bossymarmalade: black woman and indian woman playing mas (birds of paradise)
miss maggie ([personal profile] bossymarmalade) wrote2010-02-11 10:31 am

i hear she bawling out for she neighbour ramsingh

asian women carnival #5: who i am when i'm (not) with you



fire in mi wire


goddamn indian people, you know they're always like this, shit

look lady you're brown you should know better

but ey-ey, who de hell she tink she playin white 'ooman for?

omg lori you're playing the sitar part and i'm the tabla! yay beatles rock band for making us feel like real indians!!


I say what I want about brown people without feeling like I'm selling out my own, and I hold them to a higher standard because you know we have to be twice as good to be thought of as half as good. I snarl at people who "ruin it for the rest of us". I say dumb, mean-spirited things about other Indian people that I would never say in front of non-desis. I fail Hindi class and feel secretly relieved because I'm more comfortable speaking French and Spanish with a broad English accent rather than Hindi with the same.

I eat with my fingers -- and I don't mean using them to pick up pizza or fried chicken. I mean dipping them into bowlfuls of hot dhal and rice, I mean tearing off flaky pieces of paratha to wrap around curry chicken and bodi, I mean mixing up stew salmon with soft rice and kuchela. I mean tasting my mother's sweet hand in the cooking and licking the food from my warm fingertips.


what the hell's wrong with your yahoo avatar? you look like a white person!

you think *everything* was invented in india, jesus

they brought home food from temple but it's that y'know heavy indian food taste, ugh

man dem guyanese does chop up dey meat so fine-fine! is like eating soup!


I run around barefoot and don't touch pictures or murtis with my left hand, or after I've eaten meat. I talk to Ganesh and Lakshmi and Shiva and Kali and Hanuman whenever I feel like it and leave them offerings of water and flowers and rum and weed a couple times. I swallow puncheon rum with lime juice and salt to "chase down" a cold, ring my eyelashes with soot from ghee burned in a diya to "clean out" my eyes, don't cut my nails or hair after six at night because they're "asleep".

I bruise myself and my skin looks the same, no technicolour purple and yellow in sight. I scowl at my unplucked eyebrows, cursing my dad's side of the family for being hairy and my mom's side for not telling her (the youngest daughter) about the special dough you're supposed to make and roll over your baby girls' bodies so they grow up hairless. My eyelashes hit against my glasses though so it's not all bad.


just because i'm indian doesn't mean i have to watch shah rukh khan movies, mom, christ

dad can you make some fry aloo and saltfish please i'll help cook some sadha roti

suhani raat dhal chuki na jaane tum ... uh ... ka ... bhowjee? whatever, i love this song

what we're eating vegetarian *again*? i'm going out and having chinese crispy skin chicken instead

put some geera in de ting nah! or shit, "cumin" or whatever they call it here, steups


I'm not with you right now. I wouldn't be like this or say these things or eat this way if I were. But that's okay, because in that way I'm lucky to be from the diaspora; I already had a bit of three different cultures and that helped me learn how to code-switch without choking on hurt and frustration, and so I don't hate myself when I'm with you anymore. Who's "you", though? Am I talking to non-desi people or sourcelanders? Both, I guess, at different times. Sometimes I'm talking to non-Trinidadians; sometimes it's non-Indian Trinidadians. Every now and again it's everybody who grew up outside of Gasparillo. Being a diasporado means cartwheeling your way through all your identities at a moment's notice.

Who I am when I'm not with you. I'm nobody you'll ever see -- but hell, this is a Carnival, after all -- and I am a Trini girl and I was born knowing how to play mas. Roll up de tassa, o beta!
traveller: (Default)

[personal profile] traveller 2010-02-11 11:55 pm (UTC)(link)
thank you.

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yeloson: (southside)

[personal profile] yeloson 2010-02-11 11:58 pm (UTC)(link)
Say that then!

Go on, Diasporado!

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willow: Raspberry on black background. Text: Original Unfiltered Willow (Willow:Unfiltered)

[personal profile] willow 2010-02-12 12:09 am (UTC)(link)
Girl, you have a way of making a body home-sick - just with bringing up memories of dougla relatives (and the ones who claim they have no Indian in them at all, and put up with everybody laughing).

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anatsuno: a cute acid green frog on a very red leaf: kermitsuno (frog)

[personal profile] anatsuno 2010-02-12 12:12 am (UTC)(link)
&hearts! Thank you, yes.

And, um. Is steups a shorter 's'il te plait'? That's what I say, but I'm not sure if that's... like what you're saying. :)

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duraflame: (Oui Shosanna)

[personal profile] duraflame 2010-02-12 12:13 am (UTC)(link)
This was amazing to read. Thank you for sharing it.
alestar: (Default)

[personal profile] alestar 2010-02-12 12:25 am (UTC)(link)
This is identical to the comment above, but it's sincere: This is amazing. Thank you.
glockgal: (Default)

[personal profile] glockgal 2010-02-12 12:29 am (UTC)(link)
Reading this makes me feel slightly embarrased. Not of you or your writing of course (duh); but of the content itself, like on a personal level. WHY. TELL MEEEEE.



