Apologetically unapologetic musings

When you get your first shot of the Pfizer vaccine at the Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens are you also grieving the millions who died by this thing?

How do you grieve government incompetence? State-sponsored violence on our own people? State sanctioned bombs falling on other humans in faraway places?

Do we sometimes grieve our dead parents by saying those things we never got to say to them to our living loved ones? (That can be hard on those loved ones. And sometimes beautiful)

I’m grieving this week, this month, this year. I thought I wasn’t. I thought I had to say I was fine. I thought I had to say things were good. My projects were exciting. My writing is going well. My death training is changing…

Be Easy On Those Doing The Work.

A random list I initially thought could organize this piece and would be deleted afterwards but as lists do, this one started doing it’s own thing and insisted it remain a list undeleted:

• why i’m mad
• why i’m grateful
• why i cut my hair/ let someone I love who doesn’t cut hair cut my hair
• why is my dog so itchy
• what is the shape of my trauma
• how can i use my time here for the most good for others
• how can i use my time here for the most good for…

Zoom and Imperialist tactics for quelling a conquered people

To act like I’m not all out here spending the most on some completely bougie skincare products would be disrespectful to you. I’m here to lay it all out for you. I typically hate the whole genre of “Why is your skin so good” beauty piece where a brilliant sexy historian also has perfect skin (?!!), so I’d like to try something different. I’d like to separate skincare routines from their actual result on the skin. Skincare could be not that much about skin at all. Stick with me.

I don’t…

Sleepwalking into 2021

My 11-year old sleepwalks, talks, and apparently sleep searches for gold rings in potted plants. A few nights ago, I saw her pulling up my snake plant in the middle of the night. I called out to her surprised in my own sleep haze, she came back to my often communal bed, and we both feel asleep. The next morning we were both surprised to see the 3-foot tall snake plant in disarray, dirt on the floor. She then excitedly recalled the dream. It blew my mind that somehow she was not awake while digging for something precious in a…

White people cannot save black children using the tools of systemic racism. They can, however, understand the historical context for the suffering and dismantle the machinery.

Several years ago, I worked as a lawyer in the Juvenile Rights Practice with Legal Aid Society. My job was representing mostly black and brown children and teenagers who were entangled with the child protective/juvenile delinquent laws of New York City. Usually it was their families/caretakers who were entangled and the kids were simply dragged along for the ride.* We, as the lawyers for the children, met family members on occasion, spoke to caseworkers, read reports, interviewed young people and their caretakers, looked at school records, filed motions for things our clients wanted, sometimes pushed for reunification with parents, sometimes…

Is what my 11 year old called this holiday.

I realized when my second grader was unsure in her class Zoom chat about what her favorite Thanksgiving foods were that I hadn’t done much over the years to establish or preserve the traditions of this holiday. It likely made her feel a bit left out, and that will be a conversation to have with her, maybe the school as well, but I’m fine with the whole arrangement. Thanksgiving is not my holiday. As a child of Indian immigrants, it’s really not my holiday. From the beginnings of this country mistaking…

It’s Sunday. My kids and I watched Sixty Minutes with my mom eating Wegman’s General Tso’s chicken and noodles in her apartment just below mine in the house we share in Brooklyn, NY. A segment called 90+ followed several 90+ year olds around for 6 years to find out how they got so to be so old and intact. Answers unclear, something about resilience, but no clue how to break that down into a gene, pill, superfood or set of behaviors for us to duplicate. To determine the quality of their minds, they were asked questions like the date and…

To say this year was confusing as a woman is an understatement.

To say this year I did not lash out at men around me, some of them my family, close friends, or innocent bystanders, is an understatement.

To say this year I exposed my two young daughters to countless feminist content in the form of rants, books, podcasts, girl-power pep-talks, fashion advice, movies, is just true.

I’ve been scared to turn back ever since I started looking forward in the face of this blatantly sexist, misogynistic world we live in. I see this same fear in the eyes of…