Accepting that me living in London is real

Here I am, in England. I never thought I’d be here. I “don’t even go here,” to channel Damien from Mean Girls. But here I am, living here. It doesn’t feel real. Sure, it feels real in that I’m physically here in London. The skies are often grey, the road lanes have zig zags, traffic drives on the left. But it doesn’t feel real that I live here. That this is home for me right now. I have difficulty coming to terms with it. Like wut.

A pic of Big Ben from one of my long bike rides

I don’t think I ever intended for living in the UK to be “real.” It was meant to be a fun adventure, a jaunt to go experience another kind of life for a bit, and then make my way back to some idea of reality I had in my mind. That idea of reality of course, is the US. It’s where my best of friends and support system lives. It’s where my family is. It’s where all that’s familiar to me, much of what’s triggering to me, and so much of what comforts me is. London was exotic, new, full of new experiences, new men to meet, new food to taste, new groceries to buy. 

I never once considered what “real life” happening to me in London would entail. What would happen if I’d experience any worries at work? What would happen if I developed deep new friendships, or had to evolve or even break off old ones? What would happen if I met someone special and *gasp* experienced love here? Could these things even happen abroad? It sounds silly in retrospect, but traditionally always-prepared- and always-hypervigilant-me wasn’t prepared for any of this. 3 years in, I can say all of those things have happened.

And so here I am, torn in a weird way between the old vision I had of this place — as a temporary moment away from America –– and the very real reality I live here. One where I’ve come to face to face with deep, heavy emotions and faced a broken heart. Where I’m figuring out what I want to do next. Where I’m observing the world from a different vantage point than what I was used to. Where I’m far away from home, yet simultaneously (and unconsciously) have been building one here. 

London gave me the space to push myself into overdrive, and then crash and burn. It’s a place I’ll forever hold close to my heart. They say life is what happens when you’re busy making plans. I’m grateful that once in a while, when I’m not frazzled with my persistent anxiety or general tribulations, I get to take a moment and stand in awe. I can look over the Thames, look up at drizzly skies, hear the rattling of the Overground trains, hear hijab-clad women speak in Somali and Bengali walking past white English dudes with their pints at a pub, see some big red double deckers, and remember — holy shit, this is my life happening right now. I’m here experiencing it. It’s real af.

A little note on creativity then and now

You know, when I sit down to write or draw something these days, my mind is blank. Of course, my mind ISN’T actually blank — it’s actually in hyperactive overdrive mode vigilantly checking around me for situations to be aware of, and the endless list of responsibilities I have on my plate. 

It’s really quite wild. About ten years ago, I feel like I was a different person. Well, same person…but different. I had no money, not much of a sense of urgency, a big open mind, and most relevantly, ideas and creativity gushing out of me. I felt as though I had a new project idea nearly every other day. I’d share them enthusiastically on the then-supportive Twitter, to followers who’d give me feedback and show interest. 

As an aviation nerd, I had a project called “Take Flight Project” where I sent interesting people I met on Twitter a questionnaire about a flight that changed their life and posted them on Tumblr. I attempted to start a magazine called “Globalizer” which I had dreams of turning into a Monocle-style thing. On my old Instagram, I did a “Summer of Type” where I did lettering and posted it daily. 

The story of what happened from me then to me now isn’t something I’ll dive too deeply into here. But I should perhaps note that the title of this website, Mind the Globe, is from that era. I originally started this as a weekly newsletter showcasing interesting / cool / unique cultural things from around the world. I used Mailchimp to manage emails, and I sent the emails to a handful (a growing handful, but a handful nonetheless) of people. 

I chose the name “Mind the Globe” because I was trying to be a little cheeky — I didn’t know what all the contents of this website would be, but I did know that I wanted it to be about different world and global things — music, art, language stuff, design stuff, urban planning stuff, cultural things. And as someone who’s moved to tears by these kinds of things regularly, it was (and is…tbh) a dream to share my love for these things with the everyone. 

Anyway, I’m low-key digressing. I guess where I was going with this is that I’m rehashing a bit of the past, looking for clues on what it was, that allowed me to be free-flowing with ideas and creativity. Perhaps I’m looking back with rose-tinted glasses in a way, as I have now a lot f things I didn’t then. 

But that spark…that drive…that excitement. It’s inside, we just gotta dredge it up a little. 

Consistency & change in Bangalore as told by fun products

I’ve been to Bangalore a dozen times in my life, and in a life full of tumult and change, it’s a place that has always been a constant. Constant in its delivery of fucking delicious food, tropical evening breezes with rustling palm fronds, and me free-flowing my deteriorating Kannada vocabulary. But while I might be grounded in the consistency of Bangalore, there’s relentless change afoot there. Here’s a few fun things I noticed on my last trip there in February 2023.

