Author: Mugdha

Leaps and Bounds

Last summer, when my family and I visited my dad’s hometown in Goa, India, we saw a local dance form called samayi nrutya: literally, diya dance. The dancers, a dozen or so women between the ages of 25 and 45, each balanced a samayi, a foot-long, oil-lit diya, on their heads. In the background, a percussionist played a steady beat and a singer sang the same melodic phrase over and over as the dancers moved, synchronized and sure, creating elaborate acrobatic formations without ever letting the diyas on their heads falter. I watched, mesmerized. Graceful, strong, and feminine, the dancers captivated our small audience.

I am no stranger to dance. I remember, growing up, walking with my mom to a kathak (another Indian classical dance form) class twice a week for almost five years when we lived in Pune. But I also remember quitting it when we moved to the US and practically never dancing again as I sank deeper into the negative image I had of myself as a skinny, lanky tween. I was no stranger to dance, but I was no dancer, either.

Watching these older women, who had no doubt looked at least somewhat similar to me when they were in their early teens, be so naturally beautiful was incredible to me. The diversity in their years seemed to disappear as they molded their bodies to form stepping stones for the others or a namaste as they became the peak of a pyramid; they were ageless. In wordless communication with each other, they crafted each choreographed formation with ease, each woman an essential part of the final shape. And to do it all with a tall samayi on their heads! Dressed in simple, moveable sarees, with the flowing fabric tucked firmly into the waistband and their hair slicked back into a bun, they could have well been dressed for a day of running errands or keeping shop. But instead, there they were on stage. Samayi nrutya showcased these ordinary women being extraordinary, a pattern that I had heard of but now witnessed newly.

My after-school evenings that were once occupied with kathak eventually found new hobbies as I grew older, and while I continued being active, I never picked up dancing again. It was simply way too far out of my comfort zone. In my late teens now, I am doing much better than I was just a few years ago, and while I wouldn’t say that watching the samayi nrutya was the entire or even a significant part of that journey, it did help me realize the beauty that lies in normalcy.

I am taking a dance class for the first time this year after quitting ages ago. My intro-level modern contemporary class is miles away from Indian classical dance forms, yet amidst the cultural, social, and physical differences, I am reminded of the familiar freedom of dance: freedom to move, to be your full physical self, and thus, freedom to be beautiful. I saw it in the samayi nrutya, and I heard it in kathak when I tied ghungroo, small brass bells weaved on a jute rope, to my ankles and stamped my feet with power and intention against the stone floors. And I feel it in my studio now as my instructor tells us to embody an insect and crawl across the studio and I look so crazy but so much like myself.

Dancing is a privilege, but being a dancer is a fundamental; this is my reckoning. I am a dancer, made to move and be beautiful even when I am just existing.

Warming Up

As the weather gets colder, a new ingredient dots the surface of my mom’s parathe: til, or white sesame seeds, that lure me into the kitchen with their subtly nutty aroma. A staple in our household during wintertime, til are, as my mom likes to remind me often, ushna or a “heaty” food; they warm you up from the inside, preparing your body for the winter.

In ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’, the author Robin Wall Kimmerer writes, “[Seeds] are designed to be food for winter… They are safety for hard times, the embryo of survival.” While Kimmerer writes about pecans, I think about til; two vastly different types of seeds, yet pecans and til occupy a similar, familiar space in the lives of people across cultures and languages. To me, til are the markers of change and symbols of sustenance, powerhouses during the winter. They teach me to stay resilient in the face of metaphorical bad weather, a combination of patience and strength that only a seed can muster, and to have faith in the cycle of seasons. Although today’s metropolitan markets make them available whenever and wherever I want, til shine during the winter.

When my mom slides a fresh paratha onto my plate, the glossy white til seem to whisper, “Spring will come,” and thus I eat. Spring will come, colorful and chaotic, the promise of a good winter.

