Kiran's place

I want a world that hasn’t been so ravaged and destroyed from within that we seek to create Heaven on Earth. 

I want a world that can revel in the sheer potential of our time in addressing the greatest problems that have afflicted humanity since its advent. 

I want a world that live for the sake of others, rather than for the sake of itself.

I want a world that can slow down and appreciate itself, at least once in a while.

Or, in other words…

I want the world to stop modernizing and digitalizing for a second, take twenty to thirty years to address the global problems that threaten our planet such as climate change, environmental pollution, regional infrastructure development, and a perverted brand of consumerism and corporate greed, and then consider how we can, in solving those problems, create a space for an equitable globe in a digital era. 

I want the world to stop caring about national labels like “American” or “Nigerian,” using that energy to perhaps create a globe where someone who happens to be from the States or Nigeria will have equal accesses to physical, spiritual, and technological resources, and thus the capacity and potential for any individual of the globe to encounter peace, prosperity, and the pursuit of happiness, as well as the potential to innovate and advance in the sciences, math, arts, and humanities.

I want the world to cast a ballet for itself, in order to vote for a day when the increasingly interconnected networks of the digital era displace the cultural hegemony of the nation state and allow Australians and Brazilians to strategize in saving their rainforests, or the children of Myanmar and Iran to learn the extent of their universal rights.

I want the world to breathe through the power of art and narrative, to rewrite and imagine the emotional immediacy of the globe all the while we continue to spin around the sun.

Why do ants waste so much of their time cutting grass and moving them into a mound when they will eventually die? Why do ants line up in order, as if they operated in an assembly, only for some ants to pick up nothing, some ants to pick up very little, and other ants to handle an entire leaf? What motivation does an ant have? Do ants have motivations in general?

Ants, like humans, like to progress. They like to feel like they can have a safe haven for their families. They like to empower themselves by doing work that for another animal seems eccentric and strange. They are neurotic, they are in control, or they seem to be, until someone decides to stand in between their line. That is when they become frenetic. That is when they self-implode. I wish humans were less like ants, but somehow, I don’t think it can be so.

Because I, unlike an ant, aspire to think, I aspire to breathe, I aspire to leave. I desire for peace among humanity, an improvement of the world through art, but not a progression of the world. We do not have to be like ants. We do not have to continue to build for the sake of an impulse. We can choose to sit and relax and enjoy life for a second and live a life without tracks. I don’t know if most humans could actually live this way, but we could try to appreciate what we’ve done already, and learn to cherish each other as much as can, before a child with a microscope gets carried away and destroys what we once had.

I once thought that the best mountains in the world were in Switzerland. I had even gone so far as to compare their supple beauty to the outline of the human body that was drawn by Da Vinci. “The small shadows of the cheeks, the supple depths of the torso, those are the differences of depth between the mountains of Switzerland,” I once said. I do not wish to take away from my previous sentence. I still believe that Swiss mountains are beautiful. I only think that the ones of Argentina are prettier.

On the way from Mendoza to Santiago, the mountains of the desert begin peppered with poppy seeds. There is the occasional river that runs along the short cliff, as well as small railway tracks and broken telephone lines that lead into unfinished bridges, and as the bus turns around different crags, lakes bend with the road to surprise us. A very small minority of the mountains are powdered with snow, sugary freckles covering light brown capsicums. The rest are fiery mounds that erupt brown at the bottom. I want to crayon more red into the mountaintops, if it wouldn’t wash away with the rain and ruin the bottoms and their beige. As we approach Chile, the mountains become white giants reclined onto their thrones, their backs thrust out as if they were practicing icy haute couture. The mountains do not end, but I fear that their magic somehow does.

Meanwhile, in Patagonia, the water glistens like Listerine in spaghetti streams and lakes and heaps, all the while mountains cascade in between. The mountains of the distance radiate with their snow, as if they were the x-rays of mountains hidden in light cracks of sunlight. The snow appears so chalky that I indeed want to take my finger and wipe it off, if only I would not instead capture fog, puff instead of snuff. I assume that the water and mountains near El Calafate are different because of the glacier, although the water, while remaining pristine, looks about normal for clean water as I approach Perito Moreno. I have never, by the way, seen a glacier of that beauty, up close, right by my side, spikes colored Crest toothpaste blue with small cavities of ice. Underneath were small boats of ice that could have been the grander versions of those found in cocktails, with a small island of icy blue that looked made of Styrofoam. The glacier itself traveled onwards, until the spikes became flat and the light blue a regular white, an ice cream sandwich with only the ice.

