–

Today, I usually distinguish between two very different terms – ignorance, and racism. They often come in the same disguise, and both create confusion and anger. But there is one major difference – ignorance can be overcome, while racism often cannot.

Growing in suburban Kansas City, at a high school that was 90% white (but, 25% Jewish), there were occasional racist acts – a anti-Jewish slur written on the bathroom, but more of what I encountered was ignorance. People who had never met an Indian-American before, who had gotten their little information from unreliable resources or media stereotypes. Most of the time these were innocent remarks – beliefs that Indians worship cows, never eat beef, that our religion is pagan. Or people assuming that all brown-skinned south Asians are the same, and not realizing how diverse the region is.

As a child it would be questions like “did you spend too much time in the sun?” Those incidents did leave me with a feeling that I was different, though, and as a child, that can be tough on its own. I remember thinking if I washed my skin enough, it would become lighter.

Of course, my perspective was different – I was considered a “model minority” – the term given to most Asian Americans who have to deal with far less negative stereotypes and perceptions than Latinos, African Americans, or Native American minorities. This alone puts undue pressure on us – the second generation, born here, assimilated yet held to higher expectations. We are supposed to be at the top of our class, supposed to be good at math, science, supposed to become doctors, engineers, professors, businessmen.

Moving to California brought me to another world – where these expectations were overbearing. I had to overcome new stereotypes – people assuming I could help them with computers, people assuming that I spoke Hindi, which actually pushed me away from other Indians, who often had the most strong expectations.

All of us as to work together to overcome ignorance – because if left untouched, ignorance can easily turn into lifelong racism – a far tougher battle to task.

Like most cafe or hostel book exchanges, the selection was mostly not to my liking. It was full of New York Times fiction bestselllers, Janot Enanovich, Stephen King, brain candy. That was not what I was looking for. I wanted something that would touch my soul, give me perspective about my life, and about the human experience. It was a hard week, and I was in this cafe studying, and I wanted something to remind me why I am here, getting my Masters.

The first shelf had nothing – though a Hebrew book caught my attention just for the script – so I went to back of the cafe, near the bathroom, to the second shelf. It was the very bottom left, the very last book I saw, that caught my eye.

“The Color of Water,” a Black Man’s Tribute to his White Mother.

I grabbed it, and began reading. Immediately I was captivated by this story that took place in the city that I was living, sometimes only block away in Harlem, about a Jewish mother, estranged from her family and religion, who raised 12 half-black children on her own, who were caught in-between two worlds.

Why do memoirs capture my heart so thoroughly? Why do I crave stories about pain and suffering, why do I crave so much to understand the human experience? In my perch at Columbia University, I often feel like there is something I am missing. I know this isn’t reality, this pristine campus, this access to knowledge – but what is reality? That was my reason for coming to Columbia, my reason for traveling around the world four years ago. It is the quest of my life.

When I am in a cafe, I sit and wonder – who are these people in here with me? What stories do they have, what experiences have they gone through? The written word, I believe, is a powerful way to see someone’s soul. To read, you must be able to listen, to listen, you must have patience, and you must be open. You must let part of yourself out, to feel and understand.

I find myself becoming more emotional when I read. This book, the Color of Water, has touched me often. When I get into a memoir, I find myself often unable to read another page, so overcome with emotions that I need to put the book down, and gaze into the distance. Let the feelings sink in, let my own mind wander.

The most valuable asset we have as humans are our experiences, our stories, our connections to the basic qualities that make us who we are. So I’ll keep on reading – probably for the rest of my life, in my never-ending quest to understand the world. I’ve found that each experience is different, and that my emotions never become dulled no matter how many memoirs I read. Instead, this is the only thing that makes me feel human sometimes, in today’s modern, money driven world.

Is that feasible way to live life?

“Why does the world allow such this?” I thought. Its easy to just think that Dachua is in the past, but the sad truth is that the present has just as terrible atrocities. Darfur, Congo, Sri Lanka, Burma, Tibet - everywhere, human beings are committing atrocities in the same way they were in Nazi Germany. Some say its part of human nature – I vehemently disagree. I believe its a curse of society. But that begs the question then – are we all capable of committing crimes against our fellow human beings in the right situation?

I told my best friend, William, my fears. We all like to think that we are better than those who committed these atrocities, but in reality, how can we know? It’s easy to blame society – how can one fix it?

