Butterflies and giggles.

Right before your first kiss, the first time he holds your hand and doesn’t want to let go, whispering your name making you feel like a princess.  These moments are the ones I cherish.  Love grows stronger within the eyes, straight to your soul.  But, how will you know if he is the one.

I want to be with the one that makes me laugh.  I want to be with the one that knows exactly who I am.  He knows me better than I know myself.  The most important thing in my opinion is that he needs to love you for who you are.  You cannot just pick any guy, change him into what you want him to be, and fall in love.  The relationship you have with yourself comes first.  Love yourself, and others will love you.  If they don’t, then who needs them?

Yet, everyone makes mistakes. Shakespeare says in The Merchant of Venice, “But love is blind, and lovers cannot see the pretty follies that themselves commit.”  Finding your true love becomes a trial and error game.  Some are lucky to hit a homerun at their first shot, but most of us need to keep swinging until we find the right team.  Mistakes are meant to be, because without them we wouldn’t have fate or serendipity.

The hardest part in finding the perfect relationship is your parents’ approval.   They will always want what is best for you.  No one will be perfect in your parents’ eyes, except you.  As a typical desi girl, this comes with a lot of struggle and communication conflicts.  Most of us live in the modern days, but our parents are stuck in their old fashion ways.

Heartbreaks and warfare may occur, but in the end your parents will always love you.

Love is poetically delicate.  Treat it with care, honesty, and soul.

I spent this last weekend at home with a good friend of mine. Over drinks, we talked about a variety of different things, from school to our jobs to our mutually reclusive dating lives. We lingered over that last one for a while there. We’re good enough friends for him to ask me about things openly and he did, bringing up my dating history, or uh, lack thereof and asking me why it was so.

Before I could come up with a good enough answer, he provided me with one, declaring righteously, “You don’t seem to open up to people, Shiva!”

I conceded reluctantly to his observation. It wasn’t often that I was attracted to people.

On most days, I revel in the joy of being what other people call ‘multicultural’.  My father grew up in a small, conservative village in South India and then later, migrated to the crazy, metropolitan liberal Delhi life. I grew up in Delhi, clearly a misfit – browner skinned that most people around, with a thick accent that was a mixture of what was considered opposites – my parents’ South Indian-ness and their great command of the English language (my father published English books and my mother was a high school English teacher). I was a misfit right from kindergarten, with my unusually long name, curly hair and very dark skin. At the age of 18, I decided to make this ‘misfit’ label permanent by moving to the US, without much thought really. Surprisingly, I haven’t ever really second guessed that decision.

The effect of this acquired multiculturalism has creeped into most areas of my life and for the most part, made it better. I work better in social situations now that I’ve experienced different kinds. The only area that my life has maybe suffered a tiny little bit, is my dating life.

I’ve had this conversation a bunch of time before where I’ve lamented to my friends about how every guy that I’m approached by is either not Indian enough or not American enough, which basically means Sendhil Ramamurthy is the guy for me (get on your phone, Sendhil, and call me already!). Anyway, during this specific conversation with my friend this last weekend, he pushing his point as if trying to wiggle out of me a satisfactory answer.

“Why do you think that is?” he asked.

“I need somebody to be able to watch Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge…”

He looked confused.

“Bollywood” I said, “Someone to watch Bollywood and love it and then go onto read Socrates and appreciate it just the same amount, and then have intense conversations with me about both of those.”

“Conversations about… people running around trees dancing?” he said

“Yes” I said unhesitatingly.

We stared at each other.

Is it possible to expose yourself to too many good things and then never be able to find anything good enough ever again? Exposing yourself to different cultures is kind of like exposing yourself to different footwear. Let me elaborate.

The first pair of shoes I remember owning, were the ones I needed as part of my uniform for when I started school. I remember looking at them and hating them with their zig zag laces and fancy ways to tie them. I could never tie my own laces and they used to come open halfway through school and many a times I found myself tripping over them and hurting myself before I reached home. I hated them at first, but slowly as I learned to tie the laces, I appreciated how fast they made me when I was running, how my feet hurt a lot less when I wore them instead of my flip flops. Eventually, I grew to love them. Then came, my first pair of flats, that did not feel as comfortable as my sneakers, but again, I grew to love them because of how pretty my feet looked and how I could actually feel the ground when I walked in them. Last but definitely not the least, came my first pair of heels, that I’m still working on loving.

It’s the same with different cultures. When I first moved to Delhi, and found how liberal it was as opposed to South India, I disliked it tremendously. I fell and was awkward, much like I was with my first pair of sneakers, but I found my group of best friends and settled down to like it, just as much as I did South India. Then I moved here, again shocked by how liberal everything was. I wasn’t quite comfortable for the longest time, but then I found sushi and cheesecake, my favorite theatre and art cinema, hiking trails and most importantly, some of the greatest people I will ever know, and found myself getting comfortable.  While, being constantly uncomfortable in one’s shoes can get tiring, I don’t think you can really grow and figure out the best path until you’ve tried walking in as many shoes as possible.

And then there comes that time when you’ve worn so many different shoes and liked so many of them, for different reasons, that when it comes time to pick a favorite, you just can’t do it.

“So this, uh, Dil.. uh, Dil..”

“Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge?” I finished for him

“Yes. That. What is that about?” he asked.

