tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-75519247459668613552024-03-12T19:30:39.336-07:00Only Real When SharedAnkitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00135360217262255049noreply@blogger.comBlogger157125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7551924745966861355.post-37239045013440158702016-12-31T17:13:00.004-08:002016-12-31T17:13:52.647-08:00Even More Lessons<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I promised a very good friend I would continue my three-year-old tradition of posting about what I've learned at the turn of a year. In all honesty, this year was so packed with mind-boggling wonders, I've hardly had time to process. So this is more a post of what I've understood from 2016. It seems to be both a gift and curse that keeps on giving.<br />
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1. <b>On resilience.</b> This is the first year that I've truly felt strong. Like on a cell and bone and flesh level. Throughout the year I've had highs and lows -- some of them from watching people in my life struggle in a way I've never experienced myself. Some from starting and ending an incredible relationship. But I kept having this recurring thought: no matter what happens, I'll be fine. No matter what happens, I can find happiness again. It's a liberating feeling.<br />
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2. <b>On listening.</b> Whether it was Brexit or Trump or a difficult misunderstanding with a friend, I learned that listening closely and actively is the only thing that can lead to full acceptance and clarity. I don't think I've very good at this yet, except maybe when I've got a notebook in my hand and a story to write. But I am fully convinced that being a good listener is far more helpful than any advice, gift or word I could offer. And it would prevent lots of pain.<br />
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3. <b>On work. </b>I'm extremely lucky that what I love is also what I do for a living, but that thought has not always been comforting. I think society sometimes makes me feel guilty for finding fulfillment in my work -- like I'm some sort of slave to an illusion. But I've had two jobs this year -- one that was not a good fit, and one that I look forward to each day, and I have now come to accept that my work will always be a large part of my happiness.<br />
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4. <b>On New York. </b>I didn't love New York before I moved there in January. Actually, I didn't love it until May, when the flowers came back out and my seasonal hangover had passed. But the combination of moving to this crazy city from an even crazier one (Bombay, I will always love you) made this city feel more like a playground and less like a menacing jungle. New York and I are still negotiating our terms, but I've got great respect and love for this city.<br />
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Happy New Year to you and yours.<br />
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Ankitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247253144937207253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7551924745966861355.post-19131128637000789052016-11-09T04:20:00.001-08:002016-11-09T04:22:08.279-08:00That Time He Won<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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This was an election about belonging.<br />
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For many of the Americans who voted for Donald Trump, this was a chance to say: This doesn't feel like my country anymore.</div>
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For many of the Americans who voted for Hillary Clinton, this was a chance to say: America does not seem to think this is my rightful home.</div>
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And for the Americans who voted for third-party candidates, or the ones who lost hope when Bernie Sanders was defeated, this was a chance to say: These political parties do not represent me, or my beliefs.</div>
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We've created a country where nobody feels like they fit in, and there is a collective responsibility, far bigger than the establishment, to change how we operate on a human level, in our own communities.</div>
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If we've curated our Facebook feeds and media diets to align only with our own beliefs, we need to recognize that we are building our own bubbles and then refusing to leave them. If our friends all look and act the same, we need to recognize that we have yet to humanize whatever we deem the "other". </div>
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America has not just spoken, it has screamed. We could sit here looking at more data, more polls, and reduce it to some statistics: White men won. Rural Americans won. Blue collar workers won. And we could think about the people of color, the women, the immigrants, who have lost.</div>
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Or we could accept that we have fractured ourselves to the point where nobody recognizes the country they live in—one where we are suspicious of our own neighbors and uncomfortable in our own skin. </div>
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Then, maybe, we will be able to operate out of something other than fear.</div>
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Rise.</div>
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Ankitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247253144937207253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7551924745966861355.post-64375141551315837522016-07-07T12:18:00.000-07:002016-07-07T13:51:07.278-07:00Loose thoughts after Alton Sterling Died, and then Philando Castile died<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I woke up today and it was a little worse than yesterday. I walked toward the train and only saw black men. And I kept saying, in my head, <i>I'm glad you're still alive. And you, I'm glad you're still alive. </i><br />
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When I lived in India people at home used to say: aren't you scared of getting raped? And when I moved back home, people in India asked me: aren't you scared of getting shot? Yes and yes. Fear is just something I lace my shoes with before I leave the house now. But there are others much more likely than I am to be the victims.<br />
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People blame things on the system as if we did not create it with our bare hands, as if we do not perpetuate it with our wallets. As if the machine would still work without all the cogs.<br />
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Now that I know there is <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/opinion/sunday/empathy-is-actually-a-choice.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0">no limit</a> to our empathy, I think we owe it to the broken limbs on America's body to learn more about the trigger we've collectively pulled hundreds of times. It takes strength to bend the moral arc towards justice.<br />
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Ankitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247253144937207253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7551924745966861355.post-29665468919999433262015-12-31T07:55:00.003-08:002016-01-03T05:05:51.354-08:00More Lessons<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Last year I <a href="http://anrao.blogspot.com/2015/01/lessons.html">published</a> this one month late, so I already feel like I won 2015.<br />
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1.<b> On going home. </b>The other day I was in the middle of a screaming match with my older sister and there was this one moment where I stepped outside of myself, looked at the situation, and thought: wow, I've learned nothing. I always thought my mettle was tested on the road, in the middle of nowhere, on deadline, but moving home from India for four months this year -- the longest I've been home since I was 17 years old -- taught me otherwise.<br />
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2. <b>On emotional intelligence.</b> The ability to effectively say what you mean and how you feel, and provide a space for others to do the same could probably end wars.<br />
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3. <b>On sitting still.</b> Let this year go down in history as the year I actually started meditating, and not just on yoga retreats, thanks to my friend Shreya and this app called Insight Timer. I probably spend nine-tenths of that time daydreaming, but those few moments of clarity are like hours of therapy and a chance to differentiate the reality I have created from what is actually around me.<br />
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4. <b>On the art of disappointment. </b>This year I applied for several fellowships, jobs and grants. And I went on a few dates. For some strange reason, approaching every single opportunity with a balance of delusional optimism and detachment is what makes me feel satisfied, even when they don't work out. Disappointment is much easier to brush off when you know you've done your part.<br />
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5. <b>On chocolate. </b>It's okay to like milk chocolate better than dark chocolate.<br />
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6.<b> On fear</b>. Last year I was nervous I wouldn't 'make it' in India. This year I was worried I would settle for a life in America where happy hour was the only thing I had to look forward to. Neither of these things happened: In India, I produced investigative projects, nuanced reports and met hundreds of incredible people with a record low of two bouts of stomach illness. In America, I spent much needed time at home with my family and managed to land a job that is exciting, valuable and well out of my comfort zone. Sometimes fear is the best motivation.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Inle Lake, Myanmar</td></tr>
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Ankitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247253144937207253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7551924745966861355.post-33391601219879656592015-09-02T02:30:00.001-07:002015-09-02T22:56:41.493-07:00Sangam<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Sangam is the Sanskrit word for the confluence of rivers -- it's a word that's been rolling around my head for days as I say my goodbyes and pack up my bags to move across the world again. I used to think of these moments as crossroads. But choices, decisions -- all those things fade when you know where you need to be.<br />
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That hasn't made it any easier to leave.<br />
