A Small World

Being an immigrant has its benefits. Hipsters feign interest in my life, I don't have to worry about being President, and I got free munchkins and coffee at Dunkin Donuts today.

I usually get coffee from the cart, but today I was in the mood for something commercial, especially with a 10% student discount. I ordered a small coffee with skim milk. The Indian teller grinned. "No sugar?" I nodded, motioning with my index finger and thumb that I wanted only a little bit.

He rang up my order. "Oh, I'm so sorry I forgot to tell you I was a student." I fumbled around my wallet for my Fordham ID. "Oh, you are a shtudent?" He looked me straight in the eye, and then grinned again. "Wow. Oh, Rucha Desai. You are Indian?" He looked shocked. Somehow, while the entire world can see that I am Indian, from my prominently Indian features and dark skin, Indians themselves, especially Gujaratis, always fail to acknowledge me as one of them.

"Where are you from?"

I almost answered Jersey, hoe, but recovered. "Gujarat."

"Oh! Me too! Shame shtate. From where?"

"I'm from Ahmedhabad."

"Oh! I am too from Ahmedhabad. I am here two months."

And then I genuinely got excited. We were from the same hood. I asked him if he knew my grandfather, Dolar Vasavada, a well-known advocate or judge or politician (no one in my family, including my grandfather himself, is sure).

"What? I am not understanding."

"Dolar Vasavada. Do you know him?"

He continued to look quizzically at me while I continued to chant my grandfather's name. The Indian cashier next to him shook his head and smiled at me, as though we were both in on some joke, as though he too found ridiculous this scene in which a small pseudo Indian looking girl was ceremoniously repeating an foreign sounding name to a dark, grinning, seemingly deaf man against a backdrop of donuts and muffins. For a moment, I thought I had found solace in him.

"She shaid do you know her grandfather? He is Basubhai." The moment was gone. I was alone.

"No. Dolar Vasavada. Vasavada. He is an advocate."

"Oh! Vashavada! No. I don't know him. Do you know how to speak Gujarati?"

I wanted to respond in Gujarati. In fact, during the entire dialogue (my yelling, his not hearing me), I wanted to just relay the message in Gujarati; for some reason, when I most needed to use the language, it completely escaped me. I could think of all these filmy Bollywood lines, lots of Hindi responses to his questions, but not a single word of Gujarati.

"Yes, but not well." He looked disappointed. And then he attempted more conversation.

"I am going to Ahmedhabad for a wedding."

"Oh! When?"

"In Ahmedhabad."

"No, when?"

"In India!" I could have easily resolved this miscommunication by saying "kyare?" but the word eluded me.

"No, I am saying when?"

And then the other cashier once again provided his version of help--"She is saying who!"

"Oh, it is my sister."

"NO! When is the wedding?" And then it clicked. "Tueshday."

I smiled. "I am going in November." He looked surprised. "Your wedding!"

Once we clarified that I was not getting married, that I was a Nager Brahmin, a title I have never truly understood but emphasized with great passion in Dunkin Donuts, and that I live with a Goan roommate, not my parents, he finally handed me my coffee.

The other cashier, who during this entire exchange neglected his own customers as he watched us, stopped me before I could pay. "She's your friend. No paying." And then he handed me two free munchkins. "Okay, you are a friend."

My eyes were brimming with tears of joy, of relief, of gratitude. Free country, free friends, free food. God Bless America.

all hail Asher Roth, because I love college

I have been spontaneously combusting the last week and a half. I am almost done with college, and so close to my future that I can feel my hairs burning in its flames. The fabulous life I envisioned for myself is now tangible, and now all I want to do is ride the subway forever, without pause, with no destination, until I can fall asleep.

The GirlTalk concert was essentially a sweaty, energetic mass of students, high on life and drugs and mixed music. Everyone was friends that night, dancing with strangers, stepping on friends' feet, the gays grinding on the straights (and with each other), sharing perspiration. We sang along with Beyonce and Kanye on the radio on the way back, the Ram Van shaking and groaning as it bore 11 vigorously dancing Lincoln Center kids. And then we shared stories of the night at the Flame, sitting amongst various other groups still drenched from the same concert.

Last night was another indescribably random and seemingly uneventful night, though peppered with a stranger screaming "cambodian breast milk" from a moving car, a newfound romance and pretend birthday party at Blockheads, and a small verbal dispute on the subway which ended in a stranger calling my best friend a terrorist. Oh yes, and I was again mistaken to be 18. I went to bed about an hour before dawn, and when I woke up I could think of nothing but scrambled eggs.

When I graduate, I will be finished. As young as I will still be (and appear to be), I will not be able to dance on chairs and tables (and then proceed to fall off) with my best friends, or eat diner food past dinner time, or even go to trashy dive bars and trashy comedy clubs and trashy tourist spots without being considered trashy. I hand in my cap and gown, and receive a diploma, which then obliges me to learn foreign notions of moderation, cholesterol, inside voices, and utility bills.

