…a member of M.I.A.’s camp, speaking Sunday night from the Super Bowl host city of Indianapolis, said M.I.A. was struck with “a case of adrenaline.” “She wasn’t thinking,” said the source, who requested anonymity but was with the artist at Lucas Oil Stadium. “It wasn’t any kind of statement. She was caught in the moment and she’s incredibly sorry.” [link]

So, it wasn’t a political statement – she was caught in the moment. She has yet to issue an actual apology. The song itself, as I mentioned before, is pretty lame and a brown middle finger was the highlight of that tune. The full SuperBowl halftime show was, on the other hand, pretty awe inducing.

As for M.I.A. and her brown finger. Well, everyone is stumbling to point the blame finger at someone else.

NBC has apologized for airing footage of M.I.A. flipping off the cameras while delivering the line “I don’t give a shit” during Madonna‘s Super Bowl halftime show. “The NFL hired the talent and produced the halftime show,” NBC said in a statement to the Hollywood Reporter. “Our system was late to obscure the inappropriate gesture and we apologize to our viewers.”

The NFL have also issued an apology for the incident, but placed the blame on NBC’s censors. “There was a failure in NBC’s delay system,” spokesman Brian McCarthy said in a statement. “The obscene gesture in the performance was completely inappropriate, very disappointing, and we apologize to our fans.” [link]

How bad was it? Compared to Janet Jackson’s flash or the controversial kiss between Madonna and Brittany Spears, I’d say pretty insignificant. And compared to the misogynistic SuperBowl commercials, I’d say it was refreshing to have M.I.A.’s rebellious voice (finger?) heard (seen?). I like what Sasha had to say about it:

Fine, it may not be legal to flip the bird on television, but that’s simply a remnant of the fifties we haven’t shaken. Unless somebody was handing out Xanax with the foam fingers, Lucas Oil Stadium was ringing with the music of profanities last night. More to the point, television viewers were submitted to ad after ad that likened women—negatively—to sofas, cars, and candy. Mr. Winter didn’t have anything to say about that, so I’d like to raise both of my middle fingers to him and anyone who thinks profanity is somehow more harmful to our children than images of violence and misogyny. [link]

M.I.A. Flipping the Camera and Back Up Dancers with Their Crotches Up

Aziz Ansari pointed me to the fact that it’s that time of the year again. The Scripps National Spelling Bee is counting down to the last person standing, and as of now there’s a large contingent of brown kids in the final rounds. Here are the championship finalists.

Update: Congratulations Sukanya Roy.

Cringe-worthy, no doubt, this short video reflects an inter-racial sub group struggle in self-identity versus external community identity monikers. In other words, the use of the word “nigger”. I thought the video was smart in that their use of the word “ninja” as replacement word and Asians as the replacement community really shifted the perception of the use of the “N word.” Plus, the video was hella funny.

What I loved most is when a brown kid saunters up on the basketball court to a group of Asian dudes and says, “What’s up my Ninjas!” The guys look like they are confused as to whether to accept him or not. But after a quick look to each other, they give him the bro-man hug and you hear “It counts.” As a South Asian, he may not be accepted immediately, but he can be accepted into the “in” group since South Asia is kind of Asian, if you stopped to think about it. Marginalized, a little bit, he can be accepted in the end. It was a simple interaction, but reflective so much of society’s deeper of inter-racial issues I’ve seen in the Desi meets East Asian communities.

As an activist in the Asian American and Pacific Islander movement, this attitude is something I see often, though a lot less brash and satirical as seen in the video. The South Asian community is often accepted into these AAPI space as an after thought, or even worse, as a token.Sure the AAPI “community” is a political term, just the way most racial terms are political constructs. But it seems that in my personal experience in these spaces, South Asians are always fighting for a place at the AAPI table, or added as an afterthought. People accept South Asians as “Asians” only when it is convenient, not because they necessarily see that Asia is a really big continent reflecting a variety of cultures and ethnicity.

