Adieu 2012

Like any year, 2012 was filled with its ups and downs and flatlines. But a recent conversation with J made me realise the year was also full of moments where I found myself doing things I never thought I would.

Relationships change you, in good and bad ways. What I like about J and me is we're always pushing each other to do something different, to try a new experience, no matter how small. Don't get me wrong, we're not trying to change each other, we're just pushing each other's boundaries. And whether you come out of the experience hating it, loving it or just relieved that you're alive - you will have changed, just that little bit because you opened up yourself to something new and different.

So in my obligatory reflective post of 2012 in review, I thought I'd give myself a pat on the back for the things I never thought I would do...but I did.

I never thought I would...

• ...skydive! This is probably one of my biggest highs of 2012. On the 30th of December, somewhere over the Byron Bay hinterland, I jumped out of a plane at 14,000 feet! After 60 seconds of free falling, I cruised along on the parachute for about 5 minutes before hitting the ground and going "OH MY GOD. I CANNOT BELIEVE I JUST DID THAT!!" I am not very good with heights. I get wobble legs looking down from not-so-high bridges. I don't particularly like balconies in high rise buildings. And I'm not the biggest fan of roller coasters. So skydiving was a pretty amazing achievement and I really enjoyed it, to be honest. I'm super proud of myself!

• ...crave a steak! This is a source of amusement for most of my Australian friends I know but hey, when you grow up in a country where the cow can be holier than people, you don't exactly develop a palate for steak. But you can't have an Aussie boyfriend and get away with that really. In the past year, I have not only grown to like a (properly cooked) medium rare steak, I actually even crave it sometimes. Sorry cows.
• ...scuba dive! This is a partial achievement because I still have to finish part of the course but hey, I'm claiming it. I am not 100% comfortable under water so scbua diving was never on my list of things to do. But J got given a voucher for his 30th birthday and well, I sort of said a "yes, I'll do it too" without really thinking what I was getting into. Next thing I knew, I was spending 4 hours in a pool, learning how to scuba dive. Yay me!
• ...learn a language! Another partial achievement but sometimes just starting and committing to something is a big achievement. In July 2012, J and I started taking Spanish lessons and 6 months later, I am at least confident about having a basic conversation with people, asking for (and giving) directions, asking for help, ordering food and even making reservations. I've always wanted to learn a language but never thought I would seriously do it so I'm pretty stoked we're doing this so seriously.

• ...drink beer! Again, silly but a huge deal for me. I never drank beer until probably 3 months ago. I  didn't like the taste. But on our trip to Melbourne, some friends took us on a really cool pub crawl through Fitzroy and convinced me to order some pale ale at the Little Creatures brewery. "You can't order a wine at a brewery!" I have since been hooked to White Rabbit. I'll admit I will probably still hate a lot of beers (I'm looking at you VB and XXXX Gold) but I do like many more beers now. Especially the shmancy boutique beers ;-)
• ...do a Body Attack class! I'll be the first to admit cardio fitness isn't one of my strong points. I have to work a lot harder at it than most people and see results a lot slower. So the thought of doing a 1 hour high-impact, sporty cardio class that involves lots of jumping, running, aerobics and more, really intimidated me. But I went along for the ride one Saturday morning (I think I was too sleepy to realise what I getting myself into) and despite the struggle, the shortness of breath and slightly achy limbs - I loved it! I started doing it twice a week and it's a Saturday morning staple now. Gym classes are more amazing than people give them credit for (more of this in an upcoming post).
• ...be happy! Ok, not never but I did feel unhappy for a very long time and wasn't sure I'd ever be able to be happy for more than 5 or 10 minutes at a time. But I am. Something has changed this year and I am more positive, happier than I have ever been. I feel like I've found a lot of peace and am so much more aware of what makes ME happy. Still searching for my zen, but I'm happy knowing I'm getting there.