“A guy and a girl fall in love. Then they dance in snow-covered mountains.

“Oh. Do you have it?”

“Yes”

“Do you want to watch it?”

I stared at him, a little bit confused.

“Uh, sure.”

“Let’s watch it.”

I put the DVD in the player, suspicious of my friend’s motives. Was there going to be a lot of pointing and laughing involved, after? I could hear him talking to our other mutual friends – “Look at Shiva. So intelligent in her daily life but then watches crap like this secretly.”

I soon forgot about my friend or anyone else as I watched Raj pulled Simran onto the train and start their perfect romance.

He didn’t whine about the length of the movie which pleasantly surprised me and we got through the three hours without the usual “can we fast forward through this song?” comment that I now expected from all of my American friends.

We finished the movie and I sighed in pure contentment.

“Raj is the perfect man.” I said with finality.

“Uh, except he’s fictional and kind of like a jackass.” my friend said.

I stared at him. “He is not. He went all the way to India for Simran!”

“Yeeaaah, but he didn’t tell her that he liked her and then was mean to her the entire trip and then came to India, just assuming that she would want him at all.”

I glared. “You don’t know anything about romance.”

“No. Uh, I think I can say that because I do.”

For the next few minutes, we argued about Raj’s intentions and women loving bad boys. He argued that movies like DDLJ work to provide little girls with fantasies about their Prince Charming and the wrong message about bad boys being really actually good at heart. I argued that he didn’t understand romance and it would be better if he stayed out of it.

We never really reached a conclusion but before we knew, it was pretty late, and he needed to get back home.

He grabbed his jacket out of the closet and we argued heatedly all the way to the door.

“Raj is an idiot but this was fun, Shiv” he said smiling “We should do it again.”

“Whatever.” I said, shaking my head and smiling “Raj is amazing.”

He laughed and opened the door and then stopped.

He turned around with a grin on his face.

“You know what we just did, right?”

I shook my head, confused.

“Dil…Dil…”

“Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge?” I supplied helpfully.

“Yes. We just had an intense conversation about Dil Aale Dul Annie Le Jange.”

I looked at him, confused.

“And…?”

“And. And..” He paused. “Do you want to read some Socrates together on Thursday?”

He grinned, staring at my shocked face, and bounded down the stairs.

I shut my door slowly behind him, trying to process what had just happened.

A smile found its way onto my face.

Then, I put my feet in the brand new shoes, wiggled my toes a little bit, and finally got comfortable.

Dev Patel and Freida Pinto on the Oscar Red Carpet for Slumdog Millionaire.

by Fauzeya Rahman

This year’s Academy Awards will be like any previous year.  We’ll see the usual red carpet scene, celebrities either looking fierce (or not so much) and awards will be given to the top movies of the year.  Unlike previous years, however, there’s a good chance we could see a movie whose storyline came straight out of the slums of Mumbai win best picture of the year.

“Slumdog Millionaire” has received both critical acclaim and widespread popularity.  Its success has been analyzed by hardcore film buffs and casual moviegoers alike.  Whatever its appeal is for the individual viewer, the movie succeeds in bringing the South Asian identity out from the sidelines into the forefront.

It is very rare to see South Asian characters in popular sitcoms or movies in the States.  Whenever there was the rare Desi cast, they were always portrayed as a recent immigrant with a heavy accent, usually as a taxi driver or a similar profession.  Needless to say, it was hard to identify with Apu from “The Simpsons,” and most of us never really saw much of ourselves portrayed in Hollywood.

Kal Penn in the hit series "House".

Flash forward to 2009.  Aishwarya Rai is starring in the new “Pink Panther” movie.  Snoop Dogg collaborated for a track in the Bollywood flick “Singh is Kinng.”  Kal Penn is a household name (well, in households with teens or 20-somethings present).  There is a definite fusion and collaboration that is taking place, a clear step in a new direction.

Seeing as how Asians account for 13.5 million of the U.S. population, a stronger presence in pop culture is to be expected.  Rather than having the token Asian fulfilling some stereotype, we’re starting to see South Asians cast in major roles in TV and in movies.  We aren’t 100 percent at accurate representation, but slowly we’re getting there.

Lakshmi Menon in an ad for Banana Republic.

One big difference (and improvement) is that South Asians aren’t solely represented as “exotic” anymore.  Take Lakshmi Menon for instance.  She’s appeared in Banana Republic commercials, has modeling contracts with Hermes and Givenchy and has walked in runway shows for top designers such as Michael Kors and Vera Wang.  She’s achieved great success not only as an Indian model, but as a model in general.

This wasn’t always the case for Indian models.  For model/host of “Top Chef” Padma Lakshmi, during her modeling days she was usually featured in ethnic clothing in exotic locales.  As the advertising and editorial world is heading towards greater diversity, we’re starting to see differences in our everyday lives.

So what does this all mean?  Well for starters, maybe the younger generations growing up seeing such diversity will be uninhibited in choosing their career paths.  They will further break down barriers and stereotypes and we’ll be seeing fellow South Asians filling more non-traditional roles, further erasing stereotypes.  Maybe we’ll see more Bollywood and Hollywood collaborations on the big screen.  Maybe rather than being seen as “exotic,” we’ll be seen simply as we are.