a nice change

so, here i am, back in the City.
i feel good. last night my dad and i stayed up till about 4:30 am, gabbing endlessly. we sent my mom running bored into snoreland at about 2. i've made a haircut appointment, and after that my mom and i are going to see the new Mira Nair movie, Monsoon Wedding. i just made plans to see the lovely Miz Sykii...(i'd call her a lady, but she might hit me.)
my cousins, and young nephew are headed here for breakfast tomorrow, i'm seeing my adopted aunt for dinner monday night, and possibly a nice man, who sells me NicE things.
other that that last, it will be a very family weekend.
like i said, feels good.

miracles

the past couple of days have been touched with a strange kind of magic.

on the drive back from college, just as my family and i were getting deeply into a dirty joke competition, we got stopped by a state trooper. we all thought for sure that my dad's license would no longer remain unblemished by speeding ticket (since he was doing 89 in a 55 zone) but instead, the trooper asked for his license, talked to him for a few minutes, and then promptly sent us on our way with a smile...unticketed.

today, my mom and i were coming back from the movie. we were trying to catching the crosstown bus at 59th st. we were hurrying towards the bus stop, but just as we got there, the bus pulled away. we resigned ourselves to wait, and began to walk to the next stop on the line. but the bus driver had other ideas. he honked at us, and gestured us near with his head, and then stopped the bus in the middle of the street just to let us on. a city bus.

it's been a day filled with small miracles, and huge silly grins. i'm quite enjoying it.

"we are like that only"

monsoon wedding.
this movie touched me in ways i cannot even begin to describe.
i have always had mixed feelings about my homeland. i hate it with a passion sometimes, the constraint, the dirt, the heat...and i love it with a part of me that i can't seem to get rid off, no matter how hard i try.
this movie...it captured India...my India with a jubilance that i would never have believed possible. it showed bazaars that i've shopped at, cousins that i had, weddings that i've been too. pounding music that i snicker at, and yet can't help moving to.

it's half in hindi, and half in english, and the hindi bits are subtitled. i think mira nair did a fantastic job in making it accessible and truthful and caricature all at the same time. that takes courage. the subject heading for this post: "we are like that only" appears on the screen, after the credits have all rolled. it's a very typical indianism- (when speaking english, indians tend to put only after every single sentence. and if you all are very very good, perhaps i will do the sentence for you, complete with accent.) at any rate, the statement however is true...we are like that and it's beautiful to me for the first time in a long while.

the movie takes place in a punjabi family rather than a bengali one, so it is not entirely accurate. but a large portion of my family is punjabi by marriage anyway, so i recognized all of it. there's even a nod to this in the film:
"You Punjabi's are so ostentatious"
"And you Bengali's are so pretentious!"
Hee! i know no one's going to get that joke besides me, but still. i guess that's actually part of it. there are so many people i want to show this movie to. for the first time, i think i could actually show them so that they would understand the flavor of where i come from. in all its laughter and exuberant embarrassment.

there was a more serious segment too, one that had me curled up in a ball, sobbing on my mother's shoulder. it was intense, and a little too close to home...but that just made the experience all the more real.

i loved it.
if you're reading this, be warned, i may very well be inflicting this movie on you at some point...
i think i might finally be able to show you what it's like
maybe in some deep sense, what i'm like,
or anyway at least where i come from.