Monkey In a Suit

So my sister and brother are moving back to Boston, officially. She got residency interviews at pretty much every Harvard affiliated program other than MGH (which I have had to hear 38 rants about approximately) and at all the other local posh universities asides. The main reason is actually for my brother, who for the last 4 years, has steadfastly refused to develop a social life in Chicago. So my sister just told him to give up his business and try to get a job with his biggest clients. They basically jumped in joy when he asked so now he’s becoming the director of tech at that company and my sis says she’s going to rank the Boston programs first. With the market the way it is they probably aren’t going to make a ton of money on their condo but their goal is just to break even.

What helps: the fact that they have two sets of parents within spitting distance of my sister’s hospitals that they can live with until the condo sale goes down. Not that they are ecstatic about it but it helps to not have to pay rents and mortgages at the same time. After trying out both sets during Xmas it has been decided that they’ll shack up with Mummy and Babs, who are apparently higher on the Annoying Lecture about Trivial Issues Scale (also my brother claims Babs has a proclivity towards grandiose statements even on subjects he doesn’t know much about) but way way way lower on the Complete Basketcase Scale.

The whole thing just makes me feel lonely and resentful. Now I know full well that my sister and brother will never have to hoard vacation again because they’ll just see our families every Sunday for dinner. I swear to you all I’m going back too. If not for Mummy and Babs and Bunsen and Beaker and BeakerFam….then for the apple frocking cider.   

10. It doesn’t matter if your family has been on merkin soil for 25+ years. Your parents will still refer to consumer products by their South Asian brand counterpart names.

9. Your family pets are polyglots.

8. It doesn’t matter that 99% of your family consists of scientists and you could staff an entire hospital with the number of relatives you have in the medical field. Your medicine cabinet is still 88% ayurvedic and there are NO HALLS COUGH DROPS TO BE HAD ANYWHERE.

7. Chances are high that you ruined Santa for everyone else. If not explicitly, with your 7 year old face of intense skepticism. This is likely true even if you are among the minority Desi christian population, for whom Christmas is still mostly about Mass and Jesus.

6. Your holiday dinners are “spiked” with chilies and turmeric to make the food “semi-palatable” as your parents kindly explain to you when you bite into a tabasco flavoured slice of meat.

5. Eligible young men seem to accidentally drop in to tea like Hollywood starlets drop trou on camera.  

4. You will never get an even numbered check for cash from anyone.

3. The biggest family project at hand is getting you married off to a Proper Indian Boy or at least, a Cultured Boy of Assorted Background. You are discussed shamelessly by everyone and all your favourite aunts are busy whoring your profile out behind your back. Your sister has been instructed to talk to every doctor, regardless of race, about you.   

2. Sleeping past 6:30 a.m. is sloth and forbidden unless you have married in, in which case you get the privilege of sleeping till 8 a.m. because of the “in-law” that follows “son”.

1. In spite of all the crazy, being Indian is really f*cking awesome. You stroke your beautiful eyebrows, ignore the pelt and cry when your mom and dad drop you off at the airport.

Current 4 Progress Report:

a) Occasionally texts, very wordy but when sent back polite “that’s great, here’s what I’m up to” texts…clams up and responds with 1 or 2 word texts.

b) Initiates chat: but then goes all silent.

c) Calls, but then gets all sulky quiet.

My response: unwavering cheerfulness and ignoring of weird behaviour but not initiating any contact. Essentially friendly acquaintance mode. I have refused to ask him why he’s behaving like this.   

My opinion:

a) He’s very very very rich (I will grudgingly give him respect for being self-made)

b) He is very very very used to girls throwing themselves at him because of this

c) He is very very very used to being pursued by said women once he pulls his hot-cold behaviour…most likely in that they are the ones who try to keep it going, figure out what’s going on, ask him what’s up etc..

The question:

am I off base in thinking he’s trying to incite a reaction? This is the only thing I can come up with but if you have a better understanding of his psyche, let me know.  

should I axe him or not?