This video reminded me of a conversation I had last week. I was talking with a friend about the term “The Other Asian” which Glee fans may recognize. It’s used in an episode to describe one of the silent East Asian football players on Glee. Basically, the character is an East Asian silent diversity place holder on the Glee cast. My friend had asked me if South Asians would identity with the term “Other Asian.” I told him that though there has been self-identity “naming” changes in the past few years to our community, it was hard enough for Desis to warm up to the label of “South Asian” and that the term “Other Asian” would just be too far removed.

I am obviously over-analyzing this really funny and nuanced video. I could have left it at that. But it would be remiss to post this video and not to open up the discussion to a dialogue we often debate here on the Sepia Mutiny threads – Are South Asians really a part of the Asian American space or is it just a convenient political construct?

Also, while on the topic, though it may be “counted” when a Desi uses the term “Ninja” but what about when a Desi uses the term “Nigger”? Every time I hear it in a Desi sung rap song, it makes me cringe, just the way I cringe when non-Desi friends of mine say to me, “Desi, please.” It just ain’t right. An example…

The above song is by Bohemia “the Punjabi rapper” featuring RD. And his lyrics? An excerpt:

See I don’t smoke, but I’ll smoke a Nigga. I’m a cold hearted dude, I’ll choke a trigga. You my main target, bull’s eye bitch. I bet I leave ya eye-patched like a pirate.

Desi, puuuuuuuuhleez.

For a little background on Hindi literature in the 20th century, you might start with Wikipedia; it’s not bad. The New Poetry movement came out of a general flowering of Hindi poetry from the early 20th century, a style of poetry known as Chhayavad (Shadowism). Mahadevi Verma is one of the best known writers in this style; another notable figure is Harivansh Rai Bachchan, Amitabh Bachchan’s father (and actually quite a good poet).

For me, the Chhayavad poetry sounds a little too pretty (“precious,” as they say in Creative Writing class), though I must admit that part of the problem is that I simply don’t have the Hindi vocabulary to be able to keep up with the language the Chhayavad poets tend to use. I prefer what came after, especially the New Poetry movement. The “New Poetry” style roughly resembles the modernism of T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Hilda Doolittle in English literature. The language is stripped down and conversational, rather than lyrical. Some poets, like Kedarnath Singh, focus intently on conveying, with a kind of crystalline minimalism, pure images. Others are somewhat more conventional.

Below the fold, I’ll give some examples of a few favorite poems from the “New Poetry” movement, with several poems in both transliterated Hindi and English. [UPDATE: Look in the comments for three poems directly in Devanagari] My source today is mainly Lucy Rosenstein’s “New Poetry in Hindi”, which is available on Amazon for interested readers. (The nice thing about this volume is Rosenstein’s choice to print both the Hindi originals as well as her translations.)

In her introduction, Rosenstein describes how modern poetry in Hindi emerged after 1900, with Mahavirprasad Dwiwedi’s promotion of poetry in Khari Boli Hindi (earlier, poetry had mainly been written in Braj Bhasha). There was an early spurt of nationalist poetry, but, partially under the influence of English Romantic poetry (Wordsworth and Shelley), a movement calling itself “Chhayavad” emerged in the 1920s. Here is an example of a few lines in the Chhayavad style, from Sumitranandan Pant’s Almore ka vasant (Almora Spring):

Vidrum ou, markat kee chhaya,
Sone chaandee ka sooryatap;
Him parisal kee reshmee vaayu,
Shat ratnachhay kharg chitrit nabh!

Coral and emerald shade
sun’s heat first gold then silver;
snow mountain scent on silken breezes,
a hundred jeweled brids painting the sky
(Translated David Rubin)

It may be that my own limited Hindi renders poems like this somewhat inaccessible, at least in the original. More generally, operating from the translation, I put poems like this under “sounds pretty, but…” (That’s my personal taste. I have friends who love writers like Pant and Mahadevi.)

After the Chhayavad movement, the dominant stream in Hindi poetry seemed to split into two in the 1930s, with Progressives in one camp (Pragativad), and Experimentalists in the other (Prayogvad).

Progressive Poetry was part of a major movement in Indian literature that began in the 1930s. This movement is usually called the Progressive Writers Movement, and it had major literary communities in fiction, drama, as well as poetry; it also had offshoots in many different South Asian languages (earlier I have written about some Urdu writers loosely affiliated with the Progressive Writers, Sa’adat Hasan Manto, and Ismat Chughtai). As the name indicates, this was writing largely motivated by a desire to make a political intervention. A fair amount of the writing was anti-colonial, and much of it was oriented to social and economic reforms within Indian society.

