We may be more same than we think we are…

Book club tomorrow -- I make a note. It’s been a while. I think of our last meeting in August. It is a beautiful summer evening and we sit outside, under the trees, in the fresh summer breeze.

The conversation veers to the Powerball which is over 700 million. The conversation moves to how much good at least part of the money can be put to. A friend asks what each of us would do if we won. We are a small group of five. Nobody has a lottery ticket, but 700 million is swiftly disbursed. 

A friend knows exactly where she would want her wins to go -- on diversity education and reform. She speaks passionately against discrimination and how much needs to happen. She is white American and states emphatically that reform needs to come from white Americans for it to matter. Everybody agrees. Everybody has something to add. 

Oddly I am quiet. I am the only one who is brown. I am the only one with an accent.

And although I have plenty of opinions and plenty to say. I am quiet. My friend continues to talk passionately about discrimination and when she catches a breath, I simply say I am glad she’s my friend. Even if I haven’t met her or most of them since that day, I am grateful to know a group that will have this discussion. There are many many others who will have this discussion for recent politics have brought like-minded people together and pushed the need to speak up and act.

My friend speaks about a racist experience. And although it is not targeted towards her, it enrages her.  I am oddly quiet. I am processing the fact that intolerance and bigotry affects everyone to almost the same extent. Not only the “minorities”.

For when these unsavory events happen, they happen to everyone, there is hate everywhere. No one is spared. Not even the most white, straight person in the room. There are no individual victims, even if it seems there are. Everyone is affected. Everyone is a victim.

I think of the time I walk into an auditorium for a talk with a friend. My bag is checked. My friend and those around me do not go through a bag-check. They are all white. I look at the guy in askance. I remember how awful my friend feels. Color notwithstanding, all decent people are victims in times of discrimination for what is wrong is wrong and the yucky feeling inside feels the same, even if degrees may vary.

I realize the power of this discussion in a mixed group. I imagine many such discussions are happening in many communities within certain boundaries of homogeneity. A group of hijab-wearing women may discuss diversity and acceptance and bigotry and their experiences therein, as may a group of Indians or Asians, or Blacks or transgender.

But I notice the strength in a discussion in a diverse groups where people have varied perspectives and experiences. And at the risk of sounding overly simplistic and optimistic, we notice we are so different, yet so seamlessly same.

Besides, our world, especially in the US is multicolored. Will we wait till we have a black sister-in-law, or an asian son-in-law or a brown spouse or a gay kid, to be sensitive? For it will happen. Even to the most conservative right wing folks. Do we wait till then, to notice that we hardly even notice those “differences” in our interactions? That their being “different” has nothing to do with why we love them or why we get annoyed with them.

Some months ago, my daughter’s friend joins her for game night at her sports place. I have my arm around her shoulder, when another dad looks at us and says, “She did great at the tournament today”.

I laugh, thank him and say, “this is her friend…” I love it that he mistakes her for my kid, despite her blue eyes and light skin and hair. He assumes she’s my kid (and I will happily assume so too – she loves my Indian food more than my own kid and has on occasion responded when I’ve accidentally spoken to her in Marathi).

It makes me think, we must be wired to believe in community based on our acceptance and interaction between us. Just as easily as this man mistakes this kid to be my daughter (and I’ll take that in a heartbeat), based on our interaction and body language and familiarity between us, that is all that should matter. That is all that can matter. 

For at the heart of it, we are wired together by a thread of humanity tying us together, beneath all the differences. And all we can hope is that this thread proves stronger than our differences. 

Once...in an open moment...

Last weekend: I attend the literary festival, Wordstock. As Lemony Snicket/Daniel Handler recounts how he always jots random things in his journal, I think it would be fun to peer into his journal. Sheepishly, I think of my own journal/s which travels everywhere with me, but has not encountered any ink to paper activity for months and months.

I pull it out. I decide to jot down some of the interesting quotes flying around me. (I don’t). However I flip the journal open to an entry exactly a year ago. At a tuna auction. At the Tsukiji Fish Market. In Tokyo. Before sunrise, on a cold fall morning.

I read it. It makes me laugh. It has a rather Mary Poppinsish, “Anything can happen if you let it…”(broadway version) feel to it.

It’s a silly little story, but one that makes me feel that life is easy. That it is okay to remain open and to go with the flow. That clearings happen.

Today, I cannot relate to the person whose journal entry I read. I am in a different frame of mind. The one that stares at me from my journal is a moment of staying open, taking chances, without any expectations, with optimism, with a let-see-where-this-goes, without a negative thought.

But first, let me tell you this silly story.

The Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo is quite a tourist attraction. The tuna auction each day at the crack of dawn, draws hundreds of tourists, but only two batches of 60 each, are allowed in. The line starts winding around 3 a.m., folks receive a bib, and the batch they will join. They will then doze and chat with other bleary-eyed tourists in the waiting room till their tour at 5:25 or 5:45 a.m., when they are taken in a single file, escorted by security, to the largest tuna auction in the world.