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The past 19 months in India have been the most dynamic of my life. I reported in ten states and at least one hundred villages, some that could only be reached on foot. I spoke to women and men of every caste, religion, income status and belief system, and found myself connecting to people I didn't know existed. I've been belittled by powerful men, and empowered by tiny children. </div>
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I wrote dozens of articles for dozens of publications -- collaborating with meticulous editors who have pushed me to dissect and unlearn, and others who have tested every bit of patience I have with their obsession with page views. I struggled to maintain integrity and nuance, and fought when an editor tried to use the word "Slumdog" in my headline. </div>
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I worked with incredible, incredible journalists. Vivek, a brilliant, obsessively detailed writer who is now one of my best friends, and Bibek, an even-tempered Buddha-being who met our deadlines even after a horrific earthquake hit his home. Atish, my British bro, who is as spontaneous and hardworking as they make them.<br />
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I got handsome checks for work that felt too joyful to be called work, and tiny checks that came six months late for hours and hours of arduous research and writing. I received grants from three sources to pursue projects I've been thinking about for years. I asked for double, then triple, the rate that was offered to me, and learned to demand what I deserve. </div>
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I fell in love with Bombay a little more each day I lived here -- with its turbulent sea and ubiquitous soul that refuses to get lost in the hustle. Its massive creative community and entrepreneurs, and beauty tucked into every corner. My Ultimate team that allowed me to fail and learn and fail and learn with nothing but love and encouragement. And friends that make everything feel like home.</div>
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I learned to be alone -- on trains and at home and in coffee shops and on work trips. I learned the luxury of silence and anonymity, and the power of my mind in the face of fear and injustice. I learned frustration and anger with no outlet, and joy that couldn't be tangibly shared.<br />
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And when I didn't want to be alone, there was my family. My cousins and aunts and uncles and Diwali, Raksha Bandhan and Holi. Birthdays and babyshowers that I would never have gotten to attend, and grand-uncles I had only met once. Family that could sense my cough from miles away, and packed me food for the road no matter how much I protested. And my family in Chandigarh, who taught me a new way to love.</div>
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In India, I've learned that love can be the silent walk between two grandparents who no longer hold hands, or the snuggles of new lovers on Carter Road. It can be the intense dedication of a doctor to his patient, and the belief of a teacher who climbs up ladders to her students. Love is in the way mothers tuck their babies under a sari fold, and the food that strangers share with me on the train.</div>
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And oh man, have my tastebuds been singing since I landed: fermented ambal in Andhra, coconut-fried fish on the Konkan coast, kababs and biryani in Hyderabad, wada pav and sol cuddy in Mumbai, real Mysore dosas, vinegar-marinated Coorgi meat, kheer in the Punjab pind, gatte ki sabzi in Rajasthan, rossogullas in Calcutta. (And somehow my jeans are too big now.)</div>
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I can honestly say that not a day of my time in India was wasted, not a day was less or more than it should have been, and that in itself has been a lesson in living. I leave with a heart that has been cracked wide open -- not so much broken as demanding what it now knows to be real.<br />
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But the thing about rivers is they don't just stop. So this sangam is just a moment, and my feet are already getting pulled forward in the strength of a current that is India and America and family and purpose all at once. The only thing I know how to do right now is let go.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Every goodbye deserves a rickshaw selfie.</td></tr>
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Ankitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247253144937207253noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7551924745966861355.post-56993323255431226272015-05-11T19:27:00.002-07:002018-03-23T06:15:05.045-07:00Everywhere Feels Like Home<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="s1">It's only four-thirty a.m. when, as we say in Hindi, my sleep opens -- my body's cadence stuck somewhere between yesterday's Florida and today's Bombay. Dawn breaks evenly across my window as I put on my sandals and step outside into the smoky morning, instinctively heading straight toward the sea.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">During the one-mile walk to Carter Road I see more life than I do in complete days back at home in the U.S. The milk man delivers his plastic pouches to a shopkeeper by tossing them one by one in a perfect arc from his bicycle into the kiosk window. Men jog past me in semi-athletic attire, sometimes in chappals that flap on the pavement. Bandra's old church ladies, in their floral-print skirts and dresses, saunter by with sleepy dogs. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Indians are not an extraordinarily active people, but they are people of slow and steady routine. A morning walk for the uncles and aunties, always around six a.m., a cup of tea on the table with The Hindu at seven. I have nothing of the sort in place, even without jet lag, but it's soothing to step into their rhythm.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">When I get to the sea I am already damp from the thick, humid air. I walk past the coconut water cart, a sleeping rickshaw driver. The waves have no answers for me today -- maybe because I have too many questions. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Last night, when my airplane landed, I took to Twitter (I know, I know) and told two thousand of my closest friends that "Everywhere feels like home." Because everything does -- the purple jacaranda and cooking dinner for my parents in Tampa, and seeing the friends who knew me when I cried hysterically anytime my family left my sight. But also this: the choked roads of Bombay's Western Express Highway, the brick streets named after Catholic saints, the fresh mangoes in the fridge.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">There's a decision I need to make soon -- a decision that would already be made if not for a sense of constant belonging. For this, I </span>get advice from all angles. From a mentor who tells me to "get the fuck out" of India before the small risks I take turn into big ones. From the roughened, hardworking guy in the village who asks me if there is anything more real that what I see in front of me out here, away from the self-importance of city-dwelling office people. I wonder who needs me more, and if my idea of need is just a naive and misguiding illusion.</div>
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<span class="s1">As I look out over the sea wall, the buzz of Bombay waking up behind me, there are many voices in my head -- voices of my family and friends and editors and people I write about. When I turn back they're so loud that I no longer hear my own.</span></div>
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Ankitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247253144937207253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7551924745966861355.post-2880827719588244242015-03-07T19:45:00.000-08:002015-03-08T03:03:12.566-07:00The Thing About Indian Women<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
I need to tell you about India's Daughters. And her mothers, sisters, girlfriends, bosses, wives, coworkers and every other small or huge role the women of this country play in their families and in their offices and on the streets that aren't always paved for them as they walk miles without stopping.<br />
<br />
I need to tell you about my grandmothers. Neither of them cleared five feet tall, but they were nothing less than pillars. My akkaji, in a white cotton sari, raised seven kids, lost her husband too early, and asking for nothing but the solace of her quiet, routine and the lit diyas of her pooja room. And my grandma, on my dad's side, who withstood freezing Massachusetts winters of poverty and a volatile spouse. She worked in factories and banks where everybody loved and knew her, and made meatloaf even though she was a strict vegetarian because she wanted her kids to fit in a weird new country called America.<br />
<br />
I need to tell you about Karuna Nundy, the Supreme Court attorney who answers all my texts, calls and e-mails even though she's leading the fight for free speech on the internet, for fair health in Bhopal, for safe workplaces for women who actually make it past the first few glass ceilings. And Chandramani Jani, a village leader who convinced government officials to do their job in a village in Orissa. About Deepika Padukone, a Bollywood actress who spoke up about therapy and depression so we know the green grass needs to be watered, too. And I'll show you a picture of Pali, the woman on the Punjabi border town, who let me make lopsided rotis while she told me, without even a tiny bit of self-pity, what it was like losing her parents as a child and being forced to marry her own cousin and run their household.<br />
<br />
If I could convince you this country was secretly run by women -- that they oiled the gears that kept it turning, brought home the water that kept it quenched, balanced the checkbooks, and painfully opened doors, one-by-one, would you believe me? Because after days of walking through those doors, India has taught me more about the strength of being a woman than any school, college, therapy session, bedroom or comfy cubicle has been able to do. And I'm pretty sure that if more of India's Daughters were allowed to grow up, they would shake the world.<br />
<br />
I mean, could you play cricket in a sari?<br />
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Ankitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247253144937207253noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7551924745966861355.post-17898257081012274652015-01-24T07:50:00.000-08:002018-03-23T06:15:23.244-07:00Lessons<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
1. <b>On India: </b>After watching and chronicling equal proportions of sad and happy, ugly and beautiful, I've realized that nothing in India is as good or bad as it seems. And that I have no right to become desensitized to any of it -- not the pain or the joy, the beggars or the Bollywood, because it has somehow come together and allowed me to be here.<br />