I hope 2013 is a year filled with many more "I never thought I would" moments too :)

When I grow up

I had always imagined when I grew up, I'd turn out to be a polished, well spoken, classy lady who has her shit together at all times. I went to an Irish Catholic all girls' school for Chrissake! When the nuns weren't talking about Jesus, all they taught us was how to be a lady.

Instead I turned out to be me.

• Someone who can't eat a cupcake without getting the frosting all over her face.
• Someone who puts her top on inside out and doesn't notice till someone points it out.
• Someone who tries to get up from her chair whilst still having her headphones (which are plugged into her computer) around her neck. Almost every day.
• Someone who forgets at least one thing on the shopping list (isn't that the point of having a list?)
• Someone who stubs her toe on the bed at least once a week.
• Someone who sometimes tries to answer the phone when the alarm goes off in the morning.
• Someone, who has conversations like this:

J: Do you think Macs will ever take over PCs?
Me: Who's PC? 
J: Umm... Macs? and PCs?
Me: What are you talking about? What's Mac? Mac, as in short machiato, like a coffee?
J: Oookaaay. Are you even thinking?
Me: What? Why? WHO IS PC?
J: I'm just going to wait till it comes to you.
*finally, my brain kicks into gear. Cue, giggle fit*
Me: oooooohhhhhh hahaha.
J: *shakes head*

May be, someday I will grow up and become a lady who thinks before she speaks?

The longing to belong...

The universality of human experiences despite our many diversities has made me realise that our identities are not bound by race, nationality or even gender.

Yet somehow, we have all felt out of place at some point; We have all felt like we don't belong...anywhere. I'll be honest, I have really struggled with my longing to belong (and still do sometimes). But through the struggle, I have realised it's not something that should get me down, but it's something to enjoy.

Not belonging means not being limited by gender stereotypes, by cultural expectations or societal pressures and that's very liberating. Ironically, this state of "not belonging" actually helps me belong in a way too - belong to a universal humanity. To know I am my own person and yet one with the universe is awe-inspiring.

This year, my only promise to myself is to not worry so much about belonging and an identity that fits in somewhere - I think being in a perpetual nomadic state of belonging or unbelonging may not be so bad.

From one Legal Alien to all the others out there - hope the coming year is filled with limitless discoveries.

Reconciliation

Is the person you thought you were meant to be, the same as the person you turned out to be?

Day 02 - #30daysofme

The Task: The meaning behind your Blog name

LegallyAlien - hmm, pretty self explanatory, no?

Well, like many other things in my life, my blog name was inspired by song lyrics. The song here is 'Englishman in New York’ by Sting.

"I'm an alien
I am a legal alien
I'm an Englishman in New York"

Wikipedia explains the meaning of Legal Alien pretty well.

I am a legal alien – in Australia and in India too. I guess moving to another country made me realise that “home” (i.e. India) will always be home because that is where I grew up but at the same time, it will never be the same home again. Does that make sense?

In the same way, while Australia isn’t the “home” I grew up in, after 3.5 years here, despite its alien-ness, it will always be home to me.

I have two homes and no home

I realise that for the rest of my life, I will always be slightly “alien” wherever I go and I like that. I guess as an immigrant, being a bit of permanent misfit comes with the territory. So being “Legally Alien” is now a permanent part of my identity and hence, the blog name.

LIFE, question mark

Sometimes I tend to abandon this blog because it gets too personal. It orders me around and demands I reveal more of myself than I'm comfortable with. I don't like being told what to do so I do what I do what I do - I run away. Sometimes we run into each other on the interwebz but I can be cold-hearted. Blog looks at me with the fond smile of an old friend & I just ignore it, pretending we've never met. But then, on days like today I come back, arrogant in my certainty that Blog has no choice but to take me back. I have things to say and Blog always wants to listen and thus begins another "On" chapter of our tumultous, sometimes toxic, sometimes comforting on again/off again relationship.

