GMAT (or LSAT, BBAT, WTF, QFTYTF, etc...)

The future is overrated.

[insert obligatory saccharine Oprah-ism]

That said, as much as my present is working out pretty well, I'm pressured to constantly think of the future. Marriage. Graduate school. Osteoperosis. While much of the obligation comes from extended family and family friends (it's as if my third cousin's neighbor's fiancé stays awake all night because I don't yet own a suburu and live in Hunkydory, Long Island), much of the pressure is derived from an ingrained sense of survival. It's cultural, perhaps even genetic; a unique fearful mindset passed down from generation to generation.

I'm still unsure as to what I want to do with the rest of my life (apparently the aforementioned third cousin's neighbor's fiancé has a general timeline and itemization of practical and attainable goals). I've started perusing different graduate opportunities, skimming exam books and informational leaflets to ascertain even a perfunctory understanding of my future.

I was once holding this GMAT book on the subway, en route to work. I was trudging through the harried and fatigued crowd converging on the E train platform, when someone tapped me on the shoulder. With great difficulty, I turned to find an Indian man sweating profusely in a tan suit, and staring directly at the book in my hands. "GMAT, eh?" I responded with a blank stare. It was about 8 in the morning, I was wearing my knee brace and sneakers, and my purse was damp from my leaking lentils. He endeavored once more. "Business?"

My parents raised me to be polite, especially to unsuspecting Indian men on public transportation. "Yes," I replied, with a desperate nod towards the escalator. Already agitated commuters threw their hands up in despair as they stumbled upon two Indian roadblocks discussing advanced education.

He continued. "Good. GMAT is very good." I smiled and attempted to merge back into the herd, but he stopped me. "So, what are you thinking? What do you want to do?"

For a several seconds, I thought I was obligated to relay the deluge of fears and anxieties and hopes and dreams and pain hidden in the recesses of my heart. Some older balding man holding the New Yorker bumped into me, and I was immediately cognizant of my reality: a strange Indian man was interrogating me about my life choices. I blinked. "No clue," I said, as I turned and walked right into a woman in stilettos who almost fell into the tracks.

I told my mother the story when I came home. I expected her to understand my exasperation, or at least lecture me about talking to strangers, but instead, her face contorted with emotion. "Aww, beta, people care about you so much."

I've now resorted to flipping coins to determine my next step.

My name is Rucha Desai, and I'm addicted to [insert unhealthily healthy fixation]

I hate addictions. It's not so much the object of fixation that perturbs me. To each his own, I've always believed, and so if you snort cocaine or send women lewd pictures of yourself or drink too much soda, I may hesitate to let my kids stay alone with you, but I would not ever pretend to understand you. (Well, drinking soda, along with microwaving food in plastic containers, is considered a sin in my family. But, still, I won't judge.)

Rather, I take issue to the act of addiction. Addicts lose their sense of independence, the one virtue I place above all the rest (I know it's not really exalted by the Pope, but seriously, prudence is a bit overrated. We can give that one the boot.)

And so, with this in mind, I decided to give up coffee. Since I started working, my love and intrigue of the coffee bean (I want to try coffee from every single country) grew steadily into an expensive and unhealthy dependency. I've always had white teeth and clear skin, even when I was a miserably awkward teenager, but over the last year, I could feel my teeth yellow and my skin curdle, like milk does in our broken refrigerator. I couldn't stop shaking and I couldn't sleep (I tend to fidget and am a light sleeper, but everything just seems magnified when you're hooked).

I decided I would reverse the effects. I came to work an hour early and researched foods that were good for skin--the wrinkle fighters, the blemish blasters, the glow enhancers--and wrote down easy recipies that included all of these foods. I baked a skin bread (whole grain bread with flaxseed, sunflower seeds, onions, spinach), roasted tomatoes and zucchini, and drank flasks of carrot juice, interspersed with bottles of water and cups of green tea. I would not touch my long term abusive boyfriend (whom I will call Joe for the sake of corny puns).

I did put my face in coffee ice cream once, but that was a low point.

The more I read about the effects of Vitamin E and Selenium and Beta-Carotene for your skin, the more I realized I may have a new problem.

