I am very lucky and I am very grateful to have the support system that I do. Financially and emotionally, my loved ones are what allows me to spend this time without a job earnestly trying to figure out a suitable path forward for myself. And my unemployment checks. However, trying to figure that path out has filled most of my days with a series of crises I have to stave off by going on walks and going to the gym and getting drinks with money I’m pretending to have.

When I journaled and manifested at the start of this year, as typical in New Years rituals, I covered a lot of ground– but I did not speak once of my day job until an entry on January 7th.

I wrote,

“I’m feeling apprehensively good about the new year…I’m also scared. If things go how I hope, that also means this year will hold a lot of change. A new job and my art out in the world.”

I knew when the year started that I was going to have a different job by the end of it, though I thought it would happen on my own terms and I definitely didn’t expect to be confronted by it within the month. I’m now five months into joblessness and based on my Gmail inbox, not much closer to having a job, plus I’m still very unsure of what I want. I am much closer to something. That something may just be my intimate entanglement with discomfort.

And yet, I read Big Magic and want nothing more than to listen to my creative callings and build a life around them despite the further plunge into discomfort that will require, accompanied by more financial risk. It feels like a worthy pursuit most of the time but other times feels so fucking stupid. I’m trying to figure out how to make Tiktoks. I’m spending the little money I have saved up to record my music knowing there’s a miniscule chance anyone will hear the songs. Everything I’m working towards, if accomplished, would be torturous to some extent. If and when I do get a salaried job, I probably won’t enjoy it. If I were to be successful as a musician, it would still involve unwanted labor and consequences. At the end of the day, I do it all just so I can get dinner with my friends.

This is the first time in my life where I have no idea what my life will look like even two months from now. I have a lot of confusion about what's easy and what's hard as it's related to what's right and what's wrong. Would it be easier to accept a cookie cutter corporate life? In some ways yes, because there's a more certain path laid out for that and it would more consistently make more money but if it’s not what I really want, that would make it hard. Also, you know, AI and the fact that I’m struggling to even obtain a 9-5 job… The life I would rather have, in which I pursue my creative passions and am able to do so professionally, would be hard because it’s very unlikely I would make money and also being creative and putting your work out is embarrassing and vulnerable and kind of crazy. I don’t know if there’s anything easy about it other than it would feel more true to who I am.

OK let’s take a moment to take stock of what’s gone down with me the past few months and use it to try to assess my future.

Positives:

• Applied for hundreds of jobs

• Got many interviews

• Have written more than two songs

• Wrote an essay and here’s another one

• Went to Spain

• Recorded three of my songs and the process is ongoing for two more

• Am a little jacked

• Painted two chickens and their pig daughter on the beach

• Read a few books

• Cooked a LOT like a LOT

• Haven't vomited this year

• Made a few tiktoks despite crippling fear

Negatives:

• Fainted once

• No job offers except for one which turned out to be a scam

• Am a mess

• Existential dread

• This isn’t my fault but State of the World

If I am an enemy of yours, maybe stop reading because it seems like I might have actually accomplished a lot! Most of the time it doesn’t feel like much but that’s because I am unfortunately one of my enemies. It took me some time to wrap my head around this huge change and I am inconveniently nearing the end of my unemployment checks but I am trying and succeeding at nurturing my creativity. I don’t always choose to and most of the time my execution is bad but I am trying.

Right before venturing off into a bright future of unemployment, I read Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh, by Shrayana Bhattacharya. The book examines the lives and desires of Indian women as related to their narrow economic freedoms. India ranks in the global bottom five in women’s economic opportunities and participation, in the dismal company of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sudan, and Iran. That bottom five is overwhelmingly South Asian. India grew immensely post 1990, a usual sign that women will start working outside of the home, and yet that was not the case—in fact, post-liberalization, the economic status of Indian women has sharply turned for the worse.

In the midst of some objectively bad news, learning this made me reflect on how unlikely and miraculous the possibility of a life like mine is—one where I can get compensated for the work I do in order to lead an independent life, unburdened by gendered economic constrictions. Even now, post lay off and claiming unemployment, I will still have the means to pay my rent by virtue of my job search.

Growing up, both of my parents worked outside of the home. At one point, my mom became the sole provider for our family as my dad underwent chemo for the cancer he did not survive. Her having a career while being a mother was never something that I questioned but I realized with my dads passing, how essential her professional commitments and capabilities have been for not only her survival, but the survival of our family.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve reframed the moments when my mom would be out of town for work and my dad was left unknowing how to braid my hair or provide food for us, other than Maggi, takeout, and heating up whatever mom had made for us in advance. Every day that my responsibilities grow in weight and it becomes harder to take care of myself, I cannot fathom the work of parents.

