a thanksgiving letter

28 November 2010

Dear Professor Lee,

While reading the November 22 edition of The New Yorker, I came across your piece entitled Magical Dinners, exploring your own memories of an immigrant Thanksgiving. I wanted to write to let you know that your writing resonated with me on many levels and I really enjoyed reading it.

When I took your fiction workshop at Princeton (in fall 2004), you would often speak to the effectiveness of employing 'important' details; that is, including details in our writing that advanced the reader's understanding of the characters or narrative. In this regard, the peppering of your essays with the details of how you used to lick different objects for taste is so wonderfully done. The moments are simultaneously senseless and remarkably relatable. Who among us doesn't remember surreptitiously putting our tongue on the bumpy end of a battery and the like as children?

Your stories of asking your mother to make American food struck a chord with me. This phenomenon is, I think, nearly universal among immigrant children. I wonder what it is that causes us to inexplicably beg for Kraft dinner in place of our mothers' rich traditional cooking. You rightly observe the tremendous power that children have to hurt their parents: and given that they are just that-- children-- I suppose it is inevitable that we will hurt our parents from time to time.

When it comes to food, at least, I have been thinking that there is a sense in which our adult lives are given to repenting for the way we treat our parents in our youth. At some point while growing, up we realize with a shock what a culinary treasure we had in the kitchens of our childhoods. For me, moving away from home was what really helped me to appreciate my mother's Indian food more than ever before. Today, I take great pains trying (in vain) to replicate that kitchen alchemy. Beyond culinary matters, too, I think many of us in emerging adulthood try to undo pain we may have caused our parents in our youth.

Just some thoughts.

Incidentally, I also enjoyed reading your essay in anticipation of my first Thanksgiving in a Korean-American household. Among so much else, our dinner included turkey, tofurkey, jeon, and paneer makhani. Cultures came together and the food was almost as delicious as the company. It will be interesting to see how Thanksgiving traditions evolve as increasingly diverse groups of immigrants come of age and as different cultures continue to come together in America. In many respects, perhaps this was a quintessentially American Thanksgiving.

I hope that you are well. I think often of 185 Nassau.

Sincerely,

Nitin

PS - I hope you don't mind that I will likely publish this letter on my blog.

when right is wrong

By now, one can safely assert that over the past few years, Canada has experienced a disconcerting drift towards the political right.

As a Canadian living in the USA, I frequently engage in the sport of contrasting inherent Canadian liberalism with US conservatism. At times, I even allow myself to feel smug, comfortable with the liberal 'cred' to which I am entitled simply by being Canadian. Recently, however, when I defend Canada's heritage of robust social support structures and multicultural tolerance, I feel like my parents must when they defend an India of their childhood that no longer exists. More frightening, perhaps it may never have existed-- my own flawed memory could be heavily coloured by romantic ideals.

When Martin turned into Harper and Bush turned into Obama, it seemed like the political differences that I (and other Canadians living in the USA) had been so fond of asserting were dissipating into nothing. Admittedly, this conclusion dramatically overstates the case. In spite of all the changes in Canada, our national consensus on issues like health care, gay rights and parental leave to name only a few, are far more progressive than anything currently imaginable here in the United States. Moreover, the recent midterm elections in the USA cast doubt on the staying power of the great Change of 2008. All the same, it saddens me to think we (Canadians) are losing our edge when it comes to progressivism.

The most recent manifestation is the astonishing election of Rob Ford as the next mayor of Toronto. I will take this moment to observe that when New York moved from being governed by Rudy Giulani to being governed by Michael Bloomberg, the city regained some of its lost dignity; Toronto seems to have moved in precisely the opposite direciton with this most recent election. Though one can hardly imagine a Canadian tea party, Ford seems to embody all of the ethos and positions so inarticulately advocated by these groups. For example, Ford bizarrely seems to be vigorously oppose bike lanes. This is a strange position to take in any major city but strikes one as particularly inappropriate given Toronto's historical problems with urban sprawl and with the usually strong Canadian respect for environmental initiatives. He opposed funding anti-AIDS initatives on the grounds that "if you are not doing needles and you are not gay, you wouldn't get AIDS probably." This is wrong and offensive in so many different ways! To round out ihs profile, he is concerned about "Oriental people taking over" and has suggested that Toronto stop allowing immigrants to arrive. That one of the most multicultural and progressive cities in the world could elect such an awful person to lead is beyond embarrassing and speaks very poorly to the direction of Canadian political sentiment.