So I am going to be Peter Pan for Halloween. This year, 15F1 is Neverland. I am going to wear green tights and a feather in my cap until I have to trade it in for a black cap with a tassel, when I will go out for after-work drinks and buy my sister birthday presents from my own money and talk to my parents about the FICA tax.

Until then, I am going to act as young as I look. And eat diner food every night.

I went through puberty, I swear!

My friend resorted to using her fake ID to get me into The Ugly Truth.

The movie is rated R. I left my wallet at home, without identification of any sorts as I was neither driving, drinking, gambling, or flying, and forgot that a Katherine Heigl romantic comedy would require anything more than a movie pass.

I should carry my identification at all times, though. The lady manning the weight room asked my age. I first nodded at my pass, which has my birth date, and then almost said 18, just because I was nervous. "I'm 20." The lady laughed and said, "OK, well as long as you are above 13, because you know, if you are younger than 13 you can't use the weight room."

Initially, upon AMC's rejection, I thought my friend, Emily, could fill the role as my necessary adult companion. But seeing as she was only 20, and the age to accompany minors into R-rated films is the same as the age to walk into any bar in the States, we resorted to begging. "Please, she really is 20, I promise!" "Yea, seriously, what are we supposed to do?" "I mean, I know she looks 16, but she's old enough to watch this!"

As it does in bars and casinos and border control, begging backfired. We stepped out of the line. After much contemplation, much deliberation, we managed to devise a plan to manipulate the system. Apparently, there were additional ID checks passed the ticket check, in front of the R-rated theaters. We decided to buy tickets to see Julie and Julia and then walk into the theater showing our sweet and not so innocent comedy. If at all we were to meet a bouncer, one of those bald, black, muscular guys employed to fend off underage teenagers, she would use her fake ID and I would be the minor accompanying her.

We managed to sneak into the theater unscathed. The film was perfectly crass, funny, and inappropriate for anyone under 15. I conceded to the theater's seemingly arbitrary policy of ID'ing; if I really were the age I looked, then this movie may have turned me into a child porn star, or confused me in the least.

When I do turn 21 (in 3 months, not 6 years), I will gamble, drink, and accompany some underage fresh mind into an R-rated comedy.

But until then, I will see all the PG-13 movies I can, and hope for the best.

life happens, so give lap dances.

Manu and I watched 500 Days of Summer last night. It's the story about a boy who loves a girl, a girl who doesn't believe in destiny and miracles and true love. The film simply unravels, like life.

I don't know how many true love stories are left. Youth seems everlasting, as do short skirts, free tequila shots, and cologne doused with pheremones. But before we can run to CVS to buy anti-aging cream, the short skirt works well as a bib, the shots are neither free nor do they sit well, and the cologne smells like pepper spray. In 500 Days, the girl does not end up with the boy. There is no cathartic rain scene, no traffic jam through which he must wade to get to her, no kiss in front of hundreds of tourists at the Empire State Building. They fall apart. He falls apart. And life just happens.

Love is real, but everyone always runs from it, while pretending to be running towards it. Nice guys are out, guys with good hair are in. Girls who are strung out are boring, while girls who run from you always seem to have the longest legs. Loneliness is said to be underrated, but everyone is scared to be alone. The math just doesn't seem to always work out: one girl + one boy =/= love. Instead one girl and one boy create a sense of imbalance, until this renowned "one" comes along.

In efforts to pursue this famed and destined love of my life, I give lap dances in the subway cars. En route to grab lunch at Yaffa Cafe with my cousin, I lost my balance in the L train. I couldn't help it; life just happened, and before I knew it, I landed squarely into the lap of the hobo sitting next to me. He grunted, slightly shocked at receiving this kind of attention. Love feels good. Even if it is a figment of our imagination, or the consistency we crave when we are lonely, love is good stuff. It comes in all shapes and sizes--my mother's worn hands, my father's scrambled eggs, my sister's undying loyalty. It can look like a football player, a windswept brunette, a musician, or even a random girl you meet in the L train who moves the relationship along quickly, from sitting close to you to sitting right on top of you.

Let life happen. Free lap dances may be involved.

Hello, stranger.

Hello. My name is Rucha. And I am addicted to [insert one of the following: nutella, lost cases, fitness, sales, Craisins, gay marriage, winning].

It is nice to meet you, and your soon to be exposed addictions to [insert one of the following: pain, your boyfriend, the future, Clairol's Born Blonde, the Hills]. Let's be friends. Don't tell me your flaws, and I won't tell you mine. Let's pretend that the smooth hazelnutty tickle of nutella on my tongue doesn't haunt my dreams, shattering any I had of looking like Penelope Cruz. Let's pretend that you don't keep leaf through bridal magazines before you are old enough to drink. Let's pretend that I don't run after what is lost, and you don't obsess over what you have found. Let me win, and I will let you lose.

fat or cheap?