“Is our society broken? How can we make change?” I asked him.

“We can force change,” he told me, “change has to come from within. We have to be patient.”

He told me a quote – one that has really helped change my life. It is from Jiddu Krishnamurthy. “To be well adapted to a sick society is not a mark of good health.”

–

I used to believe that power was the way to change the world. That you had to make it to the top to make a difference. Yet within that was an obvious fallacy, one that, today, has led me away from politics as a career. That to get to the top, to those positions of power, you often have to sacrifice many of your values.

The sad thing is, that it is, in the end, nearly impossible to get to the top, because the top is defined by your present situation. It is un-achievable. Moreover, by sacrificing your values now, you are making it harder to enact change when you can. It’s a vicious cycle, a symptom of a society in which consumerism, environmental destruction, human rights violations, are all accepted as part of daily life.

That is a sick society.

Change can only come from within us. Change has to be in every action we take. If society is sick, then we much work to make it healthy. The power is within us in each and every action that we take.

You can push people – as I often did, trying to force change, or you can do what I’m trying to learn how to do – plant a seed and let it sprout. Lead by example, not by force, and help when you can, but also be patient. Its something that is far easier said than done.

I wasn’t an easy friend – I know. I used to push people towards what I saw as their potential, sometimes with anger, always with the feeling that, inside, it was well-intentioned. There was nothing I hated seeing more than lost potential.

There was also a selfish side. I wanted to believe that anyone who met me, and especially, anyone who was friends with me, would be a better person for it. If I couldn’t even inspire my friends to be better people and realize their potential, how could I change the world?

–

It’s been a retrospective few weeks. A friend from high school, passed away recently. Though we were never good friends, I still felt sad. My memories with him were mostly positive. Is there anything I could have done to save him, years ago, when I still had a chance?

I want, today, to be a better friend. To focus on what I can control, and to be there for those when they need me. I want to plant seeds – small ideas, hopes, potential – and then let those I meet do what they can to realize their potential. I can’t change the past – and some of those friend whom I pushed too hard, friendships I destroyed, will never be repaired. But I can change myself now, and be a better friend to those around me today.

Instead of lamenting about the past, I will focus on the future. Changing the world.

This post is partly inspired by him, but also encompasses many other thoughts in my mind the past several weeks.

Uncertainty is the only constant in life. Reality is a function of perception, locked into a single place in time, so incredibly constraining, and the only way to break out of that is through introspection, looking within yourself. That has been my life ever since my summer in Asia, when I was forced to look within. I felt abandoned by some of my closest friends – but in that light, I saw what it means to care for someone.

Living without regrets means always being the person you want to be to those you love – and often, to those you don’t. It doesn’t mean living for experiences, in fear of regretting what you did not do for yourself. The only regrets that matter are what you did not do for other people – because there is nothing more important in life than people.

That is what I’m trying to do now.

This means family, but also it means everyone. I just finished reading Somaly Mam’s “The Road of Lost Innocence,” about her life, being forced into prostitution in Cambodia. I’ve been to Cambodia, but I had little awareness of what was happening there – the rampant slavery, human trafficking going on throughout SE Asia.

In the future, I want to be more aware of the reality around me, to be connected to humanity.

If I can be there for those around me, and those I care about, no matter where I am, then I can live the life I want to live – without any regrets.

Had I not been there, Jakarta would still have gone on, and the city wouldn’t have noticed. It was a one-way path – the city and country making a deep, intractable impression on me, but me leaving little impression on Jakarta.

It was a strong feeling throughout the summer. Jakarta was, by far, the most hectic city I’ve ever lived in, even more than NYC. Add in the fact that I barely spoke the language, I really felt oblivious. Like the city was always churning, moving, and I was just observing it from the shadows.

That’s not to say I was passive while there. I learned some Bahasa Indonesia, met several Couchsurfers, visited numerous Kehati sites, and explored the city. One of my favorite projects was forming a writing group through Couchsurfing. We met at my favorite local cafe, Anomali Kemang, which has coffee that is unparalleled in NYC. Every week for nearly two months, I met with a varying group of 3-8 other Couchsurfers, mostly Indonesian but we did have one Filipina regular, and wrote together.