On the auction warehouse floor, huge tuna fish are inspected as carefully as a Fabergé egg being auctioned off at Sotheby’s. Flashlights shine into their gaping mouths, pickaxes poke into the bodies of giant defenseless bodies in neat rows on the floor. Thin cuts of meat are displayed, a small part of the fish is cut for perusal. The scrutiny is complete. The auction is serious. Bells ring. Bids are made. There are wins. There are losses.

Our first morning in Tokyo, my daughter and I are up at 4 a.m. The window sill on the 28^th floor is the perfect seat. We squish ourselves between the pane and behind the curtains, trying to keep the room dark for my husband who (of course) is fast asleep. I stare at the neon lights of Tokyo, my tween texts her friends on a different continent. “Let’s go to the Tsukiji Fish auction”, I suggest.  

“Hmmm… do you know how to get there?” eyes don’t leave the device. My turn to look into my device. I decide it may be better to get more information before the two of us hit the streets of Tokyo in the dark.  

“How about we go there tomorrow if we’re still jetlagged and wake up early?” “Okay,” she murmurs.

Next day:  I’m the only one wide awake at 4 a.m. I decide to go to the Tsukiji market. I get ready before I can change my mind, and quietly ask my kid who isn’t fast asleep if she wants to go. She doesn’t. I poke my husband and tell him I’m leaving for the fish market. He is too sleepy to ask questions. He has a meeting at 9 a.m. I tell him I’ll be back before then and if not, our kid can stay in the hotel room by herself. I don’t allow even an ounce of doubt to shake my plan. The fish market jaunt is anything but important. But in that moment I decide to not allow any of the usual inane considerations to shake my resolve.

I bounce out of the room, with my bag, metro card, broken Japanese and my best spirit of adventure. At the hotel lobby, I ask about Metro stations. The guys suggests taking a taxi waiting outside. I ask if it is safe at this hour. He nods, smiles and tells me this is Japan. I feel safe and grateful.

I am excited to be in the cab, to have ventured out, in the dark, to a place my husband and kid have no interest in (not sure I would have intentionally woken up early for this, but it seems like a fun thing to do since I am already up). I am happy to not have hummed and hawed and created obstacles of my own.

I arrive to find a sign on the booth saying the auction tours are full. I suppose I am disappointed. But not completely. I am still really excited to be there that early. I decide to explore on my own even if I can’t see the auction.

I wave and smile at the person behind the counter. For some reason, he opens it. He points to the sign that says “full”. I nod and in my broken Japanese attempt to ask if I can walk around the fish market, if other parts are accessible. Ahem… at least I think that’s what I ask. Who knows what I actually say!

The guy looks at me, shakes his head and laughs. “hitotsu desu ka?” (just one/ by yourself?) he asks. I nod and say “hai, so desu” (yes). He stands up, opens the door and hands me a bib. I look in confusion. I have no idea the bib is for the tour. I am not expecting to join the tour. The sign in front of me says it is full. He points to a door and says something (I don’t understand), looks at my puzzled face, laughs and shoos me away.

By then, it slowly sinks in. A couple of tourists smoking outside the waiting room watch our exchange. One of them tells me I am incredibly lucky. “I must be,” I tell him, but again, such things never happens to me. I say maybe there is only one spot. The guy tells me he saw many single folks being turned away. “Maybe none of them had a smile like yours,” teases his friend. I beam even more foolishly, I suppose. But who cares. I want to skip with delight.

The morning is magical. My feet won’t touch the ground, else the magic may disappear. After the auction, I walk around the narrow streets that are slowly waking up. Storekeepers open shop. I buy umeboshi plums and seaweed. I sample new things. I get the freshest-sushi-in-the-world for breakfast. The tuna-on-a-stick, all lit up, before I eat it, is fabulous.

I have a feeling that nothing can ever go wrong. I can’t remember the last time I felt this way. What a gift it is to feel so. To feel like you are somehow responsible for creating a clearing. Like when on a highway, you want to move fast, and the cars in front of you change lanes magically to allow you to pass.

I walk to the Metro station, I see a large beautiful shrine. I walk in. Gongs sound and morning chantings commence. Vibrations bounce of the walls, straight into my insides. More magic. I want this day to never end.

Oddly, I feel as if I have something to do with it all. Or rather, I do not create any obstacles. That my lack of negativity, or disappointment or heightened expectation, allow it to happen. That I am able to receive and appreciate beautifully. That the Universe is trying to help me get the things I want, get where I want. Ahem… the fish market is great, but again, I need to have a chat with the Universe – there are other waaaaaay more important things on my plate. Really. Truly.

I may be closed and clamped up again, today.  But reading the journal entry and writing about it makes me believe that sometimes the path ahead just clears for us... if we allow it... if we simply decide to walk on it...if we decide we deserve to...if we own up to our dreams (big and small), with a certain confidence and certainty and lack of worry and fear and expectation…

And now, just like Mary Poppins, I will open my umbrella and fly away – but with a torched tuna-on-a -stick in my hand.