Overreacting to an (Allegedly) Near-Death Experience

We were in a 30-seater bus – something between a kidnapper van and a Winnebago – thousands of feet above sea level in the Himalayan range, absolutely certain that we were going to die.

I know this because I heard the bus driver whisper, “I think we’re going to die,” and with his smart woven cap and clipped mustache, he didn’t seem the dramatic type.

This is what happens when you try to pray at ancient temples. One time my grandmother’s foot swelled up to the size of a watermelon as we trekked to a solid gold avatar of a family God. Another time I almost fainted, trying to complete the requisite one hundred rounds of a sacred statue.

But nothing was as bad as this particular stretch of a family vacation in the mountains, because there were 25 of us, and a huge box of mangos; suitcases with clothes meant for the whole year; and huge metal tins of messy stuffed paranthas and stinky chutneys that constitute portable travel food in India.

It was a month long family trip, I remember, that had been planned weeks in advance by my mother and her four sisters. I was ten years old, just growing out of a terrible haircut. I was the youngest, with my Limited Too cerulean shorts and butterfly clips.

We had hired a driver from Delhi onward, who, with a hardly nourished co-pilot named Raju, would navigate the 30 or so destinations we were told to see.

Until then, things had gone smoothly because were in safe territory – four star hotels, big cities, tour guides and unlimited chai and pakoras. We had the Mary Poppins bag of food, and we spent our free time singing Ricky Martin’s “Maria”, and imitating the Buddhist chanting that we picked up in the smaller villages. I still remember my beautiful aunt with one hand over her mouth singing, “Lubalubalubaluba boy boy boy boy,” right in front of the monks-in-training, sweet-faced Tibetan pre-teen boys wearing the orange and maroon robes of austerity.

Then there was this: A trip to visit one of the oldest temples in the vicinity, according to the people trying to get us to stay in a nearby hotel. And so we piled in the car with all of our baggage, and set off.

Halfway up the mountain our bus was trying to inch up a steep bend when the tires started to spin furiously – coughing up a smattering of tiny rocks and sand from the dirt margins of the road. Our trusty vehicle began to slide back, unable to catch hold or move forward, straight toward the unobstructed cliff that marked the end of the mountainside.

Raju jumped out of the truck with a grin and sashayed to the edge of the cliff to see how many inches we had left to back up. His calm confidence kept our family in their seats, chatting about how a friend’s son we had met in the last city was handsome, and more importantly, fair-skinned, and should probably marry into our family at some point. But then we all looked back to see Raju trying to adjust football-sized rocks behind the wheels to procrastinate our imminent death, and in that moment, I knew we were gonners.

My mother raced to the bus door, trying to jump out in some sort of heroic  attempt at safety. But the driver stopped her. “Madam, I have kids too, don’t you think I would tell you if you should be getting out of the van?”

She looked back at us and sat down in the front, smack next to the driver. Note about my mother: she once started a mini-riot at an Air India counter when the travel agents didn’t show up on time and we were close to missing our flight.

The next few moments were the slowest of my life – stretched out, panoramic seconds in which I looked at each of my cousins and aunts as people should do in their last breaths, taking in the prominent maroon bindis between their eyebrows, the orange tinge of henna in their graying hair. I said a silent prayer in my mind, one of the only ones I know, and simultaneously tried to locate the windows that had working handles.

It was some point in this film reel memory that our driver had whispered, “I think we’re going to die”, although no one remembers him saying this but me. I looked at him in the rearview mirror, trying to employ my psychic faculties to give him one last push.

And then there was a revving of the engine and sudden lurch forward. Raju made a loud whoop – the sweetest sound to ever escape a brown man’s lips (later in the trip he would be arrested for steeling some other tourists’ money), and gave the bus a whack as if he were hitting someone’s bottom with a towel. The wheels had turned just enough to gain momentum and the inches between us and the cliff turned to feet, and then to meters.

Our co-pilot raced up and jumped onto his seat like a cowboy on a rodeo bull and the bus sped up to the top of the hill in one piece. We climbed out of the van, slipped off our shoes at the entrance of the temple and went in to pray to the goddess. After all, we were alive because of her.