Here I am, talking about a glacier, when I claimed earlier to only speak of mountains. Well, if it happens to please the reader, in the distance, on the side of the national park, I exit with mountains in the background, those infamous Christmas mountains of the Andes, red and green underneath, iridescent as if had been brought to life by the breath of God.

I went to the town of Valparaiso today, even though I lost my debit card and retreated into a strange and virulent shade of panic. I am glad I did, financial insecurity and all. It was gorgeous. The town is similar to Coimbra, in that the main part of the town is a plain set of European style houses, hotels, and buildings, with a hill that uplifts the town in its beauty. The difference is that the houses are more vibrantly and eclectly colored, with dark red or pastel blue or baby-shower yellow hugging the various hillsides like imaginary San Franciscos, and since Calparaiso is a port city, it has the vibrancy and eccentricity of parts of the American Northwest, stores run by apathetic woman sitting around in oversized glasses and cashmere scarves selling wooden tables next to a coffee shop aptly called the Color Café. I truly liked Valparaiso, not enough to consider some form of extended life there, but certainly enough to instill my hope that once again, I can see beauty in the world still.

I have noticed that my problem is that I am a person who sees not in specifics, but in generals. I see when I travel to a new place the many other places I have been to, in the people I have seen, in the shades of their expressions, in the colors or shapes of the houses or streets. Therefore, when I’m not wowed by a place, it is not because that place is expansive or not interesting, but I do not base my intrigue or captivation in a place by how much it seems different from what I am used to, or how much it artificially “humbles” me. Rather, I appreciate things by their aesthetic beauty. A great city to me is like a great painting or a great book. Valparaiso has taught me that there is still much to inspire me in South America. I look forward to my next chapter.

That you find yourself personally hurt at words carelessly hurled in a different context by a person you have never met across the room.

That you find yourself attracted to the partner of the person who has graciously offered you a place in his home.

That you find yourself about to denounce the lifestyle of a person so different from you the moment that person incidentally materializes with wide and human eyes in front of your own.

That the best painted houses and the most colorful people reside in a town that is too financially unviable to return.

That, no matter how funny you may think you are, you will at least once make a joke that will make a person wince.

That you can never shake the vibes of a bad wind when the fear comes from inside of you.

That you can never move mountains or change the world until you learn to have conquered your own and become ultimately and indisputably comfortable in yourself.

That the day you find peace in life will be the day that a word like peace will no longer need to exist.

            Yesterday, I landed into Buenos Aires. The same day, I felt that Buenos Aires had nothing to offer to me. I found the city to be mostly skyscrapers, a lot of busy people, and pretty in the park areas, but nothing more or nothing less. It is something I am used to. I have seen at least around 70 countries and even more cities. I have lived in at least three different countries, successfully in only two. I am used to seeing a place for an instant, and then leaving the moment it does nothing for me. Most people find me strange for that reason. I think of it as normal.

            I’ve always been afraid that there’s something wrong with me. I feel not connected to a city, but to the world, as if there is almost no place for me in physical space in and of itself, as if I travel like energy touching down on various parts of the world, but am never able to settle down and transpose into a form. I also change emotions dramatically in seconds, going from depressed to elated to fuming to borderline psychotic in the span of a day. In fact, walking down the streets of Buenos Aires, I found myself returning to thoughts on feeling ugly, feeling unloved, feeling unappreciated, feeling alone, all because people weren’t looking at me, too busy in their own lives, their own conversations, their own worlds.

            I get very defensive when people tell me to give things more time. Ever since birth, I have been a person unable to consume details. Whenever I would have to read books for class, I would literally not be able to process the information, because I would lose interest to such a degree that I would retreat to whatever I was thinking in my head. Whenever I have to talk to people I find boring, I create new conversations inside with friends or literary celebrities, which I tend to find much more interesting than those of real life. The same happens with travel. If I’m in a place I don’t care for, I feel it immediately, because I immediately start to think about the peculiar sadness that haunts my life.

            Today, I realized that the reason why I constantly like to be in new places is because I am a class-A escapist. Only, I am worse than an escapist, because an escapist finds pleasure in only the escape. I am a person with a very strong imagination, one that tugs me away from my very existence in the physical world. I am also a person who is very emotional, and so, when those two things come together, I am a person who becomes completely detached from the world around me, and instead only thinks inside of myself. I run into bicycles or hit people with my swaying hands, I forget what city I actually am in, and I tend to imagine myself in places that I’ve been before, with people that either exist or don’t. I realized that in many ways, I feel like a walking modem, with writing my Internet (I would argue that most Writers feel the same). What I look for so desperately, however, is the connection.

