth and check).

Or maybe it’s because all girls are genetically programmed to like wearing earrings.

Or necklaces.

Or any other kind of jewellery.

Or make-up.

Or shopping.

Or short skirts.

Or heels that torture your feet.

Or cooking.

Or cleaning.

Or Barbies.

Or dolls in general.

Or playing house.

My genes must have been busy sleeping when they had that session.  

Clearly, they missed out on this very important programming. I say ‘very important’ because evidently you don’t qualify as a girl unless you like all the above-mentioned things. You became an alien. Or a freak. Or as euphemisms go, a tomboy.

Even so, being a tomboy is a phase; you eventually grow out of it, and everyone applauds for you the day you step out decked in head to toe in female-worthy attire, because that day you finally come into your senses and become who you were born to be – a girl!

Because, even after 22 years, that tiny fact cannot be confirmed just by pulling down your pants (or should I say, by pulling up your skirt?).

But like I said, my XX chromosomes were so focused on catching up on their sleep, they completely missed out on that particular training session. Or maybe that loser Y drugged them with something to induce their sleep, knowing quite well what the repercussions of missing out on that one training would have on my life.

It was the revenge of the Y.  That jerk!

It’s hard enough being a girl what with all the “time of the month” and the horrifyingly painful labour that men seem exempt from, but being a girl and yet not fitting into the standard description of a girl is much worse. I think I’ve lost count of the number of times people have looked at me with their mouth hanging open in shock and exclaimed, “You haven't pierced your ears?!?!” 

No, I don't like making holes in my body, thank you very much. I think the fact that I don’t wear earrings is more shocking to people than the rising number of people living below poverty line.

I hope nobody leaks this information to NDTV.

No, I’m not saying I want to undergo a sex-change operation (although I do think I went through a phase during puberty when I would pray every morning in the shower that I would turn into a boy). I’m just saying that it would be a nice change to be able to be myself without having to defend my estrogen levels all the time.

Stop laughing. It could happen. One day. Evolution and everything, remember?

Let's have it out there once and for all. 

I’m a girl (trust me, I checked), and I don’t like – scratch that, I hate – wearing earrings.

Or necklaces.

Or any other kind of jewellery.

Or make-up.

Or shopping.

Or short skirts.

Or heels that torture your feet.

Or cooking.

Or cleaning.

Or Barbies.

Or dolls in general.

Or playing house.

.........

.........

.........

Al right, fine, you can laugh.

But if I ever get my hands on that sore loser of a Y chromosome, it’ll be craving the fires of hell once I’m through with it.

The hunt continues.

Mommy missing time

This is going to be an ongoing list...

• When you have to discard a favourite pair of pants because of a hole, knowing that the remedy lies in a needle-thread
• When you wake up one morning craving aloo ka paratha, or mooli ka paratha, or pyaaz ka paratha, or anything along those lines
• When the one shirt you need is all crumpled and there’s no iron around because you had vehemently argued with your mom about there being no need for such an item
• When you need to be nudged awake at 6 in the morning after a late night of work, which somehow the alarm just cannot manage to do
• When cutting onions
• When you crave coffee that’s not made from nescafe’s 3 in 1 sashes, but is rather the exotic pheto-ed version only one person can get right
• When you spend several hours painstakingly following the recipe, and at the end of it all feel “that’s not the way mamma’s food tasted”
• When you just want someone to ask you how your day has been so that you can let it all out
• When nobody around you seems to intuitively realize you’re having a bad day and are in desperate need of a big hug

The Ahmedabad Diaries - Writers are Bastards

As part of Teach for India’s annual retreat, I visited Ahmedabad for three days recently. Much of this time was split between the Gandhi Ashram and visiting communities that Manav Sadhana worked closely with.

The community I visited had been relocated to a bare ground because their houses were demolished by the government without notice. They had been living in make-shift houses, braving the freezing nights of Ahmedabad with bare minimum clothing, and struggling daily with their gnawing thirst and hunger. For me, it was a very unsettling experience, mainly because I was unable to understand my purpose over there. Despite that, as I walked around boiling with suppressed emotions, I realized something:

My eyes involuntarily took in every detail

The colour of the tarp,

The tatters in their clothes,

The remaining brambles that were indicative of the dangerous land they had initially been dumped in, The vastness of the garbage dump next to their camp,

The few utensils they had managed to save

And my mouth hesitantly asked questions

How did they end up here?

How long would they have to stay?

Did they have access to water?

Why couldn’t they find work nearby?

What did they eat daily?

I groped for details, as far as I would allow myself. I wish I could say it was because I cared. Yes I did care, but that was not the main reason why I want to know.

