“You know, if you didn’t tell people, they wouldn’t guess you have a 19-year-old daughter,” I said to my mother as I put on my coat. We were going to pick up my brothers from school, and my mother looked beautiful. She had her hair down, styled to perfection, and a bright pink dress on. She looked exquisite, put together, capable of taking on anything. This wasn’t new. My mother always had the ability to both grab and hold the attention of any room she stepped into — a true beauty, impeccable with her words. 

 “I know, but I like telling them I do. I like telling people that I’m a mom,” my mother replied as she closed the front door. 

My mother and I were reflecting on a conversation she’d had with a new friend and how they hadn’t expected her to have a daughter in college.

As I walked up to my car, I drifted off into a whirlpool of thoughts.

My mother was 18 when she got married, and she had me the same year. It was a decision that changed the course of her life, and it’s something she was never keen on talking about. She went through the joys and agonies of being a new mother, a new bride and a new daughter-in-law, all in the span of a year. And my mother, if and when she talks about her first year of adulthood, speaks about how different it was and how it was a new experience for her every day. 

In retrospect, if I had to take on even a little bit of what she had to at such an age, I don’t think I would be able to carry myself as gracefully as she had. 

My mother juggled college and raising three children. Education was an important virtue instilled in her, and nothing would stop her from getting her degree — not a long-distance marriage that proved to be much harder than she anticipated or three kids all under the age of 10. Her dreams for herself always included being educated, whether that was through institutions or through self-teaching. She would tuck my siblings and me into bed at night, and I would fall asleep watching her study for a test the next day. If one of my school projects was due the same morning as a project she had, she would help me finish mine before staying awake to work on hers. If she had a weekend class, she would let me tag along. 

Her days started at dawn, hours before mine and from the outside, it looked like she balanced everything perfectly. 

I remember asking her if it ever got hard and if she’d prefer not to do it. 

“Yeah, of course it was hard. It was a lot of energy and time and strength and focus, but no, I don’t regret it. There were times when I’d be like, ‘Why do I have to do so many things at the same time? Why me?’ I had to do things for myself and for you guys, but I’m glad I did it.” There was no second thought in her statement. Her take was overwhelmingly positive, and it left me feeling inept. In fact, the act of comparing myself to my mother grew to become second nature to me. She was poised, unapologetically took up space and warmed rooms with her laugh. When she spoke, people would make sure to listen. I wanted to be like her, in every way. And this feeling of inadequacy seemed to intensify every time my mom would be brought up in conversations. Comments such as “She’s so young!” “I can’t believe she’s your mom” or “Your mom is an inspiration,” were ones I’d internalize. Was I less than because I was pursuing something different than she had? In terms of the propriety of women in Bengali society, my mother lived up to standards, she thrived under them. She got married, had kids and stayed determined to her goals for herself. She took on the responsibility of a lifetime, and though it was not always easy, she made it look as such. 

It’s a hard act to follow. 

I pride myself on being a hard worker with big dreams to go through law school and pursue a legal career, but the responsibilities my mother had to take on always seem much larger than my pursuits. On days I am incredibly overwhelmed with my course load, extracurricular activities or future grad school applications, it is easy for me to dismiss my struggles by convincing myself that nothing will ever compare to my mother’s sacrifices. Even if it did, I question if I look as put together as my mother always did. 

All of this produced a layered, complex and nuanced relationship with my mother. We are different, and we have different dreams for ourselves. 

It took time, and there was no singular moment that allowed me to realize that though different, our struggles were both valid. I had to grow up, dedicate myself to pursuing my own passions, not recreate my mother’s legacy, but to make myself content and immerse myself in experiences unique from my mother’s to realize that we were allowed to be different people. 

“Alifa, get in the car!” 

As I recollected my thoughts, I smiled. 

My mother continues to be an example of a headstrong woman. And even though it took drowning in her dreams for me to learn that I will stride through life differently than she did, we share the same strength. It’s how I know I’ll be okay. 

MiC Columnist Alifa Chowdhury can be reached at alifac@umich.edu.

The post Shared strength appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

Whenever my family and I return from an extended leave from our house, the smell of hardwood always fills our nostrils. My sister and I turn up our noses at it, and I promise myself to use the time I have left to replace it. Over that time, I work tirelessly, taking care of my family’s chores, of course, but also to fill up the house again: lining a pressure cooker with ghee, dropping cinnamon bark and cloves and coriander seeds, chopping onions to sauté, peeling and grating never-ending cloves of garlic and ginger, throwing in staple spices — like jeera, haldi and lal mirch — measured by nose alone, then pureeing some tomatoes to roast with salt and pepper and whatever protein I’m actually cooking. In no time, the smell of the hardwood goes away and a new scent settles over the house — or for me, a lack of scent. 

A different smell washes over me during my family’s weekly trips to the Indian grocery store, the accumulation of countless Desi foodstuffs being packed as densely as the shop owner could in his portion of the strip mall. That scent is familiar to me, synonymous with begging for mango juice and sitting on bags of rice bags when I wasn’t boxing them. In my childhood naivete, that Indian store was the only one that existed. Of course, this would be dispelled by visits to multiple stores in the Detroit area — these collections of Indian groceries were far more massive than anything I’d ever witnessed. The aroma was the same, however — from the quaint store of my hometown to the Patel Brothers in Detroit, all the way to Ann Arbor’s own Om Market — a smell that knocked me back to my rice bag seats.

Every time my family has traveled somewhere, we’ve always stopped at an Indian restaurant. My sister and I have teased this habit of seeking our own cuisine in new locations, but I’ve come to understand it more now. When you’re in a place foreign to you — whether it’s been a couple years or nearly three decades — it helps to find familiar food. It helps to take in the sight of foods eaten in my house’s thalis recontextualized in restaurantware, to flood your tastebuds with the flavors your parents made, to tear roti and dosa with your own hands and eat until every sense is full. Of course, you can smell it first before you see, taste or touch it, mouth watering before the restaurant is even entered. That sense comprises one-fifth of my reality but contributes even more.