            You see, when I am in a place that I love, with a person I adore, inside of a piece of literature I cherish, I forget the world inside me. I can’t tell you how many times I have been so consumed by my own fear or depression, only to decide to pick a book to feel like I’m doing something productive, and being so entirely compelled by what the writer is saying that I feel almost transported out of my body, convicted by giant hands pronging my eyes open to the blazing light of his/her world (Dostoevsky, I’m looking at you). The same happens when I am with a great friend. I might be walking down the street, upset about how ugly I think my face is, or how anguished I am that a person five years ago openly asked me why I’m sitting at the same table as her, when I see a friend wave manically at me, and all my thoughts are lost.

            Traveling, like friendship and literature, immerses me into the real world. Like many a great novel or amazing person, some places don’t inspire me, and I find myself at odds with the way the world is, as always. Then, just like the times when you have a great conversation with person in line at a restaurant, there are places that unexpectedly transport you out of yourself immediately as you enter. They are the places where I feel that, no matter how much I want to, I can’t return to my interior, because the world outside of myself has become so much more persuavely interesting than anything I could have ever created. It is rare for me to find these places, and what the secret to which places humble me and which places don’t is something I don’t think I’ll never know. I do know that someday, I will be able to recreate the peace and growth inside of myself the way that places like India or Italy, previously New York or Madrid, gave to me, but until I can find that ease, I will travel until I completely exhaust and extinguish the capacities of my feet. 

I discovered San Salvador through the bus. Not only because I was in the country for a pathetic six hours, and so had to use the bus to go from airport to city to lunch to city to airport, but because only when one is on a bus that is fully crammed with thirty other people that are significantly bigger but shorter than you, people who could probably push you out of the mini-bus because the door is wide open, or when you have to duck to either see the cramped quarters of the villages and the verdant hills that they lie beneath, you start to realize that, even in such a small space, the world is more than big enough to fit each and every moment, sensibility, and emotion that we could ever need to compress in one life, and that no forms of simulation nor simulacra could ever truly replace it.

            To begin with stereotypes, there was the woman who was dressed in checkered red and white and looked like she was off to run her own church service. She smiled at me, very politely and professionally, like most church women do, as she watched me slide back and forth from the rail that kept me from flying out the door. She also watched me crouch to see said scenery. I told her in Spanish it was pretty obvious I was a tourist. She agreed.  We ended up talking, about where I was from (the States), where I learned Spanish (Spain), what I was doing here (stopover), and what I was doing (moving to Buenos Aires). She ended up taking me to the national palace. It turned out that the entire time, she didn’t own a small business or sing for a chapel, but was a fruit vender, who bought fruit and then sold them in a village. Turns out that some people dress up to sell fruit, and not the kind that hangs on the body and is plucked by jerks.

            On the way back, I still swayed around like a dangling grape, but I at least had the courtesy of a family who offered to hold my backpack for me. At first, I thought the woman, who was seated in one of the few sofas on the bus, was asking me to take off my backpack, since it was probably hitting everyone. She instead said she could put it underneath her seat. As a gesture of reciprocity, I started to play with the baby on her back (turned out it wasn’t hers, but instead her brother, and their mother was the also young looking woman next to her; her other brother, thirteen, and sister, ten, were in the seats behind us). I gave young Jose a handshake and asked him if he could dance. He cawed as babies do, and kept smiling at me for the rest of the trip.

            He was an adorable baby, wearing a shirt and diapers, dirty around the mouth, but I thought the family in general was precious. The oldest daughter reminded me of my friend Pamela, the oldest son reminded me of my cousin Abhay, and the youngest daughter reminded me of my friend Pamela if she were fat. They were all kind, talkative, and made the hour- long bus ride a lot more manageable. Behind them, there was a guy looking at an album he had bought by Sade. Everyone else looked tired and sweaty, although there was an occasional smile at the clear Indian foreigner.