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gloss: woman in front of birch tree looking to the right (Lisa - hurray!)

[personal profile] gloss 2010-02-12 12:38 am (UTC)(link)
God, you are so awesome! I love this and feel privileged to have read it. <333
kuangning: (Default)

[personal profile] kuangning 2010-02-12 01:07 am (UTC)(link)
An' dey jammin' de soca, jammin' de soca...

Thank you so much for this. The voice, and the seething mass of memories. I often wish I had ties to home that didn't include my immediate family; going home for the roti and the dhal and rice and the chutney means unhealthy interaction. I go anyway, when the pull gets too strong, but I wish I didn't have to choose. This helps.
misadventure_lad: (Default)

[personal profile] misadventure_lad 2010-02-12 01:11 am (UTC)(link)
but ey-ey, who de hell she tink she playin white 'ooman for?

Heh. Sounds like home.
the_future_modernes: a yellow train making a turn on a bridge (Default)

[personal profile] the_future_modernes 2010-02-12 01:27 am (UTC)(link)
ahhhhhhh. What a beautiful piece of writing this is.
goss: Artwork of Lord Shiva (Default)

[personal profile] goss 2010-02-12 01:33 am (UTC)(link)


Is Shivraatri here tonight. And Carnival startin tomorrow.

I fasting and praying right through de night (6pm tonight til 6am).

Tomorrow? Is wine and jam time, dahlin! *g*
ext_16103: (Default)

[identity profile] tallycola.livejournal.com 2010-02-12 02:00 am (UTC)(link)
This is beautiful! Thanks for writing! :D
glass_icarus: (mango cubed)

[personal profile] glass_icarus 2010-02-12 02:03 am (UTC)(link)
oh, glee! &hearts &hearts :D
torachan: (smokin')

[personal profile] torachan 2010-02-12 02:20 am (UTC)(link)
This is such a wonderful piece. Thank you for sharing!
st_aurafina: lotsa little rainbow hearts (hearts: lotsa hearts)

[personal profile] st_aurafina 2010-02-12 02:35 am (UTC)(link)
This is an amazing post, thank you so much for sharing it.
crossedwires: toph punches katara to show her affection (a subtle change of light)

[personal profile] crossedwires 2010-02-12 02:43 am (UTC)(link)
dharmavati: cute Asian girl is hugging the world ({misc} I love the whole world)

[personal profile] dharmavati 2010-02-12 02:56 am (UTC)(link)
This was a beautiful read; thank you for sharing it! :)
beachlass: red flipflops by water (sandals)

[personal profile] beachlass 2010-02-12 03:23 am (UTC)(link)
Aw, thank you for sharing this. It warmed my heart after a chilly day.
devilc: Sanity Assassin (SanityAssassin)

[personal profile] devilc 2010-02-12 04:39 am (UTC)(link)
Brilliant as always, thank you for sharing.

I bruise myself and my skin looks the same, no technicolour purple and yellow in sight.

Okay. Wow. I've never thought of that before. To have the pain and the knot, but not necessarily the mark and the lurid colors.

And the reason this bit so resonates with me is that, being so pale, when I bruise, the color show is spectacular. To the point of comments (or even gasps) from strangers. To the point of planning clothing choices around (innocently got) bruises.

A part of me, in the back of my mind, has always considered this just one of the realities that every woman "gets" -- the realities of dressing around that brightly colored blotch on your arm or shin, even when you're sweltering in long pants on a humid day because you munged up your knee on Saturday while roller skating and it's rotting-flesh green by Tuesday.

Except. Not.

Thank you for jolting me out of my reality and getting me to look at the world (and my back of the mind assumptions) in a new and different way.
Edited (clarity) 2010-02-12 04:44 (UTC)
dharma_slut: They call me Mister CottonTail (Default)

[personal profile] dharma_slut 2010-02-12 05:24 am (UTC)(link)
Thank you for this wonderful prose poem!
dhobikikutti: earthen diya (Default)

[personal profile] dhobikikutti 2010-02-12 05:38 am (UTC)(link)
I had a big old sappy grin on my face four lines into reading this post that just kept getting wider and wider. Also, I heart you.

(Suhani raat dhal chuki... na jaane tum kab aaoge)
heathershaped: (SGA: Teyla)

[personal profile] heathershaped 2010-02-12 05:57 am (UTC)(link)
Beautiful. ♥

weirdest compliment ever: there is something about the way you write about food.
applegnat: (Default)

[personal profile] applegnat 2010-02-12 07:26 am (UTC)(link)
*stands up and applauds*

This is beautiful. Thank you for writing it.
buddleia: (whyyouwannagoandputstarsintheireyes?)

[personal profile] buddleia 2010-02-12 09:26 am (UTC)(link)
Lovely post! And, apropos of an earlier comment, so many of my school friends said, 'Cheups, man' when they were pissed off. Actually said, rather than sucking their teeth, which was usually a trigger for a fight. Ah, happy days in West London, or something.

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