The thing is, I know he’s all Ph.d-ed up and wealthy and stuff. I know that I make significantly less money than he does. But why should this matter? Why is it that I’m supposed to run around after him like a chicken with its head cut off when he was so bizarrely cold the whole weekend and pulled all that “my mom and dad don’t approve” crap on me. Is this fair? The only thing I did after the weekend was over was ask whether or not he felt we should continue and if he felt an attraction and he pulls this whole “it’s difficult for me to be positive when there is so much concern on my mom and dad’s side” wahwahwah after which I decided to write him off and then HE re-initiates all the contact.

Is it weird to think that if he visits me for 3 days he should at least make an attempt to hold my hand?  

The thing is if he really liked me I feel like he wouldn’t be playing these games with me. It hurts my feelings every time someone’s psycho parents pulls out 17 different objections to me and I am given some bullshit crap about stuff I tell people UPFRONT that cannot be changed. I CANNOT change the fact that I don’t know how to speak Marathi, I CANNOT change where I was brought up, I CANNOT change the my caste, I was born into it. Why is that I TELL people these things SO FROCKING CLEARLY right away (“hey, if the american/lack of indian language/whatever thing is a big deal for you, this probably isn’t going to work out”). I know it’s not personal but it damn well feels like it sometimes, like Ganpati has cursed me to be The Girl Everyone’s Parents Hate because I hear this shit over and over again and it doesn’t matter if it’s first or second generation. It is just very frustrating for me. I know I’m not the only one and it’s so much harder when Americans have to marry into our culture (probably why I always side with them in the ensuing drama) but it just SUCKS. 

And I know he is a phenomenal catch by desi standards, but so what? Am I not worthy either? What do I not have? I have a nice family, semi-large breasts, a pleasing countenance and enough useless education to get me promptly killed through stupidity in a post-apocalyptic world. I feel that just because an Indian boy makes a lot of money does not give him the right to put all this nakhra on my head.  Just because I am the woman, make less money and am therefore the lesser candidate (in Indian culture, it seems) doesn’t mean I can’t retain a little bit of dignity and pride in this process.

So should I let it go or not? If he were being friendly I could just keep him as a friendly backup to work on later but all these stupid games are beginning to get to me.  

ETA:

I’ve been thinking about all of this and I just think the reason all of this bugs me so much is that no matter WHAT I do…how much weight i lose, the degrees I accumulate, the licenses on my wall, the increase in my paycheck, I am bound (as far as Indian marriages are concerned) by the circumstances of my birth. I read people like Square Peg of “Diary of a Mad Brown Girl” pretty voraciously so I know I’m not the only one having this problem. I just wonder why it is that Ganpati chooses people like my sister for easy happiness, so easily accepted for everything that goes on my “Negative, Hated by Parents” List. Every time I get to this point I think to myself, “I should I have just said yes to that boy in May”.

I’m still happy and positive but I’m so confused. I’ve done everything. EVERYTHING. I don’t know how much more weight I can lose…I’ve even brought my weight in perfect line. I have everything else Indian boys are looking for…money, education, family background blahblahblah. I am pretty much at the point where I’ve decided that I might just be better off with an American because I think my attitudes and lifestyle pretty much make me an American even if my tastes in food and my mom and dad are Indian. Because bless them, they don’t know Marathi from Punjabi and I daresay they don’t give much of a a f*ck, which is probably what it should be. I am just so sick and tired of the fact that the American side of me gets tagged as a negative. It makes me scream because WHY DID YOU COME TO THIS FROCKING COUNTRY IF YOU THINK YOU ARE SO MUCH BETTER THAN THEM ASSHOLES.   

Frock this crap. I am going on an American boy rampage which is probably where I should have hedged my bets a long time ago. After I dispose of 3. Oh yeah, ps to self, deal with major issues in regard to your sexuality before you do so.

Yes y’all, brown rice is more than edible. In fact, it’s fan-frocking-tastic in fried rice, exactly as promised by Stephanie.

Okay, not only is it TASTY as fried rice…it tastes BETTER than regular white fried rice.  

And as suggested by Olivia, I went for a short grain rather than long-basmati. I’ve heard brown basmati is more aromatic but I quite liked the tasteless chewiness of the short grain organic brown I found at Whole Paycheck.