However, the group seemed to have sputtering motivation, with small turnouts near the end. No one volunteered to keep it going. As I left Jakarta, I forgot about the group, and assumed that it had faded into oblivion…

–

Hence, my surprise when my Indonesian friend Felisia told me this in an email.

btw do you know that your writings meetups is being held again?
…
you’re a starter of something here hehe…

I couldn’t believe, and quickly went to the Jakarta CS group boards. It was true! The longest thread was for the continuation of the writing group I’d started back in June! In the first post -

Would like say Hi first to Nithin, where ever you are right now.
Thanks for hooking me up with Writers Club :)

Inez, who only came only once, is organizing the meetup. It’s turned into something greater than I could have imagined – with its own blog (Peoplesliceoflice), weekly themes, prizes, contests and rotating locations.

It turned out that I was wrong. Completely wrong. I didn’t just sit in the shadows of Jakarta, I did do something there that is lasting. A seed had been planted. My presence made a difference to some people there, maybe only a little, but some, just as they made a great influence on me.

The world works in mysterious ways. Maybe I was meant to be in Jakarta this summer for a reason.

Jakarta – keep on writing! I hope to make a meetup again, someday, someday.

The meeting was at Crossroads Cafe, near the Embarcadero. Immediately upon entering, I was astounded. It was a wonderful place, spacious, with a small bookstore, and an incredibly large, and cheap menu. I saw the red printed sign to the right, and introduced myself. It was a fairly new meetup, having only been going on for a few weeks.

It was the first writing meetup that connected with me – focusing specifically on my struggle, sitting down and writing. The concept is simple yet effective – we meetup at various cafes, introduce ourselves, then write silently, continuously, for an hour, on whatever project we want. After an hour, we talk, though there is no pressure to share or critique. That first day, I wrote in my journal, but from then on, I focused on my book, one I’d been struggling to finish.

It is incredibly effective. In those one hour sessions, I’d get two or three times the amount of writing done as a single hour on my own. It was positive psychology, group pressure helping all of get accomplished something far greater than we could have on our own. Shut up and Write helped me overcome my greatest barrier – building discipline. In those hourly meetups, I finished my book about my around the world trip.

When I moved to New York, I started the first chapter of Shut up and Write outside of the Bay Area, with my weekly meetup now having become four meetups organized by different folks in New York City. It’s a small, yet strong start. If you’re in NY, come!

Writing doesn’t have to be a solitary exercize – together, we can get more accomplished on our own projects then together.

It’s taken me three years to realize that it was fate, or luck, that night in San Francisco. Finding that meetup, going, and becoming part of the writing community, has changed me in ways I’m only beginning to understand. I’m finally realizing my dream of making writing a part of my life, no matter where I am. Now, in NY, I hope to spread to others what Rennie and the SF SU&W organizers did for me.

Spreading inspiration – is there any better way to make change?

After a year, I’ve synthesized it down. What it is that I don’t like about New York. My normal caveat, of course, that this only applies to me. My dislike of NY doesn’t mean you have to dislike it to. Strangely, I’ve found many New Yorkers can’t take this – my dislike of NY seems to drive them crazier.

Anyway, why I dislike New York. It’s not the difficult of living here…though cubersome and overly complicated.

It’s not the lack of nature.

It’s not the congestion

It’s when people tell me this.

“That’s just how New York it.”

or

“You’ll come to love the chaos.” (or disorganization, attitude, etc)

In those statements is, hidden within, is something a little more sinister. New York City is big, cumbersome, bureaucratic, inefficient, and it can’t be changed. We have to love it for what it is.

In San Francisco, people are always actively working to make the city better – laws are passed to make Government more efficient (at attempts to) and any threat to local cultural events are taken seriously. Protests are a part of life. People love SF and can complain about it, and then work to make it better. Whether they succeed or not is another question, but at least they try. There, people see the city for what it is a – a collection of people who can, together, make the city great.

New Yorkers speak about their community, about the solidarity, but I rarely see it. Here, the city is the living being, and we are just part of it.

It’s a minor attitude difference, but I think its at the root of what I don’t like about NYC. I’m to accept that shitty housing market, the inefficiencies, the dirtiness, as part of what makes NY great. Why?

Now, I’m still enjoying my time here – and enjoy a lot of things about the city, and love Columbia as a place of learning. But I want to live in place where people are empowered, where people treat each other with respect, and where we are the city. That, above all, is why I won’t be staying here.

So…where will I go?