Also, on the spur of the moment, I have decided to challenge myself to the 30 posts in 30 days thing that a lot of bloggers do. (well 31, as it is July). Starting today, I'm going to post here (however big or small) every day until the 31st of July. Forcing myself into being a writer by leisure, not just by profession so I can remember why I used to love it so much.

So anyway, yesterday my dear friend S wrote a note on Facebook "When I grow older..", which is now on her blog. Please read it and then come back and tell me she's an amazing writer. She's smart, she decided not to make a career out of writing. That's where things start going downhill. But I digress. S's post is a series of questions and realisations about the crisis of growing up. (Yes, it is a crisis, an unfortunate unavoidable one at that.) She inspired me to write this so at the end of it, if you think reading it was the biggest waste of your time, feel free to blame S. haha. :)

I'm curious by nature and I ask people (or Google, as the case may be) a lot of questions but this time around, I've been asking myself a lot of questions. Ever wish you had an internal Google that would just give you all the answers? Do you think if it were possible to measure the speed of thought, we would measure distances in space in "thought years"? (seeee - so many questions and I haven't even started the "actual" post.)

Do you ever reach a point in your life where you look at all your dreams, goals,achievements, ambitions and even materialistic pursuits - and wonder - "Why do I want this?"

The things you thought you wanted from life - do you really want them or have you just been conditioned into wanting them? By people? By society? By advertisements? ;)

Can anyone ever really be beyond cultural influence? So why do you think you are so special?

For all your independence and pride, did you really make all your decisions "independently" or have you surreptitiously been conned into them?

If I asked you "Who are you?", could you really tell me? Not your name, not your job, not your skills, not your hobbies, not your relationships - but who YOU are?

Can you evolve overnight and become a different version of yourself or are you just trying on a new skin for shock value?

Is it normal to regress to your teenage years as a form of liberation from your adulthood? Can you be living your life in reverse?

Do you feel passionate and blase about the same things in alternating bursts of dizzying euphoria and mindnumbing dullness?

Can home bring you comfort while also frighten you into depression? Can home be home without the people? Can you be home and still be a nomad?

When you don't cry - is it because you are really happy or are you too scared to feel...anything. If the happiness is bittersweet, is it really happiness?

If you are asked "What did you want to be as a child?" and you cannot remember, is it because it was that trivial or have you lost a part of yourself?

Do you find yourself wishing you had some psycho babble analysis to blame things on but you can't because you had such a perfectly normal and happy childhood?

When you meet someone new who knows nothing about you or where you come from, can it be a relief to hide behind the lack of identity? Or is it simply a chance to create an identity without pre-conceived notions?

Remember when your naivete and innocence was lovable? When did it become laughable?

"Good things happen to good people" they say and you believed it because you are an optimist. But are you sure? Are you really, really sure? No, really?

Can you be a cynical optimist? Why not? It's like believing Evolution was followed by Creation. Or being Agnostic. No?

Is faith (in anything) good or are you just kidding yourself? But you're a daydreamer - do you really want to let go of that just yet?

Are you being impulsive and "listening to your gut" or is it just the devil-may-care attitude frothing up to the surface?

Why is it when men are nice, you think "he's a nice guy" but when a girl is nice, she's flirting?

If being nice was cool, would more people be nicer or is bitchy always going to be in?

If you put yourself before anyone else, is it okay not to feel guilty about it?

Do we put too much pressure on ourselves to be perfect?

Do you feel like you're constantly falling short of expectations that no one has of you but yourself?Once you start falling short, do you stop trying or do you just go harder? Are you running around in circles then or is it a marathon with an eventual finish line? Do you stop if you run out of breath?

When your heart tells you you want to do something that will "make a difference", why does your mind shut it up with "wise" words spouting "impracticality" "no future" "what will you do for money?" and even "rubbish, what difference could you possibly make"? Is this part of societal conditioning or are you too afraid to take the leap? Will you do it anyway?

Can we really have it all? What is this "all" you speak of?

P.S. Don't ask me "What brought this on?" or anything to that effect. They're just questions...at some point you've probably asked yourself some of these too.

