GARAMASALAS EDITORS- These days, it’s easy to look around at the world and feel disheartened by what you see. With the current social and political climate, people worldwide are feeling hopeless. Among these dark, dark clouds, what better day to look for silver linings than Thanksgiving? Today is a day to stop and think about what you do have rather than what you don’t. It’s a day to look at your circumstances and be grateful for the people and things that bring joy and love into your life.

​Not everyone has all — or any — of the things many of us take for granted, like our families, friends and health. For those of you who are fortunate enough to have the extra time and/or money, the Garamasalas staff urges you to consider giving back this season and brightening the day of someone who is in a position less favorable than yours. We’ve created a list of acts of kindness that is versatile enough for everyone to choose at least one or two and help spread the love today. ​​
​

1. Smile and say hello to a stranger you pass by.
2. Give a genuine compliment to a cashier or server.
3. Put a surprise note in a loved one’s bag.
4. Pay for the person behind you in a drive-thru.
5. Write a small letter to your parents telling them how much you appreciate them.
6. Hold the door for the people behind you.
7. Make cards for soldiers or people in the hospital.
8. Call someone you know who’s having a hard time and just listen to them for as long as they’d like.
9. Tell someone face-to-face how much they mean to you.
10. Make blankets to donate to hospitals or homeless shelters.
11. Cook a meal or do a load of laundry for a loved one who’s going through a tough time
12. Let the person behind you at the supermarket checkout with one or two items go ahead of you.
13. Volunteer or donate to a food bank.
14. Put sticky notes with positive messages on the mirrors in restrooms.
15. Play board games with senior citizens at a nursing home (sixty percent of them will never have a visitor during their stay).
16. Give someone who's crying in public a tissue, and offer to listen to them if they’re comfortable with it.
17. Tell a customer service rep that you appreciate their hard work and hope they have a wonderful day.
18. Compliment someone in front of others.
19. Create a playlist for someone you care about.
20. Apologize to someone with whom you don’t get along.
21. Say yes at the store when the cashier asks if you want to donate $1 to a cause.
22. Give a hug to someone you know and just say thank you.
23. Call your mom.
24. Gather some friends and pick up trash along a particularly litter-filled street in your town.
25. Make a little extra food as you’re cooking and share it with someone who needs a fresh meal.​

​If you’re searching for food to share, look no further! Each member of the Garamasalas team has shared their favorite Thanksgiving recipe for you to enjoy.

​This signature stuffing recipe comes from Madeline's great-grandmother and has been passed down through her family for generations. It stems from the belief that the turkey isn't the only thing that makes Thanksgiving great. 

Every year Praneeka’s family makes traditional Thanksgiving dishes with an Indian twist. In place of the traditional turkey, try out their aloo-stuffed chicken this year! For more of her adapted recipes, check out our previous Thanksgiving post.

Non-veg recipes not your style? Try Shail’s family paneer tikka masala. One of the richest vegetarian recipes in Indian cuisine, this timeless favorite is sure to satisfy even the pickiest of palates.

On auspicious days, it is customary in Indian culture to distribute sweets among family, friends, and strangers. Most often, the sweets being shared are bite-sized spheres made of fried gram flour called ladoos. Make a batch at home and share the love! ​

​This year, the Garamasalas staff is thankful for all of you. Every click, every view, every share means so much to us. We couldn't do this without your continued support. Thank you, and happy Thanksgiving from our family to yours. 

illustration credit: debracartwright

​MADELINE- Last night, 7.5 million people tuned into the finale of the most high-quality, dramatic, important, realistic television show in American history: The Bachelorette. The sappy confessions of love, emotional breakdowns, petty feuds, and countless sets of perfect abs have enchanted viewers since 2003, and in a lot of ways, this season was no different.