            I almost forgot about the Salvadorian that spoke English, German, French, Portuguese, and a bit of Turkish, because she wanted to live in Turkey. Yes, how could I forget about the girl that took me out to lunch and joined me at my alterglobalizing side? We discussed her own multimedia project to compose the non-fiction narratives of women of Latin America. We talked about the role of a new globalization in bettering our global community, particularly the ecosystem and social justice. We also laughed a lot and made fun of the Argentines. Sounds familiar? Oh, and did I mention she’s a Salvadorian that wants to live in Turkey? Sounds silly, right, until you remember this sentence is being written by an Indian-American who lives in Argentina…

            Now, back to those who I met on buses. Don’t worry, there’s only one left, who I met on the way to lunch with my new friend, while we were talking about the currency of San Salvador. I had seen only the American dollar, and so had assumed that it was just the currency of efficiency, so to speak, not the currency of the country. When I asked her what the dollar of Salvador looked like, she showed me a coin of Sacagawea, the one Americans used in the early 2000s. Just when I realized the currency of this country was indeed the same of the one I was born, a guy sitting next to me negated my friend by handing me a coin and telling me that this was a coin from El Salvador. He was on the tall side, meaning that he looked like a giant in his seat, and had the full face I come to expect from Latin men, with the exception that he also gave a very full smile with his eyes that made him come off as gay (me and my friend agreed later).

            Anyway, he had given me a rare Salvadorian dollar, and when I tried to give it back, he wouldn’t let me. I tried to pay him for it, and he said I could have it for free. I felt bad for him giving me the dollar, silver with a cronish old woman on the front from 1985. My friend even told me it was a coin fit for a collector, and I should consider myself very lucky to even see one.  He joined our conversation, and we found out that he was a tennis player for El Salvador, and he had lived in California for two years. My friend added him on facebook, and I gave him another coin in return. I can’t wait to put my coin from El Salvador next to the ones I’ve collected from all the over the world, from Macedonia to Israel, India to Russia, and I hope he enjoys carrying with him a penny from New Zealand, eye-winged feathers glittering on its back.

            The women of Fiji have the most vibrant and genuine of smiles. Even if you are giving them a pass-of-the-shoulder acknowledgement, they smile, and they smile with the  warmth of their eyes. The women of Fiji, when they are not Indian, because there are a lot of Indians here, also have ridiculous afros that remind me of Foxy Brown films. Luckily, it doesn’t take away from my appreciation of the women.

            The food of Fiji is fresh and oily, moist potatoes and plantains, served on a fresh plate. I feel more satisfied eating 80 cent food than I do eating food from five star restaurants with five star preservatives. The markets don’t buzz and hum, but recline and relax. It is a welcome change from the crowded bazaars of Morocco and India.

            The advertisements in this country are ridiculous. I saw an advertisement for Winnie the Pooh toys with three naked Chinese babies. There was a deodorant ad with a man covering his chest like he had boobs. There was also a cover for a cell phone of a white woman barely covering herself with the strings of a bikini. No wonder people of the non-Western world think of every Western woman (and every woman in general) as a slut…

            Did I mention I see a lot of men wearing women’s clothes? Because, I’m not sure if they identify themselves as some version of a Third-Spirit, or gay, or transgendered, or wearing something that was just donated to them. Fiji is considered a homophobic country, so color me surprised when I see men wearing sandals and a bright pink shirt that shows off his breasts. 

            Oh, and did I also mention that there are a lot of Indians? Because, seriously, there are a lot of Indian in mutherfuckin’ Fiji…

1: To R,

   Out of all the people in my family, I believe you have hurt me the most. I am not especially articulate, and I know my strong personality might come off as someone looking for a challenge, but I don’t like being contradicted every time I try to represent who I am. Life is not a debate; life is living, life is learning, but life is not always arguing about who is right and who is wrong. I understand that you might prod me because you think I am sensitive, that you can insult what I believe and what I stand because I stand for it so strongly.

            You are wrong. I am weak. I am easy to knock off. I might be pretentious at times, and I might be hard to understand, but I do not share moments of vulnerability in my life and ask for your advice because I want you to contradict me, or to tell me what is Right According to You. I do not like it when you complain that “no other person my age talks like or me,” or when you rebuke me for being unable to filter my mind or disbelieving in a God. You are not guiding me. You are simply trying to displace your ego with mine, and I do not care much for it.

            As you should know, I am a person who seeks faith in growth, who aspires to become greater than my body will even allow me. I do not need guidance. I simply need time. Learn to appreciate the lives around you instead of berating them for what you wish they could be. Learn not to guide life, but observe life, or in other words, take the advice that you often preach.

