PRANAV- Bollywood is generally the first thing to pop into the general worldwide audience's minds when they hear "Indian cinema," accompanied by images of lavish and brightly colored traditional costumes, elaborate dance sequences, and often even more epic fight sequences that allow the audience to throw out the laws of physics along with their empty bags of popcorn. Beyond this surface level profile, however, lies a deep history and distinction of films of innumerable styles, genres, and themes. India is a land of many languages, and thus the first and most important thing to know about Indian Cinema as a whole is that it is not just one overlapping umbrella film industry for the entire country, but a system of multiple regional industries for each regional language throughout the nation. Each state in the country has its own distinct film industry, its own set of artists and technicians, and its own style of filmmaking and storytelling to cater the audiences of that individual state. Bollywood refers strictly to Hindi language films, which are the most widely distributed and thus most widely spoken about internationally. Beyond that, there are the industries of Tollywood (for the language of Telugu, spoken in the states of Andhra Pradhesh and Telengana), Kollywood (representing the language of Tamil, spoken in the state of Tamilnadu), Mollywood (for Malayalam-speaking audiences hailing from the state of Kerala) and many more. I’ll be focusing mainly on Tamil cinema in this post, with the intent of providing you, the reader, with a decent idea of how the rest of these industries work and how they’ve grown so as to understand the vast diversity of Indian cinema as a whole.

​The division of Indian cinema into various regional industries has led India to produce more movies per year than any other country in the world, with each language producing an average of over 200 films per year of its own. Each industry has its own films that have achieved outstanding critical acclaim and have reached the eyes of critics and the stages of prestigious film festivals worldover. Within these industries, however, lies a very obvious sense of duality between various elements of how the films themselves are made. Of these, the most prominent partnership is that of politics and cinema, regarding what is being told on screen and what is being received off screen. To explain this phenomenon, let’s take a look at a southern state where politics and cinema have gone hand in hand in a more distinguished fashion than anywhere else, Tamilnadu. The first talking Tamil motion pictures released in the 1930s, and by the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were two intense rivalries that nobody in the state could ignore. First was the rivalry between actor M.G. Ramachandran and screenwriter and poet Karunanidhi. MGR and Karunanidhi were a very popular actor-writer duo from the humble beginnings of their careers together, and as their popularity and their audience grew wider, Karunanidhi, who was already very politically involved and aimed his efforts toward the uplifting of lower caste citizens into the ranks of the government, began to allow more and more of his views to seep into the dialogues that MGR uttered with all his righteous charisma on screen. As it was, MGR had touched countless hearts in Tamilnadu with unimaginable influence, and with time, grew to attain a position of unparalleled stardom. Noticing his power, Karunanidhi lured MGR into joining his political party and MGR began to portray a do-gooder who inspired hundreds of thousands with his thought provoking messages with hints of political ideologies teaching the audience how to live their lives productively while benefitting society, which only helped boost his image as a leader. Eventually, the political agendas of Karunanidhi and MGR clashed, and the duo departed from cinema to form their own parties, and competed for the seat of Chief Minister of Tamilnadu, a rivalry which raged on for decades to come. To this day, the feud continues, as MGR passed the torch on to Jayalalitha, another former actress, after his demise in 1987. This rivalry and format of storytelling also spurred the trend of social messages being intertwined into the tongues of Tamil cinema’s leading characters, who are more widely referred to as “heroes,” and would be recognized as a sort of cultural tradition for conventional filmmakers to follow, which eventually evolved into the stereotypical “song → fight → comedy →  sentiment → song → fight” formula.​

The second rivalry which held the institution of Tamil cinema together was that of MGR and Sivaji Ganesan. MGR, as mentioned before, was the star, the hero, the ultimate Tamilian, whose true character always reflected in the characters he played on screen, and thus roped in family audiences that could teach their children to lead their lives like he did, as they all rooted for him to lead Tamilnadu into a better tomorrow. Ganesan, on the other hand, was the performer, the artist, the man who could bring audiences to tears with his acting, and whose films taught the importance of the family values. The sheer power of his acting was unquestionable and led him to worldwide acclaim, as he became the first Indian to be awarded the title of a Chevalier by the Order of Arts and Letters of France. Each of these actors captivated as many hearts and minds of the Tamil audience as their counterpart, but the stark contrast between their films branded their careers and the future of Tamil cinema forever. Even their screen names paralleled their rivalry, with Sivaji owning the title of “Nadigar Thilagam” meaning “the pride of actors,” while MGR claimed the title of “Makkal Thilagam” meaning “the pride of the people.”  The vast difference of their respective styles of storytelling led Tamil cinema itself to grow into a race between commercial cinema, which caters to families and children seeking overall unadulterated entertainment, and progressive cinema, which aims to advance Tamil cinema in terms of storytelling, style, techniques, and technology in persistent efforts to help it reach a global standard. Commercial, or “mass” cinema, tends to shield the audience from things contrasting with the views and values and common storytelling techniques thriving inside the bubble that is Tamil culture, while progressive, or “class” cinema, tends to introduce the audience to a sense of realism in its ways of filmmaking, which is often inspired by world cinema.