Locks of [Unrequited] Love: The Myth Of "Good" Hair

Shakeeda navigates my hair with her pointer finger, skimming the asymmetrical hairline and coaxing a snarl into submission. I study the African-themed border on the golden wall, trying not to flinch.

“I’m sorry. It’s a mess,” I say, leaning back to fix my neck into the crevice of the basin. Apologies have been a standard part of my salon regimen for almost 18 years now, ever since baby curls gave way to a chaotic mass of corkscrews that perpetually threaten to become dreadlocks.

“Girl, I’ve seen some things,” Shakeeda says, maneuvering her cumbersome body to the other side of the sink. “This is not a mess.”

Her words, like the nimble hands massaging shampoo into foam, are comforting. I grew up the frizzy black sheep in a family of Indian women with silky hair cascading down their backs. My cousins and aunts are oblivious to split ends and humidity and buying extra strong hair ties -- weddings and baby showers are like a cheesy L’Oréal commercial, every hair toss more mesmerizing than the one before.

My mother is no exception and spent most of my middle school evenings forcing me toward a patio chair with a blue bottle of Parachute coconut oil and unprecedented faith. The next morning I would scrub my head until the hot water ran out, worried that the pungent aftermath of her childhood Indian hair remedy would scare away Science class suitors.

Now, in my favorite Harlem salon, Shakeeda does a final rinse, drapes a black apron over my shoulders, and leads me to the workstation. I look at our reflection in the mirror, taking in her pleasant face; a large, flat nose fixed firmly between high cheekbones. Her hair, I deduce, is a weave, fixed tightly at the root. It falls in perfect, jet-black rivets to her round shoulders with no trace of defiance.

“You need a trim,” she says, examining my hair between her thumb and forefinger. “How long has it been?”

“About four months -- since October,” I say, proudly. I’ve been known to wait a year. Or two.

“October! October!” She throws her hands up. “You will come in every two months from now on. We’re not letting this happen again.”

I’ve already bestowed the woman with rare and complete trust, so I agree to almost everything she says. I will not wash my hair every day. I will go to the beauty supplies shop on 125^th street, across from the H&M, and buy the entire line of Cream of Nature products. And I will not relax my hair.

I will not relax my hair.

It took me eight years to not relax my hair. Our family hairdresser in Florida insisted on the chemical straightening treatment when I was in seventh grade, determined to run a hairbrush from root to tip without bristles breaking off the handle. She would do it for a special price, she told my mom, a flat rate of $350. I quickly agreed – disheartened by catching her despair via dramatic eye roll in the mirror when I would come in for a haircut.

At the time I was prone to masking my eyelids with Maybelline eyeshadow to match my favorite baby blue shirt. I had the seventh-grade version of a boyfriend, who I would chat with on instant messenger until ten o’clock. My best friend from the neighborhood had straight blonde hair. And my second best friend -- straight, dirty-blonde hair.

The first time I got my hair relaxed, it took six hours and half of the second Harry Potter book. People in the salon came to watch as Anita blow-dried my hair straight out until it stood on end like a lions mane, my tanned face a small oval in the center. My scalp tingled for days as if someone had rubbed acetone on an open wound. But it looked so damn good.

I wore it out, styled and long, to every class that month, including gym. I kept Herbal Essences hairspray in my backpack to spritz on extra floral scent. I felt like shouting down the halls: “Hey look at me, it’s the middle of a Florida summer and I still got this”. To top it off, my 13-year-old boyfriend was effusively supportive. “You look good,” he would mumble under his breath.

“You relaxed this?” Shakeeda shrieks when I recall the story that Friday evening. She holds up a wet spiral near my ear for emphasis. “This is great hair. People pay money for this.”

“People always tell me that,” I say. “Nobody would actually pay money for this.”

I’m about to launch into a rant comparing good to bad curls, but I bite my tongue. The last few years have been like a 12-step program in the battle of Ankita versus her hair, and I refuse to go back to a time when I preferred Britney Spears to Erykah Badu.

I had become a born-again hair virgin during my last year in college, days after my friend got drunk and compared my chemically damaged hair to a brillo pad. My friend Lynsey, who had recently liberated her own hair from weaves, gave me the final push I needed – forwarding me natural hair blogs and remedies involving honey and silk pillows. I was so chaste with my hair then that I all but gave up the straightening iron, blow drier and expensive serums.