<br />
2. <b>On Work: </b>The more I work, the more I recognize the signs of a biased system -- from the people I interview thinking I'm a student, to editors discrediting my ability to work independently. If you're a woman you have probably been wired to underrate yourself when it matters most-- I know that I am. But knowing that has only made me work harder, and somewhat more fearlessly, to become better at what I do and unlearn those invisible boundaries.<br />
<br />
3. <b>On Men: </b>Just kidding, I've learned nothing about this species.<br />
<br />
4. <b>On Money: </b>People always ask me about money when they hear that I'm a freelancer and are surprised when I say that it's hardly an issue. I attribute this to two things -- learning to live simply and happily without too much stuff, and not succumbing to the atmosphere of deprivation and competition that we're told surrounds us all the time.<br />
<br />
5. <b>On Being Alone: </b>Last year I walked out of the airport in Hyderabad after one of many trips and had a sinking feeling when I realized no one would be waiting for me, as usual. Then last week I reveled in the liberating luxury of a 20 hour train ride all to myself with a podcast and Caravan. Making friends with solitude is an ongoing challenge, but possibly the most fulfilling of all these lessons.</div>
Ankitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247253144937207253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7551924745966861355.post-79903163065137793162014-10-03T05:53:00.003-07:002014-10-03T06:31:59.478-07:00Dusty Dreams<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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My dream tastes like train coffee and a crumbly biscuit from a kind stranger. It's gritty like the sand and god-knows-what between slipper and sole. It gathers like sweat at the nape of my neck, and black smoke that chokes until my dream turns into freedom in lawless hills between rice paddies and streams.<br />
<br />
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">This dream, it smells of mud and rain and phenyl in crowded hospitals. It is slow like the days that feel like weeks, and those last few moments before sleeping in a grimy hotel room where I look for comfort in the wrong places. </span>When I look in the right places, the dream is unstoppable, booming laughter and Tibetan prayer flags and a piece of boiled corn as yellow as the sun.</div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
I always thought that when my dreams left the clouds to touch the earth, they would fall like welcome rain on parched skin. But my dream is scorching sun and flooded pathways and unanswered questions about the child with the swollen belly. You don't always get to wake up when it hurts.</div>
Ankitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247253144937207253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7551924745966861355.post-36195023969813887782014-08-12T03:24:00.003-07:002014-08-12T21:30:59.713-07:00Field Notes: Araku Valley<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The hills in Araku are a million shades of green. There are shelves of rice paddy ponds and groves of straight, tall trees shading lush coffee plantations. Bulbous jackfruit, each the size of two basketballs, hang off branches and rot on the side of the road when they fall. Fields of methi and spinach and millet thrive, even though the monsoon rains have only sprinkled the valley. Out here streams rush down the slopes and across the roads and through the tiny villages of mud houses and red tiled roofs.<br />
<br />
It's too beautiful to close my eyes, too alive to daydream. I forget about the ribs of the jeep seat jamming into my hip, or the numbing vibration of long motorcycle rides. I forget about the work I came to do.<br />
<br />
But V. Rao, a community leader and researcher who has opened his home to us for the week, says he no longer sees this Araku, a tribal area in Andhra Pradesh that was once a hotbed for the Maoist movement. "I just see the poverty. I see how bad things are," he says without emotion, steering his bike expertly through the eroded roads. <br />
<br />
I don't know much about Rao. I don't speak Telugu, and he doesn't know Hindi or English. Vivek, my reporting partner, translates for us, and there isn't much time. But I see that he dresses with care, speaks with authority, and in the evening, dances tipsily to <i>dimsa </i>music while he brainstorms ideas to move his community forward. His home -- three bedrooms in Araku town -- doubles as an orphanage for the twenty abandoned girls that he has taken in as his own along with his own children and their families.<br />
<br />
That day, we're returning from a daylong meeting with about fifty village leaders and youth -- a meeting where Rao has spent hours making sure attendees know their rights at a time when their land is threatened by the mining industry, illegal timber markets, climate change.<br />
<br />
Those struggles, while very real, are not the most immediate in these striking communities. In villages like Chintalveedi, the families tell us they're just trying not to get sick by drinking the well water that is covered by a sheet of algae. They wonder why their babies keep getting viral fevers, or why their feet swell with disease while the doctors remain far away. And they wait for the government to turn the skeletal bamboo huts where their children study every day into actual buildings that resemble a school.<br />
<br />
But there are also signs of incredible health and harmony -- a vestige of age-old wisdom that dissolves as you get closer to industrialization. Here the farmers have sinewy arms and strong, white teeth. They eat local grain and rice with lentils and green vegetables straight from the earth. Men and women share tasks like cooking and taking care of children, and the threatening leer of creepy men is nonexistent. And while the next generation seek an education to grapple with the economy they can no longer avoid, many said they would prefer to stay close to this lush, green haven.<br />
<br />
I think back to the cities, bursting at the seams with new villagers choosing the urban life, just like my great grandparents did years ago. I think of scarcity -- power cuts and dry taps and fights over space and walls and borders. And how far removed the rice on our plates are from these paddy fields. Amid the traffic and concrete jungles that I have deemed my comfort zones, there are diseases of a different nature in every home.<br />
<br />
In Araku I don't know what's right or wrong and I'm too tired and uninformed to figure it out. When a weathered grandfather in one village asks if I've come to find out what medicines to send to them, I feel helpless and misdirected. So I wake up every day for the journey instead -- the hours in the backseat, staring at the valleys and hills with renewed awe. And I think of this line from the Bollywood movie Highway when the heroine says: "Where I came from, I don't want to go back. But wherever we're going, I don't want to reach."<br />
<br />
The road has yet to let me down.</div>
Ankitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247253144937207253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7551924745966861355.post-5820407006643607032014-07-22T20:57:00.003-07:002014-07-22T22:57:37.176-07:00Bindaas and Barelegged in Bombay<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I was crossing the road to get to an ATM in Hyderabad the other day (a feat in itself given the traffic) when I felt the familiar onslaught of leering eyes on my body. I looked into the oncoming cars and suddenly they were everywhere -- men on bikes and in cars and crossing from the opposite side. I felt so vulnerable, as if the pressure of their gaze would cause my button-down shirt to literally pop right open.<br />
<br />
But I also realized why it hit me so hard: I had spent the last few months in Bombay, wandering through the cobblestone streets of Bandra totally <i>bindaas</i> in dresses and shorts, and experienced only a fraction of this kind of thing. That city had proved a haven and those days were some of the most liberated I experienced anywhere in the world. Unlike other places in India, I could wear what I wanted, drink when I wanted, and come home at a decent party-time hour. And unlike cities in the U.S., there was so little focus on time and schedule, or even image, despite the beautiful and highly fashionable 20-somethings around me.<br />
<br />
And there's more. The autos run on meter so you don't have to fight with the wonderful rickshawvalas. And the people I met -- through concerts, meditation circles, parties, whatever -- were some of the most creative, lively and coolly ambitious folks I've encountered in one place. I had long conversations about how zombies were actually, symbolically, immigrants, and what it was like to walk through the red light district at 4 a.m. I learned which train station had the best weed (and no, I had no plans to buy it), and which music festivals in India were worth my time. Novelists, screenplay writers, musicians -- I was surrounded, making it easier for me to understand why I came back in the first place.<br />
<br />
Bombay also revealed the striking power of what happens when women are actually visible on the streets (and in offices and buses and trains). A couple of months ago I got a text from a particular family member telling me to come back home because "India was a rape waiting to happen." I felt nervous, but also defiant. India has become a second home to me, at least as much as any place I've lived for the past ten years, and leaving it in fear would mean being one more supposedly empowered woman hidden away and held back. Not that I'm interested in being a martyr, but being able to walk down the street at night to buy milk (or let's be realistic -- Old Monk) is a right that can't be taken away from me.<br />
<br />
Not to be too rosy -- Bombay's got it's issues for sure (read Maximum City while standing in a flooded street during the monsoons if you need proof, or look at the sleeping line of homeless people around every corner). And every Indian city has incredible treasures, charms and kindness. But in a lot of ways, I got to see the best of this country during my summer in Bombay, and fall in love with the motherland all over again.</div>
Ankitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247253144937207253noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7551924745966861355.post-74471188287650247762014-06-12T01:45:00.000-07:002014-06-12T03:21:01.122-07:00These Bombay Shores<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="p1">
My friends and I sit silently on the edge of a park in Bombay as dusk turns to night, our faces turned toward the wild grey sea. Today the wind is rough and cool, and if you hold completely still you can actually feel where it meets the hot city air. </div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