Onion shampoo and hair oils. I saw this more in this February 2023 trip than ever before

Some things are things I just notice being different, or things I haven’t noticed before — like onion (yes, literally onion) shampoo. Others are representative of India’s burgeoning market, a land teeming with hundreds of millions of people for companies to sink their teeth into to get their monies. India is a place that has its own deeply rooted ways of doing things, eating, drinking, counting, you name it –– and that means brands localize like crazy. Luckily for me, the food localization usually fits my palate really damn well -– like kesar pista (saffron pistachio) flavored Snickers bars.

Kesar pista flavored Snickers really blew my mind.

Look up Indian or Ayurvedic skin care routines, and you’ll definitely find besan, or the flour of split chickpea lentils feature pretty prominently. So, obvi Nivea had to get in on that.

Back to food. While I’m not the biggest fan of the flavor of chickoo, I am definitely a fan of the history of it being a big fruit flavor in India, as well as the fact that said fruit flavor is now being mass-market packaged into health stores too. In Kannada, I’m pretty sure the word for this fruit is sapota, which, if you just do a little light digging, reveals itself to come from the Nahuatl (the language that they spoke in Aztec Empire- and pre-Columbian-era central Mexico) tzapotl! The fruit itself is native to Mexico, so it makes sense. But how awesome is it that words make their way around the world from places as far off as Mexico into the lexicon of sari- and panche-clad women and men in Karnataka, India?

Chickoo-flavored smoothie at SimpliNamdharis

I finally enjoyed Dubai

I’ve been to Dubai a handful of times, and no time has exceeded 3 days. Probably like a lot of people, courtesy of Emirates’ hub-and-spoke strategy, I’ve pretty much only transited through the place. I never truly…enjoyed Dubai. The reasons were that it’s a place built artificially, that there’s a strong and visible sense of a racial hierarchy (with South Asian workers at the bottom), and that it’s hard to get around without a car. On my way from London to Bangalore in February, though, my opinion on Dubai shifted.

I think a lot of it has to do with me just getting older, having more of an income to be able to spend on Dubai things, and perhaps the biggest reason: that I just leaned into what it presented, and the parts of it that I really did enjoy. I’m a lover of Khaleeji music, cuisines of countries across the Arab world, hot weather, and general multicultural environments. Dubai has all of that in spades. Plus just such an intoxicating intersection of different types of people — it’s like a little microcosm of the world (including some of the ugliness of the world, like social injustice among other things).

In the words of Emirati singer Mehad Hamad’s song, I came away with “دبي يا محلاها” in my mind. I actually don’t know the translation, but Google tells me it means “Dubai, what a place it is”.

Anyway, here are some pics

Everyone’s no 1 boo, the Burj Khalifa

Your boy’s day 1 Emirati breakfast. Bottom left is balaleet.

I had dinner here, Aroos Damascus in Al Muraqqabat. Syrian music, buzzing tables. Affordable. It was magnificent. No food pics cuz I was too excited to eat and it went in my belly.

Avgeek nerding over SyrianAir offices cuz…she doesn’t even go here (or anywhere) anymore. Except Dubai I guess.

A late night walk in Deira, which ended up with me discovering the sidewalk ends at a freeway, and then getting an Uber back to my hotel.

Sheikh Zayed Road

Old school, and arguably the more interesting, Dubai

I think this was Al Karama or somewhere in Deira. Everyone seemed to be Pakistani

Dubai’s a city of opportunity and money for people from so many countries. Lots of pretty normal South Asians live around Dubai creek, and close to the airport in apartments like this.

Me by the Al Fahidi Historical Neighborhood, after eating my own bodyweight in Iranian kebab at Al Ustad

Liberal Hindu American reconciliation

Across much India-focused social media, a major event I’m seeing sounds of is that of the beginning of the construction of a grand new temple in the Indian city of Ayodhya. It’s being celebrated as a victory by many Hindus, and watched by many others as a another Hindu-right-issued-blow to India’s constitutional secularism. It’s a complicated and lengthy issue for many.

I don’t know that I have super strong opinions on the Ram temple project yet. But India, Hinduism, the US, the West, and how these entities interplay with one another and the world are often on my mind.