I wanted to know so that I would have something to blog about.

Even as I collected the information, I was sorting it in my head: “this would be good to write about; this is irrelevant; oooh this would make for an interesting topic!”

Because that’s what writers do.

We gather information, sort through it, choose the ‘juiciest bits’ and write those down.

We don’t go into the field to solve a problem or to alleviate pain – we go out to gather details.

We ask, we probe, we observe – hoping every second that the next bit of information will take our article from mundane to brilliant.

We become unfeeling, uncaring bastards who care more about the style of our writing than the subject of it.

We worry more about how a word sounds on paper than how a probing question sounds to the person receiving it.

We ensure that we have the proper pictures that will help tell the story, because that’s our only job.

 We don’t intend to hurt feelings, but if they come in the way of telling the truth, then so be it.

We don’t consciously aim towards poverty porn, but sub-consciously, we know that’s what readers want.

We don’t experience for the sake of experiencing, we experience so that we can pick up every single detail.

During my three days at Ahmedabad, that’s exactly what I did.

My professors at York would have been proud.

The Ahmedabad Diaries - Please Tell Me

I walk into your home, bearing

Blankets for the cold

Food for your stomach

Water for the thirst

A smile for hope

Yet as I look around, the smile falters

Your home is not a home

It is a piece of the ground

Marked off by sticks and plastic

There is nothing outside

Nothing inside

Except people

People who step out from all directions

People who stare at me

Their gazes filled with a myriad of emotions

I can only try to guess

Is it happiness for the company?

Is it hope for the gifts?

Is it sadness at the reality?

Is it anger at the divide?

Is it disgust at the charity?

Is it envy at the unfairness?

Because the question that remains unanswered

The one I want to ask but am afraid

The one that plagues me constantly is

Who am I to you?

Am I a guest, to be invited humbly and treated with respect?

Am I a celebrity, representing a part of society that has evaded you?

Am I God, bringing the hope of relieving you from your misery?

Am I a philanthropist, trying to make myself feel better about the injustice?

Am I a snob, coming over to look down upon you and your neighbours?

Am I a friend, willing to provide a shoulder to you when you need it?

Am I a stranger, pretending to be your friend today to never see you again after this?

Am I a helper, offering you aid?

Am I a hypocrite, saying I understand when I really don’t?

Please tell me, because I don’t know

Tell me

Who am I to you?

And who are you to me?

A friend I genuinely care about?

A piece of charity to assure myself of my goodness?

A receiver of my gifts?

A giver of love?

A passing phase I use to “gain an experience”?

A needy person I try to help?

A project to test my skills?

A person I want to learn from?

An alien I truly cannot understand?

Because like I said, I really don’t know

So please tell me

What do you feel when you see me passing through your makeshift community?

Who am I to you?

Who are you to me?

And while we’re on that subject

Also tell me,

What am I supposed to feel?

Concerned for your welfare?

Nervous about the encounter?

Troubled by your reality?

Touched by your affection?

Humbled by your warmth?

Guilty for being rich?

Confident for being educated?

Scared of being offensive?

Indifferent so as to be detached?

Hypocritical at my pretence?

Unsure about my actions?

Happy at the connections?

Hopeful about the future?

Cynical at the world?

Angered by the government?

Upset at the unfairness?

Faithful in the God up above?

Satisfied at having made a difference?

Did I do that?

Did my blankets, food and water change your lives?

Did my visit bring you out of poverty?

Did my presence alleviate your misery?

Did my company make you happy?

Did my words bring you solace?

Did my actions bring you comfort?

Did I make a difference?

Please tell me

The community we visited - standing in front of their bamboo-tarp houses

The Ahmedabad Diaries - In the Shoes of a 13-year-old-girl

Asha and me

Meet Asha – a 13-year-old living in Ahmedabad. She comes from an economically lower background than the rest of us. If you will excuse my political incorrectness, she came from a slum. She lived with her parents, a grandmother, two younger brothers and two younger sisters. Being the oldest of the lot, she was also the one responsible for the other children, and when you are given such a responsibility, you tend to grow up faster than you need to.

I met Asha at the Gandhi Ashram in Gujarat, where she is currently under the wing of Manav Sadhana, an NGO that strives to spread the message of peace and unity among the surrounding communities through various projects. Asha happened to be in one of them called Ekatva – a 70-minute musical performance by 16 children aiming to spread unity. The performance left every single audience member astonished and mesmerized, inspired by the sheer talent and hard-work that was reflected.