Selenium Toxicity--my hair would soon fall out, I would have joint pain, fatigue, and nerve damage, and my skin would blister. And Carotenodermia--my skin would turn orange.

I started drinking coffee again last week. If I were to be a blistering oompa-loompa, I might as well enjoy some Joe.

Plus, coffee is linked to a decreased likelihood of Alzheimer's. I drank three cups yesterday--for my brain, of course.

my mother's first American date

My mother crashed my date two weeks ago. [take a moment to let that sink in.] It had been a beautiful night. The June heat was tempered by soft zephyrs, and New York was in a good, celebratory mood. I watched the confluence of naked cowboys and tourists with fanny packs and locals with furrowed brows, as I sat at the Rockefeller fountain eating a Magnolia cupcake--with my friend to my left and my mother to my right.

There was much logistical deliberation that day. I was to get dinner with an old friend (who shall remain anonymous for the sake of his reputation and sanity) and my mother was going to visit her sister in the city. My aunt and uncle had come for a physician's conference, and had an event at 6. My mother said she would meet me after work so we could ride the bus home together. I told her I could meet up with her after having dinner with my friend, and my aunt suggested my mother stay in the hotel room for a couple of hours to relax, nap, watch TV, until I was ready. It seemed like a solid plan.

My cousin and his girlfriend came up to the city. My mother felt out of place, and wanted to give them some privacy. She does not like to impose on young people, has always believed in the "live and let live" mantra--which is why she left my cousin and his girlfriend to hang out with my friend and me.

I had barely dug into my smorgasbord of spinach, sriracha, and tofu before I got my mother's first text. She must have initially thought she would feign composure, and asked me, "Ruch, what's going on?" I didn't respond right away, and within twelve seconds I got four consecutive messages from her, each exponentially more desperate than the next. The truth finally came out. She said she wouldn't even mind walking to where I was, so I wouldn't have to take the trouble to get her.

For my mother, anything. It's never trouble. And this case was no different. I was surged with a sense of familial protection, and explained the situation to my friend. I assumed he'd be disappointed, or would want to part ways after dinner, but instead he shrugged and smiled. "I love Mrs. Desai. She's a great woman. I'd love to see her."

And that's when the sense of duty to my mother turned into gastro-intenstinal discomfort. I clearly envisioned the way the next hour would come to pass. I texted my mother, informing her that my friend wanted to come say, "hi." She ignored my information, and continued to pursue my whereabouts. I would provide her with my ETA, and reiterated that I was with my friend but she seemed unabashed. She then called me, telling me she didn't have her reading glasses on and it was easier for her to call me rather than text.

In fairness to my mother, she was in a tough, awkward position. She was trying to give my cousin and his girlfriend time to themselves, trying to give the next generation the opportunity to come into its own, and unintentionally gave me a coronary whilst destroying any perception of cool anyone had of me. The night hadn't turned out the way she had planned, and she felt perpetually uncomfortable and out of place.

Poor thing.

In all fairness to me, my mother should wear her reading glasses.

After we got cupcakes, we met my mother across the street. Her face noticeably changed as her eyes darted from me to my friend. Her face flushed. My friend and my mother exchanged the usual niceties, hugged, she noticed his change in height and he noticed her change in weight, and then everyone sat down by the fountain. I assumed my mother was hungry so I gave her half of my cupcake. I wasn't sure why they were both willingly present. My mother seemed frozen to her concrete seat, clicking away at her blackberry, finally comprehending the messages I sent her. My friend was a good sport, and engaged my mother in discussions on our high school friends, his new job, New York City life. I stuffed my face with cupcake, so I could be relieved of the obligation to speak.

I still felt bad at how terribly the night had turned out for my mother, as I was still too numb from shock to realize how horrifying the night had turned out for me, and for my friend nonetheless. So, as we were walking to Port Authority, I constantly reached back, trying to grab my mother's hand to give her solace. She wanted to give me privacy, and so would not meet my hand, prompting me to reach back even further. My friend was walking slightly ahead of me, and so I was looking ahead, trying to match his enthusiasm as I internally combusted. I was therefore walking sideways, with my chest facing the street. I walked like that for three avenues.