Some aromas elevate me above my reality. In any house I’ve lived in, we’ve always had a room with a cupboard. Idols, pictures of gods and passed loved ones, flower wreaths, religious texts and, of course, incense sticks are all arranged together. The cupboard shrine was built before a temple was built in our area, but we still use it, lighting that incense every Sunday so that the room they live in is dedicated to the divine aroma of our gods. Every Sunday, that incense elevated me to somewhere beyond this room with a cupboard we’ve packed religious memorabilia in. Since I’ve moved out, I haven’t been able to take in that earthly perfumed fragrance as often. Any time it’s lit now, I ascend again.

One night I was biking through my hometown, closer to the downtown area, and in a flash, some odors struck me in combination, like vague burning smells and the exhaust of traffic but they weren’t odorous to me though — the urban scents of my parents’ motherland. Across all the time and space from my last visit, I could almost fill in the vendors and cuisine and temples stuffing the city my parents grew up in. Pausing for a second, I closed my eyes and ears to take as much of it in as I could, as slightly damaging to my lungs it might be. These scents all blend together for me: a city whose smell I can still remember, the packed scents of Desi grocers’ wares, cooked until fragrant in an American restaurant’s kitchen, some served as prasad from the cupboard under the smoke of incense, all wafting through my house as an aroma I can’t ascertain because I grew up in it. They’re all wrapped in the scent of my family’s hugs. They smell like home.

MiC Columnist Saarthak Johri can be reached at sjohri@umich.edu.

The post गन्धतत्त्व appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

Bibi. 
Bibi yangu.
My Grandmother. Her Tree. 

Bibi’s tree is yet to be a tree . . . but it is a tree to me.

A plant that is supposed to reach her God. 
A plant that we water, so it grows. 
A plant that we pray over hoping it protects her. 

Even if it never reaches even two ft tall.
It is a tree to me. 

The word plant isn’t enough.
A plant is so fragile. 
A plant is not worth the faith we have in its protection. 
A plant will whither. While a tree will thrive. 

A tree will keep growing towards her God. 
A tree will surpass the limits of the grave it's planted in. 
A tree signifies my Bibi much more than any plant could. 

My Bibi’s name was Salma. Peace.
Her name, just like her tree, means peace. Means safety. Means security. 

When I think of her tree, that is what her tree is to me. 

MiC Columnist Iman Jamison can be reached at ijamison@umich.edu.

The post Bibi’s Tree appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

This semester, I traded in my aforementioned chronically open Google Docs tab for a chronically open Spyder file. Lo and behold, in my attempts to become a Renaissance woman, I took a coding class! As my senior year capstone!

After a long day of asking whichever unlucky person who happened to mention knowing Python for help ending with my roommate Grace, she mentioned one of the most thought-provoking guest lectures she had ever attended in her SI 430 class, given by Prof. Mustafa Naseem. Within five minutes of her summarizing his lecture, I found a new role model, undeniably furthered by the coincidental fact that Naseem is Pakistani like I am. The first time I recognized I wanted to pursue a purposeful career was when I visited Pakistan: Seeing the disparity in living conditions between my relatives and the children we passed in clothing markets and hearing about a brother and sister picking up a half-eaten mango off the street to eat have permanently altered my perception of what my priorities in life should be. Learning of the creative approaches Naseem took to tangibly dismantle patriarchal standards in Pakistan expanded the realm of possibility to me in terms of how to use tricks of the trade for societal progress. Thus, coincidentally on the last day of International Women’s Month, I planned out my final article for Michigan in Color. As a section with the mission of utilizing narrative to facilitate social change, introducing the work and experience of Naseem to our readership will hopefully expand the spectrum of how readers can work towards propelling social progress in their own pursuits. 

Even within our initial email interactions to set up an interview time, it became clear that Naseem is a natural facilitator. He was eager to read my previously written articles, connect me to social impact opportunities and further discuss possible opportunities after our interview. During our Zoom conversation, every so often he’d pause to check on Milo, his sister’s dog who he was babysitting at the moment. Milo clearly had a thriving social life; Naseem once even paused to set up his playdate with a friend’s dog later in the day. It became immediately clear to me that family is an integral part of Naseem’s life, not just as an overarching concept but as a day-to-day engagement. In asking him about his driving force to work in the intersection of social impact and technology, he instantly cited his father as his primary inspiration, pointing to a photo of him on Naseem’s desk. As a family physician running his own private practice, Naseem’s father cross-subsidized medical costs, offsetting the price difference of affordable medicines offered to lower-income Pakistanis by selling at higher costs to insurance companies. 

“Before the words social impact and social entrepreneurship were coined, he didn’t charge for prescriptions” Naseem said. “It’s good when you’re able to contribute on the side with volunteering, but I think I’d want to be able to do this 40 hours a week and get paid for it. And that inspiration comes from my dad.”

Currently, most of Naseem’s work is based in Pakistan and is largely intervention-based, providing strategies to mitigate and address pressing issues. 

“When I’m trying to cause behavior change, I want to do it in a place where I feel like I understand the landscape (…) and with communities where I have a perspective,” Naseem said.

It all started with his involvement in vaccination efforts to eradicate polio, a disease that Pakistan was working to eliminate for good. Ultimately, a large reason that Pakistan’s polio eradication campaign faltered into failure was vaccine hesitancy. Naseem had noticed trends of this phenomenon while working at a vaccine delivery service. 

“I quickly came to realize men had a big say in child health. If a mother was declining vaccination, oftentimes it was like ‘iske abbu ijaazat nahi de te,’ or his father is not okay with this,” Naseem said. “So we need to start influencing the man.” 

Alongside one of his colleagues, Sacha Ahmad, their team came up with SuperAbbu, meaning Superdad. SuperAbbu serves as a health hotline for current and prospective fathers to ask accredited doctors questions about maternal and child health and share their own stories. “The idea was to get men more involved in pregnancy and childcare,” Naseem said.

Initially, naysayers thought that this service would be unutilized — no man in Pakistan would see the need. However, Naseem’s team came to realize a wholly different reality: Since fathers weren’t allowed in the gynae wards, they usually waited outside as their wives got checkups. 

“Men were interested, but they just didn’t have access,” Naseem said. 

After launching SuperAbbu, the service was inundated: 30,000 total calls from 20,000 users, asking questions ranging from preliminary information about pregnancy itself to how they could best help their wives throughout the process. Evidently, while access to information had been stifled, demand had been pent up. 