The clash between the stars and the performers have continued since the days of MGR and Sivaji, first succeeded in the late 70’s and into present day by Rajinikanth, the Super Star, and Kamal Haasan, the next Chevalier, along with the credits of writer, director and producer, and whose films have been selected as India’s entry for consideration for Best Foreign Language film at the Academy Awards a whopping seven times. Every South Indian film industry has its heroes and its actors, and I feel it is an age old battle that may never have an outright winner. Even technicians differ in their own respective fields; for every “masala” movie from Hari or Lingusamy following the rise of an ordinary boy next door into a valiant hero, we get an in-depth exploration of relationships in the form of a Mani Ratnam film. For every hero-praising intro folk song from DSP, we get a soul stirring piece from AR Rahman, or an EDM love track from Anirudh.

With the migration of more Indians across the globe, the roles of distributors in film industries have become that much more important. Orchestrating the spread of a film to every corner of the world where an Indian may reside, distributors deal with the producers to get copies of a film in mass bulk and get them where they need to go, and this has helped with millions of Indians around the world stay connected with their culture and watch it grow.

she's not the same colour
​as ivory and pearls

what a shame.

she looks of the night sky
​instead of the moon

what a shame.

she should have stayed out of the sun
she should have done whatever it takes

what a shame.

​it's a curse

i can't be beautiful
i can't be comfortable
i simply must endure

the mistreatment
the judgment
​the criticism

even to dark men
dark girls can't win

even if he's darker than the skin i'm in
​to be with a dark-skinned girl is a sin

in their eyes
​i'm only almost pretty

if i weren't so dark
i might be worth
​love and appreciation
​care and admiration

instead i'm just
tolerated

i want to be taught how to love myself
not to better myself

​
​my complexion

not a definition of my character
my accomplishments
​my being

my skin

the color of a chestnut seed
coffee with no cream
dark toffee
bubbling caramelized sugar
earthy mahogany wood

my identity

much more
​than the pigment of my skin

​
​on the outside

you're porcelain
frost
​cotton

i'm cocoa
buckwheat honey
gingerbread

on the inside

​we're both

nothing but blood red.

illustration credit​: almondmilkchild

PATRICK- It was an unsettling morning — in two ways. First, it was light out, but the sky was slathered in an absolute, lifeless white like God was too preoccupied with an unexpected guest to put the color back on. Second, because all the people who stood in the streets, black against gray concrete against white sky, had only a fourth hue on their mind: red. I did too. There was no way to avoid the thought of losing such a young life. The image ricocheted in the walls of my mind, taking on different innocent faces and names and ringing ceaselessly like a chant — hands up don’t shoot! I put the chalk that was in my hand to the concrete and in vibrant orange wrote: “RIP Mike Mike so young.” That was my art. That was the only thought I had in mind and the only thought I could share with this world.

I am young too. I’m fourteen years old, but I was marched to the epiphany that there's a chance I am facing the last years of my life, so I wrote his name down one more time — orange on gray — and watched it transform slowly into my name and the names of millions who it could have been. “What’s this all about?” a stranger spoke as he approached me, snapping me out of my reflections. His voice was blue from grief, and he explained to me in a sullen voice that the way to make change happen was not through vandalism or meaningless words that could be washed clear by the rain, but through making a message that lasts; to make things better, we need to consolidate in mourning, not engage in criminal activities. So I joined the huddled mass of people chanting on the street with a sign that read in blue, “Am I next?”. That was the only thought I had in mind and the only thought I could share with this world.

It was in the midst of the people that I began to understand the spectrum of ideology in this movement. That the people, from those grieving in blue chants to those breaking into stores and homes with red aggression, were all only one voice screaming desperately for whatever chance they had at justice or hope or change. They were all as afraid as I was with the same question, “Am I next?”, ringing in their heads. And as I walked back home at the end of the night and took in all the color, the white, the orange, the red, and the blue, I realized that the difference between life and death, whether in Florida or Missouri or the rest of the states, was color, and we sure as hell could not be black. That is the only thought I now have in mind and the only thought I can share with this world.

​RAGINI- Now that summer’s almost over, I’m finally getting started on my beach bod! Going to the gym feels like such a daunting task, but one of the things that helped finally push me to go was finding a solid gym soundtrack. We have for you five playlists in five languages to fuel a week’s worth of workouts (or a year’s worth, if you’re more like me).

// content warning: playlists may include explicit songs //

PATRICK-

PRANEEKA & PRANAV-

​RAGINI-

EUNJI & PRANEEKA-

​SHAIL & PRANEEKA-

SHAIL-

At 3:05 AM on the auspicious - or so I pretended it to be - day of May 12th, I landed at Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in Ahmedabad. After eleven years, I was returning to my motherland. What’s more, I was not sure what to expect—I’d forgotten about this country I was apparently born in.

Just two hours before landing, I had been playing songs on my iPhone with my trendy Skullcandy headphones while aimlessly watching some American movie on the TV screen they provide for each passenger. I donned Nike Elite socks and a nifty Fitbit Alta.  

I needed to pee. I walked to the back of the airplane and, as I expected, was greeted with a toilet, a sink, and “gourmet” soap.  Hours later, while presenting my e-Visa to the immigration officer, I realized something:

It was time to pee again.