We took the bus back to Ridgewood. Together. Before we got on the bus, my mother had begged me, in Gujarati, to sit with my friend, and apologized profusely for ruining my night, and his, especially. I told her not to worry; I had of course planned on sitting with him, and she had ruined my entire life, not just my night. She then slept soundly in the front, as we chatted in the back.


My mother's first date was almost twenty five years ago, when she got ice cream with my father. Soon after, they got engaged; and the history of my existence thus ensued. The comfort and stability of marriage gradually settled in, and the thrill of adventure and ice cream parlors subsided. About 21 years into the relationship, my parents decided to spice things up. They bought Optimum for our home, so they could see a free movie every Tuesday night. It's usually the 7:00 show, but it hasn't always been a successful endeavor. Sometimes, my father comes home from work too late and collapses on the couch--shoes, shirt, half-eaten bowl of lentils and all. Other times, my mother falls asleep in the movie theater. It's free, so she never feels like she wasted money.


I guess my mother had just needed a change.


As I was getting off the bus, I apologized again for the way the night turned out, and my friend reassured me, "Don't worry about it, Rucha; next time, I'll bring my mother."

SENIORITIS in the geriatric sense

I'm pretty stubborn. So despite the fact that I have a bad knee and a full time job, I refuse to let go of my diminishing youth, only eluding me as I desperately seek it. My friends planned an explosive week of firsts and lasts, of burritos and beer gardens and rooftop lounges and museum excursions, of typical New York and typical college bonanzas; I resolved not only to be present at each of these events, but to actively partake in all revelry, so as not to miss out on the senior week I was supposed to have last year.

It's Day 4 of Senior Week. I'm bundled up on the couch watching Dancing with the Stars with a mug that reads "Crazy Cat Lady" and body chills. My knee throbs and lazy rolls of fat from the weekend's debauchery are peeking out from beneath my shirt. Inner beauty doesn't exist. And the youth is dead. Mission Senior Week: Epic Fail.

While I am incapacitated today, Friday was a night warranting superlative commendation. FCLC pretended to be real college, and so everyone bought their favorite games to the table--the dining table that had been pushed to the center of the room. One of my friends set up a confessional, which was intended for us to randomly go in and indulge in our favorite college memories, but ended up being a channel for Patrick, Bianca, and I to cry about our long lost youth and beauty and functioning body parts. I took my nighttime dose of fish oil while Patrick was talking about weekly reports for his boss.

After the authentic college party (which included dressing up as ninjas, because that's a universal collegiate obligation, and collectively straightening my hair, because that's a group activity), we moved on to HighBar, a rooftop lounge infused with delicious cosmopolitan zephyrs (that froze us half to death) and swanky cosmopolitan drinks (that no one could afford). After dancing and stealing candy from the bathroom, we decided to leave that pricey lounge filled only with wealthy heteros and free Starburst, and headed to a place where we'd feel more at home: Industry, a gay club 7 blocks away from Fordham.

On the way to the club, I saw Asif Mandvi, of the Daily Show. I walked up to him and introduced myself and said something apparently hilarious (it wasn't funny). I then joined my friends and went to Industry, where I was doted upon and courted, and almost forgot that this was the one place where no matter how straight my hair was or how diligently I did Butt Blasts at the YMCA, boys wouldn't ever look directly at me, but always to my left, where my attractive (male) friends stood. Then we (girls) all realized that we once again voluntarily and proactively put ourselves in that no-win situation that haunted us throughout our college careers. So we stopped dancing, stopped off for late night munchies (I got bananas because old people need potassium), and went to sleep--well, we tried.

It took every ounce of energy I had left (about 2.5) to cancel plans for tonight (Greenhouse lounge with my ladyfriends). Hopefully tonight I'll recover and then spend the rest of the week pretending I'm as young and cool and hip as my friends.

Or maybe I'll take a few more days to rest. I can't handle all the parties and celebrations and late nights. Kids these days, I just don't know how they do it.

ode to mothers everywhere

Sometimes I wonder why my mother puts up with me. I'm irrational, stubborn, and picky. I seem to actively pursue dysfunctional endeavors, hate being touched, and only like cantaloupe 27 days out of the year. Still, she loves me. For some strange reason, which I can only attribute to her unsound mental state, she unconditionally embraces all of my idiosyncrasies and flaws and "eras" (Foreign-Service-Officer era, Bohemian-carpe-diem-let-hair-loose era, nothing-but-bananas era). And she makes me omelets (when I'm not crusading against eggs).



