miss maggie (
bossymarmalade) wrote2010-02-11 10:31 am
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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!
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!
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