Not everyone was impressed by my revolution. My family was visibly disturbed when I showed up to a wedding reception with my natural curls. “Did you even brush them?” My aunt asked in a hushed whisper as I got ready to hit the dance floor. I forced a smile, telling myself I was representing a whole generation of hair oppression, and proceeded to release my locks from a gasping butterfly clip.

Now, in solemn respect, I swallow the complaints, and ask my new fairy godmother for more hair advice.

“You know your hair feels it when you don’t show it love,” Shakeeda says as she shears the tendrils on either side of my eyes. “It’s only good to you if you’re going to reciprocate.”

I stop to consider this idea of my hair as a needy lover, and it’s clear that I haven’t had the best relationship. My last year before moving to New York was spent living in a backpack in northern India, away from the reaches of my affluent relatives. I slept and worked without air conditioning in 118 degrees, only aware of my physical appearance when my students would point it out in English class.

 “Ankita ma’am has very bunchy hairs,” 12-year-old Kajal would say, mapping out her subject and object.

“No, no,” I would say in response. “Hair is the same whether it is singular or plural.”

By the end of the year half my hair had fallen out from bucket baths, chlorinated water and a horrifying lice epidemic in our classroom. I wore my hair in a braid so often, I didn’t realize that the ends had frayed, or that there was a knot at the base of my neck so convoluted that it would eventually have to be cut out with scissors.

When I showed up in New York to attend Columbia University days after, I was quickly shamed into a haircut. I chose carefully– skipping the Upper West Side windows with Sarah Jessica Parker photos, and settling in a chair after Google searching Turning Heads Salon, rated best for “ethnic hair care” in Time Out magazine.

And that’s how I ended up in the slow, steady hands of Shakeeda, who doesn’t mind that it’s almost 7 p.m. and we’ve just started to blow-dry my hair for tomorrow’s job interview.

“You know, if you really love your hair, you would wear it natural tomorrow,” she says with a wink.

“I’m not there yet,” I tell her. Maybe soon.


Note: This essay was written back in March 2012. Just had to clarify so my employers don't think I'm interviewing for jobs. 

Brown Guys, Bicycles, Mug Shots and Newsrooms

While the country reeled from a slew of horrific events this week, there was a sub-conversation going on around the Boston attack. Muslims on Twitter started to hope the terrorist wasn’t part of their faith – a digital prayer heard by The Washington Post, among others.  And a cluster of other voices, some South Asian like me, remembered how they were treated post 9/11 at airports, on the street.

My family was part of what some call security and what some call ethnic profiling. A few years ago, my dad was asked to disembark a flight after a vacation with my mom, presumably because his tan skin and facial hair made a fellow passenger uncomfortable. His car window was also smashed with a projectile beer can in a part of Florida that isn’t known for cultural diversity.

As I  followed both the unfolding of the Boston attacks and this culture clash, another, more petty, event came to mind. When my bike was stolen a few weeks ago, I met my bike thief in a failed attempt to get it back (more on that in a different blog). When I called the police right after,  they asked me to describe the young black guy who I had seen riding away. I did, in my adrenaline-pumped state, to the best of my ability.

But I looked at the picture my friend took of him later and I realized I got it all wrong. He was black, yes, but I told the police the wrong clothing, colors and height.  Just like the suspects, after the Boston bombing, were described as brown or black with a backpack. Only part of that turned out to be correct.

Now I’m going to try to make a graceful segue into an insightful article my friend shared with me earlier this week from the magazine Jacobin. The author, Laurie Penny, posits that objectivity in journalism is both unattainable and unnecessary. She said only middle-aged white men can be seen as objective in the West, since women and those of other ethnicities can be perceived as projecting the bias of their background on their work.

I’m not going to support or refute the idea of objectivity – it is something I test in daily life. But at a conference I covered this week someone suggested I must know more about doctors and medicine because I’m Indian. My family jokes that I write about “Indians, in India, doing Indian things” more often than I need to. And being a woman and minority has come up in several conversations with sources, in both negative and positive light.

As someone engaged in understanding my background, I am definitely sensitive to the subtleties and differences between Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans, Pakistanis and Indians. Not to mention the vast differences between states in India, which can seem like different countries. This sensitivity, both learned and intrinsic, has proven a boon in journalism. It makes me hyperaware of people’s roots, of their worldviews.  But it's also limited. It didn't make identifying my bike thief any easier. And it didn't mean I could have guessed how the Boston story would unfold.