“Part of my work is influencing men to be better partners, better parents, and better fathers,” Naseem said. “The other part, as I quickly realized, (relates to) social determinants of health. Seventy percent of our well-being is determined not by our genetic makeup or by the quality of care we have access to, but the environment that we are in.” 

So Naseem came to understand that, in addition to expanding access to quality care, he needed to address social determinants of health.

According to the World Health Organization, social determinants of health include the conditions where people “are born, grow, work, live and age,” as well as the broader forces and systems at play in one’s everyday lives, including political, economic and social policies, norms and systems. Interestingly, recent research has shown that these social determinants may be even more important than quality healthcare or good lifestyle choices. As an example, Naseem outlined potential negative effects of racism in one’s daily life. 

“If you’re at work dealing with microaggressions, it increases your stress levels, which increase cortisol levels, which leads to heart attacks,” Naseem said. “Similarly, if you’re a woman living in a patriarchal country and there are limits to your freedom of movement or if you’re in an abusive relationship, it impacts your health.” 

Particular to certain communities in Pakistan, the latter condition is unfortunately not so uncommon. As a diaspora-hyphenated-Common-App essay Pakistani American, I’ve always hesitated to characterize my family’s homeland as a country with the stereotypes it’s often associated with, but I assume and hope that the readers of this article are nuanced thinkers who don’t jump to hasty generalizations. Associating Pakistan with patriarchal standards isn’t meant to be normative or in favor of Western cultural superiority, but simply descriptive in terms of the lived experiences of many women who’ve had encounters within that realm. As readers and writers with hyphenated identities that are split between the East and West, it’s a tough line to tether: How much do we portray incessantly positively in a way that doesn’t delve into posing as progressive liberal “we’re just like you” Westernized mini-societies, or how much do we critique without disparaging in the “America please save us, Homeland is actually accurate” genre? Honest cultural assessments can only occur if we step out of the zero-sum mindset of Western centrality. A critique of Pakistan does not mean an extra point for the United States, and vice versa. As a topic that my nerdy all-coincidentally-did-Model-UN-and-are-now-prelaw friends get into frequently, our conclusion is “let things be shitty … in a vacuum!”

Nonetheless, it’s no surprise that women in Pakistan are living under patriarchal standards. In the age of globalization and technology, these same women have found creative approaches to create community in navigating these difficulties. Where does a lot of this support reside? Facebook. Alongside his colleague Dr. Maryam Mustafa from Lahore University of Management Science in Lahore, Naseem set out to learn more about what he dubs “digital safe spaces.” I had actually heard of the general concept before through my mother, as she’s part of a few of the Facebook groups for Pakistani women herself. Essentially, they’re created by women, for women. Members can post anonymously or with their information, and all content is vetted by an overall moderator, who posts anonymous content messaged to them. 

According to Naseem, there are three things that happen within these spaces. To start off, users are able to get the weight of their experiences off their chest — when their stories are out in the world, it’s no longer their burden to carry. 

“The second thing that happens is you’ll start to see a lot of comments pouring in, and you realize you’re not alone,” he said. These spaces are filled with women who’ve gone through similar situations, so the collective support is tremendously significant.

 “And then the third thing that happens is you’re able to collectively brainstorm strategies or provide material support,” Naseem said. “We’ve heard things like this for abusive marriages: This woman wanted to get out of her marriage and leave her partner, but she was scared for her children’s wellbeing and didn’t have material resources. So somebody said, ‘Be ready at 11 p.m. at this intersection with your kids, I’m going to pick you up from there and take you to a halfway home.’ ” 

In that specific instance, the community also conducted fundraisers for this woman to provide her with financial support to begin her new life. 

“A lot of times, when you think of who’s an entrepreneur, you think of tech bros in the Bay Area, largely men,” Naseem said. “All of these women are creating infrastructures on the internet that didn’t exist … circumventing all technologies that don’t serve them and creating infrastructures on the internet that do serve them. To me, they’re entrepreneurial. To me, they’re founders.”

Like attracts like, and as Naseem says, “Once you start to create a supportive community, it attracts other supportive people.” He noticed this with the men using SuperAbbu: Once a supportive community was established, it became a virtuous cycle of sorts as users uplifted each other in their self-improvement journeys.

“This then normalizes behaviors,” Naseem said. “There’s tens of thousands of men sharing stories, (conveying) ‘Okay, I’m not alone.’ ” 

As a graduating senior, listening to the innovative insights of Naseem had me preemptively adding “look up how to take another semester” in my to-do list. The combination of passion for his work and sheer intelligence was so evident, and I can’t help but think we’re blessed as a university to have his presence. As a professor, he has an important goal for his students. 

“We have this mantra at Michigan, leaders and best. I think that’s inspirational and important,” Naseem said. “But it also then starts to paint a picture of brilliance here, not elsewhere. I want to teach my students that when you go work in these communities, just because the person you’re working with is non-literate or doesn’t know how to read or write, doesn’t mean they’re not intelligent. Just because they happen to be low-income doesn’t mean they can’t solve their own problems or come up with interesting ideas.”

Diminishing the maize and blue superiority complex isn’t easy, and it may not even be necessary. (To echo the intuition of a certain Victoria Justice, I think we can all be intelligent.) The embedded goal of Naseem’s upcoming course is to signify just that. Being offered in the spring, this course is called Humanitarian Innovation: Co-Design for Social Impact. Within the class, U-M master’s students codesign resettlement processes with Afghan refugees who will accordingly receive three credits from Washtenaw Community College. 

“They’re your co-fellows sitting next to you in class,” Naseem said. “Not people you need to go to and source information from, but as equal members of the team who are going to get a grade as well. … You treat them as equals, you don’t treat them as information sources.” 