This year, however, The Bachelorette attracted extra attention. Finally, after 12 seasons of lily-white Bachelorettes, in February it was revealed that Rachel Lindsay, a black attorney from Dallas who placed third in Season 21 of The Bachelor, would be the Bachelorette for the 13th season. Both excitement and apprehension surrounded the announcement, since The Bachelor franchise does not boast a history of handling the topic of race elegantly or treating contestants of color with respect. Despite this, some were hopeful that the season would be great, citing the diversity of the bachelors selected for Rachel and her assertion that things wouldn’t be “that different from any other season of The Bachelorette”. As the season progressed, though, it became increasingly clear that Rachel’s optimism was admirable but ill-founded. Uncomfortable moments were scattered throughout the episodes, such as Dean Unglert’s proclamation that he’s “ready to go black” and Peter Kraus’s reference to Dallas suburb-born Rachel as a “girl from the hood” in a rap he wrote during some group date fun. These small instances laced everything with a kind of uneasiness. At least, for me it did - I was always prepared to wince whenever one of the white bachelors opened his mouth.

Unfortunately, the occasional cringey comment from a white bachelor was not the worst thing Rachel and the black bachelors were forced to smile through. They also had to endure contestant Lee Garrett, an aspiring country star who generated much of the season’s drama and controversy by aggravating the black contestants, especially 35-year old wrestler Kenny King. Unprovoked, Lee tried to sabotage Kenny’s relationship with Rachel multiple times by interrupting their time together and falsely claiming that Kenny is violent. He called him “aggressive,” and when black contestant Will Gaskins attempted to explain how the word evokes a harmful stereotype about black men, Lee ranted about how he’s playing “the race card” and continued to be a jerk until he was finally eliminated from the show in the sixth episode.

One might be tempted to argue that the show’s producers weren’t responsible for what happened, that they couldn’t possibly predict Lee would be so unapologetically racist and the black contestants would have to put up with it for weeks, but a little research and thought completely discredits this idea. Shortly after the list of contestants for this season was made public, tweets of Lee’s that expressed hatred toward Islam, called the Black Lives Matter movement a terrorist organization, and declared that the NAACP is as racist as the KKK surfaced, and there’s no way those responsible for selecting the bachelors didn’t see them. This article outlines the casting process for The Bachelor, which, I think it is safe to assume, is similar if not identical to the casting process for the The Bachelorette. The system for filtering out unworthy contestants is extensive and thorough - there are several questionnaires, examinations, and even interviews with psychologists and private investigators. There’s no way Lee’s tweets and racist views didn’t come up, but they cast him anyways. Why? It certainly wasn’t because they couldn’t find anyone better - thousands of men apply every season, at least some of which would be a far better match for Rachel than a racist who looks like a buff elf. The only possible explanation is that the producers deliberately cast Lee, thinking the inevitable racism-laden drama that would ensue would be entertaining.

Every season of The Bachelorette has to have a tool. I understand and fully support that. The petty antics that ensue as a result of throwing some inflammatory mouth-breather in the midst of serious contenders is a big part of what makes reality television so hilarious and captivating. The problem is that Lee Garrett is not just an inflammatory mouth-breather: he’s also a real-life, actual bigot who’s potentially dangerous to both Rachel and the black bachelors, and watching them be forced to deal with Lee’s racism isn’t entertaining at all. It’s gross. Using racism for ratings is gross. Turmoil on The Bachelorette should stem from the question of who loves the Bachelorette the most or who stole whose protein powder, not serious social issues that affect millions of Americans. The producers of the show should have known better.