I think we miss the point when we talk about diversity in newsrooms, and the missing link adds to the messy journalism we saw this week. This is not a narrative solely about ethnicity. There are scores of non-minorities who are meticulous and careful to learn the differences between “shades of brown” and religious sects, just as there are plenty of minorities who don’t look too far into their own backgrounds.

Real diversity in a newsroom requires a depth of thinking and knowledge that takes time and attention to cultivate. I'm not sure where that stuff is getting lost -- maybe in education or job applications or networking, but I want to find out, because the amount of misinformation and misguided thinking I saw this week was disheartening. And if we're perpetuating cultural confusion in media, you can be damn sure it's being played out on our streets.

I guess my point, and hope, is this: when we’re telling a story – whether it’s one of violence or unity, or both – we need all hands on deck. And those hands should be a true reflection of the best of the world that we live in to make any sense of the truth.

Experiment 2: The Art of DC

Tabla/sax/beatbox concert at Atlas Theater

My parents took me to a good amount of concerts when I was growing up -- Jackson Brown, Don Henley, Sting, U2, Zakhir Hussain, Pandit Jasraj etc. It was a mix of classic rock and classical Indian music, kind of like Concert for George, which embodies both the raag and rock of my upbringing. I eventually peppered their taste with my own flings: the Backstreet Boys, Maroon5, and eventually Ani Difranco and one random night with Styx.

Partly because of this, I've always subscribed to the idea that art is one of the few things worth paying for -- concert tickets, books, paintings, instruments. These, along with travel, are worth my paycheck, and make for an easy sacrifice of things like fashion, makeup, cab rides and expensive drinks.

As my second experiment this year, I spent the last few weeks discovering DC's art, in all it's forms. I attended slam poetry events, visited the Hirschorn twice for an Ai Wei Wei exhibit, perused the National Art Gallery with a teleguide, listened to jazz, spoke to street artists from Nigeria and Northeast, saw a tabla-sax-violin-beatbox concer at Atlas Theatre, and went to a handful of photo exhibitions.

Nat'l Art Gallery

It isn't hard to find art in this city. You just have to stay off the Hill and say yes to every invitation you get, every flyer you see on a lamppost. And suddenly there's a 15-year-old kid standing in front of you reciting a poem about the emotional and physical abuse that daggered through his childhood,  making your entire body shake because you can't lift your fingers to snap when someone's soul has taken over the theater.

You learn that a man's curated pile of rusty rods and portraits of his middle finger were strong enough to have him detained by the Chinese government, and that the swiftness of a painter's brushstroke can speak volumes about his mental, physical and political state. There's ancient, and new, and accidental, and ruined. There is art from the poor and  rich, and  from men who decided to equate a smaller "package" with masculinity because they had control of the industry.

DC Youth Poetry Slam

The art immersion was a reminder about creating. About writing stories even when nobody will read them -- stories that are an extension of daydreams and reeling thoughts on long train rides. About making compositions on my tabla even if I'm a novice, because those beats are just as instructive as the ones penciled in my book.

I think it's cheesy to say I discovered art this month. I never lost art, whatever that word means, and I've always valued the delicate design and rhythm of the places I've lived. But I also think that an intentional focus on that graffiti in Shaw and the guy at the farmer's market with pen sketches has shed light on the District's relationships. It's a chronicle of the city's heartbreak and strength and violence -- and it's told through acrylic, wood, word and the absence thereof.

Experiment 1: Life Is Sweeter, Somehow

On the third day without sugar I was restless, pacing around my office like someone jonesin' for a fix. White powder drugs come in all flavors I guess.

But let me explain. My first experiment this year -- one that will extend past the first month for sure -- was to start tackling the "things that get in my way". The habits, the learned behaviors, the falling-prey-to-marketing types of reactions that slow down my dreams.

Through an ongoing self search, I realized these inhibitors were present on many levels. On the health level, it was sugar. That damn white stuff that has made its way into places it never should have been, making us so damn addicted that we don't know sweet from salt. And then on a behavioral level, it was the meaningful use of technology, which the guy in the video at the end of the post explains better than I can. I'm no ludite, but there's a reason that "i" exists in all of the products we think we need, it's good temptation for the ego. And lastly, I wanted to tackle this dash of lazy I have-- something that manifests in the form of Zooey Deschanel and The Mindy Project.