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<div class="p1">
I watch the waves below me -- following one at a time as they crest and break on the jagged rocks. Beyond the water is an arching bridge and skyscrapers illuminated in yellow light. A cluster of women in black hijabs gossip on the stone wall on one side of us, and determined joggers turn their faces toward the breeze as they make their rounds. Elderly couples saunter by in comfortable silence, their hands clasped behind their backs. I hear no one.</div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Everything, suddenly, feels like home. Like Clearwater Beach at night with my best friends, and the dock that stretches into the Anclote River behind my parents' house. Like watching the Potomac ebb under the M St. bridge in D.C.; that one quiet spot along the Arno in Florence. The rivers and oceans and seas flow into each other and I could be sitting on any of their shores, just belonging. And I'm not the only one.<br />
<br />
The other day I met a traveler en route to Brazil at a cafe in Bandra — a soft-mannered guy with kind eyes and a stubbly beard. He had spent the day taking photos in the hot sun and we drank coconut water and jaggery coffee and talked about where we had been. After sharing a few adventures the talk turned to Bombay and the city's chaotic grace. There was something magical here, a quiet sort of humanity living among the fishermen's nooks and bustling Dharavi market and lover's perches on Bandstand. He took a sip of his coffee and said, "I have this theory that living on the water is good for the soul.” </div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
I smiled because nothing is coincidence. This is the same theory I've held for a while, created with my toes in the ocean: the idea that people must live on the water, or amid the mountains, or in the desert -- anything vast and natural and divine -- to feel truly happy. That without something expansive and beyond our grasp for reference, it is far too easy to slip into our minds and think the reality we've created is the only thing that exists. </div>
<br />
<div class="p1">
Out here on the edge of the sea, with the wind in my hair and the rush of water drowning out millions of voices, I have no doubt that there is more. I feel like one of the rocks on the shore, at the mercy of the sun and waves and stars. And for now this city is as much home as anywhere in the world could be. </div>
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Ankitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247253144937207253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7551924745966861355.post-16012347664501151422014-05-21T06:31:00.001-07:002014-05-21T06:39:10.992-07:00Scribbles<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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These are some of the incomplete, largely mediocre notes in the margins of my reporting notebook. Typed for your viewing pleasure.<br />
<br />
<b>Valtoha, Punjab</b><br />
<br />
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I want to ask why you build your homes of concrete and glass</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">stretched across this plot of land like an unfinished palace</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">wrought iron gates guarding what you make sure others can see</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">while the light bulbs flicker and the taps run dry</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">lean season is not limited to your fields of wheat</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I want to know why you built your homes on a crumbling foundation</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">of promises and greed and gold that turns black</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">when our grandfathers knew that if one person is weaving the cotton</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">the other has to dye the fabric</span></div>
and that a breeze cannot blow through a wall made of stone<br />
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b>Preet Nagar, Punjab</b></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="p1">
The days here are long and difficult. They start early with the sun rise, as farmers do, and end only when you forget about the mosquitos. In the middle there are endless stories to hear -- from the drunken Sudeep to weary women who bear the burden of this broken, broken system. </div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
I try before every conversation, before nib hits paper, to remind myself why I am here. Sometimes this work feels too fluid and suspended in ideology to be meaningful to these faces that sit across from me. </div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<b>Amritsar, Punjab </b></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s2"><br />
I used to watch Chitti (dark and beautiful, half sari and silver bangles) race up and down the marble stairs of the Somajiguda house with trays of chai and bundles of clothes. Battered, tiny feet with a silver payal. I asked my family then, doesn’t she get tired? And they told me: No, no, usko aadat hai. She’s used to it. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s2"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s2">So for years I watched these people who were used to it — watched them carry buckets of water half their weight through the hot, hot sun. Cut vegetables for hours on the scorching terrace. Scrub a household’s worth of dirty clothes on a rock with a bucket of water. Lift bricks in silver bowls on their heads. And I tried to tell myself that they were used to it.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s2"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s2">But I knew better. And so I packed my suffering and their suffering in a blue backpack and landed in a home where Chitti could have lived. I watched my family’s words fall to pieces upon the aching shoulders of a laborer, the open wounds of a farm hand, the tired feet of a mother with too many hungry children. There were pills and fake doctors and bottles of promised relief. And when those failed, there were chemicals designed for escape.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s2"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">
</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s2">But nobody was used to it.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s2"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s2"><b>Khem Karan, Punjab</b></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s2"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s2">I am too full of fresh village air to crawl into a shell. I feel at once insignificant and powerful. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s2"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s2"><b>Chandigarh</b></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s2"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I want my paper back</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">and my ink</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">the words I gave to you</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">not to mention the words you gave to me.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">In your hands each letter was</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">heated with a soldering iron</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">to be twisted like your mind</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">This is a world of limited reams</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">impatient blue lines</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">notebook bindings that actually stay together</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">after days on the rough, winding road.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I didn't realize that not everyone</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">hands you an extra pen</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s2">
</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">when you lose yours on the bus</span><br />
<span class="s1"><br /></span>
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Ankitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247253144937207253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7551924745966861355.post-13753048091634149532014-05-02T11:37:00.000-07:002014-05-03T00:32:39.717-07:00Farmhouse Meditation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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"When the winds come the rain doesn't stay very long," Sanjeev Anna tells us as the thunder rides in on dark, swift clouds.<br />
<br />
I breathe in those telling winds, gazing over the mud porch at the hills before me. There are acres of wild forest and farm and creatures, mango trees heavy with still-green fruit, yellow eggplants, prickly branches, banana leaves that shade wild, uncultivated earth.<br />
<br />
The rain begins. It comes softly and suddenly, leaving no room for the overbearing sun or the thick, languid air that weighs on my eyelids all day long. The flies retreat, the beetles scurry away. For minutes I just sit on the porch, watching the soil quench its thirst.<br />
<br />
When I inhale I notice something under my ribs -- an ache like heartache, a love like my mother's warm hug. After days of talk and travel, there is nothing left but to feel open and raw like the fresh dirt under my finger nails, dusting my soles and speckling each sip of water I draw from an earthen pot to drink.<br />
<br />
I think of life's sharp edges that have followed me to India. A friend's accusations, a family secret, an unanswered question. I think of a boy and feel ashamed that my words turn their feet in his direction.<br />
<br />
The rain stops and the sun stays hidden. A grey sky is cool and welcome and the leaves drip green and red and brown. My heart is wet and weathered and I tuck it away so that I can return to the safety of my mind, where stories are made.<br />
<br />
Sitting across from me, Sanjeev Anna has this peaceful smile playing on his face that can come only from having one hand in the soil, eyes bright from gazing at the starry night sky.<br />
<br />
I look for courage in the trees.<br />
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Ankitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247253144937207253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7551924745966861355.post-29214680929859590812014-04-08T22:55:00.001-07:002014-04-08T22:57:00.096-07:00Keth Notes<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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It's only been a month since I started reporting in India, but that's enough to know that every 1000-word article comes with a second story -- a much longer adventure best chronicled in patience, sweat and possible tears.<br />
