Teaching for a decade

      I just wrapped up ten years of teaching. For those of you who go,” just 10?” Yep! I started late. Not by choice but that’s another story.

I did not work for the first fifteen years of my life in the US. My prime was spent cooking, cleaning and carpooling. Hindsight 20/20? Maybe. Now I work with people from the next generation who are ever so polite but just cannot find the right wavelength to engage me in a conversation. And so life goes. 

      In the last 10 years, finding my footing in the education world has been quite the journey as you can or cannot imagine. When you think you will find your footing with your first step on the sidewalk and you place the next foot down to steady yourself, it could surprise you that the very rock you stepped on was already quite wobbly. Suddenly the space between the sidewalk and your face was very little. But you whip up, and take the next step. One foot in front of the other.  Just carefully this time.

       I don’t think I’ve given myself enough credit for finding the gumption to start teaching in a country that I did not grow up in. I don’t know where that courage came from. Definitely not from within me. But as life would have it, one foot in front of the other, was always the way. I don’t think I have prayed harder for anything else other than for my children. But pray, I did, every day for sanity, a modified version of the serenity prayer but this time it was for wisdom to know the difference between sanity and adamance. 

Were there moments I wanted to quit? Absolutely. Several times a day. But when the going got tough, I dug in, just out of sheer adamance and refused to quit. I am glad I hung on for the ride.  The ride included teaching suburban kids and kids from all over the world. The ride also included Covid, teaching remote and hybrid thru the next years that spun us on our heads and the phone reliant years that followed up to now. The ride also included the joy of watching my students grow into adults which made it worth the while.

       I cannot pretend that it got easier. There were a few persistent hurdles like the microaggressions and subtle reminders of me being an immigrant. There was the ever present parental and spousal guilt of working long hours, planning and grading at home. The tremendous exhaustion when you get home that leads to years of inactivity and eroding muscle strength. The everyday stress to draw on the physical and emotional strength to show up for the students and the drain when you actually muster the energy to. But when the days looked up, they made my heart content. 

Joy and passion can use some help getting there but overall, there is contentment.

I am sure it happens to all walks of life and to all people who work but I just find the need to write about me having worked 10 years and proud of it, that is all.

My tribute to the women in India!

 

My tribute to the women in India!

During my recent trip to India, I had realized I was soaking in way more than I was looking for. Over and again, I was struck by the amazing resilience of the Indian woman. As I silently looked around, it was quite an awakening for me to realize that an average working woman in India tolerates the sweltering heat like a boss.(not every family can afford air conditioning) She does not wear makeup, nor does she rely on a car. She dabs on some talcum powder on her face,a bindi on her forehead, flowers on her hair to start her day. Some have a two wheeler. The rest use public transportation - a bus with open windows. She still wears her traditional clothing - a six yard sari! Even on the hottest day of the year, her life seemed to go on in a normal cadence. She goes on without complaining, without rolling her eyes but with a smile on her face. What she seems to exude is a silent fortitude despite how tedious or physically hard her job is.

         Of the women that captured my attention, there was a woman who cared for her disabled husband, a woman, estranged, because her husband was hiding from the authorities in another town, a widow tasked with caring for her grandchildren, there was another taking care of her widowed mother in law along with her own family. 

         After a full day of labor intensive work outside of the house, I could tell that any working woman would go home to a hungry family and would have to start making dinner right off the bat, tend to washing clothes, washing dishes and help the children with homework.

There is going to be no kicking off your shoes and resting your feet but I do have a feeling that there is going to be a TV show to watch at the end of the day. Maybe a new sari she can buy at the end of the month.  Maybe a gold earring that she has her eyes on. That she could afford in a couple of years. She presses on looking forward to tiny little joys scattered somewhere in the future.  

And yet there is a smile that lingers and she extends her warmth and hospitality to anyone that graces her doorstep.

Just to bring forth the irony, I have to mention that men have it slightly better. Almost all of them have a motorcycle or a car to get around and more often than not are able to work in an air-conditioned building. The burden of household chores, however, falls squarely on the woman. 

Am I biased? Maybe, just a little. 

Kudos to you if you fall even remotely in this category, my friend. A thousand kudos. Even if you are in a different country, different circumstances, even if you do own a car or wear makeup.

May your days treat you better and your nights lull you in deep restful slumber as you await another day!