Just after the Progressive trend in poetry began in the 1930s, a much smaller group of Hindi writers initiated a new, experimentalist style. Much of this writing avoided big political themes in favor of more abstract meditations. (Importantly, many of the writers in this movement overlapped with the Progressive Writers, and some were card-carrying political activists (i.e., communists). They simply didn’t bring themes from the political world into their writing.

Initially the movement was spearheaded by Agyeya (also sometimes spelled Ajneya in English; his real name was Sacchidananda Hirananda Vatsayan), beginning with an anthology called Tar Saptak, in 1943.

Agyeya (whose pen-name literally means “Unknowable”) is a really interesting character. He was educated at home initially, as his father didn’t believe in formal schooling, though he did go on to get a Bachelors of Science at a British college. He also started an M.A. in English, but didn’t finish, after he got involved in the independence movement. According to Rosenstein, Agyeya spent three years in jail (1931-1934), which proved decisive in terms of his development as a poet. He was a mass of contradictions – widely recognized as an activist and political leader, Agyeya was also deeply solitary in some ways. Raised as a traditional Brahmin, he also exemplified modernism in his intellectual and literary output.

Here is an example of Agyeya’s poetry, in the Experimental (“New Poetry”) style:

Chup-Chap

Chup-Chap Chup-Chap
Jharne ka svar
Ham mei bhar jay,
Chup Chap Chup Chap
Sharad kee chaandnee
Jheel kee lahro par tir aay,

Chup-chap chup-chap
Jeevan kaa rahsya
Jo kahaa na jay, hamaaree
THahree aankho me gaharaay,
Chup chap chup chap
Ham pulkit viraad me Dubei
Par viraad hm mei mil jay

Chup Chap Chup Cha … ap

Quietly

Quietly
May the murmur of water falling
Fill us,

Quietly
May the autumn moon
Float on the ripples of the lake,

Quietly
May life’s unspoken mystery
Deepen in our still eyes,

Quietly
May we, ecstatic, be immersed in the expanse
Yet find it in ourselves

Quiet … ly …
(translated by Lucy Rosenstein)

Another favorite New Poetry writer is Raghuvir Sahay, who came of age a generation after Agyeya.

Here is an example of a Raghuvir Sahay poem I really like:

Aaj Phir

Aaj phir shuroo jeevan.
Aaj meine eik chhoTee-see saral-see kavitaa paDee.
Aaj meine sooraj ko Dubte der tak dekhaa.
Aaj meine sheetal jal se jee bhar snan kiya.
Aaj eik chhoTee-see bachchee aayee, kilak mere kanDhe chaDee
Aaj meine aadi se ant tak eik poora gaan kiya.
Aaj jeevan phir shuroo huaa.

Today Anew
Today life started anew.
Today I read a short, simple poem.
Today I watched the sun set for a long time.
Today I bathed to my heart’s content in cool water.
Today a little girl came and shouting with delight climbed onto my shoulders.
Today I sang a whole song, from beginning to end.
Life started anew today.
(Translated Lucy Rosenstein)

Another poem in Rosenstein’s collection that clicked with me is by Shakunt Mathur, one of the leading female lights of the Experimental/New Poetry movement.

For now, I’ll just post Rosenstein’s English translation of a Mathur poem:

You should be beautiful, the house should be beautiful

When I return home tired you should be beautiful, the house should be beautiful
Even if all day sweat poured
However many clothes you sewed
Even if the child doesn’t yield
And the potato is half-unpeeled

When I return home tired you should be beautiful, the house should be beautiful
All storms in the house should be stilled
You should look at me with eyes filled
Without flowers in your hair,
Showy clothes, flirtatious air

When I return home tired you should be beautiful, the house should be beautiful
Reclining on the sofa,
You should be reading a foreign journal
The house should shine like crystal
My steps’ sound should startle you

Don’t write poetry, beauty, I am enough, you are loved
When I return home tired you should be beautiful, the house should be beautiful.