Rob Ford seems so antithetical to everything that Toronto and Canada stands for. I want to write this off as the product of a tumultuous economy and a confusing mayoral race. Nevertheless, this has happened. I really cannot overstate how taken aback I still am by this news. I want to say that this will all be over in a few years, but then I never thought the federal Conservatives would win consecutive races. I continue to believe that Stephen Harper is one of the most uninspiring politicians I have ever seen and I resent that he represents Canada to the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, Canada happens to have had a remarkable few years economically, particularly when viewed in the midst of financial and economic collapses in other markets all over the world. Canada's economy has done quite well, and much of this has to do with relatively open trade policies.

Are Canadian social supports, healthcare, and our multicultural diversity standing in opposition to this economic success? Of course not. On the contrary, these are conditions that provided the human capital to drive this growth. Did the stability of our financial sector have anything to do with the conservative principle of keeping government out of the way? Absoutely not. Canada's financial sector was as robust and resilient as it was precisely because strong government regulations kept the institutions from taking on unmanageable and dangerous levels of risk.

Am I naive or nostalgic in my assessment of Canadian ideals, and am I misguided in observing this rightward drift? I cannot, for the life of me, reconcile my understanding of what Canada is with the fact that Toronto just elected Rob Ford to be their next mayor.

Other Canadians, can you help me out? Would love to hear your thoughts.

the diary of a young girl

Yes, I cried. Yes, I laughed.

Last week, Ania and I took a trip on Metro North to see Molly perform in The Diary of Anne Frank at the Westport Country Playhouse. What a wonderful production! The theatre and its grounds, built in what looks like an old barn, is the sort of community space that channels the aesthetics of a small rural boarding school. Lately, I've been reading about John Cage's premiere of 4'33" at Woodstock, New York and when I picture the concert hall, it looks a lot like this Westport playhouse. As a pleasant surprise, there were free sandwiches, drinks and snacks laid out for all of the guests to eat and drink before the afternoon showing!

Oh, and the show. Wow. I came away shaken and moved. The cast was uniformly superb. The dramatic and emotional intensity that such a story demands was present without any sacrifices in portraying the honesty of Anne's adolescence. Perhaps one of the most psychologically daunting aspects of this story lies in the thought of prolonged and crowded confinement. To convey this from the stage effectively requires a dept feat of dramatic irony since a performance stage is so literally antithetical to the notion of a closed and secret space. This director and cast proved more than up to the challenge. The audience laughed but was far more often (as I think is appropriate) forward in their chairs, shocked and engaged, mouths slightly ajar. This really happened.

The story is, of course, one that is well-known to most in our society. Nevertheless, like all good stories, something new is revealed or discovered with each retelling. For me, what was most apparent watching the play was the sense that my life is a charmed one. At the risk of sounding cliche, we tend to take things like space and mobility for granted. Who among us has been so openly, callously and horrifically isolated for his race or for any other reason. Who among us has literally been selected for extermination. I say these things not from any profound insight, but because we have to say these things. We have to remember and art is one way we can do so.

When I was on a road trip last year, I was involved in a minor car accident. A friend of mine was upset by the accident for most of the trip; I tried to comfort him by reminding him that things "could be worse"-- nobody was hurt, for example. He bristled at my reasoning, noting correctly (to paraphrase) that I could use this logic to argue against feeling bad about most anything. At the time I thought "exactly: that's the point." Now, I wonder: maybe there are times when even this logic cannot stop one from feeling bad. We have the story of Anne Frank, trapped hiding in an attic against a regime that said Jews, you really should not exist. Silence and stillness during the day. Not even allowed to peer through the window. Exasperated, I kept asking myself in the theatre: can things get worse than this?

The wonder of her story is that in spite of all of this, Anne's voice does reflect a measure of optimism and even levity. Certainly, The Diary of Anne Frank teaches us about human resilience. About the nature of family.

But it's tragically about so much more.

And we ought to remember that this really did just happen.

Thank you to the spectacular cast and crew for a moving performance and for reminding me that my life is charmed.