And still, imagining all of that difficulty and exhaustion does not even touch how insane it is that I have a life of economic freedom and so did my mom, and even more rare, so did her mom. I get to sit here and take advantage of my time being unemployed knowing that I will probably be employed and paid for my labor for the rest of my life till I die or retire, whichever arrives first.

Listen, I am starting to have doubts about that. The job market is abysmal, AI has and will continue to replace me, blah blah blah. I could be fucked. Sometimes I feel quite hopeless. I know hope will appear another day. You know the vibes.

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There is so much about this film that deeply moved me and had tears continuously streaming down my face in theaters, but the most unexpected was the appreciation and acknowledgement of the love contained in the arranged marriages of our parents that is often thrown away as a purely familial transaction, void of romantic love as we have been exposed to by western media. Parents in these movies, and often in real life, seem connected only by their relationship to their children with seemingly no connection to each other beyond the ways in which they work together to provide for their families.

Until recently, it was an assumption I made about my own parents and the parents I know who got married like them–with little of a relationship built before marriage only to immediately move to the states and have kids. My parents had a “love marriage”— a term I can’t really get behind as it reinforces the assumption that arranged marriages are loveless—but even still, despite all the trouble my dad went through to marry my mom– fraudulent horoscope readings, multiple threats of suicide, and all bets placed on a love at first sight moment– I assumed the glue and purpose of their marriage was somehow practicality.

Naveen’s parents, Megha (an immaculate Zarna Garg) and Archit Gavaskar (unexpected MVP Harish Patel), classically play this relationship of two South Asian parents, deeply and perhaps too much so, invested in their children’s romantic prospects while not being invested at all in each other. They watch OutTV to try to understand their son’s homosexuality but nothing much comes out of that other than an education on Harvey Milk and hopefully the subconscious desire to try some butt stuff. When Naveen tells his dad he wants more for his romantic life than the loveless marriage of his parents, Archit is shocked by his son's reading of their relationship. He goes home that day and attempts to sit on the couch next to his wife–it does not go well. Megha yells at him, asks why he’s sitting so close to her and to go back to his usual spot on his chair that he bought for himself. When he moves away, he watches her, contemplating seeking connection, when she proceeds to yell at him for looking at her. Defeated, he leaves to go to bed. It is hilarious and accurate in a way that is so touching to see on the big screen. Megha Gavaskar asks the age old question, why are you, as my husband, sitting next to me?

When I went home to California at the end of March, I started to see the love between South Asian parents in places I did not notice it before. I paid a visit to the parents of my childhood best friend, Shreya, whose parents provided a second home to me as a child and into adolescence. After work, Uncle and Aunty go for a walk, eat dinner at 6:00, watch TV afterwards, and both end up dead asleep on the couch. The image of them asleep with the TV still on, side by side, both kids living across the country, in the house they bought almost 20 years ago, was so full of the qualities that make love what it is–routine, comfort, and dedication. I watched Uncle do the dishes and wipe down the countertop after we had eaten the meal Aunty made for us, struck by how an act that on some days is just a chore, on others is a window into a shared life.

I’ve always known that my friend Riya has affectionate parents because she taught me her endearing ways, I could only assume were mirrored from them. When I visited them, I learned that Aunty’s mother would cook eggplant for husband, knowing how much he loved it, despite how much she despised it, as we ate the eggplant dish Aunty made for us, a separate portion reserved for Uncle without any peanuts due to his allergy. Uncle tried to sell the three of us on the broad appeal of Las Vegas, citing the many shows he attended there, Cirque du Soleil, the Sphere, etc. Then he mentioned that last time he visited, he wanted to see an adult show but couldn’t get tickets. Aunty’s jaw dropped as I nodded along politely, not knowing what the protocol was. It turns out, we had all misheard him– he had wanted to see an Adele show, not an adult show. Insulted by his wife’s crude assumption, he asked, "You think your husband has been someone else this whole time?” Witnessing another part of the routine of love–knowing.

During my last day in California I went looking for photo albums at my mom’s house and was surprised to find pictures I had never seen before and cards from birthdays and holidays decades ago that she had kept. I found the developed photos along with their negatives from when my parents had just moved from India to Atlanta, experiencing their first glimpse of fall foliage, their first snow, and their first visit to the Northeast. I found a Valentine’s Day card my dad gave my mom in 1997. The card opens up to a heart filled pop up where my dad has written in, before and after the prewritten message, “Dear Renu Kutti…Your everloving hubby, Sendhil.” I did not know my dad knew the word hubby or that he had ever called my mom kutti, a Tamil word meaning small, often used with fondness towards children. My dad’s routine of love was not to do the dishes or any other chores for that matter, but he provided something else–he looks like he’s got the winning lottery ticket in every picture from 1996 onwards and the rare courage of knowing that the love he had for his wife and kids transcends how short a life can be.