<br />
Behind that quote from a local politician, for example, is hours of waiting, droves of leering men, cups of chai served in direct proportion to visible frustration, and several fights with auto rickshaw drivers that charge vastly different fares for the same exact distance.<br />
<br />
There are children to be played with, traffic jams like you've never seen, and interviews that start and end with incredible home-cooked meals of fish and rice and spicy daal. There is traveling in 106 degrees and choking pollution. And women -- amazing, brilliant women with silent strength in their narrow shoulders, sturdy steps and ability to do anything in a sari.<br />
<br />
Reporting is not easy anywhere, I assume, if you do it right, but this is a whole new world. Gone are my days of calling up a congressman's press office, of knowing exactly where to find reliable data and measuring time with a clock. I've replaced it, instead, with a struggle to balance constant adjustment and a stubborn fight to get what I need, against the odds.<br />
<br />
Journalism to me has always been about discovery and new voices, but this might be the first time that I feel completely at mercy of the world around me. Luckily, the world tells much better stories than I ever could, so all I have to do is show up.</div>
Ankitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247253144937207253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7551924745966861355.post-30116911876998289782014-03-23T08:55:00.000-07:002014-03-25T05:40:27.365-07:00Princesses In A Princely State<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The Hyderabad of my childhood was full of palaces.<br />
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The first, an old bungalow where my mother grew up with her seven siblings. I spent hot summer days there in frilly frocks, playing with small wooden toys and hiding from the dog, Cindy. My cousins and I would swing on a huge metal<i> jula </i>in a courtyard teeming with leafy plants and accessed through a beautiful wrought-iron gate.<br />
<br />
I remember the stone grey floors that stayed cool in the summer, the stories that my mother told about her late father. Learning to drink milky sweet chai out of saucers so I wouldn't burn my tongue, and the sway of my grandmother's soft cotton saris when she did pooja in the morning. I remember that next door there was a small buffalo farm with sounds and scents so strong that I knew exactly where I was when I woke up.<br />
<br />
The second palace was my cousin's home, a sprawling estate perched on the top of a hill. There were white arches, black-and-white marble floors and a terrace where I spent hours asking Chitti, a beloved maid, thousands of questions and chasing lizards on the banisters.<br />
<br />
This was a house meant for dreaming -- I could imagine the portraits of my cousin's ancestors coming to life, their swords and turbans and jewels in tow. I convinced myself I was part of that royalty -- though my heart was fullest playing barefoot in the yard and following my cousin into the nearby construction sites for daily "adventures".<br />
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The palaces of my childhood are gone now. By the time I graduated from high school both had been demolished for personal and financial reasons -- land sold and replaced by apartments and modern houses where the marble and stone give way to glass and steel.<br />
<br />
It's a lot like what has happened to the city, Shah Alam tells me when I visit his Golconda Cigarette Factory with the <a href="http://chaiwallahsofindia.com/">Chaiwallas</a>. At 88, he is the patriarch of one of the city's oldest families, the ones who claim Hyderabadi as their identity before any state or faith. In Alam's Hyderabad, dinner tables are stocked with biryani and mirchi ka salaan and meant for at least thirty people.<br />
<br />
Back in the day, he said, the princely states kept social order as it should be -- families were close and trustworthy, servants were loyal, and money was secondary to respect. Abolishing these states, and the power of the Nizam, monarch of Hyderabad, was the worst thing that could have happened.<br />
<br />
His nostalgia is a little bit like the city my mom describes, one of shaded streets and rickshawvallas and more bungalows with open doors. Now, new money directs urban sprawl, and political tension has divided many people earning and living in the city. Huge malls line the streets and the cost of everything -- from a cup of Irani chai to a haircut -- has grown exponentially. My mom says she doesn't always recognize her hometown, or its people, and I've spent the last several visits vicariously bemoaning the change.<br />
<br />
But in the past few weeks I have discovered beauty in this new Hyderabad, too. I follow my friend into the depths of Old City one day as he visits schools in mostly poor Muslim neighborhoods. I sit in a circle with thirty eighth-grade girls -- the first girls to be educated in their families -- and we learn about each other. One of them, clad in her uniform and black<i> hijab </i>speaks of the changes happening in her volatile neighborhood with such hope and clarity that I have to believe she and her sisters will take over -- the new princesses.<br />
<br />
I spend hours with my cousins who have perfected the art of working to live instead of living to work -- enjoying each meal together, taking drives with their friends just to talk. I eat the best shawarma ever with <a href="http://viveknemana.com/">Vivek</a>, party at the most beautiful house I've ever seen, and enjoy two wonderful dinners at the National Police Academy with one of my mom's best friends, the first woman director in the institution's history.<br />
<br />
When I think of those crumbled palaces my heart still hurts for what this city's people, and my family, have lost. But when I look into the face of that school girl in Charminar, I can think only of it's strength -- something like the stone statue of Buddha in the middle of the Tank Bund, so peaceful and timeless that it's core can't be shaken.<br />
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Ankitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247253144937207253noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7551924745966861355.post-15076085430127450742014-02-14T05:11:00.002-08:002014-02-14T05:13:59.154-08:00Dating the District<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">October.
Arlington. We're full from dinner that he cooked, I'm a few glasses of red wine
into my night. He walks me back to the metro and says, "I'm not going to
end up on your blog or something am I?"<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Oops.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I've lived
out of a backpack in India, trekked through central America, knocked on doors
in the shadiest of DC neighborhoods, driven through a snowstorm in
Appalachia and made plenty of almost-disastrous decisions along the way. But an
intentional foray into the dating world seemed far more nerve racking.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Even so I knew it had to be one of my <a href="http://anrao.blogspot.com/2013/02/project-2013.html">experiments</a> in 2013. Grad school was
over, I owned more than one pair of cute shoes, and my evenings were free as
long as I made deadline. Not to mention, my past romantic history had been a
mix of bad timing, impulse decisions and lack of communication. I always had
some sort of boy drama going on, but it rarely proved worthwhile.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Luckily, a
bunch of my friends were in the same boat. Some of us were recovering from
breakups, others from summer flings. Our particular demographic is <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=7&cad=rja&ved=0CHQQFjAG&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffinance.fortune.cnn.com%2F2012%2F01%2F25%2Feric-klinenberg-going-solo%2F&ei=DGXpUq-IEq2-sQScvYKYDg&usg=AFQjCNF_Y1KTq5yMcyuEa7_WpxrWDuftvw&sig2=-jH6Dm9-sP-siTWEgkrTLQ&bvm=bv.60157871,d.cWc">prone </a>to being detached, and the four of us were proof.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So we
channeled every terrible romantic comedy and Time magazine dating feature and
did what all girlfriends do -- we made it a game. Not the sort of data-driven,
critique-filled Hunger Games stuff you might imagine, but just a bit of
competitive spirit and constant banter. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Finding guys
in D.C. was easier than I thought. This city is full of the kind of people I
like -- idealistic, big-picture thinkers that live at happy hours. I employed
all the millenial dating tools I had never used to broaden the pool: mutual
friends, set-ups, and a slew of (free) dating apps and sites that are all the rage.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #222222;">When you
sign up for dating apps a lot of weird things happen. First, you see a bunch of
your guy friends and try very quickly to click through them, or send them
awkward notes to clear the air. Then, you get tons and tons of weird messages like this:</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">If you
happen to mention said app or site in public, you suddenly find that everyone
you know is on them too. It doesn't matter if they're drop-dead gorgeous,
high-powered professionals, and the most put-together people you know -- OKCupid
is the great equalizer, and it has become acceptable to Tinder at parties.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Sifting
through the messages -- skirting offensive grammar, clean shaven faces and people who lived in
Herndon, Virginia -- I worked up the courage to respond to my first date in September. He
seemed great: worked at an embassy, wasn't scared to leave NW DC and wanted
to move abroad. That he was cute, tan and tall didn't hurt either.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We met at a
generic Dupont bar on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, and I had dinner
plans with friends afterward to ensure a clean getaway. My biggest fear walking in, though, was not rejection but just plain awkwardness. </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But during that first
date -- three hours of seamless conversation, few uncomfortable pauses and the strongest
gin and tonics in the city -- I learned something new about myself. I love
talking to people, almost all people. I love listening to their ideas,
childhood stories and wild, ridiculous dreams. I always know in the first
couple of minutes whether I think a guy is cute, or if we have chemistry, but
that has little impact on whether I want to continue a conversation. I realized it was
almost like reporting, without the notebook.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A genuine
interest in the people I met helped fuel the next, wait for it, 19 first dates.