Being a part of Ekatva, Asha’s typical day included school in the morning, tuitions in the afternoon followed by activities and finally dance practice. Like the other children, she stayed at the Ashram and visited her family only in the holidays. I was lucky enough to join her one night as she went home.

On the bus-ride over, she chatted enthusiastically about her life - her love for dance and acting, her fear of the first performance, her excitement at the latest performance, her dream of becoming a doctor (and not because her family wanted it), her happiness at Manav Sadhana, her sadness at being away from her family, her nervousness about leaving Manav Sadhana the following year to attend a different school, her love for her friends, and her longing for her old house.

Their original house had been demolished by the Government, but luckily they had been given a flat in its stead. The new flat was 15 kilometers away from their original house, which meant that Asha’s father, who worked at a nearby shop, had to travel long hours every day to work. Despite being utterly exhausted, he was extremely welcoming, and took advantage of the great Indian hospitality to feed me seven pakoras –  in addition to my dinner.

Unfortunately, the parents and the grandmother had to travel to their village that night for voting as the elections were on, which left me alone at home with the children. My initial apprehension soon gave way to shame as I watched Asha wake up early in the morning and calmly prepare chai and breakfast for her siblings, and finish up other house chores. I nearly cringed thinking back to my life as a 13-year-old, and in that moment, I felt like a little kid, younger than Asha, embarrassedly asking her how to flush the toilet when clearly there was no flush.

Another memory which stands out from my visit is from the night when Asha and her friends walked me around the community from one friend’s house to another. The streets were lined with boys probably a little older than Asha herself, yet the way they were ogling at us was enough to send major chills through me. 

Having grown up in a very sheltered-Kuwait –life followed by boarding school followed by Canada followed by a completely oblivious me in Bombay, I have had (thankfully) few instances where I was made to feel like a piece of meat.

But right there, holding hands with Asha on one hand who aspired to become a doctor, and her 13-year-old friend Varsha who had gotten married a few months ago on the other, I realized just how different my teenage years were from theirs. How I had been spared the crudeness most girls in India are forced to face.

How I couldn’t even begin to imagine what it’s like to live in the shoes of these 13-year-olds. 

The Ahmedabad Diaries - You Look Like a Lakshmi

Disclaimer: This post might be offensive. Actually, it probably is. But it's hard to rip the band-aid without feeling any pain. 

A friend of mine once told me that I’m the least judgmental person he ever knew. And I believed him. Why? Because I didn’t hate Pakistanis. Or Muslims. Because I liked to listen to both / all sides of the story before deciding who was right. Because I apparently had bucket-loads of this substance called empathy which allowed me to involuntarily see things from other people’s perspective, making it a little hard to judge them afterwards.

Three days ago, I realized I was as judgmental as the founder of the KKK. Maybe not in my actions, but in my thoughts, I could give those white-wearing-racist-bastards some serious competition.

Why? Because I met a girl named Lakshmi. And when she told me her name, a thought entered my mind from some place I didn’t even know existed, which said to me: “Ahh. That’s right. She looks like a Lakshmi.”

She looks like a Lakshmi?!?! What does that even mean?!

At first I tried to placate myself by thinking that she probably reminded me of another girl called Lakshmi that I have met before. Yet as I racked my brain, I couldn’t think of ever having met anyone personally with that name before. So it’s not like I could draw similarities to the features. And if I have never met anyone called Lakshmi, how do I know what she is supposed to look like? Hear that? I said ‘supposed’ – like there’s a type.

You know, like Ahmed is Muslim. Ram is Hindu. Tom is white (because, clearly, he cannot be any other colour). Kapoor is a big-shot. Chhotu is the helper. Natasha is the beautiful fair one. Lakshmi is the dark nerdy one.

Where did these labels come from? When did I become the authority on people’s names? True, some names do reflect a person’s religion / ethnicity, but I had no idea that we could use names to identify someone’s social status or fairness-of-the-skin data.

I want to blame the media. When was the last time a Bollywood movie had a leading actress named "Lakshmi" who represented glamour? “Om Prakash Makhija” may have been a perfectly suitable name until Shah Rukh Khan destroyed it in his film. When was the last time we came across a “Natasha” from the village or a slum?

But blaming is the easy part. Accepting the reality of the situation is harder.

I’ve written dozens of essays and had countless discussions on how stereotypes are the bane of this world, and for some reason, I felt that my ability to come to this conclusion prevented me from falling in its trap. 

Apparently not.

It seems that prejudice is embedded within our bones, at least mine, and it creeps up at strangest of times. It may not be intentional, but it’s still there. And there’s no excuse for it.

I thought I hated it when others judged me. It’s even worse to realize that I reciprocate the feeling so easily.