At Naveen and Jay’s wedding, Megha gives a speech about how her love for Archit sprouted and how it continues to grow. In their earliest days of marriage, as a newcomer to the kitchen, Megha practically poisoned her husband with her cooking each day. About a week into this routine, hope faltering on both sides, she smelled an aroma coming from the kitchen and was met with several home cooked dishes, fully prepared by her husband. Love made itself known between the two strangers, filling in the gaps that had just barely been revealed to them.

Having physically affectionate parents probably provides a more pleasurable standard for what your own marriage could look like but we are ultimately pleasure seeking creatures. We will find it not just in the bedroom but in the kitchen, on our way to pick each other up from the airport, and on separate ends of the couch while watching OutTV. They’re all aphrodisiacs to me.

In the past year or two, I’ve become quite intolerant regarding the portrayal of women’s suffering and oppression in entertainment media broadly. Apart from the conflicts and obstacles of a woman’s inner life and coming of age (any age), I’m not very interested in watching women suffer at the hands of Patriarchy. I am interested in her own investigation of her societal standing but I do not need to be shown what standing she is born into– I am all too familiar with it. Familiarity with our oppression often causes an underestimation of its tools rather than recognition of how horrific it is. This is especially true now that those tools are less concerned with legal bearings of humanity (except now they are… overturning Roe v Wade) and more so with the subtleties they show up as in our daily lives. In deciding that I wasn’t interested in consuming media that mindlessly displays violence against women, its extremely frequent presence is now glaringly obvious.

As an AMC A List member and the girlfriend of a man who was randomly chosen to be part of SAG’s nominating committee, I recently watched this year’s winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes, Anora. The film follows Ani (Mikey Madison), a Brooklyn born sex worker, as she encounters and marries Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), the frenetic & eccentric son of a Russian oligarch. I came out of Anora struck by how despite endless judgment made by society at large about being a sex worker as well as the careless with which Ani is treated at the hands of Ivan, she presents herself freely throughout conflict, without regard for the potential and likely violence that is always a threat to her existence as a woman and even more so as a sex worker with a client who is unwieldy with his power.

When the men who work for Ivan’s family come to retrieve him upon finding out about their elopement, they end up having to hold Ani hostage– Ivan, who becomes a clearer picture of his childish and predictable impulse driven ways, has already abandoned her to escape his imminent orders to go back to Russia. During this entire encounter, Ani is in her underwear and a t-shirt. It does not seem to occur to her to put pants on until she has to leave the house–it would be my first instinct to put on pants though at least her underwear were closer to boyshorts than a thong. When the men say she must stay with them in the house as they try to retrieve Ivan, she attempts to escape and violently attacks her captors without fear of repercussions. Fortunately, they don’t punish her apart from physically restraining her–first by tying her hands up, an act which they sweetly & surprisingly consider a last resort, and eventually by gagging her as a result of incessant screaming.

These men are at first glance, goons, but we quickly realize the traditional machismo and aggression expected of men who work to accomplish the dirty work of the wealthy is not present in these characters. Probably because more than anything, they’re glorified babysitters for Ivan. One of them can fight, the others are questionable in skill, but the moments when they choose to use violence are telling. When dealing with Ani, there is no attempt to assert power over her through sexual means– there is even an absence of non sexual violence, all seemingly unjustified action to take due to the fact that she is a woman.

It’s not that they are void of misogyny, her profession and status have brought shame to Ivan’s family. However, trapped in a situation where a dumb young boy has treated her life carelessly for his own entertainment, she is still afforded respect. Respect is not something that I expect from men even when I am on my best behavior. The bold way in which Ani is able to fight for herself, screaming, biting, and lying in order to find freedom, only made my own constant fear more recognizable.

Just a few weeks ago, a man sitting across from me on the train told me that I looked like I was not having a good time, or some variation of that sentiment. Here’s where the first choice happens.

Do I take my headphones out to hear what he’s saying and invite his attempt at interaction or keep my headphones in, eyes away, and avoid acknowledging him, in hopes his attempt ends there– knowing the cost could be at worst, violence, and at best, denial of his humanity in an attempt to preserve my own.

I took out my headphones to hear him say I looked sad and then gave him a thumbs up to indicate my happiness. He then told me I had an unforgettable face. One that he would not forget even in death. That maybe it was a bit dramatic to say. And perhaps not even a compliment. But he meant it. I responded with something like a laugh, uncomfortably wanting the encounter to end and not knowing how to safely do so, and put my headphones back on.