A persistent and relevant critique of philanthropy and social impact work is that marginalized communities are otherized, being asked carefully curated questions for a few minutes and leaving the problem-solving to the Big Boys. There’s a sort of paternalism and savior complex with these well-intentioned efforts, and to top it all off, navigating complex cultural hurdles in looking to help facilitate progress in marginalized communities is not one-size-fits-all. According to Naseem, these hurdles can at least be partially navigated through the concept of buy-in, an example of which is the new reflective journaling app for men that he’s working on with students at LUMS. The distinguishing factor of this app is that its prompts would borrow from Islamic concepts, namely muraqabah and muhasabah, the former methodology encouraging self-reflection on one’s closeness with God, and the latter methodology promoting reflections on how to work on one’s shortcomings to align with their religious morals. It’s no surprise that reflection and community are two of the major modes of facilitating behavior change, and Naseem’s work operates within the modality of cultural contexts, providing a transitory ease of sorts for individuals who utilize these innovations. There’s a sense of intimidation with something Other, and many of the benefactors of his technologies are everyday Pakistanis who quite simply would utilize a platform more if it related to their closely held values. The term “cultural competency” doesn’t do Naseem’s innovations justice, and I think their brilliance lies in their nuance: No behavior-changing solution is one-size-fits-all, but complicated problems don’t negate their worthiness of being addressed.

Undeniably, it is difficult to even get the opportunity to address them. Speaking for myself as a student trying to work in the realm of social impact, pathways are sparse. 

“Every student I end up working with wants to be able to do more of these things,” Naseem said. “It’s up to us to shape a society that encourages this kind of behavior because the demand is there.” 

I will testify myself that Naseem is the change he wants to see, as he spent a good portion of our conversation before and after the delineated interview portion referring me to so many resources and opportunities to look into. (Thank you so so much!) 

Ultimately, one could probably write a Harry Potter sized book on everything there is to learn from Prof. Naseem. As my loyal reader who made it this far, the rumors are not true: TikTok clearly didn’t impact your attention span thatttt much. Proud. To wrap up, I’ll leave us all with a descriptive and normative truth from Naseem: 

“I do think people want to do the right thing at their core” he said. “I think we need to align the incentives.” 

A tall order for our current society? Maybe. Realistically though, I think deep down we all know that a lot in our current world does not make sense, and many structures and systems are quite literally unsustainable. As a collective, humans are really great at ignoring things, but let’s be honest, that seven trillionth forest fire in California is not normal. 

To me, it’s inevitable that some of the best brains of our generation will have to work to solve society’s most pressing issues, and in a perfect world it would be easy to want to. Maybe the incentives don’t align everywhere in the world, but here in Ann Arbor, we’re blessed to be able to seek out opportunities to get involved and utilize our strengths for a common goal, and I hope that this article facilitates further involvement in Naseem’s important work and groundbreaking courses.

As a parting senior, a hill I’m willing to die on is that work you care about always excels. Clearly, here I am, four days before graduation and a semester after leaving The Michigan Daily finding my way back to writing about topics I care about. It’s undeniably important to integrate that intrinsic, passion-driven work with expanding your skillset (translation: my Python homework wasn’t that bad), but with inspiration from individuals like Naseem, maybe we can see more feasibility in a combination. Personally, I ended the Zoom conversation staring at my reflection in my perpetually-fingerprint-stained laptop screen, thinking “what are the odds?” The coincidence of hearing from a fellow Pakistani who did research in the university one of my cousins teaches at and another cousin attends, all spurred by a daily debrief with my roommate, seemed less like a coincidence and more like life’s little nod to maintain these tightly-held dreams. 

Message received! The pursuit of this tall order persists. 

MiC contributor Eliya Imtiaz can be contacted at eliyai@umich.edu

The post How Professor Mustafa Naseem is changing the world, one app at a time appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

I love “Frog and Toad.” In its simplicity, a story about the friendship between a frog and a toad provides its viewers with a guide to loving. No frills, fireworks or grand gestures — just sitting on a rock next to your dear toady friend. Loving was taught to me by two amphibians clad in pinstripe pants and earth-toned blazers. I devoured those stories as a kid and, while I may be a writer, I find love is best expressed through a reader’s lens, with the words of others.

Love is Sacrifice

Sometimes, I hope I’ll love people so hard that I’ll disappear. When I love, I give and I find myself wishing I could give enough until there is nothing left of me. If I loved hard enough, I think, I would cease to exist. What’s left after dispersing all the best parts of myself to all the people who deserve them most? 

“i killed a plant once because i gave 

it too much water. lord, i worry 

that love is violence.” 

– José Olivarez, “Getting Ready to Say I Love You to My Dad, It Rains,” “Citizen Illegal”

Love is Effort

I don’t think you must be good to be loved, but sometimes I do think I must be flawless to love. Everyone who deserves love deserves it in its highest form, at least from me. And so I give all the love that I can! Unfortunately, it seems I’m unable to receive it.

Other times I find myself begging others to leave me. I don’t need your energy. Don’t waste it on me! Choose yourself! I forget that to be loved by someone is to carry a piece of them with you and to choose yourself you must choose all those you love, including me.

Love is SICK

When you’re sick, you think accepting love might be the most useless act in the world. What a waste of love to be bestowed upon someone who can’t even figure out how to survive properly! You also think that if there isn’t enough of me to keep me going, there is at least enough to give to everyone else. Make them whole.

This is, of course, a flawed line of thinking. Everyone dies. It’s unfair of me to restrict others just because I might pass early; who am I to limit the lengths of their own loving? But I am sick and with that comes the headache of realizing you are a headache. When people love you and you are sick you either tell them and bear the weight of their stifling pre-grief or you don’t and lie by omission.

Love is Enduring

As a child, I’d sit on my windowsill and wave to the dollar store across the street, my small body tucked under the heavy curtains. The store was owned by a man named Jerome, but I knew him as Jerome-call-me-Jerry-actually-wait-that’s-Uncle-Jerry-to-you-kid. He’d gift me free Better Made chips and Faygo whenever I crossed over to say hi because “you only turn 6 and 43 days old once!” What a privilege it was to witness first-hand the kind of people overflowing with affection to give. I didn’t catch on to his subtle signals of love at the time. I was an angry child. Being angry makes you believe you are the antithesis of loving until you discover the existence of apathy. Like this, you determine love can be violence. I know now that one cannot lack love if one cares enough to rage.

Love lives in scarcity and in siblings — both of which are one and the same, if you think about it. You can always find a new friend or spouse. Siblings, on the other hand, don’t grow on trees. Only with them can you find enduring life-long relationships, the kind where you feel just as comfortable laying your head on their shoulder as they feel swatting it away in mock annoyance.