I stood in front of a hole in the ground. Yes, a literal hole carved into the ground. There was a sink, but no “gourmet” soap. Instead, there rested an overly-used bar of soap.

For so long, I’d taken this for granted. Especially at home, I’ve complained whenever our hand soap supply ran low. Expectations were set: body wash and hand soap were a given no matter where I went. Overall, the same problem rings true throughout all of American society: no matter whose house you’re at, soap of some sort is expected. While not true for all of India, these shoddy conditions are not unusual to residents. The smallest of novelties are ones we’ve come to expect.

Everywhere I went, I was referred to as a NRI, or a Non Resident of India. I was treated as if I was a special guest who could not survive India in its purest form. Initially, I took offense to such treatment, but as time passed, I realized it was imperative. In each house I visited, the hosts turned on their custom AC units and set them to the coldest settings. Despite such “special” accommodations, the room just barely managed to reach 85 degrees.  

Imagine you have a house. Open the door, walk in, and sit down somewhere. Think about the temperature. 65 degrees? 70? 75? In India, try 90 degrees. Our standards for any given place of residence in America is comparatively high. Lease an apartment, and you get a stove, microwave, and air-conditioning unit. Meanwhile in India, there's no guarantee that an apartment will even come with a fan, much less air conditioning, and a stove is only available if you've dished out enough rupees. Air conditioning is a gift, not a given, in India. Here in the states, we’ve become so frequently exposed to these amenities that they’ve become something we automatically expect.

After spending a week meeting family, I was given the opportunity to travel to Sarangpur. As we packed our subcompact car with our luggage, my grandma gave me three containers of food with 2 mega-bottles of “my” special Bisleri (The “Ozarka” of India) water. A while after we commenced the four-hour journey, my uncle stopped at a rest area with an ice cream stand, snack bar, and a bathroom. Due to my relatively light breakfast, the notion of food made me drool. I was beginning to make my way to the snack bar when my uncle ushered me towards the bathroom instead. Afterward, he handed me my containers of food, explaining the dry snacks in India were not safe for my health, as there was no guarantee the food was fresh. What’s more, he handed me the warm bottle of water. In contrast, in front of me, I saw people receiving cold glasses of water in steel cups. Yet, regardless of my state of mind, such precaution was necessary. While India has certainly progressed as a nation, the water system is well short of safe. In fact, unless specifically noted, most of India’s water is not safe for individuals whose immune systems are not desensitized to the bacteria.

In comparison, consider your average road trip to another state. When hunger strikes, it’s so convenient to stop and eat at any restaurant. Concerns about food quality and the state of the water? Close to none. Although we criticize restaurants like Taco Bell and Subway, we still trust that their food is safe enough to eat due to FDA regulations. In general, the taste, standard, and quality of the food in these restaurants remain the same, too. Say you want some iced water with your meal. You can ask for some water with no concern about how it’ll impact your health. Before even going to India, my relatives constantly lectured me about not drinking any “outside” water there, especially if it isn’t iced, so I denied any beverage and vigilantly monitored the state of the food I was given on my trip. Health became an issue in the forefront of my mind.

That being said, lack of “gourmet” soap and FDA-approved food is far from all there is to India. While exiting Sardar airport, I was greeted with an oddly familiar scent. The hot humid air slapped my face as I took everything in. Looking into the distance, I saw tall billboards adorned with advertisements for China’s Vivo phone and images of Deepika Padukone promoting beauty products plastered across the streets. This isn’t what I expected. This was a capitalist, consumer culture.

I am definitely not one who’s detached from the world. Come time for the next iPhone launch, I will have already obsessively read numerous articles discussing possible features. A bit too often, I find myself at the mall buying clothes I don’t really need. Throughout the day, I’ll check for the latest in Tesla’s mission to provide a luxurious, all-electric vehicle for the average American consumer. In short, I’m a sucker for material goods, and I’d always assumed this to be a strictly American trait, and that consumer culture would be nonexistent in India. In high school, nearly every Geography class painted India as a country that looks like this:

​​In a nation with over 1.3 billion people, such an obsession with contemporary trends is certainly not something I had imagined. Yet, the more time I spent in India, the more I realized fashion and trends were an integral aspect of youth culture. As my cousin and I relaxed in the basement on a slothful Tuesday, I asked him what we should do, and he suggested a trip to the mall. Reluctantly, I agreed. Much to my surprise, these multi-story edifices were filled to the brim on a weekday. Compared to the empty American mall, there was no shortage of consumers.

While my time in India can be summarized as one magnificent cultural shock, perhaps what stands out to me today are the aspects of India that no other country can match. Foremost, the social culture. Nearly every night in India, I found myself meeting guests that came to our home, or I traveled with my family to be greeted at someone else’s home. Upon arrival, the hosts would embrace us with open arms, usher us in, give us seats, and simply sit and chat with us for about 30 minutes or so. Within two minutes of having been seated, we would be offered warm chai along with ice-cold water (which I had to respectfully deny). This aspect of Indian culture was invigorating and rich. There’s something fulfilling about spending evenings with loved ones and cherishing life one conversation at a time. After chatting, the dinner would start. No matter how many times you would say no, the food would keep coming. With love, you would be fed to the brink of vomiting. The experience was sickening yet comforting.