He offered me a Coke and then left but terrifyingly, he could’ve done any number of things and I could’ve reacted in any number of ways and the stakes would have, in any scenario, been life or death. Maybe he knew that or maybe he didn’t but either way, as fucked up as it is to be under the threat of violence at all times, it is also fucked up to have to assume that every man you see is not a person but a weapon and you, it’s possible victim, leaving you both ultimately not human. No one gets the privilege of being seen for who they are and everyone is presumed to be their worst possible selves.

That pivotal scene in Anora not only gives Ani full human rights but humanizes her captors as well. They are not just men – perpetrators of violence – but men doing their jobs to tame a stupid little boy as best as they know how. Knowing they were not people who would enact such violence unto women relieved me of projecting my own fears onto Ani. I watched the rest of the movie knowing that I could take these characters as who they were showing me they were, rather than who they might be based on their gender and occupation. I wish I could do that more in real life and frankly, I don’t know how we get there!

To drink coffee as an event instead of as a fix is what all great vacations are made of. Asking, where can we find this beverage, actively being drunk everywhere, right here– and how can we find some so good that the people who live here might dare to claim it as their own despite its worldwide ubiquity. In California, I will tell you to go to Philz and in Europe, I will tell you to go anywhere.

I was reminded as I walked and walked and kept walking through the streets of Berlin, Prague, and Rome that, just as many other people and critics alike have observed, America possesses a lack of beauty.

We have plenty of highways, McDonalds, and homes that look just like other homes, but beauty can be rare. New York is beautiful by way of experiences and expectations but physically, the senses are too often bombarded by excrement and excess.

We make beautiful movies with beautiful celebrities that fill the world’s cultural consciousness, but the ground we walk on and the buildings we step into–the things that make up our daily life and eventually our whole lives–are mass produced and functional to the point that they do nothing to make me feel like my life on Earth, no matter the day, is in fact miraculous.

The people around me provide that, the art I consume can provide that, so why can’t the material things in life also possess a sort of human artfulness? I’m open to ideas!

I wondered aloud as cigarette smoke filled the sidewalks and as I peered into the designated smoking rooms in bars, why despite the continuous lurching presence of Big Tobacco outside of the states, I had this uncanny feeling that Americans, broadly, must suffer a worse mortality rate. My boyfriend answered, “That’s because loneliness is worse for you than any of this other shit.”

Even in a place like New York City which has the connectivity of trains and buses, of walkable streets, and a deep history of art, industries, and habitants, one can’t escape the curse of American individualism. New York is a place unlike anywhere else and yet serves as a reminder that its people are just like everyone else.

The future pushes into you here without any proof that you’ll actually make it very far, as every block you once knew churns out new restaurants and cafes faster than you can get to know the last one– faster than the city can feel truly lived in on an individual level. And yet, the impact of its massive and ever changing population is undeniable.

Our footsteps on these sidewalks matter collectively but it can be so hard to feel like part of a collective here, to feel collected at all. Should the city remember the weight we once carried around it or or is it up to its people to discover that compounding weight of all who ever walked here, themselves?

The way history is preserved in Europe feels like another world staking claims in this one, but in New York it feels like the world of the past so intimately knows our present that the tension between them manifests, not in the architecture but, in our minds.

Living in both the past and future here often feels like drowning but there it just felt like life. And yes, I was on vacation, but I wonder if there’s a way to achieve such a feat in my day to day. Thrown between history and its consequences without the tension of American despair but rather a traveler’s curiosity.

The way the people of Berlin look like they’re actively filming The Matrix, the way Italians treat their meals and their wine like something so essential to being human that it can’t just be about surviving. As if doing something to survive is exactly what makes it special. Though unfortunately, this doesn’t apply to the survival necessity of pooping or peeing– a toilet seat was rarely found in Rome, they do not want you to cherish those moments.

Being somewhere else absolved me briefly of the lens I wear around New York of looking for what needs to be fixed. It became much easier to see people as people instead of people as a reflection of systemic and cultural incompetence.

But that is the beauty of knowing a place too well, its flaws are not just visible, they are melded into my being. In a new city for just a few days, its flaws can hide but mine do not and as I senselessly and soberly cried our first night in Berlin, only that was obvious.

Surrounded by beauty and its people, I was reminded of how my dad was insistent on taking a tour around Europe only a year before he died. There wasn’t much of a possibility that he would make it that far, especially as it became increasingly difficult for him to move around the house, let alone the world.

But I’ve made it that far. And looking back it feels strangely just as impressive as his hope at the time. To have the world encompass its whole size in front of you is far different than feeling like your own emotions could overtake the world. Being somewhere with so much history is a duty for the living but causes such a reckoning with death.