Love is grief; mourning the overflows of affection with nowhere to go after the passing of their target. It’s an aching reminder of all that was had, savoring its transitory warmth. To be grieved is to have your existence proved; an affirmation of the tangible nature of love left behind.

Love is Creation

Love is creation. We’re here, aren’t we?

Finally, a lesson learned not from a book but from my mother: Love is obligation — something in spite and not despite. To love is to rest in the belief that they will be there at every turn.

Columnist Huda Shulaiba can be reached at hudashu@umich.edu.

The post Loving appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

mumbai is loud
humming with squawks, honks and shouts
but noises blend
into sounds of laughter, banter and bhajans

mumbai is smelly
bearing odors of sewage, cows and smoke
but smells turn aromas
of vada pavs, pakoras and kebabs

mumbai is chaotic
the traffic incessant, trains crammed
but no day is the same
the commotion inviting, spontaneity intoxicating

mumbai is serious
people move with purpose, rushing to get places
but for every adult is a child
playing in the gullys, basking in their innocence

mumbai is overwhelming
my eyes dart, my mind scatters
but as an artist
my eyes bewilder, my mind ideates

mumbai is rustic
she doesn’t walk on eggshells or put up a front
but beckons you
to experience her in her rawest form

mumbai is colorful
she doesn’t follow conventions or norms
but reinvents herself
her streets your canvas, people your muse

mumbai is loud
but amongst the noise lie sounds of serenity
with the crash of her waves and rustles of her trees
amongst the noise lie sounds of community
with the bargaining of her veggie-walas and greetings of her auto-walas
amongst the noise lie sounds of artistry
with the contours of her skyline and brilliance of her people

amongst the noise lies her
in all her cordiality and modesty
to embrace her chaos
and live a life of color

All of these photos were taken in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India in May of 2022.

MiC Head of Photography can be reached at abdewan@umich.edu

The post mumbai is loud appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

As spring flowers bloom, the Office of Multi-Ethnic Student Affairs has been offering an April full of opportunities to celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. With the second week of April focusing on the Pacific Islander community, MESA hosted this year’s annual Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month Gala at the Michigan Union this past Monday. Boasting a diverse lineup performing in celebration of the two communities, the event drew statewide collaboration from various university organizations including but not limited to the University of Michigan’s Spectrum Center, Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources and Related Sciences, and the Michigan Student Power Alliance.

Rackham student Wren Palmer, a board member of the Oceania Student Association and performer at the gala, expressed her excitement at how the gala allowed performers to share the culture of Pacific Islander students and create a welcoming atmosphere.

“For us, (the gala means) being included in a label that often uses our name but doesn’t offer us space, so we are really happy that they reached out to collaborate with us,” Palmer said. 

Before 2021, when the OSA registered as an official student organization, the University of Michigan also did not have a student group to represent individuals from the Pacific Islands and Oceania. To LSA sophomore Carly Salazar, a fellow performer, the gala served as an opportunity to give attendees a taste of her heritage.

“I am just excited for us to have a space to be able to share our culture and connect with other Pacific Islander students, not just here at (the University of Michigan), but across the state of Michigan,” Salazar said. “We just really want to create this welcoming atmosphere for them, show them that the PI voice is here at the University of Michigan, that we do matter, and that we do have our own space.”

After a land acknowledgment statement, as well as opening remarks reminding attendees of the importance of supporting the Pacific Islander community, the performance section of the gala started off with LSA junior Sanya Bhatia singing Hindi film song “Iktara” from the movie “Wake Up Sid.” The soothing, deep voice of the singer paired delightfully with the romantic message conveyed by the lyrics.

After Bhatia’s mesmerizing performance, the OSA danced to the song “Ulupalakua.” The hula, a traditional Hawaiian dance performed in the pāʻū (wrapped skirt), provided attendees with an opportunity to understand the many dimensions of Pacific dance traditions as performers danced barefoot and inserted chants throughout the song.

A series of Asian American student organizations also performed to celebrate their community’s rich heritage, influence and contributions. rXn, a dance group under the University’s Chinese Student Association, performed both traditional Chinese dance and modern American hip hop, featuring an array of props including swords, umbrellas, fans and flags. 58 Greene A Capella, an all-gender a cappella group, also introduced an enjoyable musical experience with the song “Fallin’.”

Following the acapella group’s vocal melodies, Music, Theatre & Dance alum Smarani Komanduri sang a song from the movie “Nenunnanani.” To close off the performance section, the Vietnamese Student Association sent a traditional Medley group to dance to the songs “Lắng Nghe Tim Em” and “Ghen.” A version of this dance was performed for the VSA’s annual cultural show “Dem Viet Nam” earlier this year, and attendees had a chance to see the dance again in which performers waved fans and ribbons throughout their dance.

The gala ended with an awards ceremony recognizing the efforts of Asian American and Pacific Islander students, staff and organizations to raise awareness of their respective communities, along with opportunities for photo ops and mingling. After the end of the event, organizers Public Health and LSA junior Amber Wei and LSA Senior Dalena Hoang spoke on their philosophy behind the event they had planned. 

“We seek to acknowledge the regional, historical, linguistic, religious, ethnic and cultural differences present in the term AA&PI,” Wei stated. “Support for the PI community is essential, and as we continue to learn from each other, we hope to honor, uplift and amplify the Pacific Islander as a separate community from the Asian American community.”

As an audience member, I could instantly recognize the efforts that MESA and its staff were making toward generational change and healing. In particular, seeing audience members hailing from diverse ethnicities and cultures, as well as the strong passion of students who planned the event, made the experience all the more rewarding and special. 

MiC Columnist So Jin Jung can be reached at sojinj@umich.edu.

The post MESA hosts annual AA&PI Heritage Month Gala appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

I’m sitting on the bus when I finally feel comfortable enough to bring out my dollar-store blue wired headphones. I plug them into my non-iPhone and rest my head onto the semi-frozen window, playing a random pop music Spotify playlist. Closing my eyes, I try to distract myself from the lack of warmth generated from my slightly holey, oversized hoodie — the same one I’ve been wearing for about three or four years now. People at school always ask me why, in the middle of a typical cold Midwest February, I’m not wearing my “winter” coat yet. I always respond in a sarcastic manner that is something along the lines of me trying to argue about what exactly defines a winter coat and that coldness is a mindset to deflect from giving them a real answer. 