At the heart of this is a desire for me to reconcile my own dissonance on a few things. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but covers some of the basics of what cause intellectual strife for me:

Non-native expertise

I find that there’s generally been a global lack of understanding of context or equitable, natively-sourced interest in Hinduism, India, its influence, culture and history. In mainstream academia, this understanding is rooted in an external, colonized lens. Western thought or West-adjacent academics and researchers, while their work is often laudable, are often prioritized as sources of knowledge. Think Wendy Doniger or Romila Thapar.

Mis-linking disparate issues across societal contexts

Many people who are supportive of decolonization and the dismantling of hegemonic power structures in the West are often those who rely on colonized renderings of the history of Indian society and history. I’ve observed that there’ve been attempts to wholesale copy-and-paste applications of Western societal struggles (issues like racial injustice or police brutality) onto the Indian social landscape (issues like Hindu-Muslim disharmony or colorism).

Right wing affiliation & decolonization

It’s been interesting to me that many of the people who are advancing the decolonization of education about Hinduism and Indian history are also affiliated with right wing movements in India. Unfortunately within these groups, I’ve observed that there are a lot of anti-Muslim (and anti-other-Indian-demographic-minority) thoughts and actions.

A number of Hindu Americans have shown Trump support because they think he’ll be great for US-India relations.

Hindu American support for Trump

By far the most fascinating observation to me, an American of Hindu Indian origin, is this: the affiliation of a startling number of Hindu Americans (especially those who have vested interests and families in the US, where they’re a minority) with Trump and the Republican Party. Observing the growth of this connection has massively eroded my trust-in-judgement of the people who are decolonizing and re-evaluating Hindu narratives. 

These topics are quite heavy and require a lot of exploration, dissection, and understanding — and these are raw, personal observations that need a lot of distilling. With COVID magnifying a variety of issues, it’s become all the more important for me to examine long-held views, dig deeper, and come out with a hopefully clearer understanding on topics we ought to care about.

The tipping point into mass wokeness

I’m fascinated by critical-mass social opinion changes. You know, the ones where a huge swathe of the public begins to think one way or another about a societal topic. Particularly fascinating to me are those swings which follow long periods of apathy, ignorance, or an opposing opinion.

An example in my lifetime is the seemingly sudden swing to pro-LGBT viewpoints by many people in the late 2000s/early 2010s. I can remember clearly being bullied, getting called “f*g,” and hearing negative things be referred to as “gay” well into the 2000s. This was invariably followed by some of those very insulters posting pro-LGBT slogans and voting for marriage equality less than a decade later. You might know where this is going.

Black Lives Matter protests in Los Angeles

In the weeks since the murder of George Floyd, I’ve observed many people posting didactically about #blacklivesmatter, systemic racism, Black American history and the long, unending battle for social and racial justice. Companies (including my employer) are telling employees to take Juneteenth off. Others have been quick to post pro-Black messages across their brands. The Aunt Jemima brand is being retired after 130 years..

A vast number of these people and entities, while often committing positive words behind things like “equality,” have been historically quiet about systemic racism. Until now. Is it just that the current situation, with its combustible mix of Trump, COVID-19, and social media, has made it impossible to ignore? For all but active racists to turn a blind eye to? Is there a social validation snowball effect which enables [people-who-notice-systemic-racism-but-don’t-speak-up-about-it] to indeed speak up about it without having to deal with too much status-quo-preserver pushback? The answer is likely “yes.”

Perhaps it’s all very logically explainabie — this phenomenon feels like something Malcolm Gladwell would have written about (Tipping Point, anyone?). I’m interested in learning more.

Problem severity

Something I’ve struggled with explaining to people around me for much of my life is my view on problem/situation severity. I believe that while problem severity is indeed relative to a person/society’s circumstances, beneath that relativity lies perhaps a more objective scale.

Examples (these are broad-brushstroke examples) that I’ve tried to explain to folks:

• A person living a life under the poverty line in a place like Bangladesh or the Democratic Republic of the Congo likely has a more severe life than a person under the poverty line in the USA

• Black and brown (and really, minority) peoples’ struggles in life, especially in Western societies, are greater than those of white people.

I’d say broadly that these non-Western poverty conditions are tougher than Western ones.

Most of the pushback I got (from highly intelligent, critically thinking people, mind you) was that these things are relative. “A poor person anywhere is still a poor person.” “Everyone struggles.” “There’s no use in labeling one as a ‘privileged’ group’.”

As recent events in the US have made clear, there are observable forces in society that provide a common-denominator-backdrop for our lives. In the case of black and brown struggles in Western societies, things like systemic racism, a culture of police brutality, and the effects of imperialism play a role. To deny this is to strip away investigative capability into the nuances and factors that could uncover why problem severity indeed varies. I’m glad the tide is turning.