Second, the spiritual culture. Hinduism is infused into each and every aspect of India. Obviously, such a structure is not possible in a great nation like America where all religions are welcome and separation of church and state is law. However, it was certainly interesting seeing a nation whose very political system was largely based on Hinduism. Don’t get me wrong, I am a Hindu, and this entire piece is opinionated. But, regardless of what religion you may practice, there’s something intriguing about seeing a nation set up to where a trip to the grocery store will reflect the preference of one religion over another. More specifically, due to the no alcohol policy enforced in the nation of Gujarat, there will not be a single grocery store carrying alcohol. Furthermore, no matter which restaurant you go to in Gujarat, there will nearly always be a vegetarian or no onion-garlic option. Every Sunday, many rush to one of several religious temples, commonly known as mandirs. A few beautiful mandirs include the Swaminarayan Akshardham Temple in Gandhinagar as well as the BAPS Mandir located in Gadhada. These structures are monumental and majestic, all at once.

I landed in America with a new perspective. Prior to my trip, I had complained about the president, our monetary problems, and the injustices this country has done to me. Lost in these thoughts, I had forgotten the freedoms I enjoyed every single day. No matter how much I may criticize this nation, there’s so much to be grateful for every single day—it doesn’t hurt to take a step back every now and then, take a look at life, and just give thanks.

India is a beauty and a beast. Its consumer-crazed culture and its crude living conditions are no short of horrendous, and such aspects of India are certainly unsavory. But its magnificent mandirs and its alluring social culture leave me no short of dumbfounded and longing to return as soon as possible. Although I enjoy wifi at any given location, universal air conditioning, and guaranteed safety at any restaurant, my love lies with the beastly India - in whom I see unprecedented beauty.
​

I’m all about women’s empowerment and feminism, and I wanted to showcase that in this piece. It’s a delicate writing, but it’s a very powerful message. Women are often thought to be fragile things but we are often more than frail beings.

I always thought that the shape of stilettos were beautiful but they are a pain to wear. I wanted to emphasize form and play around with color to create this piece, and I think it turned out how I would have wanted it to. I like how prismacolors blend so well together, and I also like the contrast of colors in this piece.

I’m not your average 5-foot brown girl; I’m 5’7” which means that most people always like to comment on how tall I am. My sister always compares me to a giraffe because both the giraffe and I are tall and skinny. It’s always been an inside joke of mine so I made this piece poking fun at this joke.

Finals are super stressful to the point where you feel like you don’t have time to breathe. I created this piece right after finals and just let the water flow easily all over the paper. After a tough semester, I needed a reminder that everything was going to get better from here.

My freshman year of high school I took a drawing class with this lady who was kind of weird, but I learned a lot from her. She always critiqued her students over how we should change up the angle, lighting, shading, etc. This was one of the first pieces that really made both her and me proud. It made me realize that my style isn’t necessarily photorealism like the rest of the class, but more of a cartoon-like style.

In my painting class my junior year, my teacher assigned us a project where we would collaborate with other students from an English class and translate their poems into paintings. The poem I was assigned was talking about islands, but I wanted to place focus on the person looking at the islands. I was worried about this piece because I had played with watercolor only a handful of times. Although this was a step outside of my comfort zone, it was still a fun painting. Painting has always been my escape and it was fun messing with different techniques to paint a bit of a paradise for me.

This was one of my first photos that got me started in photography. My extended family and I all went to our neighborhood park while I went with the intent of snapping several photographs of everyone. This photo is of my cousin, Nihaal, who is the second youngest one of our batch and I love him to death. He’s looking down one of the bright, blue park slides, but with the editing it looks like he’s looking into another dimension. I wanted to show that everyone’s future is bright and also play on everyone’s imagination.

MADELINE-
​
​It’s incredible how little white people have to do to be “woke.”

Reblog some pictures of black people on your Tumblr on Blackout Day, call out a few people on Twitter for using slightly problematic language, post a picture of the absolutely savage sign you created for a protest on Instagram, and BAM: you get to consider yourself “one of the good white people.” Being a revolutionary is easy!

Except that you’re not and it isn’t.

Because doing all of those things is exactly that: easy. It’s comfortable. In a lot of cases, it’s even cool and trendy. I’m sure you remember the fiasco surrounding this Pepsi commercial a few months ago, which featured Kendall Jenner effortlessly achieving social justice by distributing a few soft drinks.

If you haven’t watched the advertisement before, click here for the full video.

​The ad is pretty horrific for several reasons: it degrades and tries to profit off of the struggle of oppressed demographics to gain equality, it trivializes the problem of police violence during protests, and the people of color in the ad are essentially Jenner’s props. Naturally, Twitter went crazy. Pepsi had to pull the ad almost immediately and issue some half-hearted apology, but I think the company’s advertising team was onto something. They realized the trendiness of being a “social justice warrior” and tried to take advantage of it. It completely backfired, and rightfully so, but I think the observation that Pepsi made is absolutely correct. Making jokes about Trump, going to Pride or the Women’s March, and making memes about the insensitivity of a large corporation’s ad are all hip. There’s an entire growing subculture filled with young liberals – I’ll call it “Tumblr culture” even though it transcends Tumblr – that’s centered around doing these kinds of things, which means that white liberals are not revolutionaries for Tweeting pictures of prominent black people throughout Black History Month. We’re just being trendy.