(I can post the Hindi if there is interest.)

Clearly a feminist sensibility! Incidentally, in Hindi some of the lines rhyme, which Rosenstein reproduces in her translation. The language is simple but elegant and the picture she’s painting seems true – and this combination is what I like most about the “New Poetry.”

Finally, here is Vinay Dharwadker’s translation of Kedarnath Singh’s “On Reading a Love Poem”. This poem isn’t included in Rosenstein’s volume, though several other wonderful Kedarnath Singh poems are in her collection.

Kedarnath Singh (b. 1934): ON READING A LOVE POEM

When I’d read that long love poem
I closed the book and asked —
Where are the ducks?

I was surprised that they were nowhere
even far into the distance

It was in the third line of the poem
or perhaps the fifth
that I first felt
there might be ducks here somewhere

I’d heard the flap flap of their wings
but that may have been my illusion

I don’t know for how long
that woman
had been standing in the twelfth line
waiting for a bus

The poem was completely silent
about where she wanted to go
only a little sunshine
sifted from the seventeenth floor
was falling on her shoulders

The woman was happy
at least there was nothing in her face to suggest
that by the time she reached the twenty-first line
she’d disappear completely
like every other woman

There were _sakhu trees
standing where the next line began
the trees were spreading
a strange dread through the poem

Every line that came next
was a deep disturbing fear and doubt
about every subsequent line
If only I’d remembered–
it was in the nineteenth line
that the woman was slicing potatoes
She was slicing
large round brown potatoes
inside the poem
and the poem was becoming
more and more silent
more solid

I think it was the smell
of freshly chopped vegetables
that kept the woman alive
for the next several lines

By the time I got to the twenty-second line
I felt that the poem was changing its location
like a speeding bullet
the poem had whizzed over the woman’s shoulder
towards the sakhu trees

There were no lines after that
there were no more words in the poem
there was only the woman
there were only
her shoulders her back
her voice–
there was only the woman
standing whole outside the poem now
and breaking it to pieces

(translated by Vinay Dharwadker) [SOURCE]

I hope you enjoyed at least some of those poems.

Professional copywriting service is the way to feel customers confident about their business and switching it to the higher side by the words. So those who really want to stand out different and innovative among all others choose us or effective and strong web presence.

When a potential customer gone through your writing, you have just a seconds to prove you’re self by catching their attention. Though the literature has same fonts, color and style, it should be eye catchy. They should be attracted and convinced them to stay to read what you have to say. Along with the best service marketing tool is essential to target the perfect mass and capture the business.

Choosing a professional copywriting service can really make all the difference on the business world. It takes a special kind of skill and experience to create a winning writing, whether it is an online presence, articles, marketing campaign, or any other type of collateral. In fact, good copywriting is critical to the success of your business.

Here at our team, that is what we do. Our professional writers dedicated to providing you authenticated, informative and heart winning copies that will attract the potential customers. They just hypnotized the customers in favor of yours by the ornamental words. [Link]

So what are you waiting for? Switch it to the higher side.

And while you’re at it, please tell these guys that they’re spoiling it for all the Indians who communicate well in Engish and are trying to market their services worldwide, as they should. (There you go, Kerala Cookies.)

Here is what the new state will look like

I have known of agitations for a separate Telangana state for awhile, though I must admit I do not know the history in depth, and would be glad to be enlightened by readers who know the region better than I do. However, Wikipedia does offer a few helpful background facts. First, the region that will become Telangana was, during British colonialism, part of the Princely State of Hyderabad, and was only formally merged into Andhra in 1956 — and even then, the merger was controversially imposed by the central government. The agitations for a separate state have been going on for at least 40 years; in 1969, 400 people were killed in agitations for a separate state of Telangana.

I had earlier thought that language was a factor in the demands for Telangana, but in fact language is not mentioned by supporters of this movement, since Telugu is spoken in the other half of Andhra as well. Rather, the focus seems to be on access to irrigation and economic opportunity (see this interview). Are there other factors that people know of?