I have always liked grocery shopping. I like food, I like the serenity of buying my own food, and I like thoughts of future meals with said food.

Yesterday, the tranquility with which I food shop was shattered. Dripping chlorinated water onto the white marble of Ridgewood's Stop & Shop, I was holding a loaf Stop & Shop's whole wheat and Freihofer's whole grain bread. I heard no other sounds except the repetitive beep of scanners at the other end of the store.

"You know, you can't just count the calories; it's the carbs that really get you. You need to count the carbs."

A large, bald, middle aged black man was stooped above me, smiling knowingly. I was silent for a few minutes, trying to transition to reality, yet blinded by his dazzling white teeth. Still in shock, I just laughed. "Yea, see, you wouldn't realize but really, you should be counting the carbs." I laughed in response again. He then said his good byes and walked away.

Five minutes later, when I managed to re-plunge myself into the nooks and crannies of generic and branded breads, I was suddenly confronted with a bald and black floating head. "And sorry about startling you before." Again, I laughed in response. He smiled and walked away.


And a day has not gone by when I regret not telling him that I was not counting calories, but the price to weight ratio. I wanted cheap bread.

Burrito Box, USA

I came back to New York for Burrito Box.

I started giggling uncontrollably when I got out of Port Authority last night. After having seen cities that earned superlative titles in beauty or cleanliness or liberal drug policy, my city offered the sense of familiarity and home that no other city could offer. London did elicit a sense of comfort, but I felt lost amidst the hush that fell upon the city after midnight, unsettled by the drivers on the lefthand side of the road, and perpetually hungry for Mexican food.

The theater district was as obnoxious and crude as usual, swamped with foreigners ("Y'all hungry? There's an Applebees.") With an expertise only the damn Yankees can hope to possess, I maneuvered through the crowds, and finally made it to Fordham, all the while talking to my mother on the phone as an excuse for my freakishly large grin.

Fordham ResLife decided to stop issuing guest passes for the next week, so I was initially supposed to be carted in as luggage. As if to celebrate my homecoming, McMahon Hall was also shutting off electricity and water the following morning (today), and all residents, and their illegal guests, were to evacuate the building by 8 am.

And then, more embracing than Fordham ResLife or a tourist enamored of Times Square, was seeing my friends. Bianca and I shrieked when we saw each other, our tuneless and incredulous yells piercing the harmony of the warm night. We decided we still loved each other and despite all the adventures we had apart, we still had the rest of our lives to live together.

We went to the art event in Chelsea that Amy had helped to produce, the Slideluck Potshow. Amy looked like a quintessential extra in Sex and the City, "immaculately polished" but with the spirit of a New Yorker. We heaped our plates with hummus and salsa and pita chips, and then got some fresh air on the balcony, from which we could see the entire city illuminated, and on which Bianca stole 8 beef franks. (She doesn't like hot dogs).

Leslie's cacaphonous voice over the loud speaker the next morning warned us of the exodus, and half asleep, half wishing we had our own Zion with no arbitrary McMahon oppression and free flowing milk and honey (and pinkberry), we filed mechanically out of the building.

We took refuge in the Flame, for about two hours, until a party of 15 trendy Koreans and 2 white men, one middle aged and the other a teenager like the Koreans, sat down for brunch right next to us. Failing to figure out the thread connecting everyone at that table, we got our 10% student discount and walked to the Hudson. We sat on the deck admiring the eclectic furniture, randomly placed among a 7-foot tall watering can, several yellow ceramic vases, and a short bed in the center of everything. Tourists staying at the hotel began posing with the watering can, at which point we left to pick up burritos for Manu and me to eat later. It was the first Mexican place in which I had set foot in over two months. Without pause, I ordered the burritos, with brown rice, brown tortillas, and no sour cream; it was a sense of control I had not felt in London, sifting through the various fried fish and meat dishes to get to a remotely flavorful and ambiguous vegetarian dish.

I held those burritos in my hand for the rest of the day, as I finished errands and met my friend Daniyal downtown on Macdougal St., where I got Mamoun's for my parents. He drove me home, and the entire ride I could think of nothing but the I heart NY plastic bag I had been holding for the past 4 hours. Manu had hardly opened the front door before I ran into the kitchen. She spread out the burritos and salsas, while I washed my hands.

And then I took the first bite. It was my first bite of New York City, my first bite of home, my first bite of a black bean burrito doused in salsa fresca and a hot sauce that burned my chapped lips. It was my first bite of America, a taste pure and simple, a taste of freedom, just like the pilgrims sought.

There were probably tacos at Plymouth Rock.