Why the Italians can eat so much pizza and be so fit and why I cannot go on vacation without crying…it must all be ancestral, right?

In a world where Adam Levine thinks there are no bands anymore, I had to ask, “Are bands still cool?” Without any hesitation they said yes, but acknowledged that it’s not like the 60’s when every top ten charting pop song was made by a band. In fact, it’s quite the opposite–in 2023, none of them are. But for Julia, being in a band is the only way that making music makes sense. “It makes it easier because you have people going through the same thing as you but also more complicated because your career is intrinsically tied to other people.” Luckily, they’ve found a group that works for them, who can collectively work toward a common goal, and in the true spirit of collaboration, delegate tasks.

Similar Kind currently has 42,000 monthly listeners and, at the time of this interview, were about to release a new song, “Face to Face,” before they headed out on tour again. Though Julia isn’t fond of writing love songs for the world to hear despite being in a long term relationship with their high school sweetheart, their newest track is a sweet reflection on how their partner served as a light through dark times. They describe the way that joy is often paired with the desperation to keep it, “I start to remember we won’t be together/and all of sudden I’m in the worst state.” As their career slowly moves forward, Julia’s main goal is just for them to be able to make enough money as musicians to sustain themselves. With a glimpse of everything their life could be as they’ve watched crowds sing their songs and seeing the impact the bands they love have had on them as fans, all they really know is that they need to see this through. When I asked her what success might mean for them, she said “I want it to be my career. I want it to be my life. I want it to be as successful as it can be. My main goal that I wanna work towards is, if I could live off of this without having to work at a fucking smoothie shop or selling on Depop.”

With such an oversaturation of music due to the streaming market, 42,000 monthly listeners is no small feat. Similar Kind formed in May of 2018 but they’ve only really been serious about making it for the past two or three years. Julia credits a TikTok of theirs that blew up over COVID, saying, “that got us most of what we have now. It was really cool because we got a lot bigger of a following without even playing shows.” The Tiktok in question has each member of the band stating one type of person their band is for: kids who play Pokemon Go, people who eat wood chips at the park, raging narcissists, people who own a ball gag, and virgins. Though the Tiktok did not actually gesture listeners to what the band might sound like, due to the importance of social media marketing for artists, sometimes an alluring personality is all you need to get people to pay attention to not just you, but your art.

Similar Kind is a self classified indie pop band (for u and ur mom to listen to), but their heavy layers of traditional five piece band instrumentals and electronic danceable synths place them perfectly in our increasingly genreless pop music landscape. Their music has an energetic funk to it with the complexity that five different musical perspectives bring to the table. Their eclectic sound comes from the diversity of each band member’s musical tastes. Julia has her high school years doing musical theater to thank for their vocal tone and technique because it was through musicals that they learned how to sing. They acknowledged that “so many indie bands are just a different type of singing and I love that style of course- not that our songs are musical theatery- but it has elements of [musical theater] which bleed through, which I think is cool. It got me into singing and made me a better singer.” It’s a style that differentiates the band from their contemporaries and it’s vital to who she is.

Outside of musical theater, her biggest musical influences lie with the biggest bands of the 2010’s: The 1975 and Paramore. But, inspiration first struck when she watched One Direction’s, This is Us, documentary. “Seeing them touring,” she described, “I wanted to do that so badly. That was a moment where I was like I would love to do this with my life.” Another moment that built urgency for her was when they played their first headline show at Space Ballroom in Connecticut, a 150 person capacity venue, and people sang the words to their opening song. The band thought, “Okay we’re building a following, we need to start working towards this now. Less of a, I’m gonna keep this on the side and hope maybe one day it works out.”

Similar Kind’s songs possess enough energy and texture to make you feel good if you play them on your car speakers or while getting ready with your friends to go out but they can lack the emotional sharpness that might make me want to pay close attention and immerse myself. Instead, because they haven’t revealed enough of themselves to me, I’m left unintrigued by who’s behind it all. That feeling changed when I witnessed them play live. In an upscale, gray, and as a result, lifeless, room at Public Records in Brooklyn, Julia not only had the audience’s attention, but their awe. In a cropped striped polo, revealing the playful tattoos scattered across their arms, they danced around the stage, shag swaying with every movement, as their energy consumed every inch of their body and overflowed out of their mouth as they sang. It became clear that music isn’t just something they love–it lives and breathes inside of them, one not fully existing without the other. Even bringing attention to the musical prowess of their fellow bandmates only made them seem more comfortable in their skin. It was a reminder that performance, when done well, is an act of giving.