Table For One

My dorm’s laundry room has twenty-something washers and dryers, out of which at least half are running at any given time. It’s a busy place, each machine clamoring as inhabitants of the building scour the rows for an empty unit to throw their load into. The lint traps in the dryers are a dark, ashy gray: the result of years of being cleaned a lot less often than they are used. Lone socks and forgotten underwear make a pile near the sink, above which a couple of “Good Laundry Practice” posters are taped to the wall. And over it all, the chemically sweet smell of detergent hangs heavy in the room.

In the middle of this chaos, however, I find solace.

What was left out from the overwhelmingly extroverted narrative of college life (all those times I was told that college was where I was going to find my best friends for life, my soulmate, and make unforgettable memories) was just how much time I was going to spend alone. Just by myself.

“But that’s not the ideal college experience, right?” is a question I asked myself far too often after I moved into my dorm two months ago, and the answer to that is that it probably isn’t. But the truth is that the day-to-day reality of my social life is much less exciting than the condensed versions of the experience I have heard from others. While I do spend a lot of time going out with friends and even just studying in the library with them, there’s an equal, if not more, amount of time I spend alone, regardless of voluntarily or because of my schedule. This solitary side of new-found independence is something I shy away from; when walking to class, I feel the urge to check my phone incessantly, just to look busy; when grabbing a quick lunch at the dining hall, to pull out my laptop and glaze over emails and to-do’s mindlessly, just because I am terrified of being viewed as a loner.

In places like my dorm’s laundry room, I find solace to be alone: not looking at my phone, not working, and of course, not with anyone. The timed washing and drying cycles ensure the coming and going of laundry-doers, but never the staying for long enough to notice me linger just an extra minute in the steady hum of the machines.

Will I ever be comfortable being alone in public anywhere else? Maybe on the bus and maybe when I wait for the walk sign to turn on before I cross the street; I just don’t know. But in the meanwhile I hope I internalize that it’s OK to be alone. It always has been.

Hair

The plan was to get my hair cut in my half-hometown of Pune, India, partly because it was a lot cheaper than in the US, but also because we knew a lady there that ran a small women’s salon my mom and I used to go to when we lived there. It was all part of my scheme to completely reinvent myself before college; my hair, specifically, as a much-needed closure to the almost three pandemic years of my mom and I sitting on our bathroom floor every couple months, snipping away at split-ends and following Brad Mondo’s curtain bangs YouTube tutorial. It would signify the end of an era, and that it did. But never would I have thought it would challenge my entire identity.

Perched on the salon chair, a big apron tucked into my collar to save my clothes from mess, I asked for layers; a timeless style, it wouldn’t stray too far away from the hair I had grown used to. Hair, that I blow-dried straight every time after I washed it in an attempt to make it silky like the blonds’ and brunettes’ around me, smooth like theirs was naturally. My own natural hair was wavier than theirs, of course, but existing as an Indian girl in a predominantly white high school had its effects. Overtime, my “straight hair” routine became normal. Whatever I had to do to blend in was just the price I had to pay to be what I considered “normal”.

Most second-gen immigrant stories and experiences I had read talked negatively about assimilation into American culture, but being an American that had lived half her life in her country of origin, I thought I would be immune to the curse; that I knew what it meant to be truly Indian and American and thus, could be my authentic self anywhere. But alas, assimilation got me. In fact, it got me so good that it forced me to reject my own hair without ever feeling like in doing so I was just playing into its tactics; that even when my parents, teachers, and friends encouraged diversity and being myself, it was beauty standards that ultimately defined how I presented myself to the world around me. How I felt about how I looked wasn’t my own opinion but rather the silent, deadly one of external criteria that didn’t acknowledge my hair type, or the color of my skin or my name or the countless other factors that define who I am.

Back in the salon, layers on my just-past-shoulder length hair turned into something of a wolf cut, edgy and fresh with bangs that looked much better than my pandemic DIY ones. But the look also revealed the curls I had so long repressed. With much of the weight of my thick hair taken off, what remained was soft locks that sat easily around my neck, and despite their newness, they looked familiar. They looked very much like my parents’ and brother’s, and a little like that of the lady cutting my hair, and even a little like that of the other Indians that surrounded me when I visited India every year. But most of all, they looked like they were mine.