It DEFINITELY cured the blood sugar weird craving issue I get with white rice, one of the reasons I was eating all my food with chapati (which I adore but am beginning to get bored of night after night).

I am basically going to throw out my white rice. Well, no, just kidding…I’m probably going to keep it for making idlis and dosas and whatnot, but I can’t really imagine eating it with dinner anymore. I will do anything to retain carbs (which I really need for the amount of exercise I engage in) without feeling like my head is going to explode from too much sugar-to-blood weirdness.

Am keeping this bag of short grain brown but will be looking around for brown jasmine since I love the aroma. Whole Foods didn’t have any…has anyone been able to find brown jasmine and in what store?

Whee! I can eat some rice again. I hope the taste of all the Indian food will just cover up the nuttiness. Somehow I don’t feel they complement as well as east asian flavours but for feeling this great and being able to eat daal again, I’ll make the sacrifice.

So my long-time friend Erin was published all proper-like this year.

Poetry, shall we say, is not my thing.

Except hers. Because when she writes she has the power to paint the pictures in your mind.

Listen up, if she can move a corporate jackal like me you’ll love her.

Buy it here…

http://www.wordfarm.net/books/1602260001/

REMARKABLE. My sister calls me “boomerang”…as in 90% of my exes boomerang back to me because I’m too good to them when they’re with me so they think they can get something better and we break up after which they date some slags and realise, “nope, that was pretty much the acme of desi womanhood right there.” Generally it takes a few months but it took 4 TWO DAYS to miss me enough to come back.

4 has boomeranged back with excuses of being tired and therefore more susceptible to parental pressure, apologies and noisemaking of “let’s not be so hasty to throw away our chemistry and see where things go, I shouldn’t have been so hasty to say they will never approve”. I haven’t checked my cell since our shitty weekend together and yesterday’s email…there they were…3 texts in response to the last one he didn’t bother responding to about keeping in touch…asking me why I haven’t emailed, been on chat, why I’ve been so cold today etc..   

Oh hai! Remember this weekend? Where you spent many days in close proximity and did NOTHING, NOTHING to make me feel special or like you were crushing? No matter how many googley eyes I made? I didn’t want to f*ck either, and expressly told you it was off the menu, but SHIT, you could have held my frocking hand.

Frock all you picky motherfrockers. I make it very clear to men upfront…I gots PRIDE. Lots and lots of stiff-upper-lipness. Once I reach my limit I cut off contact and wait for the other person. I guess you can say this is a bad quality, years of experience making me less willing to risk my heart. On the other hand, at least I don’t lose my dignity. I waste too much dignity falling over on my 5 inch heels, I don’t need to melt away more contacting guys that don’t want me because I am too SARASWAT.

Two years ago me would have responded angrily to his attempts.

Today-newly-confident-bitch-me has decided to make guileless beautiful 3 my primary victim and make slithery-sexxy 4 my backup. I think 4 is backupping me too…so he isn’t going to get anything he isn’t planning on doling out himself.

So, new list.

3 (primary and favourite suitor)

4 (re-circling warily, may slip noose around his neck after all)  

I feel like I kind of have to blogwhisper about this because I’ve shared said paintings with 3 and I live in fear of having this blog discovered by 3. Of any guy I’ve gone out with, he would be the one to cotton on to the fact that I have a blog and not just because I sent him the link to Foodiebytes and begged him to use it and tell all his friends while completely forgetting I had posted on the FB blog with a link back to this place. Umm, yeah, you can imagine how many panicky emails Cagey got within the space of seconds.  

I make up greeting cards.

But not just any type of greeting cards. They are very very very specific crappy greeting cards that

a) Can only be drawn in MSPaint as a rule (this forces me to simplify my aaaaaaaaaaaart)

b) Are melancholy/convey a somewhat disheartening message

c) Illustrate, with very simple geometric illustrations, a particular proverb or idiom

and e) are drawn such that the front illustration conveys the message ALONG with the inner statement, and/or forces the recipient to hearken back to the original idiom to get what the inner statement is talking about/what emotion the sender is attempting to convey. I figure discomfort can be sidetracked by riddles.

