It’s Friday night and I’m at a SoBo (South Bombay) night club with a few of my friends. I arrive late, around midnight, after a coworker’s engagement party. I’m wearing a fairly conservative red dress, standing behind the crowd of Indian girls at the door who are all dressed in black, four-inch stilettos adorning their tiny feet. After some back and forth with the bouncer, I finally get in when my friend comes to get me from the inside.
I step in to the outdoor patio area of the club to find a lot of people who look like each other. More girls in backless black dresses, long flatly straightened black hair, all weighing less than 100lbs with mundane expressions on their faces. I think the guys were also wearing black, but I was too busy wondering whether the girls eat Indian food to stay so skinny to focus much on the guys.
I find my friends, get a drink, and start people watching, since no one at the club looks like they are having enough fun to dance. My friend points out Manish Malhotra, surrounded by a few women, wearing a fashionable scarf, though it’s 70 degrees. In his defense, I think that’s considered chilly for Mumbai-kers. Then he pointed out Suraj Pancholi, Jiah Khan’s ex-boyfriend, looking very casual in his backwards cap. And then…my friend says, “Oh there’s Monica Dogra, the girl from Dhobi Ghat.”
I couldn’t believe it! I have idolized Dogra ever since I watched “Dhobi Ghat” in 2011. I always wondered about her life, an American-Indian girl living in Bollywood. Her character in “Dhobi Ghat” moves to Bombay for work and finds herself involved in some side projects. To be honest, in a way, her character, and even the real her, inspired me. Another American-Indian girl living in Bombay. So, I told her this! She was so sweet. She was wearing white, her beautiful hair falling over her in natural waves. We chat for a few minutes and she seems genuinely interested in what I had to say and talks a bit about her experiences in Bombay. I didn’t want to take up too much of her time, so I eventually said “it was nice to meet you” and I go back to my friends.
Later that night, a girl whom I had previously met at another club pretended not to know me. A guy made a rude comment about my outfit. I wasn’t happy about the SoBo snobbery, but I will always remember that time I met Monica Dogra at a club and how she was even cooler than I had imagined her to be!
NAKED: The Honest Musings of 2 Brown Women was born in the autumn of 2018, when Mimi Mutesa and Selvi M. Bunce began sharing their poetry collections. It was scary, beautiful, and terrifying when they decided to trust each other with their most intimate thoughts. Not only did they feel relieved after doing so, but Selvi and Mimi also felt more seen as women of color. They embarked on their publication journey, so others may feel as seen as they did on that fateful autumn.
“Ingrown Hair” deals with the themes of societal and family pressures that are reflected throughout NAKED. Mimi and Selvi have always written for themselves. They see poetry as an outlet, and their poems exemplify their personal frustration and vulnerability. “Ingrown Hair” speaks to Selvi’s experience with the societal pressures of South Asian women, such as getting married, being a good wife, becoming a good mother, and leading a certain kind of life.
There is something strange beneath my skin
telling me to build a house,
make a home,
mother children.
I am not sure how to reconcile it.
My mother was strong
and a mother after all.
My philosophy has been to spend my time
on myself and the world.
I have always thought
I could simply address the thing under my skin
when it finally crawled out.
But when my family starts guessing
who will get married first, and my father
has been saving wedding money for years,
I begin to wonder
if I will have to pluck it out.
The opinions expressed by the guest writer/blogger and those providing comments are theirs alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Brown Girl Magazine, Inc., or any employee thereof. Brown Girl Magazine is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information supplied by the guest writer/bloggers. This work is the opinion of the blogger. It is not the intention of Brown Girl Magazine to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, or individual. If you’d like to submit a guest post, please follow the guidelines we’ve set forth here.
“Confessions to a Moonless Sky” is a meditation on the new moon and guilt. I wrote it when I was living in Dallas and was driving back from a dusk prayer. The new moon terrified me on that drive. I was diseased by the knowledge that my partner, at the time, had seen the worst parts of me. There’s immense shame in this piece—it seized my self-image. If the moon could become brand new, then I could start over.
I often ponder on the moon’s reflective nature and pairs of eyes. I’m hyper-fixated on how I am seen by others. Unfortunately, the brilliance of seeing your reflection in another person leads to negativity. After all, those who are too keen on their own reflection are the same people who suffer from it. It is possible to use shame to fuel one’s retribution and personal growth, without becoming consumed by it.
We can look to Shah Rukh Khan succumbing to alcoholism in his own sorrow and then later imbibing his sadness in Chandramukhi. “Confessions to a Moonless Sky” is a lesson for us: Don’t be Shah Rukh Khan in Devdas, instead embody pre-incarnation Shah Rukh Khan in Om Shanti Om!
Sometimes when the moon abandons the sky, I wonder if I drove her away.
If she comes back, will she be the same? How I wish she would come back new, truly new! That way she’d have no memory of the sin I’ve confessed to her. You noxious insect. Sin-loving, ego-imbibing pest. You are no monster, for at least a monster has ideology, it sins with purpose. You sin just to chase ignominy.
But the moon won’t say that, she never does. She’ll just leave the sky and return days later, slowly. And I’ll wonder if she’s new, perhaps she won’t remember my past confessions. What does it matter? Were the moon replaced with one from a different god, I’d drive her away, too.
I organize play dates for my children. They’re friendships remind me of when I was younger when Fridays were consistently set aside for my friends. Now, it seems play is indeed meant for childhood and work is for aging adults. We often can’t find time for ourselves, let alone our friends, who are busy working mothers like ourselves. Or we moved into unreachable corners of this globe, far away from any means of physical communication. It’s fair to say, it’s hard to stay close to friends like when we were in college. Nowadays, it’s easier to travel, but more difficult to bond with others. “My Friend” asserts that we should not end let our friendships fall by the wayside. Even with physical distance and conflicting schedules, we keep our friendships close with kind words on phone calls, regular FaceTime calls, or even encouraging social media comments. Friendship doesn’t end once we become adults.
The opinions expressed by the guest writer/blogger and those providing comments are theirs alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Brown Girl Magazine, Inc., or any employee thereof. Brown Girl Magazine is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information supplied by the guest writer/bloggers. This work is the opinion of the blogger. It is not the intention of Brown Girl Magazine to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, or individual. If you’d like to submit a guest post, please follow the guidelines we’ve set forth here.