Reviewing ‘Unaccustomed Earth’

Note: No spoilers. I have tried to review this book without giving away any story lines or plots so even if you haven’t read the book, don’t worry I won’t spoil it for you.

It’s been a while since I read a book I found hard to put down. I mean, I read a lot… I’m always reading more than one book at a time. Some books I keep reading because I simply want to know what happens next but there is no real urgency; some I keep reading because I like the book but it’s not hard to put down or anything; some I keep reading only because I started it and can’t bear an unfinished story and then there are those I keep reading because I can’t bear to put it down and as much as I want to know what happens at the end, I keep wishing the book doesn’t finish because it’s so good. Jhumpa Lahiri’s ‘Unaccustomed Earth’ fell into the last of these “keep reading” categories… so not surprisingly, I finished the book in 2 days.

I have neither loved nor hated Jhumpa Lahiri before this. I honestly can’t remember much of ‘The Interpreter of Maladies’ so I’ll leave it out of this discussion. I read ‘The Namesake’ long after it came out and had heard rave reviews from friends and family. Despite these or maybe because of these reviews, 'The Namesake' failed to live up to my high expectations. Coming from a Bengali Indian background like the characters in the book, I think most of my family and friends liked it because the book was about Bengali characters more than anything else. I liked it but I didn’t think it was all that fantastic. In fact, I liked the movie more… may be because the actors did such a great job.

‘Unaccustomed Earth’ however has been a different experience. It is a collection of short stories about the Bengali immigrant’s life in USA. I love the name – in two simple words, Lahiri explains her book – a book about living and growing up in a culture that you adopt, but somehow doesn’t become your own. The book is depressing, no doubt but it is very real too. I love how the author concentrates on various human characteristics and traits in each of her short stories. Some of them are very typically Bengali, some characteristic of most Indians while some others more universally human.

My immigrant experience has been very different from the characters described in the book… for many reasons, some of them being:

a) I am a first generation immigrant of the 21st century… the characters are a generation or two ahead of me. Many of them suffer the identity crisis second generation immigrants do.
b) I don’t live in the USA… Bengalis haven’t adopted Australia (yet) the way they have USA & UK.
c) I don’t limit my social interaction to a Bengali/ Indian crowd only.
d) My upbringing hasn’t been as traditional and orthodox as of the characters.

Yet despite these differences, I can relate to these characters, not just because they are Bengali, but also because they are immigrants.  I miss India but I don’t think I could go back to living there. I love being in Australia but there IS a reason I call myself a Legal Alien ;-). Therefore on some level, I can identify with the characters a little.

I love it when authors paint a vivid picture… but I love it more when they create strongly etched characters. I think what I liked most about this book is that in each of the short stories, Lahiri not only creates a beautiful picture of the surroundings, the culture and the general atmosphere the characters inhabit but also creates strong, real characters and situations that one can identify with. Usha, Hema, Kaushik, Sang, Rahul and all the rest are not just destined to live within the pages of the book – to be forgotten once the book is closed but come to life and tend to stay with you. 

When Lahiri describes the close-minded & judgmental Bengali, the loveless but respectful marriages, the haunting sense of “duty” that plagues parents and children, the head-in-the-sand approach to family problems… etc… I did find myself thinking of my own family (immediate and extended) and friends and that is what made me realise that Jhumpa Lahiri has done an amazing job of creating fictional stories to portray cultural issues that are very real and very much the norm. Through her stories, she courageously talks about various cultural issues that Bengalis (and Indians in general) prefer to brush under the carpet.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and true to form, find myself wishing there were more stories in the collection. Stories of immigration and the identity crisis that follows… what’s new you may ask? I agree it does get old if you don’t create a new twist; if you don’t tell the story from a new angle. But if you open a new window for the readers to look through, it doesn’t matter how many such stories have been told, yours still stands out from the rest. I believe the short stories in 'Unaccustomed Earth' have managed to do just that.