Bloggit!

It seems that I'm incapable of writing these days. And so I'm posting writings from the summer before last, when I was a lot more dark, sullen and existentially anguished -- but nonetheless reasonably well-traveled!

(These days I'm just hungry)


(Summer 2005)
My city’s under water from the endless rain storms, and I’m sitting on dry land 6,000 miles away anxious and helpless. So what if her people are dying; people I’ve shared space with, people I’ve cursed under my breath, people I’ve turned to for direction. So what if the ground I walked on day after day for 23 years and more is melting under the pressure of human corpses and animal carcasses. I’m here and there’s nothing I can do but walk the streets of Bombay in my mind over and over again, not knowing how it’s all changed beyond recognition. Not wanting to know.

This is where my people and I part ways for I haven’t seen what they have. We’ll never have a common base to stand on again. Our land is breaking and as they struggle to swim to safety, I stand on high ground peering from behind shadows of security.

London, July, 2005
I’d like to say I’ve seen it all but that’s far from true. Today, two weeks after the bomb blasts, the city is on red alert again. Today, the world is an awful place to live in. I’m afraid of everyman as he is of me. I remind him of a concept he has grown to hate. The color of my skin represents threat and terror and he would rather not see me, rather not have me in his midst.

Connecticut, June 2005
As I tried to cross the street, an old Haitian man held me back. He said I was too young to be breaking streetlights, said I had a long way to go. He seemed to know what he was talking about, in his head, at least. “I’m not respected here,” he said. “Look at me.” And I did. He was a professor in that country and dressed like one in this. But he wasn’t getting the respect he had grown so accustomed to. So, why was he here?

New York City, July 2005
“I like money,” a Bangladeshi cab driver confided in me, trying his hardest to justify his presence in a place 10,000 miles away from his own. “Do you like it here?” I had asked him. You heard the man. I tipped him well for his honesty and walked unsteadily into China Town. I was on my way to Washington DC.

“Do I hear a 72nd Street?”
Bidding in a New York subway. I’d asked if the train was going to 66th Street. New Yorkers all joined in the bid. Somebody said it went to 48th, another said he was sure it went to 55th, a third said, “Oh yes, it goes to 66th”

Who said it’s an unfriendly city? For a while there, we were all New Yorkers, brown, black and white. We were all helping a young New Yorker who needed to make her way to Lincoln Center. We all spoke a common language. We all laughed when the bid touched 72nd Street. We were everyman. Only we hadn’t brought along our darling child. Hate was at school that day.

South Norwalk, Connecticut, June 2005
It’s how you present yourself. It’s what you make of yourself. That’s all it is. That’s a valuable lesson I learned this summer.

Oxford Street, London, August 2005
Europeans dress rather well. They must have learned my lesson several summers ago.

Baltimore, July 2005
I’m on my way to DC on an unreliable China Town bus that has just broken down. It’s been nine hours; I’ve slept, I’ve read and I’m far from near. I’ve had an interesting chat with a Yale student who’s traveled the world. His last trip was to Pakistan. He has a story to tell. I listen as I watch the driver stomp around the broken bus.

The Jubilee Line, London’s Tube, July 2005
She wasn’t trying to be friendly when she asked where they were from. She very well knew. She wasn’t curious when she asked why his wife’s face wasn’t hidden behind a black veil, why he didn’t have four wives. She couldn’t care less. She was the epitome of everyman. And she thrived on hate.

And yet, as us brown skinned cousins walked off the tube that day covered in indignation, we weren’t expecting to run into a friendly Londoner. He proved us wrong as life often does; went out of his way to help. Who was he, then?

A member of the minority, I thought as I tried to justify his act of kindness. He had opened the ticket machine to find our punched in ticket so we wouldn’t have to shell out more cash. What was it to him? It was a couple of quid at the end of the day. He helped anyway. And we were grateful for it.

At the foot of the Big Ben, July 26 (or thereabouts), 2005
I got to hear it chime today. It sounds like the Columbia Missouri clock tower; it looks like the Big Ben carved and gilded in gold.

Stomp, the last day of July 2005
They make music with non-musical things. And how.

Portobello Market, London, July 2005
I saw an ancient map today, dated 1826. It was a map of Hindoostan, and Pakistan wasn’t and Bombay was.

Today, on the first day of August 2005, Bombay almost isn’t.
What’s to become of my city?

Priori Road, London, August 3, 2005, 10 a.m.
Today’s Metro reads, “Faith hate crimes rise by 600%”
It was bound to happen.

Today…
On the eight day of the eighth month in the sixth year of the 21st century, I stood at longitude 0. The place where time begins for most of the world.

It felt much like any other longitude and I hurried home, knowing only too well that time waits for no man.

Columbia, Missouri, August 21, 2005
Tired and still on London time.