The hardest, for me, was easily the sugar. My mind defaulted to deprivation when I set the boundaries, and whined and rebelled like a teenager. Why is it that giving something up, even if you're gaining something better in it's place, is so hard? My recent diet has become increasingly dependent on the farmers market and generally pyramid-happy -- except for the chocolate.  So my plan was to cut out not only sweets and baked stuff, but also the added sugar in things like crackers and dried fruits and bread.

But it wasn't just health on my mind. I think it's nuts how companies build their business models on the premise that we are easily addicted, making profit of my lack of willpower. I also think about the kids I work with both here and back in India who spend any pocket change they have on hard candy or soda -- those are not priorities, they are inhibitors. The result for me was about 85 percent successful -- Valentines Day, Restaurant Week and stressful assignment days notwithstanding.

The takeaway is clear: I'm less addicted to sugar than I was a month ago, but not cured by any means. I eat a bit less, and my taste buds are heightened and alive again. I don't know if that's scientifically true, but it feels good. So in the battle of Ankita vs. Nestle, I still have a small chance of winning.

As for the technology piece. This man:

My Friends Are Awesome Part II

So a few years ago I highlighted some of my friends who are doing unusual, courageous and interesting things. I thought I'd take a break from the usual and do a new one. This has become increasingly difficult given that a) I keep meeting amazing new people and b) My friends keep getting more awesome. But here goes.

Tree House Rock
My friend and photographer/educator extraordinaire David is going on his third year in the mountains of Colorado as the program director at Sanborn, where, among other things, he is devising a nature-focused curriculum for local students. As much as I miss his online presence -- especially beautiful photos of his journeys -- his ability to integrate the land into his life, mind and reading is inspiring.

Liberating Land in Liberia

My film-watching partner Gaurav, also known as Masala Justice, is working in Liberia to help local communities keep their land while large firms are taking over. Even knowing his challenges, I find his move to Liberia both fearless and inspiring, with the added benefit of humanizing an issue that I know so little about. Next week he's at a summit in Uganda that he helped organize to bring stakeholders together for action.

Bikes Without Borders

When I met Arunesh in Chandigarh I knew he would be friends because he had a dreadlock embedded in his hair and he liked pastries and yoga. An interface designer by trade, he has redefined the idea of traveling for me by biking in Kashmir and through the Himalayas. He also makes videos, apps and helps out with this awesome start-up TravelMafia.

Buddha-Love In Bangladesh

Tania and I bonded over a mind numbing class in grad school and were quickly kindred. After graduating through the documentary program at Columbia she flew straight to Bangladesh without a real plan, but with a lot of ideas. Now she's helping produce for Al Jazeera, taking beautiful pictures and bringing Dhaka alive through her soulful, humanist lens.

Project 2013

Last weekend I was advised to take rest -- something foreign and undesirable in a city that I devour with my feet whenever I get the chance. But I listened, and though it was difficult, I had the time to further develop the idea that launched this blog: experimentation.

Gandhi had his experiments with truth and Thoreau with his pond and Ensler with her body and Spurlock with his health. The man who gave me the title of my blog, Chris McCandless, experimented with his mind and nature, simultaneously.

And while I would never liken myself to any of the above, I've always wanted to use this platform as a living laboratory, a space to tryout the things I'm curious about and report on the conclusion or lack thereof. So I've come up with a list of things to try this year -- a collection of long and short term projects mostly derived from practices that I think are positive and helpful. Some are more difficult than others, and some are just common sense, but I think they're all worthwhile efforts.

If I was a reader of this blog I'd exit now if I didn't share my list of experiments, but I'm not going to do that for a few reasons: I think telling everyone what process you're working on can take away from the actual ability to perceive and understand it -- too much awareness can backfire. Also, some of these are so ridiculously simple that I can see people rolling their eyes, so it's a bit of self preservation.

Nevertheless, here are some topics I will explore this year: health, sustainability, dating/relationships, art/music, writing, career, money, fear, strength, service.

I know, you can't wait for the dating part -- but believe me, I can.