2: To P,

            I’m sorry our relationship has faltered as much as it has. You and I were once so close. Now, each and every conversation we try to force between each other has become so awkward. High school, it made sense. You were a basketball player that studied hard, and I was an average student that people thought was smart for some reason, and that made it really hard for me to feel accepted in that world. We were both compared to each other, and so we competed against each other. We’re no longer friends now for that reason, and I get it, but I also don’t get it. We’re adults now. I’m a writer still trying to find peace in the world.  You’re an engineer who’s still trying to sort your pathway in life, to learn to like yourself for who you are as well, and that’s okay.

            I think we deserve better. We once fought each other with Power Ranger swords until we tired out. We once raised a pair of plush Dobermans that barked at each other because they were fed few grains. I know that mine is still sitting by the corner of my bedroom window. I can tell that he misses you.

            So, let us sit on the couch and talk about life. Let me ask you about your trip to Costa Rica, or your nights on the town. Don’t feel embarrassed if something private ends up coming around. Pour me some brandy, and I’ll pour your some wine. Then you can tell me: Are you still a virgin? Have you found someone who makes you happy in life? If there was any place you would live in, where would it be? Somewhere in those questions, you will find yourself awkward, and I will find myself overbearing, but we’ll make a moment of peace, because we owe each other that much as cousins.

3: To A,

            I love you like a brother, because you are the closest thing that I will ever have as a little brother. I held you when you were a baby and taught you to play with trading card games when you were young. I once cared of you so much that I felt that I competed to be your brother against your real brother. Now that you have become so different from me as you have entered your thirteenth year, and thus, adolescence, I don’t know what to do with you.

            When I try to talk to you in a pattered down version of a voice, you complain of being treated like a kid. When I am aching to tell you about cigarettes or the joys of sex, you are visibly disturbed. What are you, and what am I, and why do these differences us between us cause a gulf that I can’t seem to trudge across? I don’t understand why you enjoy to curse with your friends, but then shrink in the corner with your DS whenever I come to your house. I don’t know if I’ll ever understand you the way I did when you were the little child I helped take care of. It is that distance that I sense growing between us that hurts me the most.

            Or, perhaps, it is because you are similar to me when I was your age. Yes, the more I think about it, the more I think it is this. I was once made fun of my peers for accidentally wagging my penis through my pants, or making noises that sounded sexual when I was just trying to breath. I didn’t talk much, I spent most of my time playing video games, and I hated feeling young in what felt to be a sea of adults. It wasn’t until the age of sixteen that I began to identify with the needs of my generation; it took me up to this year to truly want them as badly as others.

            What can I say that won’t hurt you as much as the fact that I’m hurt that in many ways I am you? Let me try with this. Don’t fear growth, but don’t hide in innocence as well. Question and learn from the world around you, uninhibited, perhaps even recklessly, but never in a way that feels artificial to your self. Finally, when you truly become an adult, don’t shy away from people who don’t seem to be like you. They’re not as ignorant about what it means to be you, as you might like to believe.

4: To Jj,

You are so innocent, and yet it is that innocence that hurts me so much. Everything you know about me is a lie, everything that people have told you about me is something that they have told in order to protect you from the truth. I know how you’d feel if you really know about how I felt about graduate school, or girls for that matter, but part of me wishes I at the very least had the option to share myself with you once, just to see how it goes, the part of me that likes to experiment with the emotions of others, I guess.

I don’t know if I can give you advice, or react to the way you make me feel, because we don’t even really speak the same language. I guess if there is one thing I would say, it’s something you already know.  I really do love you. I just wish you could get to know who I truly am.

5: To Pp/Mm,

You both hurt me in each and every each year, but the rate at which you hurt me has diminished greatly. I believe we will get to a point where all the mistakes we have made to each other will have been forgotten, and we will love each other as much as a son and his parents can exchange their love. Until then, I shall catch the drips of my soul in a chalice that I shall never drink, in order to avoid jinxing our luck.

Afterward: To S,

            Don’t worry. I’m not targeting you because you have hurt me. If anything, it is for the opposite. Like my parents, you too are sensitive. You also share my maternal blood in being absent-minded and quick to speak without thought. It makes you an easy target in many ways, because people who enjoy preying on the weak will devour you whole. Say something that is a little dumb, and those who want to appear intelligent will take advantage of it to put you down. I’ve learned this myself in many ways, because I as well once lacked confidence and an ease of articulation in the world.

            My advice to you is this. Learn to trust yourself. Learn to not let those around you bother you in what they say. Even if you say something silly or dumb, stay strong. Don’t let their words fester in your wounds, or your wounds will never learn to heal. Don’t dawdle to much time on the words of other that have already been spent, or you yourself will never learn to grow.