This is not to say that any of the Tumblr culture activities I’ve mentioned so far are bad or completely useless. They’re quite the opposite: positivity movements for people of color, protests that get a lot of attention, and pointing out problematic language or content online are all important and can do a lot to end minority oppression in America. What I’m saying is that all of these things are also fashionable. It seems that people of color are creating these amazing movements to cope with and combat the oppression they experience, and then white people do exactly what Kendall Jenner does in the Pepsi ad: swoop in, participate, and bask in their own coolness and “woke-ness” while failing to do anything to combat systematic racism in real life that actually requires any effort or discomfort whatsoever.

That needs to stop. Participating in Tumblr culture is a good thing, but you shouldn’t do it for the sake of being considered cool or enlightened, and you should also be combating racism in ways that are far tougher and way less cool. A huge part of our white privilege sits outside the Internet and protest sign-making; we have it when we walk into grocery stores, go into job interviews, and cross the street. When you call out someone on Twitter while simultaneously being silent while your uncle makes racist comments to the cashier of color at a Whataburger, not only are you being hypocritical, but that real-life part of your white privilege is sitting dormant. Put it to use by having those difficult conversations with your white friends, not letting those bigoted jokes your dad makes pass, and defending people of color in real life. Those things are actually hard and uncomfortable, and they might not get you “invited to the cookout,” but they’re just as important as things that do. So do it: do the right thing and stand up for your beliefs even when it’s difficult and uncool, because that’s what people of color really need from us.

illustration credit: k-et

SHIVANI- Sometimes I have a recurring dream. I walk into a room full of people, and they’re all staring at me. They’re all judging me, watching me with unrelenting stares, like vultures. Now, don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a nightmare. This is just something that has been in my mind for years, subconsciously affecting me.

As a child, I was fiercely unique. I wore my individuality as a cape, protecting me from people’s malicious thoughts. I was loud and proud, and unapologetic about it. Everything about me was like a megaphone. Heck, I used to pair bright orange with blue for my outfits. I was THAT loud.

​I have a genetic disorder called eczema, or atopic dermatitis, and I have a sensitive immune system and liver. When I was ten, it got worse. I had to take time off school, and my skin was covered in rashes. That confidence? That uniqueness? Gone. My self-esteem took the express train to rock bottom. And the way my parents dealt with it aggravated my hyper-awareness. They were understanding, and definitely caring about it. They love me and would do anything for me, and I’m lucky that they do. However, it shows to this day that they are a little embarrassed about it. In India, fair skin is preferred over darker skin. My scars were a few shades darker than my skin tone, which rubbed my Indian relatives the wrong way since I’m not fair to begin with. They’d always tell me about how I’ve gotten darker whenever I visited. Only today do I realize that it still affects me when I go shopping and I hesitate to buy shorts or skirts because what if someone stares? What if they’re disgusted? Unknowingly, my parents made my insecurities worse. I don’t blame them; they were raised like that. But even to this day, I end up second guessing myself.

“Are you sure you should be wearing that?”

“Are you sure no one will stare?”

“Are you sure?”

Are you sure?

Some days, it doesn’t matter to me. Some days it’s all that matters to me. I’m working on it. I’m improving, but I don’t think parents realize just how much they affect their kids. Without those three words “Are you sure?” I would probably not give a crap what anyone thinks. But because Indian families are so hellbent on what OTHER people think, they’re hurting their own children. It’s not just in my case. It can be if their child is gay, if they’re non-binary, if they suffer from a mental illness. I’m not saying every Indian parent is like this, but something needs to change, doesn’t it?

I have a question for those Indian parents. Why do you care so much what other people think? Why is their opinion more important than your child’s well-being? They didn’t have your child. They didn’t look at those tiny fingers and toes, they didn’t watch that child grow into a teenager. They don’t know anything about your child, so what gives them the right to dictate how you perceive your child? You should love your children, regardless of what other people think, because YOU are their parent. It’s you. Don’t be someone that they regret knowing. Be their hero. Be their rock. Because if you aren’t, who will be?

PRANEEKA, RAGINI, & SHIVANI- Summer is the most anticipated time of the year, and it's officially here! For many, the season brings with it an opportunity to take a break from working and just relax. It's a time to sit by the pool, sip lemonade, and spend time with friends. These playlists are for chill days like those. Whether you're lying in a hammock, reading a book by the lake, or just staying in, these songs are here to help you unwind.

PRANEEKA & SHIVANI- tamil playlist // note: yelani is a tamil word for tender coconut water.

RAGINI- hindi playlist // note: lassi is a popular indian yogurt-based drink.

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.

PRANEEKA- 

"If any part of our body is sick, we go to the doctor
But no one goes to the doctor when their mind is sick
As if the mind is not part of the body at all." --Shah Rukh Khan as Dr. Jehangir in Dear Zindagi

On January 27, 2013, Shreya’s parents informed my friends and me that Shreya* had “passed away due to unknown causes.”

What her parents did not tell us is that Shreya attempted suicide and succeeded. She killed herself.