The news has resulted in the mass resignation of Congress Party-allied MLAs in the other part of Andhra Pradesh, suggesting that the Central Government may not be able to easily sustain its promise to create Telangana without making lots of new promises to the other half of the state. That, or we might see one of those major regional political realignments in Indian politics that can cause seemingly strong governments to fall. (Incidentally, the BJP had promised to create a Telangana state when it was in power, but was unable to do so. However, during the BJP’s five years in power it did create three new states in northern India.)

The news is also expected to give a new boost to other statehood agitation movements in other parts of India; Gorkhaland is one that is often mentioned.

Do you support the creation of Telangana? Isn’t it possible that acceding to these statehood movements in India might lead to a further weakening of an already weak central government? Also, do you think these movements might feed a sense of monoculturalist ‘separateness’ that could make the region a less inviting place for people from different ethno-linguistic backgrounds who happen to live there?

Watching “Fighting Dirty in Scrabble: How To Beat Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere, and At Any Cost” will take only five minutes of your life! Your living room competition will never be the same! (This is an important note: these are not your Stefan Fatsis-level tips; these are for people who, like Shah, “love to play Scrabble and really, really hate losing.”)

What won’t he do? No cheating, no stealing tiles–but I’ve gotta laugh when I hear Shah talk about aggressively making up words. I haven’t forgotten that a certain British relative of mine made up T-R-A-X a few years ago when I wasn’t looking. (“It means… You know. Trax,” she said when I looked again.)

I will admit, I am part of the Scrabble Rabble. With the demise of Scrabulous, I took to Scrabble Beta over Lexulous, and I play “live” whenever time permits. (As fate would have it, this week I am teaching Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale to my contemporary political fiction class at the University of Michigan. Scrabble even makes a fateful appearance in that novel! It’s a good board game for some literary analysis.)

Now, how much of what Shah says is applicable beyond the board? I tremble in fear.

Follow Shah on Twitter

Previous word nerd coverage here.

Something about the article in the Times bugged me, starting with the following passage:

One store owner insists in English that she is not actually speaking Hindi; when Ms. Rich explains, in Hindi, that she studied the language for some time in Rajasthan, he retorts, in English, “They don’t speak Hindi in Rajasthan.” (This happens not to be true.)

When Ms. Rich returned to New York from abroad, she spontaneously spoke Hindi to a friend of a friend. “He told me that when I spoke Hindi to him, it was like a body blow,” Ms. Rich said. “I think to Indians, sometimes it feels like I’m eavesdropping on a private conversation, like I’m breaking the fourth wall.” (link)

Wait, couldn’t it also be that the people Rich has been accosting, taxi drivers and convenience store clerks, might simply find this persistent American annoying, and have refused to speak Hindi with her mainly to make her go away? Lady, I’m sorry if your being in New York means your newly-acquired Hindi is going to start getting rusty. But I got a job to do, and that involves speaking English to patrons as I sell them stuff, not teaching you how to pronounce “lajawab” correctly. Next in line, please?

The question has to be asked: why does Katherine Russell Rich want to learn to speak Hindi? Is it to communicate with Hindi speakers while living in India? That would be a perfectly fine reason, indeed, an admirable one. But I suspect that sadly her real desire was to a) get paid for writing a book where she can talk all about her Hindi lessons and her impressions of Rajasthan, only to b) promptly move back to Manhattan, where she’ll irk Hindi speaking New Yorkers with her persistent demands that they speak Hindi with her?

Another annoyance in the article is the presumption that people refuse to acknowledge a white woman who speaks Hindi because we desis like to gossip about Americans in our secret language:

To some people from India, Ms. Rich learned, it is insulting to be addressed in anything other than English, a language of the privileged. And for some immigrants, domain over a language unfamiliar to most Americans must feel like one of the few riches they can claim. (link)

I really don’t know where the author of the article got this idea. (Why not ask an actual Indian, Hindi-speaker before making the speculative statement that “domain over a language unfamiliar to most Americans must feel like one of the few riches they can claim”?)