           A random book from the library that shook me a bit

Is this how it feels?

In the last few months my heart has been on a rollercoaster. Not physically, just emotionally. My son goes off to college in a few days. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not going to write like those bloggers who write so beautifully and fluently about the philosophy of bidding farewell to teenagers. Mine is just going to be my take on the bicultural balance of raising my son in an Indian household in the American soil with our parenting skills learnt from both cultures and letting him take on the American world by himself. 

        It's not like this was a surprise. This is like waiting to deliver a child. It's not just waiting nine months, we have waited for almost 18 years. We knew this was coming and yet when I realize how soon this is coming at me, my heart tightens.

       When I consider all the friends he's going to have, the strides he will make in his life, the degree that he will earn at the end of the next few years, the job that he will land, my heart swells.

       When I see my younger child gaze at her lifelong companion in wonderment and bewilderment as he prepares to leave her behind for college, then my heart races. In his absence, will she blossom? will she wilt?

       When I see that his clothes are packed, his toiletries being readied, to do lists scattered here and there, then my heart sinks.

       When I see him pray in earnest, recite Bible verses,when he takes so much pride in his summer jobs, when I see him beam with confidence and apprehension all in the same moment, then my heart rate rises and falls.

       When I ponder how he will be treated in his life, will it be for who he is? for the beauty of his heart and his personhood? or would it be based on his skin color? and be treated different from others? then my heart stops.

       I cannot begin to imagine what his mind is going through. After all at the end of the day, this is more about him than me nursing my arrhythmic heart back to rhythm. 

      When I begin to panic,I turn to my solace and read these verses. "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight". Proverbs 3:5-6 

   "Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the Lord." Psalm 31:24

At this, my heart calms down. He’s got this and he’s got this. 
Be still,my heart.

Spoken English

It suddenly occurred to me that I have been doing it all wrong all along. For years, I used to catch myself when I spoke English wrong or mispronounced  an English word. I even sought to learn the correct American pronunciation lest someone would correct it for me and then I’d feel all embarrassed.

I was very proud of myself when I finally began to speak English confidently. My grammar was decent, my spelling was topnotch and I spoke English the American way(most of the time)-with the right emphasis in the right letter and rolling my t’s as d’s and sharpening up on my the puns and idioms. 

One day it occurred to me that my feat in English language is nothing short of an epic achievement-despite its flaws and shortcomings and awful pronunciations. English to me and million of other immigrants is indeed a second language. We speak our mother tongue and we know its alphabet, its grammar and its literature and we speak it so fluently and easily. It was out of our own will, that we chose to start learning to speak English as adults when we moved to a country that required us to speak English. Schools in our country taught us to read and write in English, but we chose to learn to speak it because we needed it as immigrants along with our passports and visas.

When we first started to speak with English speakers, we stumbled and we fell and finally got up just enough to hold a conversation in English. And when we did speak with fear and hesitation, there were times when we heard ourselves search for that english word so desperately in our brains to have  that word pop up a day late or never at all. We struggled with past and present tense, the correct gender, using the articles at the right place, prepositions and many a times we just wanted to give up. On top of mustering the courage to learn this new language, we were also expected to be familiar with the American slang and cuss words, the innuendos and racial slurs. Last but not least, we were expected to speak with an American accent! If we didn’t, we were corrected or worse, laughed at.

You see, when a foreign national comes to my country, we do not expect them to speak in our native tongue overnight or ever. We show them grace or at the most, waive off their attempts and move on. 

English might be the most spoken language of the world, but when you compete against China and India, the most and 2^ndmost populated countries, with their own dialects and innumerable different languages………well, you do the math. I almost want to say our attempts at speaking English is more of doing a favor to make lives easier for those that cannot speak our language.

So, I would like to express, it is OK to speak wrong or broken English, it is OK to make mistakes but it is NOT OK for immigrants to be embarrassed about it and it is NOT OK for English speakers to expect all of us with our own native tongue to speak in impeccable English.

We totally get monolingualism and its limitations and we hope you get bilingualism and its limitations, as well. 

My life in the bleachers

Today being Mother's Day I can only think of how life has evolved from the day the kids came into my life. I remember when I was single and all I had to think of was myself. Then when I got married, as newlyweds-my husband and I were each other's entire world and then when the babies came along inadvertently our lives started evolving around the kids. Everything we planned we planned around the kids -their schedule, their lives, even around their waking and sleeping hours.  And within a few short years our lives are now punctuated with the weekends and evenings of driving the kids back and forth to practices and games and how we have allowed those numerous practices and  games to consume our lives.