Oh sorry, did I say the “s” word? Is it hard for you to stomach? Does it make you flinch a little bit? My question to you is: why? Why does it hurt to say words like suicide, depression, self-harm, and therapy? Why are we silent on these things when they are becoming increasingly common in our culture?

My friend was every Indian family's poster child; she was a beautiful, bright student who had plans to pursue a career in medicine and knew how to make everyone around her feel good about themselves. Everyone thought, why would such a perfect girl even think of ending her life? I read a news article about my friend’s mother answering a similar question and the following was her response:

“My daughter never told me anything. She never said anything about being depressed or any of that nonsense. The only mildly concerning thing she ever said was that she didn’t think her career path in becoming a doctor was right for her. That was solved though because [my husband and I] told her to keep going and push through. She was doing well the last time I checked, but now it’s all gone. We don’t know what to do or say. Our family back home [in India] doesn’t know about this yet, and we don’t know how to tell them. What are they going to think?” She fades off to a mumble, tears forming in her eyes.

I hope you found many problems with what this woman said. One. She dismissed the idea of depression in such a condescending manner. Two. Instead of properly addressing their child’s request for help, the parents continued to push the girl into doing something she did not wish to pursue. Three. She prioritized family reputation over her own daughter.

A few days after Shreya committed suicide, the police found Shreya’s journal and went through the text messages left on her phone. Her diary consisted of dark poems and doodles, and texts with friends included statements such as “my mind feels blank,” “I feel trapped,” and “I’m scared of my parents” scattered in their conversations. None of this evidence came as a surprise to me; I knew all about this side of Shreya. This girl was far from perfect! She regularly had panic attacks. Instead of becoming a doctor, she wanted to become a journalist. Her parents had more control of her life than she ever did. She didn’t magically change her outlook on life just like that, as her parents had claimed. Her mental health gradually deteriorated until she could take no more. It is horrible to say, but it all added up.

You might ask, why didn’t Shreya just ask for help? The answer lies in the ingrained behaviors that make up our community’s lifestyle. Mental health did not become a concern for many immigrant South Asians until they moved from their respective countries. In a 2004 study, an immigrant Indian woman subject exclaims, “We didn’t know what the meaning of depression was. We only heard about it, now here we know what the meaning of depression is.” The woman went on to explain how there is more accessibility to mental health services in the western world than there is back home: “In India we would only visit the doctor when we are sick. Here [in North America], even if you are healthy we still go for a checkup.” She also discusses South Asians’ affinity with using home remedies instead of seeking traditional medication because they are “uncomfortable with the notion of seeking medical help more regularly,” and would avoid burdening others. In a report from the US Surgeon General, it has been found that Asian Americans are “more likely to exhibit complaints of depression than are African Americans or whites, but Asians are thought to deny the experience and expression of emotions.” Due to this restricting stereotype, Asian Americans have “the lowest rates of utilization of mental health services among ethnic populations.” Rather than being emotionally honest, we would rather prefer silence and internalize our pain so we won’t be perceived as weak.

South Asians also subscribe to what is known as a model minority stereotype. Our community includes some of the highest-income, best-educated, and fastest-growing individuals in North America and places higher value on marriage, hard work, and career success compared to other Americans. High expectations are forced upon and extreme success stories are thrown as unrealistic comparisons at the future generations of South Asians. My brown friends, you know what I’m talking about. Vidhya got a National Academics Award for getting a perfect score on the math section of the SAT in seventh grade. Abhi took the MCAT two years early and is already in medical school. Sanjana got an MBA at Yale University and now earns $250k a year. Due to these sorts of extraordinary examples, their understanding of what most professions entail is skewed and now anecdotal. Raziman, a nanophotonics postdoc, states that South Asian parents “hear that so and so professions have good job security, earn enough money, and are well respected in society. Money, security, and status are buzzwords that every parent drools over. As a result, they tend to disregard their child’s passion as the stupidity of youth, and enforces their wishes on them.” Parents force their children into becoming cookie cutter copies of their exemplary peers, all eventually becoming doctors and engineers. They fail to understand that not all children can be thrown into this mass manufacturing of STEM career-focused professionals. Other jobs not relating to mathematics and science are looked down upon and are thought to not hold as high of a reputation in society. Much to our community’s disbelief, there are outstanding South Asian individuals in non-STEM fields, too! Just to name a few: Aziz Ansari, Mindy Kaling, Hasan Minhaj, Dev Patel, Sameer Gadhia, Anchal Joseph, Pico Iyer, Padma Lakshmi, Norah Jones, Nav, Fareed Zakaria, Pooja Kumar. The list goes on and on. It is important for parents to realize and guide their children to do something they would enjoy for a long period of time. If they are forced to pursue a career they are not passionate about merely for the status and security, they will not be true to themselves for their rest of their lives and will eventually emotionally burn out.

In South Asian cultures, there are beliefs that drive this stigma of mental illness. For instance, it is presumed that mental illness occurs because individuals are too weak to deal with such problems and can be cured by free will. However, mental illnesses are like any other medical disorder: they cannot simply be controlled by the suffering individual. There is no way humans can attain perfection; we all have mental struggles. There is no value to you in staying silent about your pain and no shame in asking for professional help and/or medicine. Even if you may be perceived as weak or you are putting your reputation on the line to save yourself, I highly advise you to take action. My friend Shreya deserved the world in return for the things she did for me. Every day I regret not offering help when she needed it most, so this post is the least I can do for her. I use her story to shed light on how ignorant our community is in terms of aiding those with mental illness. Listed below are some online resources available for South Asians who need helpful information regarding mental health.