As the bus finally takes off to take me home, I think about why it is that I don’t have many friends at school. In an attempt to avoid questions like this and other intrusions into my personal life that could reveal more about me, I’ve responded to classmates who ask me stuff in what I thought was a joking, sarcastic manner. Now as a junior, though, I’ve come to learn that people just think I’m weird. I would disagree with them and try to communicate how I’m just a product of my environment. Sometimes I’d point out how their definition of someone being “weird” is probably classist, racist and other -ists I don’t feel like writing out, but I realized that this would probably make them like me even less.

I bet you’re thinking that I have to have some friends — everyone knows that there’s always a weird kid friend group in high school. Sorry to disappoint yet another person, but I haven’t had the chance to be a part of a friend group. Yeah, I’ve made the occasional class friend, but they never stick. With less than a year and a half of high school left, I’ve given up on trying to fit into the social hierarchy of my school. I’m tired of getting excited about someone talking to me in class just to find out that they never had any real intentions of getting to know me. They’re usually only using me for homework answers or to do their in-class Spanish worksheet. Being one of the only Hispanic students in my Spanish 3 class, I’ve come to learn that my classmates aren’t inclined to talk to me, either because I’m wearing one of my only six permanently stained shirts or an unintentionally ripped pair of jeans or just because of my brown hair, eyes and skin. They see my traits that are different from theirs, assume I speak Spanish, hit me with the friendly “Heyyyy,” chat me up a bit, then boom, ask me to conjugate ser or something. This always confuses me because if I was a Spanish genius I would’ve already taken AP. But that’s not even worth discussing considering I’m not even fluent. 

My bus stops in front of the rusted stop sign in front of my apartment complex. Somehow the mint green painted walls with brown stains randomly scattered throughout kind of blend into the depressing gray backdrop that is the winter sky. Though my building isn’t the prettiest, it definitely feels like home for me. Here, I have my own room (rare for people like me) and Wi-Fi, free from the judgment of others. Most of the time I’m alone, too, which is nice. Having no friends is a perk, especially when you always have something to study. I’ve come to learn that loneliness can be filled with reading, writing, math, history, science and literally any other subject. It’s a pretty cool way to distract yourself from your bad social and family life. It’s an escape, a reason to dive into a new world. I know this could pay off in the future, too. Having straight As and a good ACT score is what I hear the white people talk about as a necessity for college. Most of them have also seemed to start their own non-profit funded by their parents to help their applications, but I’m not so worried about starting that anytime soon. Moving away would be fun and would feel like a new start, which is something that I deserve. College in the movies looks so awesome, yet deep down I know it probably isn’t a reality for me given my mom’s status of being a cashier at the local fast food place that exclusively sells shrimp. Today is Tuesday, so she works the afternoon and night shifts. More alone time!

I open the door 20C and have my daily thought about how I was destined to live in this apartment. I was born on the 20th and my last name starts with C! I have many thoughts like this throughout the day. If you couldn’t already tell, being lonely means having to constantly think about something — even if it’s as ridiculous as thinking fate destined me to live in poverty through an apartment that shares the same number as the random day I was born on and coincidentally the same last name as my father. It would be cool if my dad lived here but I don’t think that would’ve ever been possible given the last time I saw him was when I was four and a half months old (according to my mom). Living with my mom is cool though. I think she provides enough and she gives me way more space than I already need. I hear people at school talk about their crazy helicopter parents knowing their teachers’ names, asking about their grades and making them their lunch for school. My mom is not that type of mom. If she’s not at work, she’s at some mysterious location doing something I probably don’t want to know about with someone I would be scared of. I think I get my annoyance of others from her. When I ask her questions about her life, she refuses to answer and deflects by giving me some sarcastic and ridiculous answer that will make me laugh. This is what I love about my mom. Despite her bad decision-making, I know she tries to find joy in life. She’s always on top of the bills, which is the most important thing, and she knows how to have fun outside of work. 

I turn on the pee-colored yellow overhead kitchen light as I walk in and sit at the table. I take out my school-issued computer and set it on the sticky and loud plastic sheet that, according to my mom, protects the one-of-a-kind handmade tablecloth she found at a garage sale a couple of years ago. She tells me that it’s probably a Van Gough or something (even though it’s pretty well known that he was famous for painting and not knitting or crocheting or whatever technique was made to use the table cover) and that one day it’ll sell for like a million dollars at one of those “Going once! Going twice! Sold!!!” fancy auctions. As I start up my computer, I look at the clock and calculate that I have four more hours until 8:30. In case you were wondering, 8:30 is my time to relax and lay in my bed for about two hours before I usually fall asleep. Getting yourself to do homework and study can be hard, but with a reward system like mine, it makes getting to 8:30 feel awesome. In just four hours, I’ll be able to grab a Nutty Bar, run to my room, change out of my annoying school clothes into comfier ones, and turn my phone off of Do Not Disturb. There will probably be no notifications waiting for me, but I can spend the next two hours doing my daily social media rounds. 

I open Google Classroom and look at my homework assignments for the next day. Tonight is going to be an average homework-load day. I have AP Gov, Psych and Lang readings to do and a couple of pre-calc problems to finish. I’m looking forward to the chapters I have to read because I’m going to feel smarter and better about myself when I finish. Even better, too, is that if anyone ever brings up the Supreme Court, asks what the amygdala is or wants my opinions on Kafka, I’ll not only have the opportunity to talk to someone but I’ll also sound cool and smart doing it. This is also another opportunity for me to be distracted from the realities of life. My bus rides home are always really tough on me because I’m forced to drive past McMansions worth hundreds of thousands of dollars with a smiling nuclear family and expensive dog inside. I try not to always be so condescending and mean but sometimes I can’t help to think how unfair it is that I was destined to apartment 20C, which is right off the highway, and other students in my school are destined to live in an actual subdivision that is named Whispering Pines or something like that. 