I first met Julia on my roof after a show my roommates and I hosted and afterwards, they invited me to a basement party they were throwing the next weekend. I spent most of that party in the back of their basement in a separated area of walls covered in y2k celebrity pop culture paraphernalia resembling a teenage girls bedroom in the year 2010, deep in obsession with Twilight and One Direction. I only really got the chance to talk to Julia again just as I was leaving. I had shown up alone and when I called an Uber to go home before it got too late, I walked out of the basement to find them standing outside. In well mannered party host fashion, they indulged me in conversation as I waited for my car to show up. We talked about our mutual friend and my roommate, Christian, who goes to school with their longtime partner, Nathan, expressing her love and admiration for their blossoming friendship. I expressed love for their dog, Bug, who I witnessed throughout the entirety of the night following them around the basement. Though she loves the little guy, his need for constant companionship and attention isn’t ideal. But, knowing Julia for just a week, it was obvious why anyone, human or dog, would crave their attention. Their presence demands it– if demands can be made in a cool, friendly, down to earth way.

Judging by the universality of their subject matter, this is no surprise. Each film centers around conflict within traditional Indian families, traditional monogamous relationships, and the power and complexities of love– whether romantic or familial. For a country with a population of over one billion people, who speak hundreds of different languages, and have dispersed all over the world, Karan Johar created stories that seamlessly weaved into our diverse DNA. Making his directorial debut in 1998, his now iconic style of filmmaking coincided with intensifying global attention to the possibilities that lie at the intersection of capital and culture.

Chapter Two of Bollywood and Globalization, written by Sangita Gopal, delves into the relationship between Karan Johar’s movies and nostalgia. She states, “if Hindi films are notoriously long, the ‘KJo’ film is even longer; if the relation of Hindi cinema to reality is weak, the ‘KJo’ film intensifies this artifice; if Hindi cinema is star-driven; the ‘KJo’ film is star crazy; if the fragmented form of Hindi cinema enabled it to connect with adjacent economies like music and fashion, the ‘KJo’ films strengthens this dispersal and activates multiple revenue streams by turning itself into an intermedial phenomena; if the Hindi cinema sought to conquer the nation, the ‘KJo’ film is set on world domination (17).”

Religion and myth have the power to make people believe in them precisely because they derive meaning through our imaginations. In the same way, KJo films amplify the essence of Indian culture into an Indian imagination. They fill the hole caused by a perceived loss of community and cohesion in the face of modernity. Hindi films have created a collective script to abide by in order to reclaim some concrete notion of Indian culture and take solace in a decided tradition (Boym 14). If Non-Resident Indians weren’t sure how to keep their culture alive for generations and generations after immigrating elsewhere, the KJo film provided a good place to start.

Looking to create a semblance of the culture and community they left behind, Indian immigrants congregate in front of the big screen. The theater presents a place of community in which we can not only experience, but create our culture without judgment. The etiquette in a fully Desi populated theater is not to show respect for art through silence, but through enthusiastic expression. Excitement and emotion are not reserved for the trailers and credits, but for the very moment. The songs are meant to be sung and the story is meant to be worshiped.

Living in New York, I reluctantly make a trip to Times Square every so often because it is the only theater in the city that consistently reserves a screen for Indian films. I arrive at each screening hoping to feel the same way I did as a kid when these movies created the basis of my relationship with my culture. However, instead of bringing me closer to my culture, the theater has become the place that makes me question it. I arrive each time hopeful that this movie will be the one to reestablish my connection to my roots, but instead end up thinking instead of feeling, reckoning instead of healing. The new movies are fine but I hesitate to call them good. In my experience, a Hindi movie has only done its job when I feel the urge to bow down to the screen.

I attempt to settle my doubt by rewatching a film I’ve come back to over and over again: Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani (directed by Ayan Mukherjee, produced by Karan Johar). It has all the makings for a classic Hindi film: catchy songs, fun dances, an attractive cast, and a will-they won’t-they love story you root for till the very end. The two main characters, Bunny and Naina, complicate what would otherwise be an overdone masala movie by representing the tangles of modernity and tradition.

Bunny wants nothing more than to break free from the restrictions and rules of a traditional life where you study till 22, have a stable job at 25, marriage at 26, children at 30, and retirement at 60–just to end up waiting for death. He prioritizes his passion, ambition, and hunger for a good time over traditional notions of success. Naina is similar in wanting to break out of her seemingly depressing fate– one where she never gets to have fun because she’s too busy studying to become a doctor. She forces herself out of her comfort zone to try to figure out what she wants as opposed to what her parents want for her. In doing so, she comes into her own while accepting that she eventually still wants the stability of settling down.