But then on the other hand when you come from a cultural background where Sports is a distraction and the emphasis is on education then yes, it is always a struggle to find a balance-that fine balance. In some strange way you do find a balance and hope and pray while you sit in the bleachers that you have drawn the line at the right spot.

I can't forget the moments rushing  home to get an ice pack on a child’s bruised knee or waiting for the swelling to go down or waiting to see if that bone was indeed broken. As I put on my many chores and obligations on hold and sit in the bleachers my mind is preoccupied with dinner. On any given day dinner is one of the following-rushed dinner, delayed dinner,slow cooked dinner or drive thru dinner. Hours spent driving the kids back and forth translate into the many stops at gas stations to fill up gas and the many visits to portopotties to empty bladders. My life in the bleachers is not just watching my kids play sports but it has been a life of watching my kids be part of orchestra concerts, choir concerts, spelling bee contests, award ceremonies, sports banquets and not to mention school plays and field days.

I do confess I have done some of these begrudgingly and some with more of a cheerleader attitude on other days. I do have to take into account that as years went by I had come to embrace my life in the bleachers. I am very aware that this was where I prayed the most for my kids’ successes and safety. I had gladly let go of ‘my time’ and start focusing on pouring into my kids and their needs. Like I heard on the radio few days ago- being a mother is not a job it is a privilege. It indeed is a privilege to watch your children shoot for their dreams-to watch them fight and strive for excellence. A privilege to watch them try their hardest in doing what they love- to win some and lose some- and ultimately find their niche. Life in the bleachers had a great view filled with great memories and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Now as an empty nester, those days still carry the best memories!

        

Using the Indian woman card!

A few months ago, a US Presidential candidate was called out for using the woman card! Remember that? I pondered over why there was such a furor and wondered what kind of a card I use? I am a woman. Do I use the woman card??? Then it came to me, I have been using the ‘Indian woman’ card. That is the standard I stick to. The adjective for the term would change on a daily basis. It will range from the paranoid Indian woman to the angry Indian woman and everything you can think of in between. When you can’t escape it, embrace it and USE it.

            Boy! Have I done that. Ask my kids. This is a typical day in the life of my 2 kids. “What? A cellphone in 6^th grade? I was 28 when I got my first cellphone in India”, “do you know what happens in India if you talk back to your parents? When I was in India……, “You are lucky you are not in an Indian school right now”…. So there you have it, a bit of a blackmail and a bit of a putting life in perspective. Or when it comes to explaining that taking an exam in India is writing pages and pages of answers in 3 hours and not filling bubbles in a scantron.

            Ask my husband when I reminisce those nostalgic moments of “when we were in India, or if we were in India, or when we have this desire to eat a vadai and  drink cup of piping hot tea from a pettikadai around the corner or the craving for a dosai for dinner or would just like to drop in on our parents or attend a wedding just to eat biriyani……

             There are times when I am doing what I do best, talking about India with my friends when I whip out this card and go to town until I begin to see very obvious signs of boredom from the person I am engaged in conversation. There was once a yawn! And yes, I did call the person out on it and I totally threw the blame on my origin.  Here is a sample…..“Personal space? What is that?” or “Parking lots, green lawns, side walks, date night for parents? We don’t have that” or “Women empowerment in India is not the same as feminism here”- It is just the basic survival technique there and not a fight for equal rights here. Women wearing jeans and driving a car is still a sign of super modern advancement in India and yet a given here. I can use my card to explain my difference from the rest of my American friends and can conveniently use it to buffer my ignorance as well. I have gotten good at it in the few years I have lived here.  

            Or even when I am by myself, when I compare and contrast the 2 different cultures I live with, I wonder about my place in a country where I am an immigrant. I will always look Indian in the eyes of my onlookers. So I will just use my Indian woman card and flaunt it every which way. It is used proudly and never as an excuse. It is used to prove my worth as a woman who has transcended/transcending the cultural differences and yet holds her head high in moments of utter embarrassment. “It is a learning curve” is such an American term that totally fit my agenda for the past 14 years here. Still learning to maneuver the curve. Keep driving but drive slowly in the curve.