A couple of nights ago, I was on a cruise ship with my family, researching for this post on my phone while sipping a cup of black tea (yes, I know it’s nasty, but it was 11pm and it was the only kind they had left) on the Lido Deck. My uncle passed by and asked what I was doing, so I tried to quickly summarize all the problems I saw in the The Bachelorette: the subtly racist remarks by contestants that the producers thought should be included in the show for some reason, the deliberate utilization of racism for viewership, and The Bachelor franchise’s general clumsiness when it comes to the topic of race that doesn’t seem to be getting any better. The only thing my uncle said to me in response was that people of color should just be glad that there’s a black Bachelorette now, and to complain about “little things like that” is “whiney.” Perhaps there is a very, very, very small parcel of truth in this sentiment. Big-picture wise, the casting of a Bachelorette of color is significant, especially if it’s only the beginning of the franchise’s efforts to diversify the show. At the same time, however, it’s not enough to cast protagonists of color: they must also be treated with the same respect as their white counterparts, and that’s not what occurred. The producers of The Bachelorette humiliated and belittled Rachel by turning a large portion of her season into an exploitative race-based feud that was harmless fun for no one but ignorant white viewers, which would have never happened to a white Bachelorette. Rachel, the contestants of color on her season, and any cast members of color on future seasons deserve much better than that.

​So while the long overdue selection of a woman of color as the Bachelorette is something to celebrate, I feel that we shouldn’t be placated by it. Her casting doesn’t make up for season after season of white Bachelorettes and the disrespect she experienced during her own season. The Bachelor franchise needs to do better, and maybe, with more diverse casts and better treatment of those casts, The Bachelor and The Bachelorette could finally cease to be so white and frustrating.

MADELINE- Long-distance friendships are far easier than they used to be. Forty years ago, if you wanted to stay in touch with someone who lived far away, you were restricted to phone calls and hand-written letters that are considered personal and cute now, but were strictly practical back then.

But with the advent of cell phones and texting, and, more recently, video chatting, Snapchat, and Facebook, you can Skype your friend in California who wants to show off her new dress, and you can see what your friend from Toronto had for breakfast on his Snapchat story. Everything is so up close and personal - we can share the most minute details of our lives with people halfway across the world. It seems that it would be easy to keep up with a friend who lives far away.

So why is it still so hard? If you graduate and stop seeing someone every day, or someone moves away, you'll probably still drift apart from them, even if you can see pictures of them on Snapchat drinking a low-fat cappuccino while they highlight their Bible in random places. It's true that technology has made long-distance friendships infinitely easier in some ways, but in others, it seems just as difficult as it was back in the olden days. How do people do it?

To answer this question, we've decided to compile a series of interviews between two pairs of long-distance friends: Shail and Praneeka, and Patrick and Ragini.

MADELINE- 

“Oh man, I totally forgot about that book.”
​
This was my first thought when I heard about a month ago that Netflix had come out with a television adaptation of 13 Reasons Why. My first encounter with the book was in eighth grade, right around the time it had hit #1 on The New York Times’s best-seller list. It hardly impacted me: I read about two-thirds of it before tossing it aside because it depressed me too much, and it didn’t cross my mind again until the adaptation was released. I didn’t originally plan to watch it, but reading about the controversy surrounding it sparked my curiosity, and I decided to give the show a shot. So, the week before finals week, whenever I felt the need to procrastinate, I settled into the fort beneath my bed and watched a few episodes. I finished it in about 5 days and have an innumerable amount of complaints, a few of which I will detail below:

In the writers’ defense, it is difficult to adapt the 13 Reasons Why book into a show that properly illuminates the issues of mental illness and teen suicide, because they’re working with problematic content in the first place. Psychologists’ main criticism of 13 Reasons Why is that the whole idea of the book, the concept of labeling 13 people as the cause of your suicide, paints an unrealistic picture of why people kill themselves, and I definitely agree with this criticism. In almost all cases, the cause of a suicide is far, far more complicated than just 13 reasons. For one thing, mental illness, especially major depressive disorder, is involved in over 90% of cases, but Hannah Baker doesn’t seem to struggle with a mental illness. Though she feels the devastating psychological effects of the intimidation, humiliation, and death she witnesses or experiences, there’s no evidence that she had a mental illness before the awful things began to happen to her. She seems pretty neurotypical to me, making her suicide unrepresentative of the suicides that occur in real life. Additionally, all of the other characters, perhaps with the exception of Skye, the emo waitress at Monet’s, seem neurotypical as well, and so it’s baffling why this show is considered a conversation-starter about mental illness.