Finally, there is the obligatory dis on second-generation, “heritage” students who take Hindi classes at their universities:

“A lot of Indians who were born here or moved here when they were very small want to rediscover the language,” he said. (Ms. Rich said that she had overlapped with such students at New York University, and that many were already proficient in the language, less interested in their heritage and more interested in an easy A.) (link)

I’ll have you know, Ms. Rich, that most second gen, Indian-American college students do not take Hindi for this reason. I myself took Hindi at Cornell, and my professor gave me a “B” in intermediate Hindi (I deserved it, but it still smarts: certainly not an “easy A”).

In fact, most Indian-American college students actually take Hindi to meet, and flirt with, other Indian-American college students. So there.Katherine Russell Rich has also produced a short, promotional YouTube video related to the book and this New York Times article, which as of this writing has had all of 127 hits, even with a link from the New York Times:

If you weren’t annoyed by Katherine Russell Rich before, I suspect you may be by now.

Katherine Russell Rich also has an amusing, but not exactly wonderful, first-person story about making out with a New York City fireman in an elevator here.

Until now, there hasn’t been a good way to send email to friends and family in Hindi, my native language and their language of choice. That’s why I’m happy to announce a new feature for Gmail that lets you type email in Indian languages. If you’re in India, this feature is enabled by default. If not, you’ll need to turn it on in the “Language” section under Settings. Once enabled, just click the Indian languages icon and type words in the way they sound in English — Gmail will automatically convert them to their Indian language equivalent. [link]

Oh, if only there were some way for me to type Malayalam words the way they sound in English to me…and have GMail (or anything else, for that matter) automatically convert them to the correct Malayalam-in-English spelling equivalent.

For example, sometimes while I’m writing, blogging, tweeting or commenting on your Facebook crap, I feel the compulsive need to refer to the side dish I loved most as a small child: a fried, potato-y concoction which I’d spell “oorelkarunga merehkwerty or in a similarly butchered fashion.

Do you know how that shiz is actually spelled?

urulakizhangu mezhukkupuratti

Yeah (Thanks for the correction, sumithar!).

Unfortunately, when I’m trying to pronounce some of these words internally, so that I can sound them out slowly in order to spell them awkwardly, I hear them the way I did when I was four, which is neither helpful nor accurate. Just try and use a search engine to look for a correct spelling when Malayalam spellings are so wacky, and by wacky, I mean REALLY DIFFICULT.

For example, if you have Hindi selected, “namaste” will transliterate to “नमस्ते.” We currently support five Indian languages – Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam, and businesses and schools using Google Apps should see this in the coming weeks. [link]

My father always said it’s not lady-like to gloat, but after seeing four Dravidian languages on a list of five total, I’m gloatin’. Blame my traumatic college days, when almost everyone was of North Indian descent, and the only brown languages I heard were Punjabi or Hindi– even from the handful of other Southie kids! All that aside, this feature sounds pretty cool to me. Like GMail wasn’t already great enough…

I’ve never been to an inauguration, despite my decade in D.C. So, I set out on a special Presidential Inauguration bus route, via my special Presidential Inauguration Metro card, which took me to the security perimeter. From there I walked in frigid temperatures to get to the Presidential Inauguration Metro train which would, it turns out, NOT take me to my intended destination.

Due to crowd control concerns, WMATA quickly shut down two train stations while I was underground, in transit, and packed in so tightly with other would-be attendees, that I felt assaulted every time someone moved an elbow. Everyone was aware of a different station which had been closed earlier; they announced it was unexpectedly reopening just as we pulled away from it. Too late. At this point, they had closed the last three stations at which we could have exited and we were well past the stop we needed. I started to worry about logistics as previously cheery train inhabitants cursed under their breath.

I hastily exited the Metro the moment I was able to, and I still ended up on the wrong side of the Capitol building. I had just over an hour to trudge through brutal, 11 degree weather, while attempting to avoid idling charter buses spewing exhaust, forbidding barricades, chaotic Police checkpoints and of course, thousands of people who were alternately shivering in their Uggs or shouting “Woooo! Obama!”.