Not to mention the second and third dates that allowed me taste test libations at almost all U Street and Columbia Heights establishments, usually for free despite my
protests. My normally packed schedule teetered on ridiculous, but I was
meeting and seeing all of D.C: the tired med students, the policy wonks, the IT
nerds, the ex-bro now-hipsters, the hippies who didn't mention they were in
open relationships. And the hippies who did.<br />
</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="color: #222222;">
I also met a guy who became incredibly depressed during the government shutdown, a
sweet guy that made my middle school insecurity look like nothing, and an abrasive consultant who almost choked when I asked to split the bill. </span></span><br />
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And while I
consider myself a fairly insightful and observant person, I realized my
radar is totally off when it comes to dating. I was shocked by several of the
guys who asked me out on a second date -- guys I felt no connection to at all.
One of them was so damn cute that my 25-year-old self gave my 16-year-old self
a high five when I saw his text light up my phone the next morning. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">My friends,
meanwhile, had varying results of their own. One gave up after her first date
-- things were too fresh from a past relationship. Another found that her town
had drastically fewer options that those of us in big cities, though she was a
great sport. And the third, like me, found the experience both liberating and
empowering and tested waters that previously seemed ice cold.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But the
experiment quickly became tiring and I was learning even more about my
preferences. I liked new people, but I loved my friends more. I was far less
emotional than I thought, and got annoyed when someone expected me
to text them every day or meet more than once a week. And while I'm a sucker
for romantic gestures, saccharine words from the wrong person are
positively jarring.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">By mid
October, I was done dating, at least in a competitive way. I didn't "win" based on our
collective terms, and I didn't find a guy, but I was considerably more open and
fearless when it came to the men of D.C. As for the ones outside of District
borders -- I'm going to need another year.</span><span style="font-family: Times, serif; font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
Ankitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247253144937207253noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7551924745966861355.post-36216682205536208422013-12-11T18:59:00.000-08:002014-01-24T06:14:16.756-08:00Coal Minds<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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You smell the coal mines before you see them.<br />
<br />
The acrid odor hits and then, just around the bend, the long arms of machinery and piles of black coal replace the snow-laced mountainside in southern West Virginia.<br />
<br />
Another twist in the road and it's all gone. Just stray dogs and rows of coal camp houses, some signs for towns built around half of a main street. And churches. Lots of churches out here.<br />
<br />
But the power of coal doesn't stop there. It's in dusty boots on the front porch, murals on local school walls, old photos of fathers and grandfathers who mined until their lungs died out. On bumper stickers and television ads where the good guys are the ones who protect your families and the mines, and the bad guys -- like the president -- are the ones who don't.<br />
<br />
And the shadow that a once-thriving industry has cast on these towns is just as palpable in the cold Appalachian air. It's not a darkness from lack of human spirit, abundant in the hills and hollers, but it's a darkness nonetheless. One that has broken families and their bank accounts and the only thing they knew would provide.<br />
<br />
"Don't write anything bad about us," people keep telling me. The ones who can work are working hard, and they've heard the statistics about them in the news. Neighbors replaced by numbers, dirty laundry aired out in print -- even if it isn't in their hands.<br />
<br />
I say I will write what I hear and see, and just the facts. But it's increasingly clear that my profession so easily ignores the signs of light -- the woman who drives hours a day from town to town to share the knowledge she has, a vibrant mayor, a Welch resident who keeps a warehouse of food ready for anyone who is hungry. They bear that burden of bad news.<br />
<br />
At the end of the day I sit in a bar with coal miners, nurses, people I've met throughout the day. We sing to the Goo Goo Dolls, we laugh at bad jokes, we lament our collective failure at trivia. And I remember last week I felt we were worlds apart. And feel lucky that today we're not. </div>
Ankitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247253144937207253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7551924745966861355.post-88941829676073078532013-11-14T22:01:00.001-08:002013-11-18T10:38:21.505-08:00Lost and Found in Addis<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I walk through the cool, dusty morning toward the blue domes of a nearby church, blurry from a night of insomnia. My camera is heavy in my bag, my skin prickles under my jacket from the chill.<br />
<br />
The gate to the Bole Medhane Alem, an Ethiopian Orthodox church, is flanked by women selling incense, their heads covered in thin, white cloth. One speaks to me in Amharic until she realizes I can't understand. A man is kneeling beside me, head touched to the cement.<br />
<br />
As I enter the gates, the stained glass windows and pillars come into full view. The church is fairly new, with smooth walls and marble floors. I step slowly, first to snap photos, and then because I realize I know nothing about this tradition or its rituals or how to respect the faithful.<br />
<br />
Watching the women around me -- most dressed in long skirts and yards of white cotton wrapped around their shoulders and heads -- I pull out the silk scarf I use to protect my camera lens and cover my hair. I step up to the door of the church where people have discarded their shoes and several are kneeling at the entrance.<br />
<br />
I've observed many houses of religion in different coutries, but never seen this kind of prayer. Women cross themselves, and then pray with their hands outstretched to the ceiling, almost as if wailing, but with little sound. They move their palms close and then apart, and bow repeatedly. The bare feet, the incense -- these remind me of temples in India. But the light filtering through blue glass, the gilded altar -- this reminds me of Rome.<br />
<br />
I make my way around the biggest church in Addis and enter through the main door.<br />
<br />
Sitting in a pew in the church, someone's walking cane at my feet, I am suddenly overwhelmed. There are sonorous chants and whispers and men and women bowing their heads to the ground in every corner, murmering toward the altar. But I also feel a deep sorrow, an ache like hunger in my stomach, a shortness of breath in my lungs. Tears crawling slowly from my eyes.<br />
<br />
I sit for minutes that feel like hours, words forming in my mind and then quickly dissipating, meditating on the women before me whose faces seem to be etched with unanswered prayers. I wonder if this is the culmination of the last few non-stop days -- of asking so many questions, of soaking in so many familiar, yet completely foreign, sites. The unrestrained reflection of the hungry children that have always, and will always, circle in my mind in every country.<br />
<br />
Eventually, a woman walks over to me and grabs my hand with a smile. "Sit here," she says, leading me to her pew and I realize I've been unraveling on the men's side. We meet eyes and laugh and I sit with her for a minute before turning around to leave.</div>
Ankitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247253144937207253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7551924745966861355.post-90444597926384149042013-10-07T11:51:00.000-07:002013-10-09T11:00:15.819-07:00Singlehandedly Destroying My Neighborhood, Or Something Like That<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333332; line-height: 31px;">Warning: I’ve replaced data with footsteps and theories with my eyes. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Columbia Heights is one of those neighborhoods -- you know, the kind that were once mostly black and Hispanic, mostly low-income, mostly part of city council meetings when people said words like "lack of access" and "development" and "up and coming". </span></span>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The streets were packed with markets and bodegas where English was a second language, and little girls avoided certain spots after school. When this neighborhood made headlines, it wasn't a good thing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And then stuff happened. Like a huge shopping mall with a Target, and bars with craft beers and high end barbecue. We moved in: the young professionals who talk about community and don't use plastic bags and put sculptures in our tiny yards. So the building facades changed and rents got higher and people built free clinics and started to volunteer for the people who we weren't.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Naturally, these things are on my mind as my waking body memorizes the bus schedule, and I figure out how to get more air in my new little room. Because I'm so happy here, it's almost unnerving.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I smile when I walk down the street and see multiple generations of boys and men playing soccer, cursing and falling and laughing in Spanish. I stop by the hidden bakery on 11th Street and breathe in so deeply my stomach is almost full. I want to kiss the buzzed head of the kid I tutor on Tuesdays when I see him waiting outside the market with his mother. And I love the little girls with their shiny black hair and uniforms, and the family that sits out on their stoop and barbecues for hours and hours on a Sunday.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">But there's this feeling of guilt sometimes. As if my being here means quite literally taking the space of someone who was there before me and can't be anymore -- a family forced out to Maryland because their home became too expensive. A mother who commutes more than an hour each morning instead of walking to work. This kind of exodus, I hear, can create islands of poverty and crime, driving a working class to isolation from the resources they need.