Even though the show fails to present characters who have a mental illness, it still could have been a show that gives a nod to Mental Health Awareness Month by shedding light on a more general issue that affects even neurotypical people. Specifically, it could have brought up the realities of the aftermath of traumatic events for high-schoolers, how many teenagers experience a sharp decrease in their overall mental well-being due to a traumatic event that is often brushed off by adults as moodiness or strangeness normal in teenagers. Unfortunately, 13 Reasons Why massively fails in this department as well, especially concerning Hannah. The show’s presentation of Hannah’s story reminded me of those “before” and “after” pictures in weight loss commercials. We only see the “before,” the events and people that Hannah pinpoints as the causes of her suicide, and the “after,” the actual suicide (which is another complaint that I have, but we’ll get to that later). We see very little of what’s in between: her inner turmoil, how those “13 Reasons” began to affect her everyday life, and how those effects became so overwhelming that she couldn’t take it anymore. The show mentions that her grades drop significantly, and there are few scenes of her crying, but other than that, we see none of the ugly realities of the psychological aftermath of traumatic events that could make a solid contribution to the ongoing conversation about overall mental health.

And the worst part is, there were some promising moments that made me think 13 Reasons Why could have been a great show about mental health. My favorite one was Clay’s answer to his mom’s question about why he didn’t shower that morning like he usually does:

“Look, I just... I turned the water on just now, and I thought about it all, the whole thing…taking clothes off, dealing with hair. And I just… I couldn’t do it. We shower, like, every day, and it’s just... a lot.”

Hannah’s tapes are clearly affecting Clay to such a degree that he’s even getting overwhelmed by simple everyday tasks, and I can’t even describe how relatable this is to me. During my senior year of high school, when my anxiety and insomnia were getting really bad, I went through periods where I struggled to do basic things such as getting dressed and brushing my teeth. At one point, I didn’t brush my teeth for three days, and when my therapist asked me why, I said something nearly identical to what Clay said. Feeling like everyday tasks are just too much is something that so many people struggle with at some point in their lives, whether they’re dealing with a mental illness or the aftermath of a traumatic event, and this scene is wonderful at bringing that to light. This is exactly the kind of stuff that is great for Mental Health Awareness Month. So why isn’t there more of it? Why don’t we ever see Hannah struggling to eat, go to class, shower, and brush her teeth? Why are the only signs of her mental struggle a quick mention that her grades aren’t as high as they used to be and some eloquent, abstract poem she wrote about how she feels? 13 Reasons Why could have explored in further detail the uglier, more personal realities of traumatic events’ effects on teenagers, but it didn’t, and so the story just felt frustratingly distant and impersonal.

This isn’t even the worst thing about the show. For me, the most disturbing part is the fact that Hannah’s suicide is so graphically depicted. Though I’m not particularly sensitive to content about suicide, that scene was far too much for me. I had to skip it, and I’m sure many others had to as well. But I’m not angry that I had to drag that red circle an inch to the right. I’m angry that 13 Reasons Why contains material that’s potentially triggering or unsafe for people struggling with depression and/or suicidal thoughts. If even I and other people who aren’t sensitive to material about suicide can’t get through the scene, just imagine the effects it could have on someone thinking about suicide. That scene is so graphic that it could essentially serve as an instruction manual for how to kill yourself, if you wanted it to be. What kind of a show, a show that’s supposed to illuminate the issue of suicide, is not even safe for suicidal people to watch? It’s completely unnecessary to portray Hannah’s suicide so explicitly; that part of the story could have been communicated just as effectively with a far more discrete scene. All the scene does is sensationalize suicide and make the show dangerous for the very people it’s supposed to help. The staff of 13 Reasons Why should be ashamed of themselves.