I ran my hand through my hair, tousling the curls, but they bounced and settled right back onto my shoulders.

Right back onto my shoulders, like they had been there all along.

Untitled #5

I could watch cats groom each other all day long.
Sandpaper tongues,
Small, pink,
Appearing fast
And disappearing faster.
With utmost care and precision,
From tiny toe beans to full, warm bellies,
Licked clean.

And then suddenly,
Friendly rivalry;
They go for the throat.
A nip of fur,
A quick paw,
And just as suddenly,
Back to grooming.

Licked clean,
And then, sleep.

“Is this graded?”

Reading the syllabus for each of your classes is one of those first day of school items that you do and then forget for the rest of the year. This year, however, the syllabus, and more specifically the new grading system, had everyone talking.

My school recently made a quiet but impactful change in how students were assessed- homework would no longer count towards our final grades, and if it did, it would be only a small fraction of them. Our grades would depend in majority on quizzes, tests, and final exams. This new, apparently more equitable way to assess students bought about many opinions. So far, after two weeks of in-person school and talking to many different people, I’ve heard both extremes of those opinions and also found some similar to my own. I don’t know what to expect, and I don’t know if it’s going to benefit me. But I do trust my school and teachers to take the right decisions, and even if they don’t mean something to me directly, they might to others and I respect that.

I wanted to analyze my own thoughts about the grading system. How can schools get a proper understanding of what a student knows? Every child is unique and growing during these crucial years of school, and everyone learns in different ways. Personally, I think that my school’s new plan is a step in the right direction because it allows students to learn however they want and only show it to their teachers on tests. Another, bigger reason for my support is that tests assess students on one crucial feature: accuracy. While completion-based grading is an incentive to do whatever is assigned, accuracy-based grading adds an aspect of reality (“real life” as we’ve been told so often) to school and the learning experience. In the actual world, if you do something wrong there are consequences. Tests represent that in a much lighter way- if you do something wrong, you only get a bad grade.

Some people that I’ve talked to do think that tests put extra pressure on students due to their time constraint, grading, and the individual student’s desire (and sometimes necessity) to do well, and I agree with that. Without homework, a cushion for most students’ final grades, academics are going to be harder. And although homework is essentially optional now, many teachers still do assign it and expect it to be done.

Could smart grading soon follow smart whiteboards into classrooms? Hopefully.

Cereal

“What’s your favorite breakfast cereal?” my teacher asks through the screen with a wide smile, clearly proud of herself for the out-of-the-box attendance question. It’s a nice effort, to be fair, to try to engage everyone in the “classroom”, but the seemingly simple issue hits too many memories in my mind and somehow I’m no longer trying to find an answer for it.

~ ~ ~

When my parents immigrated to a completely foreign land, which later became my birthplace, over 20 years ago the only cereal they knew was light, popped grains of rice, sorghum, or millet, made in huge brick ovens and sold in kilograms back in their home country. It was far from the aisles of colorful cereal boxes that they were seeing then, miles away in every way from everything they had ever known.

~ ~ ~

“Are you going to finish it?” my parents ask me carefully, eyeing the cereal box in my hand (differently colored than what they usually buy) with suspicion as we stand in the grocery store. Somewhere inside of me it’s like a switch turned off; I examine the box myself, my eyes skimming over the list of ingredients, the colors, the “artificial flavorings added”; the grinning, predatory mascot that seems to scream to me, “DON’T LISTEN TO THEM.”

“No,” I say, putting the box back in its place among other boxes.

~ ~ ~

The teacher calls on me. “What’s your favorite breakfast cereal?” she asks again.

“We don’t really eat breakfast cereal,” I reply, thinking of huge brick ovens and the popped rice they make.

Red Line

Under my name, a red line. I stop typing, take my hands off my laptop entirely. In the background my teacher continues to explain what microaggressions are.

Suddenly I want to close the document I’m working on. ‘X’ out of all the tabs I have open, even out of the one where the teacher that can’t pronounce my name teaches what I want to learn about.

But I don’t. I right-click on my red-underlined name-

‘Add to dictionary.’