I know…there is a huge market for such a complicated scheme. They’re pretty clever I think…3 is always nagging me for more. I’ve been thinking of putting them up on Flickr but am not sure how to go about copyrighting them so they don’t get ripped off. Not that they are great as art or irony…but seeing as people come like bandits in the night and take crappy couches out of alleys…I’m not risking my Totally Awesome Greeting Cards. So how do I go about being able to slap anyone with a hefty violation should they steal my shiz? Register the images, right?   

Apologies and Explanations:

Deepest apologies to Will and Nina for not showing up to the LA blogger night yesterday. I’ve been really good about getting out of the house for these types of things (hence my friendship with Asimovian) but the combination of a semi-crappy weekend with someone who announced himself with a cryptic statement on my so-called inappropriate ethnic background combined with 3 days of fatty-food gorging kind of felled me. Plus, I got home to a “my mom and dad said it really wasn’t going to work…..” and was like “screw it! I’m sitting in front of the TV and farting all night”.

Anyway, don’t WORRY…I am not going to pen some sort of psychotic angry-at-all-men-Indian-especially diatribe. Would it have been NICE if it had worked out? Of course. I’m kind of tired of this whole game. But while I would prefer to marry someone Indian and I want to get married before my eggs dry up into shrivelled little balls fit only for sabudana kichidi, I absolutely do not want to marry someone ruled to such a great extent by his mom and dad or batsh*t superstitions. Because if it came down to it, I would definitely tell my parents to frock off if they disapproved of someone that was making me blindingly happy. Would I listen to them? Do I? Yes…but my mom and dad don’t purse their lips up about ethnic background, nakshatras and other such hoo-ha! I mean, CRAP, my dad just told my sister to hook me up with HOT WHITE DOCTORS (PREFERABLY JEWISH, BALA, GOOD CULTURAL BACKGROUND, REASONABLY FAST MARRIAGE) from her residency. My FATHER, telling BUNSEN to introduce me to AMERICANS. Hi! My family is not crazy! My family is quite liberal! My parents don’t make up weird bullsh*t stories about nakshatras! As I’ve always said…I don’t even really care if the guy is Indian it just has to be that

a) No talk of conversion

b) Must be a professional that my mom and dad approve of (let’s not mince words…MBA/PHD/MA/JD/CPA)….as long as he has the right initials after his name…

c) Will not insist I live out of wedlock with him prior to marriage

d) Marry me within a year.

e) Likes Indian culture

That’s it! That’s all we’re asking for around here! No “star matches”. So, quite frankly, I don’t think I’d do well in a family that was so conservative, anyway. Now, it’s no surprise that because of cultural differences the pool for Indians is higher than Americans with that whole “not live out of wedlock” and “interested in getting married sooner than later” thing…but it’s not like they’ve said NO. 

And anyway, I have to say that my father bucked tradition and married my mom, despite being sent a series of letters prior to their marriage accusing her of not being a *cough* virgin.  Laugh all you want but we’re talking about bumblefrock India in the 70s and a marriage in a fairly conservative (sexually) community. That was HUGE. My father didn’t even bring it up-to his parents or family or my mother. He ripped up every letter he received and went and married her anyway. She didn’t even find out until two years after they were married and he was joking about it to her.  

My brother in law dropped all and moved to the Midwest to support Bunsen in her medical career after she got into a Posh McPosherson private medical college. It’s not like his mom and dad were ecstatic about said decision, and he got a lot of “pussywhipped” commentary from friends who were leading THEIR women around by the noses…but he did it for her anyway.

All I’m saying is…my two favourite men in the world have given tradition and superstition and stereotypes the big old middle finger and I would not expect any less of any partner of mine. And frankly, if he just made this shiz up because he’s too yellow to tell me he wasn’t feeling it, or there was someone else he liked better (hello! I’m juggling you too, jerk!) or whatnot…well then SCREW IT. I don’t want someone like that either. I’ve stopped playing games with these guys and tell them my expectations in very clear terms…if you can’t meet them then MOVE ALONG. I am done apologising for being Marathi-this-or-that-brahmin and American and whatever else other objection these asstards come up with.