I’m finishing up my psych readings when I’m rudely interrupted by my stomach growling. I walk over to my white refrigerator and open up the freezer section to see what frozen meal I am eating today. Today I am lucky because I get to have the last frozen pepperoni pizza — my go-to. Another reason why my mom is so cool is because, even though she’s usually not home to cook for me, she gets me everything I need to eat. Obviously she gets the food, but she also bought this rotating pizza oven. Not only does this thing cook the pizza better, but it also means that I don’t have to be scared of burning myself if I have to open the actual oven and touch the hot pizza tray with a thin cloth. This works for all of the frozen stuff we buy too; whether it’s chicken nuggets, taquitos or fries, you can put anything on there and watch it spin around. It’s pretty cool to watch, even though I don’t really understand how it works. 

I put the pizza on the rotating pizza oven and sit back down at the table. It’s about seven o’clock now when I once again escape reality. The loud “ding!” noise startles me and pulls my eyes off of the English book I was reading and onto dinner. I get up and look for the pizza cutter. Unlike some other utensils or kitchen tools, I know I’ll always find a kitchen cutter because we have at least like three in the messy drawer that houses the miscellaneous kitchen items. To the “average person,” that would probably seem like an excessive amount of pizza cutters. Having frozen pizza multiple times a week, however, means that having an abundant supply just makes sense. Imagine only having one and it’s dirty so you have to wash it. Or worse: you lose your only pizza cutter. 

After cutting myself two slices, I return to the table and fall back into my book. After an hour, though, I can feel my eyes getting heavy and my head starting to sway down before I catch myself and jolt back awake. It’s so unfortunate and annoying that after eating you always feel tired for some reason. It still confuses me because I’m pretty sure I learned that food was supposed to provide nutrients and energy or whatever, but I guess processed frozen pizza from the discounted grocery store probably doesn’t add much to my health or melatonin levels. I get up to get a glass of water that I pretend is coffee when I drink it, hoping that the placebo effect magically wakes me up to finish my final math problem. 

I finally finish but am still unfortunately stuffed from dinner, so the Nutty Bars will have to wait for another day. I walk to my room that is illuminated by red LED lights lining the ceiling. I have some posters up on the wall that I got from a couple of Christmases ago. I have a problem with the Minecraft poster that hangs just above my bed though, and as I walk into my room I sigh and grab more tape to hang up the falling corner. This is, at the minimum, a bi-weekly occurrence for me. Because I’ve had to tape and re-tape over and over again, the poster is starting to tear and my mom says I should get rid of it, but it does a good job of covering up the ugly cracked wallpaper around my room. 

I change out of my day clothes and into my middle school PE uniform that now works as a set of pajamas. I instantly feel at peace and jump onto my bed that is a mattress on the floor with a blanket I got for Christmas this past year. There’s only one outlet in my room and I didn’t want my bed to be in that corner of the room, so I bought one of those 10-foot chargers that charge your phone very slowly but can span across my whole room. I plug my phone in and start my rounds of social media. After being slightly disappointed, yet not surprised that I didn’t have many notifications, I then turn to YouTube and watch a video showing the process of how bubblegum is made. Before I know it, I’ve fallen into the YouTube hole and suddenly I’m learning about the history of Neanderthal migration at 10:30 p.m. I’m fighting my eyes from closing and falling asleep by now when I hear my mom stumble into our apartment, drop her keys on the floor and throw her body on the couch. 

I get up and out of bed to perform my final acts of the night. I walk into the living room and set my mom’s keys on a hook by the door that says “keys” in cursive font. I take her shoes off and place a blanket on top of her. Finally, I grab the glass bottle that is slipping out of her hand, pour it out, then throw the bottle into the recycling bin. 

I get back to my room and grab the remote with about 15 different colored buttons on it to turn off my LED lights. I turn my phone back on Do Not Disturb to hopefully wake up surprised to have notifications other than the one telling me I need to update my phone. I finally close my eyes and am left thinking about what new, better life I can dream of tonight.  

Former MiC Assistant Editor can be contacted at hugoq@umich.edu.

The post A Tuesday Afternoon: a fictional short story  appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

Content warning: mentions of violence and sexual themes.

I don’t believe in fickle things 
like gold
or fate
But my mother taught me how to listen
when the universe hums a soft siren song

How strange is it
I found you
and time seemed to stop 
the same day I lost my favorite watch

I liked dancing alone
But you never gave me a choice
Calloused fingers yanked me into your waltz
so fast I lost count

One, two, three
One, two, three

We floated delicately around each other
breaths bated
not quite touching
I twirled on my toes
it was dizzying
A thousand jittery butterflies
enveloped me in their sweet embrace

I cursed when the clouds darkened
You didn’t mind much (you welcomed the cool wind)
I minded too much (I missed the way the sun made your hair glow)
The real tragedy
was when the sky unleashed her pouring wrath 
Do you remember how quickly
we tumbled down that yellow cobblestone street? 
My right foot slipped on wet stone
You grabbed my hand without looking
as if your instincts were wired to catch me
when I inevitably fall before you

I flicked damp hair off your cheek
Your palm found home on the nape of my neck
and when our lips met
you laughed into my mouth 
It was funny 
How the rain stopped soon after
Almost as if its only purpose
was to urge your hand to grab mine

My touch was static
charged volts with violent desires
I drew back
to contain the sparks
You cried out
and placed my hand on your heart
You thought the electricity
would bring you back to life

But you never blinked
when I failed to thread the needle
every stitch incomplete 
The water spills past the dam, still
Did you want me to drown?
 
When our legs were entangled
and my curls splayed across your pillowcase
my battle scars disguised themselves
as marks of your affection
Purple and blue and yellow
On my neck
chest
stomach
in between my thighs
I didn’t know
I was a masochist 

I would bite your skin 
aching to show you
I, too, could play your games
The white handkerchief taunted me
I used it
to wipe the blood
trickling down my chin
I would let myself burn 
if that’s what you wanted
Rub me into your wounds
My ashes could be your salve

But if we were so vicious 
together 
Why does the wind scream in my ears
and push my body backward
so I stumble into your arms
once again?
What does mother earth know
that I don’t? 

MiC Columnist Dheeksha Krishnan can be reached at dheeksha@umich.edu.

The post What she knows appeared first on The Michigan Daily.