Please take care of yourself, my friends.

RESOURCES (thanks to reclaimthebindi):

• Self-Care Masterpost
• Suicide Prevention Lifeline
• SAMHAA
• MySahana
• SAMHAJ
• CHAI
• South Asian Network (SAN)
• Heart Mind International
• MannMukti​

*Name has been changed to protect subject’s confidentiality.

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!

background info: A tilak chandlo is a physical representation of the Swaminarayan Hindu faith for male devotees. They usually apply a tilak chandlo on their foreheads during worship. The mark includes two components: a u-shaped tilak made of sandalwood paste and a red kumkum dot in the middle.

SHAIL- I walked on, ashamed. Head down, earbuds in, eyes on the floor. I was different from everyone around me. It wasn't my race, height, or age that alienated me. It was my forehead. Branded on my forehead was a scarlet-like red dot surrounded by an orange, u-shaped mark. In other words, I was wearing a Tilak Chandlo on my forehead; my beliefs differed from those of every other student at my high school— I was a Hindu, a Swaminarayan.

Naturally fearing others' perceptions of me, I initially steered free of the people around me. Up to this point of my sophomore year, high school merely seemed like an institution in which cliques were formed based on character, personality, and religion. As a result of this perception, I felt out of place. Although I already had a friend group, this preemptive notion of discrimination led me to believe I had no place in the social structures of high school. At 7:20 AM the bells rang. I took my place beside the friends I no longer knew.

As expected, I watched their eyes wander to my forehead. I prepared myself for judgmental looks and a flood of questions. Contrary to my inferences, the manner with which these questions were asked can be best described by M. Scott Peck, who stated, "Share our similarities, celebrate our differences." Rather than asking in a condescending manner, my peers delivered questions that rang with curiosity, love, and friendliness. Shockingly, I failed to realize their genuine interest and half-heartedly answered with an explanation of the marks as being a religious symbol. However, my friends persisted. The power of curiosity was indefinite, almighty. Eventually, this superior force defeated my personal bias and opened my eyes to the embracing nature of my friends. With newfound ease, I naturally spoke of the metaphor of the Tilak Chandlo: "The vermillion Chandlo represents me, the devotee, while the U-shaped Tilak represents the feet of God. In a sense, this means that I am always at the service of God's feet."

Prior to wearing the Tilak Chandlo, I tailored my social image to conform to high school's perception of "cool." I adopted the latest fashion trends. I tended to keep quiet on campus. I suppressed my own personality. However, after this experience, such actions became illogical. Now it is apparent to me that diversity should be treasured as a virtue rather than a flaw.

Since sophomore year, I've come across many similar experiences ranging from pointing and laughing of teenagers to the encouragement of diversity from teachers. The difference, however, remains in me. I now realize the secret to defying society's conformities lay upon my shoulders, my dogma, and my mind.

Today, I walk. Head up, earbuds out, eyes on those around me. I know I'm unique. And this time I don't mind.

SHIVANI // JUNIOR WRITER- You’re Indian, right? Do you eat people’s hearts? I heard that Indians do that. These were the words of a classmate of mine in the first grade. My response? Why yes, of course, my amma is going to have a delicious, steaming plate of human hearts sitting on our dining table when I go home today. Of course, at that point, she couldn’t really understand that what she had said was extremely offensive. She was just curious, I suppose, as all children are. Back then, I was really hurt by what she said, because then I got a lot of weird looks from friends and the like. I went home to my amma and cried to her about it, and she told me that kids are always like that and that it would get better with time.

Yet here I am almost eight years later, and I’m scratching my head at the boy in my 8th-grade history class who called me out on the “stupid dot on my head” and asked me why I would wear it to an “American school.” And people actually excuse his insolence by saying that boys will be boys. I’m absolutely flabbergasted when a classmate of mine posts a picture of herself squinting her eyes and calling herself “ching ching.” I see a boy in one of my extracurriculars who makes jokes about a noisy dog near his house, and how he told it that he would “feed it to the Asians” unless it stopped barking.

Insensitivity towards cultures these days is way too smoothed over, and some people even think that it’s not even a problem.

These days, you’ll rarely see people who actually clearly imply that they’re racist. Instead, you’ll hear, ”I don’t see color,” or another really washed out phrase that shows that they couldn’t care less. Amongst many, there are also people who generalize races, for example, “all Asians are smart.” And let’s not forget the ever present cultural appropriation, which makes you wonder, are those even real terms? Yes, they are. We will be considering the following areas today as we look at how to solve this problem:  First is failing to recognize and acknowledge problems that certain races experience. Second, we will look at racial stereotypes. Lastly, we will look at cultural appropriation.

