About 20 months ago, I lost my brother Ammar in a car accident. It’s been a heart-wrenching journey of soul searching and coming to terms with a reality that my best friend, the person who I could confide in about anything, the sibling I was closest to, is no longer a part of my world. Loss is something everyone goes through, and if you haven’t gone through it already, eventually you will.

In the months following my brother’s death, I received an outpouring of love, but I knew it was all temporary. The hype of the loss was only there in the beginning, and as the months marched on, it all slowly faded. I knew this would happen; I wasn’t surprised. But death can change a person entirely. People often say to me that they are astounded by the behavioral changes I’ve have gone through; they simply cannot reconcile that the Humna they knew before the April of 2016, and the Humna they knew afterward, are somehow the same person.

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I decided that I wasn’t going to let my brother’s life fade away in vain. I was going to make sure his legacy lived on, and that he would be remembered forever. And above all, I would use Ammar’s departure from this world to change everything I didn’t like about myself. I decided that I wasn’t simply going to be nice to others. I was going to offer my best self even if it required a little more effort, even if it means I have to smile when I don’t want to and if I encourage and uplift others when I’m too emotionally drained. Because truth be told, I wasn’t my best self before I lost Ammar.

It started from simple things to greater things; from making my bed every morning to starting a nonprofit. This loss still hurts, but I knew that only my best self could uphold Ammar’s legacy. Ammar was a wonderful person, more than anyone could ever realize; he always said that if you’re the best version of yourself that you could ever possibly be, life will just fall into place. He was a teacher that so many kids looked up to. He mentored kids from troubled homes of abuse while also being their teacher. He taught calculus, computer science, linear algebra, differential equations, and the Holy Qur’an. His students viewed him as more than just their teacher; they sought comfort in him. He was admired by so many and his loss is still felt by our community.

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I could never even be half of the wonderful person Ammar was, but I took his principles to heart. Being my best self-was quite the effort, but Ammar was right. It worked. The Universe works in mysterious ways, but I can confirm that it actually worked. All of the wrong people slowly faded out of my life – some deliberately filtered out. The most sincere people stuck around and, astonishingly, just the right people landed in my lap.

When I pursued my mission of starting a non-profit in my brother’s honor, I was making a giant move from Texas to Arizona. There I met my lawyer, Raees Mohamed. He knew about the odds that were stacked against me and worked his tail off to materialize my brother’s legacy into a nonprofit. Shortly afterward, the two friends who stuck by my side after all of the hype surrounding my brother’s death had faded, agreed to help me in my mission. Hiba Alkhadra and Sara Bawany poured their heart and soul and proactively took on the mission as if it was their own. My web developer, whom I’ve never even met in person, Faraz Hemani, took on the project as if he had something to gain from it when he actually didn’t. I never knew that as soon as I became the best version of myself, the universe handed me the most wonderful people, who were proactively engaged in my making my dreams come true, without any incentive.

[Read related:5 Lessons I Learned From Surviving Trauma]

I’ll never have my brother back, but I now understand why he had to leave. Like I said, the universe works in mysterious ways; like clockwork, the gear on the left doesn’t touch the gear on the right, yet when it turns, the right gear also turns. Ammar had to go because in his death, a nonprofit was born that would help refugees and the underserved obtain an education. The Ammar Tariq Education Foundation reflects the same demographic of students that Ammar used to mentor. Ammar aspired to change the lives of children, those who were incredibly disadvantaged in life and refugees, for the better. I can only hope that he knows that while he didn’t get to complete his life goal during his lifetime, he was still able to achieve it.

Being your best self isn’t easy. It doesn’t mean simply asking someone how their day went. It’s asking how their day went and when they tell you they got the job, you’re more excited than they are. Being your best self isn’t just complimenting your friend’s poetry to her face. It’s bragging about her poetry to others, even when she’s not there. Being your best self isn’t just appreciating the people who work for you every time they get a task done. It’s showing them constant appreciation and not treating your relationship like a business transaction, rather, a genuine and human collaboration.

[Read related: #JusticeforFahim-Mourning my Baby Brother, Fahim]

It’s about sending a get-well text to your lawyer when he’s sick, and not being afraid to ask your web developer for homework help. It’s about going to that random girl who’s crying in the library during her finals and asking her if it’s homework you could somehow help with. It’s about picking up trash off the street even when no one is looking. Being your best self is being the change you want to see in the world, without any incentive.

By Humna Tariq

Humna Tariq is a graduate student at Arizona State University pursuing an M.S. in Data Science and Health Informatics. She … Read more ›

Photo Courtesy of Varsha Panikar

“After so Long” is a poetry film created for Simha’s EP, which is streaming on Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music. The poem was collaboratively written by Simha, a U.S. native, and Jae, who is based in India, during the 2020 lockdown. “After so Long” was recited by Simha and their parents. In 2022, I directed and produced the film through my studio, Star Hopper. “After so Long” premiered on Nowness Asia in March 2022.

By Varsha Panikar

Varsha Panikar (they/he) is a filmmaker, writer and multi-disciplinary artist from India. They are the co-founder of Star Hopper, a … Read more ›

Photo by Biscotto Design via Shutterstock.com

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.

[Read Related: Exploring the Endless Possibilities of who I am In the Mirror]

Ingrown Hair

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.

[Read Related: Reconstructing and Deconstructing our Ideals]

You can purchase your copy of NAKED on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, Bookshop, and The Black Spring Press Group. Follow Selvi on Twitter and Instagram. Don’t forget to check out her project, Brown & Brazen.