On July 13, 2019, Halle Bailey was announced as Ariel in the live-action retelling of “The Little Mermaid”. For many, this was cause for celebration. Black Twitter met the announcement with a sea of unbridled support. Fans of the alternative sister duo, Chloe x Halle, rejoiced. For we know, Halle has a voice that a certain sea witch couldn’t help but be envious of. Wide-eyed Black girls uttering “Mommy, she looks just like me” starred in an adorable array of viral clips.

Unfortunately, not all of the reception was positive. Angry groups of dissenters have taken to critiquing every aspect of the casting from complaints surrounding the brightness of Halle’s hair to her darker skin tone. My personal favorite baseless critique is that “scientifically” a Black mermaid wouldn’t make any sense. Allegedly, mermaids would have no access to sunlight and couldn’t develop melanin … Analyzing the scientific realism of a being that’s half human, half fish, and capable of breathing underwater is a job that not even Bill Nye is qualified for. Everyone has appointed themselves a jaded film critic and made a 23-year-old Black woman their sole target. Recently, the film’s second trailer garnered over three million dislikes on YouTube in the span of a few weeks. A #NotMyAriel campaign also surfaced on Twitter. Under this hashtag, you can find Halle being the target of racial slurs and countless insults regarding her physical appearance. Some users are even going as far as to edit white skin and blue eyes onto images of Halle as Ariel. While all critiques aren’t this drastic, a common complaint circulating has to do with Hollywood making a habit of “Blackwashing” white characters. 

Those who oppose a “Black Ariel” claim that the white characters they grew up with are being erased. A small, but vocal, pond of gingers are even upset that their redhead representation has been stolen, coining this phenomenon: “gingercide.” 

Be astronomically for real.

The idea that representation is being taken from white audiences is ridiculous. If white people are seeking to see themselves in the form of a Disney Princess, they still have an array of porcelain sopranos to choose from. Look no further than Snow White, Cinderella or modern figures such as Rapunzel and Anna (oh look redheads, you got another one!). Better yet, if you want your original white and fiery-haired Ariel, she is available to you at any point in time via Disney+ for only $7.99 per month.

Another common complaint is that whitewashing is never acceptable in the reverse. “Why can’t white actors play characters of color?” Well, they already have … There is large historical precedent in support of whitewashing. White creatives have cast white performers in “racially diverse” roles and perpetrated harm through caricatures of ethnic experiences for over a century.

Minstrel shows were the first uniquely American live theater productions. In the early 19th century, white actors donning black face, exaggerated red lips and coarse wigs performed stage plays riddled with various racist stereotypes. Decades later, actor Mickey Rooney played Mr. Yunioshi in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”. Mr. Yunioshi is an Asian man with artificial slanted eyes and an exaggerated accent. Mickey Rooney is a blue-eyed white man. More modern examples of this American staple include Gerard Butler (a white man) playing an Egyptian deity in “Gods of Egypt”, and Scarlett Johansson (a white woman) cosplaying as Asian for “Ghost in the Shell’s” two-hour run-time.

Whitewashing is a cancer that has pervaded performance arts for years. Not only does this rob minorities of the chance to see themselves on screen, it steals agency from performers of Color, bars them from telling their own stories and refuses them access to an inequitable film industry. If anything, with casting choices like Halle Bailey, Hollywood is only beginning to make up for lost time. These shifts in casting are only a small step in healing decade-old wounds and adding diversity to projects created in less progressive eras. Whitewashing has the exact opposite impact and only works to strip away the representation marginalized demographics have had to fight tooth and nail for.

Whitewashing also tends to interfere with the believability of narratives. Typically, the ethnicities of characters of Color are essential to their storylines. The Louisiana Bayou backdrop, central voodoo elements, and soulful blues music in “The Princess and the Frog” don’t work with a white protagonist. A white man being the king of Wakanda, an uncolonized African nation, wouldn’t make sense in any context. Contrarily, “The Little Mermaid” is a relatively untethered coming-of-age story, focusing on a fictional creature with zero mention of race. There is no vocal demographic of mermaids that will be audibly offended if they are “inaccurately” represented. Ariel is a blank slate. Rebelling against your parents or wanting to explore the world are not uniquely white experiences. If white children and white gingers could see themselves in a mermaid, they should have no problem relating to a black woman.

The beauty of an adaptation is the opportunity to retell a classic story with a modern audience in mind. On paper, Black Ariel just makes sense. For starters, the original film’s soundtrack has very obvious Caribbean influences. The musical number, “Under the Sea”  was composed with a blend of calypso Trinidadian music and reggae sonics. “Kiss the Girl” even goes as far as sampling Harry Belafonte’s song “Jamaica Farewell.” The story itself also becomes more nuanced with the addition of a Black protagonist. Ariel feels like an outsider in her world and longs to be part of a larger society that refuses to accept people like her — this clearly parallels the reality of many Black Americans navigating this country. There is always an underlying feeling of discomfort or invalidity associated with holding marginalized identities. It is difficult to truly feel a part of a world that was built through your oppression. Narratively, a Black woman begging to be seen in a land that ignores her existence is infinitely more powerful than a girl who merely wants to travel and trade her fins for legs. A Black child getting her voice stolen by a villainess white woman also takes on a deeper meaning with this reimagining. It’s no secret that Black music, style and aesthetics are frequently colonized by white people, and appropriated for their benefit. Am I reading too deeply into a story containing a magical belting octopus and a six-packed sea god? Possibly, but I’m not claiming these were intentional choices, just that they’re interesting to analyze and have the potential to bring new life into an old project. 

There is no better fit for bringing Ariel to life than Halle Bailey, the exceptionally talented singer, actress and Black woman. Halle Bailey does not deserve internet trolls and heated controversy. Halle Bailey deserves a relentless wave of “thank you”s. Thank you for ushering a lead Black heroine into the living rooms of countless Black children. Thank you for acting as a symbol for youth that are constantly forced to question their beauty and value. Thank you for letting the Black kids with starter locs or plaits reaching down their backs know that they too can be royalty. Thank you to #OurAriel for telling every Black girl in America that she can be anything she wants to be, even a princess and a mermaid.

MiC Columnist James Scarborough can be reached at jscar@umich.edu.

The post In defense of “Black Ariel” appeared first on The Michigan Daily.