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And then the questions:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What do I do? Is this just the kind of capitalism that doesn't come so naturally to me -- an inevitable shift? Do I stick to my designated spot near U Street and Dupont? Or do I try my hardest to be a loving, giving, sharing person so that I earn the right to stay? And is this also just a construction of my mind and its imposing limits?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">My friend and I talk to Monty one day -- an ancient black man sitting shirtless on the steps of his row house with some sort of liquor in a brown paper bag. He's been here for decades and the neighborhood has changed in front of him, I imagine, from the same spot where he is currently perched.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I ask him questions that secretly reveal what is nagging me, and wait for an answer that I never get.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Monty doesn't care about gentrification, really, and he's not the least bitter about the white kids moving in. He points at the liquor store across the street and says things have gotten safer around here. He likes what's going on -- there are new things replacing old things, and the kids are getting home in one piece. Things look different, and Monty is on board. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I see him again on a few occasions, the shiny skin on his chest juxtaposed with the aging gruff of his face. He and his wife sit outside all the time, taking sips of the humid summer air. And every time I see them, it's a reminder. A reminder that I don't get to tell someone else's story for them -- let alone the narrative of a neighborhood that existed long before me and will continue long after.</span></div>
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<div style="color: #222222; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">For now the battle I have is not the one of how this city should grow, but how I can grow alongside my neighbors. At the very least, I'll have to start by finding out who they are.</span></div>
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Ankitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247253144937207253noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7551924745966861355.post-77241839782718231512013-09-13T06:09:00.003-07:002013-09-13T07:06:00.548-07:00Eyes On My Body, Rage In My Head<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Today there are celebrations across India -- the four rapists that brutally attacked a woman and her partner on a bus last year have been sentenced to death.<br />
<br />
My friends are cheering. They post stuff and send me texts that justice is being served. But that euphoria seems more like tiger balm -- satisfying in a strange, tingly way, but only until it rubs off. Then you're just left with the ache.<br />
<br />
There are some things that don't wash away. I resonate in part with this widely circulated <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&ved=0CE4QFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fireport.cnn.com%2Fdocs%2FDOC-1023053&ei=rQ4zUvmbEviq4AO6roCgBA&usg=AFQjCNEbBBOAXdLGdN2VS4FIcko9vZwc2g&sig2=-KRIHUe0umrtc1H5sUKDzA&bvm=bv.52164340,d.dmg">essay</a> from a an American student in India -- the constant feeling of eyes on your body is a silent, pervasive trauma. It's the kind of thing that turns your wonderment into dull, passive rage, your aimless saunter into a hurried walk.<br />
<br />
It's not just an India problem. It's in my backyard and every country I've visited.<br />
<br />
The worst moments for me were actually in Italy, where American study abroad kids can be like a drunken scar on the face of a beautiful city. But I wasn't drunk when I was followed for blocks down cobblestone streets, or when some guy pinned me against a wall in a club and stuck his hands down the waistline of my jeans.<br />
<br />
I was told these weren't Italians. They were undocumented workers preying on American girls. But paperwork means nothing when you feel unwanted eyes and hands on your body.<br />
<br />
In India, the frustration was paired with an experiment. I lived for a short while in the kind of community described in these context pieces about the Delhi rape. But it quickly became home, the stares become curiosity, and I had enough guardians in the families I knew that uneasiness became a thing of the past.<br />
<br />
I became human there, in a slow and deliberate way. But only within that one square mile -- there were, of course, other times that shook me to the core. <br />
<br />
This is not about my story, though, it's a collective narrative. We don't get to write the plot through our single blogs and Facebook posts -- it's in the way boys are raised, and what girls see in the mirror. The way they sit together in school, and what it means to hold hands. The true meaning of consent. <br />
<br />
Because until that happens, these stirring moments are not tipping points, they are just headlines. And I can safely say that's not justice.</div>
Ankitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247253144937207253noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7551924745966861355.post-55750906425209907402013-08-21T06:45:00.004-07:002013-08-21T07:10:08.428-07:00The Millenial Revolution<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I am a product of my generation.<br />
<br />
My grandparents left behind continents and community, seeking opportunity. My parents worked long, hard hours for quiet, peaceful stability. And I -- well I'm driven by the need for constant engagement, a path that is interesting and uncertain and full of the kind of life that smacks you in the face so you can't look back. A path that allowed me to make mistakes in at least three different countries. <br />
<br />
A big house and a nice car have little allure for my kind of millenial. Big houses have mortgages and pools that need constant maintenance. Big houses are full of closets with stuff -- stuff that keeps you from moving when you want to see or do something new. I like pretty dresses too, but not at the cost of mobility, or knowing the burden that my accumulation of stuff puts on other people far from home. <br />
<br />
And when I see senseless violence, like the open fire on preschools and pedestrians yesterday, and revolutions that end where they started, I know it's not random. Because those beautiful homes on the water are attached to bigger lawns. Not enough land to grow much, but the kind that put considerable space between you and the neighbor.<br />
<br />
I went to "gifted" public schools where I was asked to answer many questions, but never about the missing students. The ones whose parents didn't have time to teach them thousands of words when they were young, or trace the shapes, or learn the colors by mixing different kinds of paint. And the missing students, hidden in their own schools, weren't asked about it either.<br />
<br />
For the few years that I rode a bus with kids that were financially poorer than me, I remember feeling uneasy. I remember when Brian told everyone I had a 'big house'. I remember cigarettes in sixth grade, kids bullying the bus driver because of his accent -- the extra syllable when he said bus stop. I remember using the word "fuck" for the first time and trying to mask how weird it felt.<br />
<br />
I felt just as unsettled with the kids who had everything they wanted. They had three jet skis and huge wardrobes and still wanted all of these things in all of these catalogs I hadn't seen before. But I remember thinking their lives seemed more complicated than mine -- more rules, more faces to put on in front of more people.<br />
<br />
My discomfort was part of the segregation -- not just black and white and brown, but so much more -- that defines a fractured society. One where everybody, regardless of their circumstance, is left without choices. And without the dialogue that should have happened, in the classroom and at home and on the bus, it has become so easy to dehumanize each other. Easy not to see someone as your brother or sister. Easy to think of someone as "the other".<br />
<br />
It's the<b> other</b> that gets overlooked and diminished. It's just too easy to hurt the <b>other</b> without feeling the gnawing, unsettling pain of how it feels to hurt your own family and friends. And creating this class of others is a task that all sides seem to have inherited regardless of their wealth or race or circumstance.<br />
<br />
But there are signs of light, there are always signs of light.<br />
<br />
I think my generation is looking to add to their families, to extend love past their walls. It's apparent in the way we travel. It lives in our efforts to build community, from hipsters with community gardens to "disenfranchised" golden children returning to their roots because escaping was never the solution to success. And we have finally started to value and look up to those who learn and produce and grow without too much emphasis on the institutions or labels behind them.<br />
<br />
And even though we plug in and tune out, I think our phones might actually be making us smart. The globalization of information has produced idealists (though sometimes misdirected like I have been many times) because a wireless connection can extend farther than we ever thought possible. Our Twitter feeds can start movements, our Facebooks promote campaigns, our Skype accounts connect us to people otherwise forgotten in so many ways. People complain that there are too many opinions being voiced, but there are also thousands of avenues to hear them.<br />
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All we really need to do is listen. </div>
Ankitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247253144937207253noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7551924745966861355.post-73747613143937404972013-08-08T18:40:00.002-07:002013-08-08T18:41:07.364-07:00What It Takes To Open Your Wallet<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
From the days when I carried around a UNICEF box during Halloween as a kid, to buying a Street Sense from the same homeless guy each week, the act of donating money, and collecting donations, has always proved confounding. There are so many things to care about, but no way to reach them all. And there's always the added confusion of accountability and impact.<br />