The only thing I could think about was how I was thisclose to missing the whole point of the day, the whole point of the last two years, and it was all because of my bad luck with Metro. I tried to be mindful and prepare myself for the worst; if I was too late to get through security or move through the sludge of confused people faster than one mile per hour, I could say that I tried. That I had experienced the cold and the crowds and the optimism which was muffled by scarves, earmuffs and gloves. Que sera, sera…

I barely expected to make it to my rooftop viewing party in time for pomp and circumstance. I certainly did not expect to see a copy of Obama’s speech before he delivered it. And I definitely did not expect to be in tears when our new President recognized a faith which I respect, but don’t practice.

One thing at a time.

Ugly, numbing cold. I don’t remember ever being out in such cold, certainly not in D.C., nor when I lived in New York, and ran out to the bodega in flip-flops while there was snow on the ground. I’m watching the evening news as I type this, and the weatherman just scoffed “Welcome to Chicago”, as he characterized the way the day felt. “This is not D.C. weather,” he added, and I wanted to thank him for stating the obvious.

It was so cold, I almost regretted my infamous, stubborn refusal to wear hosiery. Almost. I am a Californian, after all. There are some things I will not tolerate. Socks with super cute flats are a bullet point among hundreds of others on my “Oh, HELL no…”-list.

I asked someone in camouflage about the address I was trying to find, amid the chaos. He confirmed information with a superior and then pointed to an edifice two blocks away. I almost sprinted to it, after thanking him profusely. I was, after all, sock-less. And late.

Before entering the blessed building, I saw a freshly-printed sign on the glass doors: “NO PUBLIC RESTROOMS”. I had seen similar on most of the chartered buses I passed. In fact, the “restroom”-issue had dominated almost every conversation I had overheard, on my way from the wrong metro stop back to the Capitol. Whether they were discussing the ramifications of breaking in to non-inauguration-related facilities or fuming over the allegedly plush, hardwood-floored, HEATED port-a-potties reserved for politicians and dignitaries, the masses yearned to be free. To pee. Or not to pee. I really don’t want to go there.

Bathroom information was the first thing I saw at my destination. The second thing? People. Everywhere. They were trying to escape the elements. The building had an extensive lobby with a gift shop, a coffee shop, one of those usurious pay-by-the-pound-and-get-a-$14-salad places and another store I could not see. It was almost impossible to walk to the far-end of the corridor I was surveying, which is where I needed to check in with security, because of all the exhausted and cold people curled up on the tile floor.

I suddenly recalled a prominent “no loitering” sign on the front door, just as a young mother who was sitting on blankets in a corner smiled weakly at me, while bouncing an infant. Meanwhile, the line for coffee snaked through these weary, huddled people and I wasn’t surprised. The idea of a hot cup of anything seemed delicious. Maybe I should have broken open one of the hand-warming things I discovered at CVS. Truly, I am a Left-coast-native because I had neither seen nor heard of such magical plastic packets until this week.

After gingerly picking my way through hundreds of Inaugural attendees, I stated my purpose to a security person guarding a bank of elevators and was whisked through. The wistful looks on people’s faces reminded me to be grateful that unlike a million others, I would be warm, near food and drink, and yes, permanent bathrooms while being a witness to history. I’d been VIP at clubs before in my younger, stupider days, but nothing I’ve experienced felt as elite as bypassing all those people. Forget bottle service; getting invited to an event like this was a real luxury, and I mentally asked my deity of choice what I had done to deserve such an opportunity.

Once upstairs, despite making it in time to see everything, I couldn’t relax. I wanted to continue live-blogging via Twitter, but I suddenly lost service on my wee Centro, which had allowed me to post updates while underground, on the subway but not eight stories up in the air. A million people sending picture mail to friends would derail my mutinous plans. “At least I didn’t announce I would be doing it on SM, so no one will be disappointed”, I muttered to myself. My perceptive host offered me coffee with a liberal amount of Bailey’s in it and I suddenly remembered that none of you really care whether I liveblog. Wheee!

Now I was enjoying myself, but the best part of my morning was minutes away. Mid-sip, I was slipped a copy of the President’s Inaugural address over an hour before he was to present it. I was astonished by what I held in my hands. Remember two paragraphs up, when I talked about the luxury of bypassing waiting in line? Forget that. This was real privilege. I skimmed furiously and then I saw it.

It.

A word.

One word.

One word which changed everything for me, and maybe, you.