First, we must look at the part of the population that chooses not to acknowledge that there is a problem.  You have people much like children playing hide and go seek.  They close their eyes really tight and slap their hands over their ears, and poof! You don’t exist anymore. Funnily enough, people think that this is a stellar solution to fixing cultural insensitivity.  Some people think that if they say that they don’t see color, then that means that racism just magically disappears. That doesn’t help at all. In fact, that just makes it seem like these people don’t care enough to address racism, or worse: that they truly believe that not seeing color is going to fix things. In America, we need to see color. We should celebrate our differences.  It is important to see that people are suffering every day, instead of pretending that everything is okay by sweeping it under the carpet. Racism is a real problem. Of course, some people don’t want to irritate other people by speaking out, but it’s time to stand up and address the issue. Blogger Roni Faida writes, “When you tell me you don’t see my color, you are basically telling me that you don’t see a huge part of who I am and that doesn’t help me. What I want you to say is, ‘I see your color. And it’s beautiful.’” She goes on to mention that because we live in America, we should be able to see color. “Saying you don’t see color stops us from having discussions that really matter. It stops us from being able to talk to one another about how difficult it can be to live in this country.” People also need to see that they see color, even when they say that they don’t. It’s quite obvious that people say that to assure themselves that they are not racist. For example, 80% of stop and frisks performed by police were on Latino and Black people, which is a stark difference from the 8% stop and frisks on white people. It’s just the stigma and negative connotation that people think of. The same people who are okay with that, also say that they don’t see color. How is that not seeing color? This is why that phrase is wrong.

Something that I’ve heard many people saying, “Some racial stereotypes are positive!” as a desperate attempt to make it seem like they are not racist. NO. No, racial stereotypes are in fact negative. Don’t just think that the stereotype that all Asians are smart is a good stereotype. Because when we work so hard on our English report or our math assignment, when we write until our hands are cramping, when we study beyond our limit, when we get that perfect A grade for our hard work, it’s passed off as nothing because “all Asians are smart, so you didn’t really put any effort into it, you just have a talent!”

And of course, we have cultural appropriation. The author of "Who Owns Culture? Appropriation and Authenticity in American Law" defines cultural appropriation as taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from someone else's culture without permission. Another thing is disrespecting sacred items of a culture. I’m a Hindu, which means I’m polytheistic; I worship many gods. These are our gods, whom we worship, whom we respect, as they created us. So you could imagine my horror at logging on to my Tumblr account and scroll through my feed to see a picture of a blonde girl smoking a cigarette in front of Ganesh, one of our gods. The caption reads, “my aesthetic.” Basically, this girl thought it would look cool on her blog to have a picture of her clearly disrespecting a god in a place of worship. Still don’t completely understand yet? Here’s what cultural appropriation is. When Selena Gomez can wear a bindi in her costumes as a fashion statement and people applaud her and call her beautiful, but when I, a Hindu, wear it to school in observance of Deepavali, a Hindu celebration, I get called an idiot. When people of color are mocked for their big lips, something that is beautiful and makes them THEM, something that is genetic, that runs in their veins, that is a part of them, makes them whole. Then Kylie Jenner gets fake big lips, and suddenly, wow big lips are beautiful! Let’s all get implants and try to be like her, but we’ll still make fun of POC who have big lips. The problem with cultural appropriation is that most people don’t understand the weight of it.

A culture has things that make it unique, for example, its clothing, and music. So when someone else who is not from that particular culture takes that and makes it their own, they’re basically erasing all the hard work that other people put into it. Especially if they are the dominant race in a region. For example, people that are white in America. Right now, White Americans account for 69% of the population. So when they adopt a culture and appropriate it, they are essentially taking a culture’s hard work, and it’s legacy, and turning it into a costume. Speaking of costumes, this happens a lot during Halloween, when someone wants to be a geisha for Halloween, it’s not just a costume. It’s a tradition that’s been around since feudal times, and it’s not a costume for someone to buy from party city for 30 bucks. Or the redskins’ symbol. It’s not supposed to be used like that. So when a dominant culture appropriates a culture of the minority, they are essentially silencing that culture’s uniqueness. Nadra Kareem writes, “In the United States, cultural appropriation almost always involves members of the dominant culture (or those who identify with it) “borrowing” from the cultures of minority groups. African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and indigenous peoples generally tend to emerge as the groups targeted for cultural appropriation. Black music and dance, Native American fashions, decorations and cultural symbols and Asian martial arts and dress have all fallen prey to cultural appropriation.”

So here we have all these problems, and yet, some people draw a blank on how to fix it. First, just don’t do it. Just refrain from saying things like “we are all one race, and /I don’t see color”. Educate yourself. Google It! It’s not that hard. It will literally take you as long as a Justin Bieber song for you to learn how to be more sensitive to cultures. Ask someone for insight. When you spend 90% of your day scrolling through Instagram, or Twitter, or whatever social media you might have or use, search up a tag like cultural appropriation, and you will be able to learn everything on that subject just as easily as reading your favorite celebrity’s post about their lunch. Don’t just stand there when you see racism or insensitivity towards cultures. Point it out, kindly. Chances are, that person probably doesn’t know that what they’re saying or doing is bad. This is why people need to be careful of cultural insensitivity and racism. Don’t say that you don’t see color. Think of a culture before you appropriate it, and don’t think that racial stereotypes are okay. Most of all, just think about what you’re going to do or say before you do or say it. That helps a lot more than you would think.