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But a recent 'fundraiser' made me realize what it takes to have someone actually donate their hard-earned cash, and do it with joy. The lessons I took away from the experience also fit perfectly with what I learned from <b>Switch: How To Change Things When Change Is Hard</b>, which I'm kind of obsessed with this year.</div>
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A college friend of mine sent out a private Facebook invite to a group of maybe 50 people, asking us to give a monetary gift for another friend's birthday so that he could travel to a sacred spot that was significant in both his personal life and ongoing study of religion.</div>
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The response was immediate: people were posting that they had donated, and urging their friends to join in. It was personal, sweet, and a kind of instant community built around our mutual respect for him and this trip. I'm not close friends with this guy, but I donated a small amount of money with no hesitation.</div>
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Within a few days the goal was not only reached, but surpassed, and the friend who had organized the whole thing put up a glorious video of the birthday boy's reaction to the posts, messages and money for the trip. It was warm and fuzzy to the nth degree.</div>
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Having seen the beauty and efficiency of this process, I started to identify what made this different than all the Save the Children campaigns we pass by every day, at the grocery story, or the Facebook posts about friends running for cancer. </div>
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1) <b>The goal was clearly defined.</b> We knew exactly where our money was going, and who would be using it. Trying to put a dollar amount on top of a huge initiative like women's empowerment doesn't exactly give you a picture, or too much confidence, that your small contribution could make a difference. In this case you knew exactly how much you could impact the situation.</div>
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2) <b>The outreach was targeted, limited and relevant. </b>You know spectator's syndrome? Where everyone in a crowd sees someone get hurt by doesn't do anything about it because they diffuse responsibility? I feel like that's how it is with some campaigns. My friend was smart enough to make a closed group that included only people he knew had some sort of attachment or emotion connected to the 'cause'. When there are a limited number of people, they know they have to rise up to the occasion.</div>
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3) <b>Emotional connection. </b>Senator Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican, attracted lots of attention when he decided to suddenly support gay marriage after his son, Will, came out. A lot of times it takes that moment of humanization -- that friend with cancer, the sweet rescue dog, to feel the weight of a cause. In this case, it was a friend that makes it so easy to love and respect him because of his quietly passionate way of living. The connection was immediate, so the reaction was too.</div>
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4) <b>End game. </b>Seeing our friends face light up was more than enough pay back for the donation. But even if you give selflessly, without needing a return on your investment, that moment is so fulfilling and necessary to come full circle. Some organizations have tried to do that by providing pictures of the child you are supporting, but it needs to be stronger, and more consistent. It can't be a one way street.</div>
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So, anyhow, this is my recipe for how to make people give you money. In a world with such stark differences in resources, maybe this will help someone.</div>
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Ankitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247253144937207253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7551924745966861355.post-45551017210331120022013-07-29T10:39:00.004-07:002013-07-29T10:40:38.899-07:00Experiment 3: All The World's A Stage<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span id="goog_1364673000"></span><span id="goog_1364673001"></span>This is a little late, and I've been slacking on posting my '<a href="http://anrao.blogspot.com/2013/02/project-2013.html">Project 2013</a>' experiments. But here it is:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpgcsF68_8rB_2gq4jwTHCz71YSOorvGq0y7BNR9zrwb3yuwzsDlLhmzCBSXd_GjP9-yrRQKm-QqdjhFoYzKab2daU9vMotExuZ2pEYR5gxeSvjpmrUqJtL78lNiHq4xur1FIi31iub8A/s1600/933982_10103554789699761_195857691_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpgcsF68_8rB_2gq4jwTHCz71YSOorvGq0y7BNR9zrwb3yuwzsDlLhmzCBSXd_GjP9-yrRQKm-QqdjhFoYzKab2daU9vMotExuZ2pEYR5gxeSvjpmrUqJtL78lNiHq4xur1FIi31iub8A/s320/933982_10103554789699761_195857691_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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It's no secret that public speaking is one of America's greatest fears. But for me, performing is even scarier. I think it's because of the creative element -- you're putting something out there that means something to you on a different level than intellect, that makes you happy, that you've practiced and tried to perfect.<br />
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Anyhow, my friend and I decided we need to woman up and face our anxiety by performing at a local open mic. Since I recently started practicing tabla, and she is a fantastic singer, we met a few times and chose some songs that we thought could pair these two music elements. I can safely say her voice is much more in tune and notable than my nascent percussion skills.<br />
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But that's not really the point. The point was to get up there and try something new. And it worked. We had a great time, got plenty of audience validation, and were absolutely giddy for hours afterward. Addressing this fear was on my list for this year, and I'm excited to report it was conquered.</div>
Ankitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247253144937207253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7551924745966861355.post-13854552911876641052013-07-13T05:23:00.003-07:002013-07-13T06:07:27.842-07:00Rich People Are Weird, And Other Thoughts<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I crossed the treacherous borders of NW DC on Friday night to check out someone's screen printing art exhibit near H St.<br />
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When we were heading out a couple hours later, one of the artist's friends, we'll call him Karl, sauntered up from around the corner, a utilitarian-looking bag clipped around his waist. He was a white guy with a big smile and some sort of gold or silver cap on his front tooth and a Sex Pistols graphic t-shirt.<br />
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Karl was one of those guys you're glad to meet after a long screen-filled week -- immediately crazy, ready to do whatever you, or he, wanted. He reminded me a lot of friends in college, who I would meet hanging upside from a zipline between our school buildings, or find at a party wearing a head-to-toe golden bodysuit.<br />
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In the short walk from gallery to our destination he talked about hating jazz music and spending $300 at Black Cat every weekend. Then he told the bouncer at the bar we were entering that he would finish their entire supply of gin. That guy didn't look too excited.<br />
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Inside the bar Karl bought us a round. I was about to object -- I'm chronically uncomfortable with people buying me drinks -- but my friend said: No, he's a millionaire. She went on to explain that he was part of the founding team for a popular iPhone app and the drinks should be on him. I thought of continuing my protest on principal, but whatever.<br />
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After some chats and dancing to 80s music we head out to the patio. Karl offered up some weed and then asked me if I knew about the app that he had designed. My friend told him she had already debriefed me on his past, and I said I didn't use the app, and probably wouldn't since I was looking for ways to limit that dependency. He said it was revolutionary, and referred me to a Ted Talk.<br />
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Then he asked: "How much do you think I am worth?"<br />
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"In what way?" I asked.<br />
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He wanted to know a number, I could tell, or at least a ballpark range. He wanted to know that the t-shirt and hip-pack and gold tooth weren't lost on me, that it was the right way to do rich.<br />
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"How would I know that? All I know about you is that you drop things a lot," I said, referencing a splattered can of aranciata and a lost cigarette formerly perched behind his ear.<br />
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But the question was revealing. It made me think of other exceptionally rich people I knew in my generation. Each one had brought up their wealth in conversation unsolicited -- on a beach during a conversation about education, or in the middle of a drunken night.<br />
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I don't know how that knowledge affects me -- it's certainly interesting, and I like to think about what I could do with expendable cash. But it's not inspiring, unless there's a good story attached.<br />
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The night moved on and other things happened. A german shepherd named Friday walked into the bar, and Karl met a couple of new friends and decided to make slingshots out of tree branches and condoms. I got a weird headache and realized how many nights I've been an insomniac.<br />
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But I woke up thinking about the cage this crazy, fun kid had made for himself. The same cage that is created when poor people feel like poverty is an identity, not a circumstance. What an exhausting way to think about your spot on this planet and the transient nature of every single thing around you. </div>
Ankitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13247253144937207253noreply@blogger.com2