Runnin through my life...my profile...

To begin with I needed to meet myself, find details that have made me me. Build a profile of what I have taken from life and stored in my memory.

Although I was born in Jaipur, Rajasthan, I have lived in many places.

Birth brought me into an Indian family from Rajasthan. Into a family where I was the youngest, with an older brother. I take art from my mother, paint at an early age. I take being spoilt by my father.

I move…I take stories of being pampered, pushed in a pram by my brother and a servant through orchards in a town called Ganganagar. Stories of refusing the food at home and only eating the fat rotis (Indian flat round bread) with white butter from the servants.

I move…I take living in Paris, learning broken French (to later forget it and give way to broken Hindi). The metro, white people, baguette and cheese, lots of cheese. I take fancy dresses, gymnastics, plays and birthday cakes of different shapes. I make friends from everywhere and tell them I’m Indian. I draw. I get my brother into trouble, and sometimes he tells me stories he makes up. I throw my milk away everyday in a flower pot and get caught, only to be supervised thereafter. I hear Lucy in the sky with diamonds on wooden floors to the smell of cigarettes and wine and think it’s a fine song.

I move…Delhi takes me to an Indian school, struggles with admission and doing badly in Hindi. I take to living with my grandparents. I climb trees, have short hair and sing songs in assembly about Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. I plummet down super long double slides to land in a box of sparkling sand. I take to being a tomboy and attempt to grow up with three other boys. We make up games like egg drop (drop an egg from a height and make sure it doesn’t break). I take dirt paths and cycles, thorns and scratches, paint cards to sell at fetes and concoct and built the most evil Ravana (demon from the Ramayana) every year on Dushera (festival where Ravana is burnt and destroyed). I take to being carefree, confident and outspoken. I bully the younger kids and am very mean to them at times by stepping on their feet (literally).

Twice a year, every year from Rajasthan I take clothes and bright colors (lehengas, salwars, patialas, kurtas and chunnis). I take the food (daal baati on rainy days, pachkute, gunde ka aachar, khud chicken and ghee, lots of ghee). I take fragments of the language (marwari from my grandparents and father). I take the festivals of diwali, rakhi and holi and others whose names I don’t remember. I make a connection with feeding birds, pigeons lots of them, water bowls and dana. I take with me hierarchy, being served, being upper class. I take the small town. I take images of kites in the sky with almost no sky left. I take the simple staying at home pace of life, sitting on muddas in the afternoon, the cooler whirring. I take the staircase lined with police photographs, my grandfather everywhere saluting and being saluted. I take stories from him and framed medals. I take the Indian government from my father and the twenty people who take care of things, run the house, maali, driver, someone to get my passport done, assistance at the airport, zero waiting in lines and zero paper work. I take with me differences between men and women and silly old traditions. I fight being able to walk into the kitchen only on the 4^th day after I’ve washed my hair, when I’m chumming (menstruating). I fight the men not entering the kitchen, not learning how to cook and think that they should. I argue that cutting my nails at night is not a sin. I fight how the women drink only with the men.

I move… Dhaka, Bangladesh I take with me Islam, Christianity, Judaism and people of many other cultures and religion. I take Americans for the friends I made and not for the country. I take living the life of the daughter of a diplomat, danger in a foreign country, political tension, and a giant lawn the size of a football field. I take the moment my father gives me the keys to the car. I take with me the loss of a dog due to carelessness and the loss of a friend to cancer. I take trying to fit in, trying to be cool and with that an American accent. I take bake sales, secret santa, dances in school with punch, proms, prom dates and dresses. I take art class with super jumbo jars of paint. I take cigarettes and alcohol and weed. I take intimacy with a Muslim boyfriend and fear sex. I take intimacy with a French and English best friend. I take being a part of her family, drinking, smoking and eating dinner in diplomatic clubs, where we play pool. I take tequila and lemon and swimming at night.

I take trips to Nepal, being a tourist, and getting a tattoo (I now want to get rid of). I take treks and travel, Bangkok, big malls, and beaches you see in movies.

I move to Woodstock Mussoorie, India and take boarding school in my final year of school. I take hills, sunsets its hard to take your eyes of and the winterline, a time when the sky splits into two colors. I take strange weather, people from the world over, this time in my own country if I can call it that and lights out at 10. I take going to chapel, intro to Christianity and smoke ganja hiding in caves.

I move… In Delhi again I take the Indian education system, lining up for college and not really fitting in. I take multimedia design in a pretentious building, with teachers who don’t come to teach. I take the urban, the largeness of the city, the fear of being a girl alone driving on the road at night. I take the big bars and restaurants the dress up posh and enter a club. I take with me being Indian, the capital of the country, and being patriotic. I revamp my image of the government, the white ambassadors twice a day, the servants, the clean house.

I move.... South of India, Bangalore I come self assured and confident. I take dosas, idli’s and coffee on the road. I hear kanadda and don’t understand it. I fit in and find others that are like minded. I spend time thinking about the world, art and design. I moonlight, get my first pay and send it to my mother. I take the good feeling of her reaction. I take money from my father every month and overspend. I dream of saving the country from problems I’m told it has. I take a complicated relationship that’s bad in bed thinking that I’m not actually loved, with a boy I can never claim as mine. We take ideas of destiny and toss them around frivolously. I take acid and a new meaning to Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. I push boundaries and scare myself to take risks. I try cocaine and whiskey and stay up for over 48 hours. I take willpower to try but to not overdo. I take suspension from college, cry and then laugh about it. I take friends who I know will stay and a context that I feel I fit into. I take people. People in my clothes, in my bed, in my car. I take having no room, no space and being pushed. I take letting myself get pushed. I try to help another as a way to help myself. I take lying on the ground with footprints on my back and pretend that I am happy. I take the people all around me to be able to say go away. I take being lonely and calling them back.

Now I’m friendly but I’m restless and as clichéd as it sounds, I’m so so alone in a crowded room.