Updates:

On the other hand 3 emails me EVERY DAY from the ’ship. And speaking of honesty, before he left for the ’ship I told him very honestly that sometimes he gets a little snippy on email and it concerns me and lo! What a difference! Not that he has been any less aggressive during our debates…but there is a marked tone of flirtation rather than semi-b*tchy academic sniping (we’re in somewhat related fields). He has also been pushing and mentioning the face-to-face quite eagerly so I’m looking forward to it.

Oh yeah, and guess what? SOMEONE’s mom already said “she’s not South Indian like us” (he was telling me this) and his response was like “South Indian isn’t a state in the US mama…we’re both Californian and that’s good enough.”

So whether or not 3 works out in terms of compatibility, I’ll always respect him more than 4.

Yeah, so you’d be amazed at how much I find out from some of your blogs.

I’ve linked Slackmistress as having the “Best Tastes in Dress Ever” and a somewhat random journey through her archives (sorry guys, when I start reading your thoughts I more or less start from the minute I found you…I’m not the best about going through the archives for the backstory) and found this place. www.stopstaringclothing.com

LOVE. Am in LOVE.

(Now I also know why she looks so well-dressed all the time)  

Obligatory 4 Update: the weekend was good (I’d rate it as a B) but things are very up in the air right now. His parents don’t approve because we are different castes (like DIFFERENT TYPES OF MARATHI BRAHMINS) and also I am AMERICAN DUM DUM DUM (apparently even a different caste raised ON the mothership is preferable to a dirty merkin) and he’s not happy about pissing them off. But I am cheerful, I am happy. Don’t feel sorry for me. I told Cagey that 3 and 4 gave different answers to “are you okay with the fact that we are from different castes of brahmin” when I asked upfront. 3 told me expressly, “I will tell my parents to go hang.” 4 said “I’ll work on them.” Hmmmm…see, this is why having someone else is a good idea! I believe I am a wonderful person deserving of love. I believe that I will take care of myself, and that I will take care of my mental health. And I think eventually I will get what I want and if I don’t…I have still led a more privileged life than 95% of the world. Also, visualise what you want, remember? LOL…what happened to the old monkey? I used to be so negative and whiney? Now I feel like I am floating on a cloud and I like it better though I think it may eventually make for a less interesting blog. I think it’s that every time I read the news I thank Ganpati for making me American and not Darfurian, Iraqi or Burmese. Thanks Ganpati, seriously. Anypoodle, onward! I still have 3 left and I’m optimistic as usual.

PS: 3 has been emailing diligently every day from the ’ship so he is definitely stepping it up while 4 has stepped it down a notch.

Anyway, that’s not what I really wanted to write about but I figured I owed you a semi-resolution to a cliffhanger weekend (hee! I overestimate your interest in my life!).

I cried. 4 looked at me and was like “why are you so emotional” but he doesn’t understand, that to watch this movie as a desimerican is almost to look into a very very painful and uncomfortable (as Working put it) mirror. I stand by what I said about the book. It is bleak, sometimes to bleak in its impression of the life we 2nd gennies lead here. The movie is a visual reminder of almost every detail of my childhood, and it inspires memories of the small details left out but discussed in the book. I’m upset that it wasn’t Boston focused, but maybe that’s for the best. Watching my own life playing out in the same neighbourhoods I trafficked might have been too much.

Moment of sobbery:

Maybe it’s not enough that we’re both Bengali

That’s not why I loved you

Also, PS, Kal Penn…sweets. I don’t care who wins the Oscars. You deserve an award for playing me, and so many other 2nd generation shippers, on screen (ps, you are gorgeous but I like you just as much chubby like when they don’t make you lose weight to play a role). I am buying you on DVD darling. I may only watch you once a year in this movie…but I want to remember what it was all like…all those hard years of not who I was or what I wanted. I am so happy that I was able to resolve my two halves.