“For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus – and non-believers.“

Don’t ask me why I nearly choked on a far more impressive H-bomb, because I don’t quite know how to explain all the things I felt at that moment. I will try to define it and will almost certainly fail, but I must try because even now, just remembering and writing about it causes tears to cover my eyes.

After spending close to three decades either being mistaken for a Hindu by those who were unaware of the existence of Christianity in India or gently reminding my peers that to conflate “Desi” or “Indian” with “Hindu” was wrong, I was shaking because I felt recognized and included– and all because of the thoughtful, enlightened inclusion of a faith of which I am not a member, in one of the most important Inaugural addresses in our entire history.

Upon reflection, I know why I felt that surge of emotion, which I almost felt like I had no right to. I may not be Hindu, but nearly everyone whom I meet assumes that I am, and perception is a powerful thing. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Japanese-Americans were seen as potential saboteurs; other Asians took to wearing buttons which declared “Chinese” or “Not from Nippon”. My point is not to endorse craven yet understandable tactics but to point to how powerful “perception” is.

You are what you look like. And to the vast majority of the world, I look Hindu. I’m not ashamed of that at all. Today, I felt celebrated for it. I felt included, even though my actual faith was mentioned first, in a group which was organized by a man magnanimous, courageous and heedful enough to include “non-believers”.

This was extraordinary.

I had to tell all of you, so you could witness it too, live, and not on YouTube or a later airing of some news program. I grabbed my phone and prayed that it would work as I tweeted an alert to any and all of you who either know the fail whale or follow Facebook (which Twitter can auto-update). Several of you got the message and when I finally reached my warm home this afternoon and checked my GMail, I was gratified by our shared joy over phrasing.

I don’t think it was a spoiler; I’d like to think it was an opportunity for a mutineer to whisper in your ear a precious secret. Though I knew it was coming, it didn’t dull the impact of hearing a resonant voice announce that list. Knowing of such inclusion in advance didn’t dampen my enthusiasm, nor did it prevent the dampening of my face. Even if he hadn’t hit it out of the park with his right religiousness, these remarks would have done me in:

Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things – some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.

For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn.

Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life.

And at that moment, though I probably wasn’t meant to, I thought of my parents, who came here separately for a common goal: a better life. My Mother packed the only three silk saris she owned and left India. She wore those saris in the snow, in Oklahoma, palloo drawn tightly around her shoulders because she didn’t yet own a winter coat. Forty years ago, my Father quietly fretted over the “eight dollars” he had in his hand and how and when he’d be able to replace them. With no relatives here before them, surely they knew they were destined to struggle initially. But they fearlessly traveled across oceans in search of a new life.

For me and for my sister, they toiled, sometimes working two jobs to pay tuition for the best schools they could afford. They did settle in the West, leaving the harsh winters of the Great Plains for Southern California, where I was born. Later, when they proudly purchased their first home, they realized with dismay that the garden they had dreamed of planting would not, could not be, because of the clay in our backyard. So they plowed that hard, messy earth, brought in topsoil, composted before it was virtuous and trendy, and grew curry leaves, bittermelon, okra, tomatoes, long flat beans, taro and vegetables I have never seen again, in order to feed us wholesome food without driving hours away to the nearest farmer’s market to procure it.

Four decades of my family’s history refined, magnified, sanctified. Contained within a few lines, delivered via a few minutes of oratory, it felt like a punch to the gut, and that was before I realized that he wasn’t talking about my parents.

I blinked and felt mascara smudge as I realized I didn’t care whom he was talking about, because it felt like he was speaking to me. Me me, the me I’m not sure everyone sees. I had attempted to remain studiously neutral during the election, ostensibly for the sake of this website, but mostly because I didn’t want to be disappointed by one candidate who seemed too good to be true even as another candidate disappointed me with his inability to make sound decisions. “I’m Switzerland,” I often mumbled to myself, recalling the phrase my younger sister and I utilized when we were small and strange.

But when you’re standing there, in brilliantly bright January light, with a clear sight-line of a man who has seen you, really seen you, who has acknowledged not just you, but your entire history, too, it is impossible to be Swiss or neutral. All I could be was American. And humbled. And grateful, to finally be included.