She's not perfect, at least not in the conventional sense. She doesn't sew (the intention is there), she doesn't like to give her children compliments (that's Oprah's job), and she always decides to (attempt to) be creative during the most sensitive, formative moments in our lives. For the competitive, fifth grade Bake Fair, my mother decided to discover and promote Jell-O. We didn't have any molds in the house, nor did we bother to get any, and she instead rummaged around the kitchen for arbitrary vessels and tea cups and serving spoons in which to freeze the Jell-O, mixed with sliced fruit. We didn't do a good job estimating the fruit to Jell-O ratio, so some of the cups looked like nothing but amorphous gelatinous banana, and others seemed to have infinitesimal flecks of strawberry as mere afterthought.



Except for the frying pan, my mother didn't have anything in which to display this fair contender, so she took out a large, deep pot, in which to steam rice. The flavors were all different, but we couldn't layer the various types as a trifle because we had used a variety of molds, so she simply placed the shapes next to each other. When she was finished, she proudly presented to me her own recipe. I peered down into the bottom of the vessel, covered with wiggling orange, green, and red shapes resembling broken tea cups and serving spoons, laden with sweet, decomposing fruit. I looked back up at her eager face. I thanked her, and from that day on stopped believing in God, because if He existed, she would not have been allowed to play with Jell-O mixes and over-ripe fruit, and inadvertently, my social life.



I didn't win in any of the categories, not even for best futile efforts. One of my friend's mother had made this gorgeous chocolate pudding with violets and dark chocolate shavings, while another friend brought in a tower of cookies, modeled after the New York skyline. My pot-o-gelatin was barely considered.



While my mother tends to ruin my life, she is one of the few who saves it. Whenever I have gotten mad at my mother, I end up angrier at myself, and often retreat in a sort of self-loathing seclusion as I lose equilibrium. Then my mother makes a joke, I make a joke, we laugh at our (my) childishness, and move on. Balance restored. The world goes round again.



Thus, after the Bake Fair, while I was emotionally ravaged by the day's events, I couldn't manage to completely shun the dish. My friends thought it looked weird and unappetizing, and all fleeting notions of embarrassment and social suicide were immediately replaced by a fierce pride and honor. "I love this," I remember saying, as I took several bites of the dish. "It's unique." The tastes of the various flavors of Jell-O and the fruit converged into an explosion of acridity, but I remained firm. I finished half of the dessert myself.



When I came home, I told my mother about the failed dish. She was deeply apologetic and wrung her hands in a sort of despair, and acknowledgement that she'd never be the mother who bakes award winning desserts for school fairs. I hugged her around the middle. "It was good, Mumma. See? Half of it is gone." She hugged me back. "Next time, I'll try to put less fruit. That weighed it down, I think."


I don't know why I put up with her, either.

The Fountain of Youth: Representative Ryan of Wisconsin?

I overslept this morning. My mother shouted my name from the kitchen, informing me my bus was set to leave in four minutes. I took a cursory glance at my phone and literally leaped out of bed, onto the plug of my rarely used hair iron, and half sprinted, half limped to the bathroom. I prioritized parts of my body that needed soaping, threw on neon blue tights (government shut downs render obsolete business casual), accidentally squirted triple doses of antihistamine drops into my eyes, and stopped only to text Patrick something about my weight or my latest food fantasy or something of paramount significance. I was ready in 20 minutes, and even packed some snacks for the day and took my fish oil.


The last time I had to eject myself from bed with Olympian force was the first day of my International Law class, which started at 8:30 in the morning and never ended (until 11:15). I had rushed through perfunctory hygienic obligations before showing up to class 20 minutes late with my shirt inside out.


Today I slept in till 7:46, which is approximately 1:46 College Standard Time.