This is honestly just the tip of the iceberg. There are many other problems with 13 Reasons Why and the way it depicts mental illness and suicide: it fulfills the suicide fantasy known as the “revenge fantasy,” it unfairly places all the blame of Hannah’s suicide on the people talked about in the tapes, even though Hannah is ultimately the one who kills herself, and it fails to properly present alternatives to suicide like psychiatric treatment and therapy. There are many articles expanding on these issues that I encourage you to look at, especially if you have watched the show or are intending to. Most importantly, however, please just please be careful when watching the show. Keep in mind that it contains potentially unsafe material, and that it’s definitely not the force of mental health awareness that we need this month.

Happy Mental Health Awareness Month to everyone except the people who made 13 Reasons Why.

illustration credit: herehk

RAGINI- This time last year I had pretty high hopes for 2016. Little did I know this year would turn out to be one of the most notoriously awful years in recent history. After Brexit, a Trump presidential nomination, and the passing of several iconic celebrities, I think we're all looking for a break from the constant L's 2016 has been giving us. Before we start setting our expectations for 2017, however, let's step back and look at some of the things that made this year personally more tolerable.

• social media used the most​​​​: snapchat
• favorite phone game: endless lake
• inspirational icon who rose to fame this year: Nathan Zed
• major lifestyle change: learned how to drive
• saddest news: Trump becoming president
• best news: the ice bucket challenge actually funded an ALS breakthrough
• saddest moment: leaving UNT
• best moment: road trip to Austin
• describe 2016 in one word: yuck
• describe what you expect/want to achieve in 2017 in one word: ​organization

• social media used the most​​​​: snapchat
• favorite phone game: 8-ball
• inspirational icon who rose to fame this year: Demetrius Harmon
• major lifestyle change: took a gap semester before college
• saddest news: Trump becoming president
• best news: giant pandas are no longer endangered
• saddest moment: first car accident
• best moment: going to India after 11 years
• describe 2016 in one word: YIKES
• describe what you expect/want to achieve in 2017 in one word: ​focus​

• social media used the most​​​​: Tumblr
• favorite phone game: Neko Atsume
• inspirational icon who rose to fame this year: Ted Cruz
• major lifestyle change: going to a new school
• saddest news: Trump becoming president
• best news: the story of Dimdim, the penguin who swims 5,000 miles a year every year to visit the man who saved his life
• saddest moment: leaving TAMS graduation and all of my TAMS friends I'll probably never see again
• best moment: turning in my physics final
• describe 2016 in one word: heck
• describe what you expect/want to achieve in 2017 in one word: ​quiet

Happy new year from all of us at Garamasalas! We hope this year brings you the happiness and success you deserve!

PRANEEKA- Another year has come to an end. As with every other year, there have been many great days and not so great ones. Change. Success. Failure. However, December 31 is always the most hopeful. We use this day to believe that the next 365 days to come will bring forth better outcomes and habits. Although many people fail to truly achieve their resolutions, the fact that we simply have so much faith that everything will get better makes me happy. We acknowledge our flaws and believe that we can overcome them. We attempt to become better humans. With all of the devastating events going on around the world, there are still people out there who want to reach a state of optimism and personal improvement.  They believe. That truly amazes me. So, this year I want to challenge you. Instead of plainly making a resolution, think of something small that you lacked this year and find an actual method that will help you achieve it. Without some work, you won't get any pleasing results. Plus, having a small, attainable goal will actually give you a sense of accomplishment and completion. I did that this year, and it paid off. My goal was to keep a journal and consistently write in it. I put some effort, and it really benefitted me both physically and emotionally. See? Anything small and achievable. It can still go a long way.