The difference is, Bunny never wants his ride to end. It takes more than just falling in love with Naina for him to realize that spending time with the people you love is an opportunity just as irreplaceable as it is fleeting. He lets go of her to continue pursuing his dreams of traveling the world. What follows is a reflection on the excitement he once felt to leave his home country as compared to the emptiness that now follows him. In the years he has spent traveling alone, he became too busy to look his loved ones in the eyes as a way of avoiding looking at himself. When he chooses to go home one last time with nothing left to lose, it becomes clear that living life on your own terms doesn’t guarantee you’ll come out of it unscathed. There will always be loss where there is love.

For the diaspora, the inseparable relationship between loss and love is at the core of our identities. Growing older and attempting to understand how this relationship plays a role in my life has become a source of gnawing internal conflict. As Svetlana Boym states in her essay, “Nostalgia and Its Discontents,” “Inability to return home is both a personal tragedy and an enabling force (16).” The distance I have from the India my parents grew up in intensely fuels my love for my own Indian identity. I used to think that it was enough to bridge that distance by immersing myself in the movies and the music. I neglected to realize that they were only transporting me to a version of India absent of reality and brimming with aspiration. Consequently, my growing appreciation for Indian culture and tradition is coupled with an unraveling of what I have thought it to be. After all, how can a nation of one billion people have a singular tradition?

In Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani–before the two main characters can claim their happy ending–the myth of the KJo movie must fall apart. Love cannot conquer all unless they have first grappled with what they want, who they’ve been, and who they actually want to be. It is not as simple as the union of two souls or in my case the union of two cultural identities. As one takes a closer look at the other, they are forced to take a closer look at themselves.

Naina’s witnessing of Bunny’s reckless freedom encourages her to take control of her life. Naina’s appreciation of the moment she’s in, no matter how mundane, tempts Bunny to reevaluate his perspective that the world abroad has more to offer than his home in India. The balance I strike between being Indian and being American leaves me with the choice of what I want to keep, what I want to leave, and what I cannot ignore about these two seemingly opposing parts of myself.

Given India’s diverse population and growing diasporic web, this balance is uniquely mine to decide. As I have begun to question what Hindi films have meant to me, it becomes impossible to ignore that my mother tongue is not Hindi but Malayalam, that my father tongue is not Hindi, but Tamil. As Hindu nationalism becomes the dominant belief system in India, I am forced to confront that the Indian culture I most actively partake in is a North Indian one. My pride and struggle as a minority in America is directly opposed by my identification with the culture of India’s supposed majority– despite the fact that to call it the majority is blatant erasure of languages, religions, and people that have long lived on the land that nationalists consider to be “Hindustan.” Not to mention, my connection to that majority is the privilege I possess as an American. Aside from that, the culture of a Hindi speaking, upper caste India is technically not my own. But what is mine? My identity and my race have progressed into an intangible and at times incomprehensible form, only able to be grounded by the company of other Indians.

Together we attempt to create a culture that is equal parts authentic as it is an escape from the inevitable complications that arise when embodying a dual identity. This experience is so notorious that it’s been given a label: ABCD (American Born Confused Desi). Upon moving to America, we inevitably find each other and build an extended family of Desi’s who left their own homes as well. We learn how to sing carnatic music and dance bharatanatyam. We attend events with the rest of our town’s Desi population for Diwali, Holi, and Navaratri. We compete on Bollywood dance teams from adolescence into college. We spend parties, family gatherings, and karaoke nights trying to harness the magic that makes Shah Rukh Khan the biggest actor in the world for ourselves.

Just as KJo created an ideal and exclusionary template for what Indian tradition might be, we created an Indian-American continuation of his invented tradition. As Gopal states in Bollywood and Globalization, “Rather than opposing tradition since it no longer wields any real power, the young invest in it with sentiment. Thus they don ethnic gear and dance at festivals, perform rituals and mimic gestures that memorialize tradition from a vantage that is utterly contemporary (27).”

Hindi films have given me an idea of what my culture is supposed to be. They have given the diaspora something to buy into and cling onto as we search for a sense of belonging. Whether or not they represent the truth is secondary, but at some point or another, we are all faced with a set of questions: Does it matter if our tradition has been purposefully constructed? If so, how can we get to the roots that it was built from? How might I build a new version of tradition that is truthful to me?

My sense of undying loyalty and commitment to my Indian-American identity is always accompanied by–though often fought by– my awareness that my cultural identity is constantly in flux. To be devoted to such an innate part of myself without ever being able to fully see it for what it is, feels the same as trying to fathom that we have somehow ended up alive on earth in an infinite universe.

