COMMUNITY

I have been blessed throughout my life (and especially my adult life) with amazing communities of friends regardless of where I was living at the time.  Though the number of my friends over the years has never been huge (despite what Facebook says), this is in contradistinction to my endearment towards these folks.  Whether it was college in Austin, med school in Houston, residency in Dallas, or fellowship in Baltimore, I have always had a cadre of friends who got me through tough times and helped me to see the joy and beauty in life.  Indeed, the strength of these communities of friends seems to have been inversely related to the 'coolness of the city' in which I was living.  For these people, I am grateful.  You know who you are!

The hardest thing about getting one's first job in medicine/science is that the sense of being in the trenches, which is something which greatly facilitates fellowship/fraternity, disappears. One is no longer 'in training,' and, for me, my most recent move to Portland has meant less friends nearby and less intense friendships with those whom I know locally.  While Portland is an amazing community in which to live (liberal, progressive, eco-conscious, tolerant, amazing outdoors, >84% voted for Obama, etc), I lack a community of close friends here.  I hope that changes over time because life is too short to not be with those whom ones loves (family excluded).  

All of this reminds me how thankful I am for the people who remain my friends from over the years wherever they might be (NYC, Cambridge, Chicago, Wilmington, Palo Alto, Baltimore, SF, Houston, Boston, Austin,...) and whose friendship still keeps me going...

HE'S GOT RHYTHM

We are still not sure from whom he got his moves and rhythm, but Nicholas has it!  The video speaks for itself.

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

Tonight I went to see "Slumdog Millionaire" with my friend Brooks at a free sneak preview, and it did not disappoint.  This is a story set in the "Maximum City," as they call Mumbai, and other parts of India.  It is a story of survival, and it is a story of sadness.  In all the talk of "Indian Silicon Valley" and "the new India," it is easy to forget the misery in which millions of Indians live every day.  When you have a country that populous, it is also easy to lose one's sense of humanity and one's sense of the value of human life.  This movie tells the story of those whose worth has been forgotten by all but themselves.

I realize I have had a lot of "ethinic" or India-related posts in the short history of this blog.  I am not someone who wears his ethnicity on his sleeve.  Hell, I do not know my way around a menu in an Indian restaurant and certainly have forgotten the language, but I have been shaped by this place, from which I come, and my race has made me who I am in more ways than I know.  Growing up, I was always one of the few Indian kids in my class.  In my Catholic elementary school in Canada, I was the only Indian kid in my school, and I experienced open prejudice growing up in that small town (will save you the sob stories).  With the exception of 6th and 8th grades, I was the only Indian kid in my middle schools.  In high school, there were 1 or 2 other Indian kids.  It was hard not to feel foreign.

It was not until medical school, when I made some amazing friends who also happend to be Indian/Pakistani, that I realized that I was not alone (in more ways than one).  These were people who had had similar experiences as me and with whom little explanation was needed.  To this day, they are some of my best friends (Amit, Asim).  I dated a few Indian women during med school as well, which was also an experience in shared experience.  These connections and this unspoken understanding were about more than race, but race certainly shaped these people as it shaped me... for the better.  I think empathy, which is really at the heart of Jhumpa Lahiri's prose (see last post), is what binds us and what draws people of all colors to her work and to other human beings.

It is nice to have those moments in life, which remind us of what we are made, who we are, and how we are all connected.  For me tonight, Slumdog Millionaire was that kind of ride.

BEST BOOK OF 2008

Many of you, I am sure, have heard of and read Jhumpa Lahiri.  She won a Pulitzer for her first book "The Interpreter of Maladies," and her second book "The Namesake" was a hit and a movie by Mira Nair.  She released her third book this year, "Unaccustomed Earth," which is my pick for the best book of 2008.  Why?

There is no other writer today, who can capture the extraordinary moments in such "ordinary" lives.  While her writing and stories appeal to the Indian immigrant in me (ABCD- inside joke), her work is about much more than race and ritual.  It is about what it means to feel in this numbing society, in which we find ourselves.  Who would have thought that tales of Bengali housewives or first generation Indian kids experiencing their first crushes would make for such great reading?  Ms. Lahiri did, that is who.  

If you have not picked up "Unaccustomed Earth," I highly recommend you do so.  If you wait a few months, you can buy an edition which says "Winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize."  You heard it here first!