Madeline, Ragini, and I did a small questionnaire below to show you a piece of how our year was. This year was pretty gross for all of us, but our friendship kept us going. As you can see with our favorite things, we have influenced each other in many ways. We have accomplished so much, and we're only going to look forward. It's been a ride. We only have one more semester together before we all separate ways to different colleges, but we're going to make the best of it! We will definitely be posting all of our adventures on here, don't worry. Thank you guys for supporting us. This blog has helped us build a stronger friendship. It's helped us find many new friends. Most importantly, it's helped us become better individuals. We hope that we can keep this going for a very long time. 

Here's to your triumphs. Here's to the obstacles you've faced. Here's to the many people you've met along your journey. Keep your head high and keep it going. Happy new year from your GARAMASALAS pals!

1. favorite musical artists
2. favorite songs
3. favorite musical albums
4. favorite tv shows
5. favorite movies
6. social media used the most
7. favorite phone game
8. inspirational icon who rose to fame this year
9. major lifestyle change
10. saddest news
11. best news
12. saddest moment
13. best moment
14. describe 2015 in one word
15. describe what you expect/want to achieve in 2016 in one word

PRANEEKA & MADELINE- Hey guys! So we decided to post something a little more personal this time. We previously mentioned that we became the best of friends instantly because we were interested in and valued similar things. One of those things brought us closer together: our taste in music. We both are musically inclined and appreciate different genres, so our tastes surprisingly fit so well together. Here's a little snapshot of the jams we love listening to. Enjoy, and we hope you discover someone new through these lists!

“Hey, dude.”

“Yeah?”

“Do you wanna do this?”

“Let’s do it.”


Hi, hello. This is Praneeka Raman and Madeline Hamilton, and welcome to our blog, GARAMASALAS. We thought it would be a good idea to share our thoughts with you. Since some of you may not know us, we want to introduce ourselves and share how we got to this idea in the first place. Warning: this is going to be a rather long post, so bear with us! We really hope you enjoy our journey to become more open-minded young adults.


Q: You both are going to the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science (TAMS). What made you go there and what was your life like before you came?

A:
Madeline- Before TAMS, I went to a straight-up Jesus School in Flower Mound. It was so conservative that for a few weeks during my freshman year, the hottest topic of gossip was that my English teacher MIGHT be liberal. I hated it there. Everyone thought I was strange because I was obsessed with math, and no one really wanted to become close friends with me. The lack of higher math classes and diversity in mindset also frustrated me. When I tried to talk to my friends about deeper topics like politics, religion and philosophy, I always got the same replies, no matter who I spoke to. It was like I was talking to the same person over and over again, and it depressed me. I tried to think of ways that I could access a less monotone environment, and I remembered TAMS. My mom had told me about the program since I was small; my grandpa helped form it in the 80’s. I decided to apply with my friend Noah. The day that I got accepted was the most exciting of my life.

Praneeka- I went to Allen High School before I came to TAMS. Yes, the school that spent $60 million to build a football stadium. AHS is a very huge school; I swear I saw a new person every day when I walked in the main hallway. I did have many friends, but it was very hard for me to find a group I could stick with. I was a “go with the flow” type of person, and it was very frustrating after a while. But this wasn’t my main problem. Many people belittled me for being what they thought of as a different person. Dumb. Stupid. Weird. Unsuccessful. These are just some of the words that were associated with my name. I was so tired and depressed. Then I heard about TAMS, and it sounded like the only viable option to get out of this environment. I also wanted to get accepted just so I could prove to these people that I am, in fact, an intellectual being with well-intentioned values.


Q: Since you both came from different environments and with different goals, how was TAMS when you first came? Was it as you had expected?

