Skip to main content

Being Heard

Following the horribly sad events unfolding in Ukraine from afar made me think of my first time watching Rashomon and then a few times thereafter in different points of time in life. Each time it became more evident that there is no single truth in the telling of history even if relatively recent. Events come to be seen in very different light as time passes and new perspectives emerge. 

The further we are from the place, time and people who are impacted or actors in the the story, the harder it is to understand what is going on. The question of who is at fault for what is going on today can provide much more than Rashomon's four perspectives on the same event. I have friends and colleagues who are native to either side and some whose families have roots that go across both. Depending on who you ask there is a different answer - it is a factor of their age, the strength of their connections to the home country and how their lives in America have shaped up to be.

My friend C wrote an impassioned note to people at her workplace - as a Russian, she felt compelled to separate herself from what is being done in Ukraine the name of that country. That reminded me of the riots in Gujarat in 2002, News traveled world-wide and in America those that were aware expressed concern about what this meant for the future of India as secular country; why more was not being done to make the madness stop. 

At the time, the average person from India when quizzed about events in Gujarat felt much like C does now, yet there was not much we could do. In a far more hyper-connected and always on world two decades later, there is this naïve presumption that the voice and aspirations of the average citizen matters specially when it is at complete odds with that of the powers that be.  

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...

Changing Pace

This blog has been a big part of my life for the last five years. Besides giving me the opportunity to connect with a number of interesting people and share my thoughts and ideas with them, it has been a form of daily meditation for me. No matter what the day threw my way, I made a very deliberate effort to find a little quiet time to write.The process of thinking about what to write and then the act of writing itself worked as an antidote to aggravations big and small. Five and half years ago, when I started Heartcrossings both my personal and professional lives left a lot to be desired for. The only real happiness I had was in being J's mother. While that was often enough to make me forget what I did not have, I sorely needed a third place to call my own and shape in the likeness of my dreams. This blog has been where there were no limits or constraints and that was absolutely exhilarating - it is the reason I have been able to nurture it for as long and as much as I have. A lot ...