The last couple of days have been the most riveting in a long time. With the potential government shutdown, I can focus on nothing else but CSPAN, Politico, the New York Times, especially with its spellbinding political updates (the White House apparently is not for the shutdown; who knew?). Though I work in a political office, enmeshed in the current social and economic issues facing our nation, I have not been this charged since the 2008 elections. Then, I would sit in front of the TV all day, partly to take in all of Anderson Cooper’s unparalleled splendor, partly to stay current on the trajectories of each campaign; during my Sacred Texts class I would compare healthcare and marriage platforms of each candidate whilst listening to passages of the Gospel of Thomas, which my professor would read aloud. Once President Obama won the election, I was in a state of euphoric delirium for several months, hung over with pride, rejuvenation, and $3 Trader Joe’s wine. I was constantly charged, blood coursing through my veins, a constant reminder of my vitality.



Blood doesn’t necessarily course through my veins anymore (it seems to have clotted at the site of the failed blood work), but I do feel alive. I feel youthful. Two nights ago I stayed up watching CSPAN till my laptop died; I exchanged trite jokes with my friends that referenced “Boehners” and “ridin Biden,” as well as ideas about fiscal policy and the 2012 election. The only difference was location. I was not with my friends in the quiet lounge, peering at them over my massive laptop, plastered with sticky social statements (literally—stickers). I was still wearing a hoodie, still drew my knees up against my chest, and still ate out of habit and not hunger, but I was sitting alone in my room. My friends were on the other side of the internet. I finally conceded to Zuckerberg’s brilliance; I could transport myself into the 17th floor quiet lounge via Facebook.



The next morning I confessed to my boss that I was a bit delirious from a late night, and I professed a superficial love for Representative Ryan. She agreed and I wangled the permission to follow the news all day, as the self-proclaimed resident expert and senior counsel on the government shut down.


Between cursing the New York Times for paying reporters to issue “news alerts” about the necessity of compromise and eating birthday cupcakes for a colleague (I took it upon myself to eat several, to fuel my new CSPAN obligations), I assisted a constituent in getting surgery to remove a malignant tumor. By 5:00, I was shaking from caffeine, sugar, and happiness for the patient. And by 6:30, I crashed in my French class.


Last night, I meant to do my homework for my creative writing class, since I had foregone my French homework for my conservative fetish the previous night. As I started writing my story, I was immediately distracted (or I opened a new tab myself) by Kristoff’s Op-Ed piece on Congressional pay during the shutdown. I again took it upon myself to disseminate the information, and essentially ravage people’s newsfeeds.



I still haven’t done my writing homework. It’s a difficult assignment. I need more than a couple of hours to accomplish the task.



But the New York Times just reported what agencies would be furloughed and impacted if our broken bi-party system doesn’t reconcile.


And it’s my job to read the news—I just want to be sure the Bengal tigers are still fed.

The Grotesques

I must finally confess: I am a heroin addict. It’s consumed me. My arm is scarred with the trauma of this dependency, of this obsession, and I can think of nothing else.

No, totally kidding. Apparently my arm just can’t handle blood being drawn during yearly routine physicals.

As I gain maturity and lose wisdom, I have come to understand that everyone has a little heroin in their lives. Everyone has a downfall, albeit sweet, delicious, refreshing, and we become completely consumed by these disgraces or defeats. My mother has peanuts and Robitussin. Katherine Millay had her weakly received poetry and her older sister’s shadow. Napoleon had his own power trip and Sarah Palin doesn’t yet realize she has one. But she does. We all do. My heroin is the pain from dysfunction. We constantly battle the immediate sensation of thrill and pleasure, partly derived from a fleeting awareness of our self-erosion. And as we oscillate between this corrosive joy and objective detachment, we become our own follies. We are these grotesques, embodying in every aspect of our lives the trauma to which we have been subjected, or worse, to which we have subjected ourselves, over and over again.

The clean shaven blonde who buys his breakfast at Pret A Manger and the puffy eyed MTA worker who idles by the ticket machine and the voluptuous Spanish mother of two who buys her children $1-books on the street—all of them carry with them an addiction, the burden of their own follies. We walk lifelessly amid scores of other people consumed by this fixation, engrossed in their own powerlessness, as they are continually terrorized and claimed and ravaged by themselves.


At least we can all say we’re heroin chic.