Sitting on the wooden planks of the second room of the exhibition, my senses were put at ease. I noted, “This is what I imagine the universe to sound like.” Sounds envelop the room and vibrated through the wood in many forms; impressions of field hollers, spirituals, and Tibetan Buddhist chants repeated with both harmony and dissonance. They urged me towards an experience of bodily awareness comparable to the effects of meditation. A potent remembrance that the body and the mind are connected in a way–that when paid attention to–draws out the innate knowledge that my being is more than mine, it is a world within a world.

Om was once a sound and symbol only known to me in reference, separated from its roots by the well-meaning and the ignorant. In this moment, it pierced through the surface and demanded to be felt rather than trivialized. It became more than just an idea or a history, more than just a sound or a symbol; the sound recordings reverberating through the space, wood, and observers materialized it. It took on a physical presence, at once familiar and jarring. It brought me closer to a reason for the cosmic cultural presence of Om and its subsequent misunderstanding.

The concept of Om first came into being in the Vedas, the ancient spiritual scriptures of Hinduism. The Vedas document a kind of wisdom about the universe. They mention no gods but address the relationship between the universe and the self–the way each one was created and done so interdependently. It is the ancient starting point of our ongoing conversation of who we are, this world that we somehow live in, and what it all might mean. It all begins with Om.

Om marks the moment of creation. The moment nothing turned into something, Om made itself present. The universe as we know it came into being and the creation of Om became inseparable from the creation of us. Call it a sound, a vibration, a frequency, or a wavelength–it exists before all else and exists along with us. Suitably so, it has become a core part of the practice of meditation and of the nation of India. It is inescapable in more ways than one.

It is no surprise then, that the sonic experience of Norment’s exhibition is consuming. It fills the body through each vibration of wood, each soundwave in my ear, and most effectively, each breath I take. The physicality of sounds becomes apparent as it starts to circulate through my body, changing the way air enters my lungs, enters my bloodstream, and pumps through my arteries. In giving myself away to a soundscape of spirituality, a kind of life flows through me. One that is pure, and as a result, unsettling.

At once eerie and angelic, beautiful and not, steady and peaceful stimulation is not what the human body is accustomed to. The usual highs and lows of my thought patterns and heart rate are more comfortable than this unusual calm that imposes itself onto me. I can only focus on peace for so long before I notice the sky in the windows of the roof, the people experiencing this exhibition alongside myself, and the people just outside without a clue what lies between them and the glass they walk by. It can only feel normal for so long before my mind starts to resist. My body knows what’s good for it, but my mind is prone to doubts. The melodies turn sour and what was once a beautiful representation of humanity becomes too human. An uncontrollable change of heart surfaces unforeseen ugliness. I cannot decide whether the Om tattoos look better or worse in the light.

“Oh, and it rains in your bedroom / Everything is wrong / It rains when you’re here / And it rains when you’re gone.”

7. The intensity of the sun illuminates bodies and temperament. There are more crimes in the summer and more people on the streets. We rub up against each other and still feel free. The ease of movement and speed of thought produced by the rapidly moving molecules, creating heat in the air, determines what I will do and what I will say. The weather creates a sort of ungraspable fate.

8. When the streets eventually empty and my puffer is all you can see of me, we no longer spark conversations spontaneously. We transition to quiet dinners and warm wine. We retreat, as if no different from the animals of the wild. We watch our breath become vapor in the air and try not to waste it—anything we can hold close, we will take.

9. Just as songs take me back to who I was when I needed them, transitions between seasons take me back to who I’ve been becoming for years. It is a cycle of rebirth inevitably accompanied by a mourning for what we will never quite have again. Each of life’s seasons remain within us, perhaps fragmented and faded, but providing clarity for what may be ahead. After all, we have survived the harsh winter more than once. We will shed our skin if needed, build again if needed, or swaddle ourselves in our past.

10. Autumn triggers such reflection most acutely. The changing of the trees we know so well serves as a consistent signifier of change– that things are not the same and yet they are what they always have been. The changing of the seasons calls for redefinition. In the case of the trees, complete transformation. The colors of the leaves change and then cease to exist, providing us with ample opportunity to reconvene with ourselves without the attention of the beating sun.

11. The seasons are cyclical, creating built-in check points: What songs are on my new playlist, do I need to add anything to my wardrobe, what is something I can do now that I couldn’t before, what do I miss about who I was when it was warm? I used to be flooded in the fall with memories of high school football games and school supplies, now I reminisce on the smells of a home cooked meal accompanied by mulled wine. I think of the holiday markets and the old brownstones, I think of the leaves and rushed walks home, I think of February and all its lost hope, in the beginnings of the new year but in a winter that feels endless. That is until, I am sweating in the palm of the sun, again. Exhaling, again.