A:
Madeline- I went into the program ecstatic; I was so excited to be learning things that were at least remotely related to my subject of interest and to make friends that were similar to me. My classes were about what I expected. My social life was not. I was a white girl in a sea of East and South Asians. People insensitively joke that all Asians look the same, but this turned out to be a legitimate problem for me. During the first few weeks of school, I would approach my Indian roommate whenever I saw her, only to realize that I was not talking to my roommate at all, but another Indian person that I thought was her. Additionally, everyone around me would often talk about food, music, dances, and languages from their home country, and I was so incredibly lost. Despite this, I made friends easily. I still had a lot things in common with my peers (it’s not like Indian people talk about saris all day), so I ended up becoming friends with several of the people around me, including my wonderful roommate. I eventually settled in. During all of this, however, I slowly began to realize something. I had been drowned in horribly racist, sexist, and restricting mentalities my entire life, and I thought that I had separated myself from them. I thought I was so different from the people at my old school, and I believed I was so superior to them for recognizing the close-mindedness of their ideals. But during the first two months of school, I realized that I wasn’t different from those people at all. I thought racist thoughts about the other TAMS kids, even my own roommate, and I insulted religions other than Christianity in my head as people talked about them. As I recognized that I was no different than the people I encountered at home, I was devastated, and I desperately searched for a way to kill off the ideas that had been hammered into me as a child. Meanwhile, even though I had many close friends, I still didn’t feel like I had a best friend that I could share EVERYTHING with, including my despair about the toxic mentalities within me. I didn’t actively search for someone like this; I felt like it was a hopeless cause. But somehow, I found someone anyway. (P.S. That "someone" is Praneeka, if you hadn't figured that out already.)

Praneeka- When I got in, I was very excited to be in what I had thought of as a completely new school. I first came with desires of becoming popular and having a large, close friend group. TAMS predominantly consists of South and East Asian students, and I had discovered that the Indians all had become a big group. They had exactly what I wanted. I tried to center myself with the Indian crowd because I thought they would be more open and accepting of me. I was wrong. The people turned out to be almost exactly the same as the people from my old school, and we did not share the same interests. I was also bullied so extensively by them for being “weird” and having really dark skin that I wanted to go back home. But looking back, I am glad I had these setbacks. After all of these incidents, I quickly came to the realization that I came into TAMS with a horrible mindset. I was just very greedy of getting many friends because I didn’t have many close friends in Allen. I eventually understood that friendship is about quality, not quantity. I found an absolutely amazing group of people who were considered “off-the-grid” here; each person I friended had an element I liked, but I couldn’t really find someone with all of those likable characteristics put into one. I had a feeling that it was not likely that I would find a friend like that, but I still tried. And boy, did that work pay off. We’ll explain how all that worked out eventually!


Q: So why a blog?

A:
Madeline- My roommate didn’t know it at first, but she slowly helped me reverse my racist tendencies. She did this partially by being so amazing, and partially by regularly telling me about her views on racism and other issues in America. I violently opposed them at first (in my head, of course), but eventually agreed with them as I became more aware of and repulsed by my own bigotry. I wanted to fight it off in myself and in others, not so I could be “one of the good white people,” but so I could actively combat the oppression that makes so many people’s lives miserable. I really wanted a platform to relay my thoughts, not only about social justice issues, but also about philosophy, math, and the little things I see every day that make me smile.

Praneeka- So Madeline’s roommate, aka my fave Indian gal pal, Ragini, helped me get into social justice-related issues, especially events that proved to be examples of white supremacy, colorism, and racism. From a young age, I was surrounded by white people, and I had always thought they were accepting of me. But I was wrong. I had become very appalled at what half of the U.S. thinks of racial minorities. I feel like people really need to understand that believing one race is better than the other is not going to help us in any way. The one thing that frustrates me the most is that most people here cause so much commotion with conceived knowledge based on stereotypes, and not many take the time to actually research the real lives of foreign Americans. I wanted to find a way of educating people about how WRONG Indian stereotypes are and how our lives in a modern society really are. So no, we are not all, as you say, “cow-praising”, marriage crazy, computer nerds. Through our friendship, we’ll try our best to show you how our experiences prove the fact that people of different races can work with each other and succeed together.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you continue hearing from us!

Much Love,
Pran & Mad