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.

By Selvi M. Bunce

Selvi M. Bunce (she/they) has written for academic and creative journals and spoken at diversity conferences and TEDx. Selvi currently … Read more ›

“I was the only one of my kind, so it was fitting I spent time alone.”

This line from “The East Indian”, the debut novel of historian and author Brinda Charry, stung as I read it. 

Growing up in suburban Connecticut, being the only brown face in a room has never fazed me. I was always the little brown girl in the corner with waist-length hair and a name that made every teacher pause, but the feeling of “otherness” captured in this line was something I knew all too well. 

[Read Related: The Culture Series Part 1: Descendants of Indentured Diaspora a Look at Fijian Representation ]

This feeling isn’t unique. It’s the same experience of many immigrants and first-generation South Asian Americans, and that of the main character of “The East Indian” as well. 

While a work of fiction set in the 1630s, the novel paints a very real picture of immigration and race in the United States today and the human need to belong. 

It is the story of Tony East Indian, inspired by a real person documented in the country’s archives as the first known East Indian in the American colonies, but who is otherwise a work of the author’s imagination and research. 

The son of a courtesan from the Coromandel coast of India, Tony unwittingly finds himself as an indentured servant in the plantations of Jamestown, Virginia at just 11 years old. 

He accepts “Tony” as his first name — though he doesn’t care for it — because a fellow Tamil once suggested others in the world would find his real name “too hard to utter.” Then he adopts the surname “East Indian” simply because it is thrust upon him when he arrived in Jamestown. The protagonist can no longer even recall his birth name, but soon, he accepts it as a thing of his past. 

Over the course of the novel, Tony lands at the center of scandal as he works to establish a new identity as a physician. All the while, he also struggles with isolation, prejudice and the challenges of trying to maintain pieces of the culture he carried with him from abroad. 

He is confused as to why Native Americans are also called “Indians” and many colonists simply label him a “moor,” a term used for North Africans or anyone with darker skin, with no context for India or its people in this new world. 

He, feeling disloyal to his “many Gods,” converts from Hinduism to Christianity, believing it will give him more credibility and a sense of connection to his peers. He begins to eat meat and spend time at taverns, all in hopes of belonging, and assimilating with colonist ways.

 

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As he comes of age and furthers his physician’s apprenticeship, Tony also begins to ponder questions of race and social class to no avail. He reflects: 

“I would talk to Doctor Herman and try to understand the reason behind white skin and black and brown and, more important, what greater distinctions of wit, sensibility, and soul the differences in hue signified. I read and was taught by my master the new ideas put forth by men of learning in England and Europe on the workings of the bowels, the brain, the blood; the causes of migraines, melancholy, and madness, but I never got closer to understanding the real meaning behind what they called different races of men, and if such difference exists in any profound sense that really matters.”

Overall, in “The East Indian,” Tony becomes a man. He learns of the world’s cruelty and its kindness. He learns to work, play, love, hate, scheme, grieve and care for himself and others. But, like most immigrants, he still longs for home. 

“For home is singular and unique. Everywhere else is but a stopping place, a bed in a stranger’s house, eating off plates not one’s own, an unfamiliar view from a casement,” Tony said. 

When attempts to head West and find an ocean back to India fail, Tony accepts that returning to his motherland is unlikely and resolves that he must learn to adapt.

He worries his love interest, born in the colonies, will not relate to him, for “her heart did not ache for another place beyond the sea” and also wonders what the future of his children will be. Nevertheless, he is never defeated. 

“I would thrive wherever the wind laid me,” says Tony. “[I] will be my own shelter, my landing place. Like a snail, I will carry home on my back, find it where I happen to be, make it from what I bear inside me.”

This resolution to resilience is one many in the South Asian diaspora may be familiar with, especially those descended from British-East Indian indentureship like Tony. 

Leaving or even kidnapped from their homes with little to no hope of return, thousands of Indians faced journeys fraught with violence, condemnation and injustice trying to create new lives and identities away from their homeland in places like Mauritius, Fiji, Guyana, and Jamaica. However, like Tony, they also found the strength and courage to survive and establish their own cultures and communities. 

While no details are known about the real Tony East Indian, Charry weaves a compelling coming-of-age tale that takes him as well as readers across three continents. 

The novel, like life itself, has fast and slow moments, but it is filled with vivid, historically accurate depictions of the colonial world and moving moments that keep you rooting for the main character’s triumph. 

It is this authenticity and compassion that makes “The East Indian” an invaluable modern work. There are no known first-hand accounts of the indentured or South Asian colonists in America. The only proof of the mere existence of many are the generations that have come after them. 

With several years of research put into it, Charry’s “The East Indian” serves as a rare realistic portrayal of what life may have been for these individuals; the hardships they endured, and the strength they embodied. South Asian or not, it is a rich history not only worth reading but sharing and celebrating. 

To learn more about Brinda Charry and her professional work visit her website. The East Indian is now available in print and audiobooks from all major book retailers.

Featured Image: Author Brinda Charry was born and raised in India before moving to the United States for graduate school two decades ago. She considers herself “a novelist-turned-academic-returned-novelist | Photo Credit: Lisa Arnold Photography

By Ramona Sukhraj

With a B.S. in Marketing from the UCONN School of Business, Ramona has made a name for herself publishing over … Read more ›