some pictures from my first week

national museaum where
1) a 9th centuary brother cops a feel 2) A saw a monk pray at the supposed relics of budda

republic day (camera's weren't allowed inside the booth)
very eerie to have a ballistic missle roll by and have everyone around you cheer
p.s. this happened http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/8321117

went to the zoo

today during lunch in the garden, the geese were swimming in the swimming pool. a boy goose kept on trying to mount the girl goose, but the girl goose kept on trying to swim away. finally, the girl goose got to the edge of the pool, started flapping her wings and climbing up the side onto the grass. my aunt, the entire time, was yelling, "run, run away!"

fuck i'm in a mood. i need some haagen dazs, a blanket, planet earth, and someone who can make me laugh. too bad there's no way i'm finding those things at janpath market. except, maybe, the blanket...

jah hin!

I am a bit of a luxury whore. Show me a cardigan in supple cashmere or perfectly treated angora and I’ll shell out way too much money to wear it once or twice a year. I collect Feragamo shoes and spread truffle pate like it was peanut butter. It comes as a great surprise to me, then, that I absolutely detest living in a house full of servants.
I’ve just now begin to realize how much money my family had in India. The Mumbai house that my dad was born in is now owned by the forth richest family in the world; Ravi Shankar used to play for my grandmother’s dinner parties; our family vacationed on the island palace in Octopussy as a guest of the Maharajah. Awesome, but always so removed, like some sort of Atlantis filled with chicken tika masala and elephants. It’s hard to realize that my dad grew up with a staff of 30 while watching him pull down the king sized toilet paper package from Costco.
So visiting my Uncle Sureesh (now head of the Indian military…yeah) has been a bit of a trip. I loved getting picked up by military guards as I stepped off of my airplane and not having to wait in line for customs only to be taken out the side door to where a lieutenant was waiting with a military car to drive me to my uncle’s house. I like getting my room cleaned twice a day and not having to do dishes. It was even kind of fun to be waited on during meals. Say a word and it shows up on your plate within thirty seconds.
What I don’t like is how pathetic these grown men in their navy sweaters and nametags look as they cower while my thirty-two year old, snoopy sweater-clad cousin shouts at them because the table butter is frozen. I don’t like ringing for the box of cookies on the other end of the table instead of getting off of my fat ass and picking up the box myself. I don’t like these twenty and thirty somethings look like they aren’t sure whether words or fire will come out when I open my mouth to ask for a bottle of water.

being colored and shit

i first realized that i wasn't white in chicago. most of my life, i expected that i would look like Belle or the Pink Power Ranger when I grew up. Princess Jasmine was darker than I would ever be and the Yellow Ranger was just so... yellow. I read the Samantha series of American Girl because she had brown hair, like me. What I didn't realize was that only one of my grandparents would have been able to eat with Samantha at a restaurant.

Growing up in racially ambiguous Hawaii made me think that because I wasn't pure Chinese or pure Indian, I was automatically white. It wasn't until July 4th 2007 at Chicago's Sadle Country Club that I realized that I was the only non-white celebrating instead of working. I realized that I wasn't white. When I saw a Chinese woman I felt freakishly connected to her, like we were part of this secret society that everybody else, with their blond highlights and j crew sweaters, didn't even know about.

It's funny, then, that I arrived in Delhi last night after spending an unexpected layover in downtown Chi going to the Contemporary Museaum with my Aunt and Uncle and sipping hot chocolate with Gracie at Giradelli's.

So I left the heart of America for the heart of my unknown ancestors. Corny, yes, but true. While I've matured in western society on an island chain where 5 generations of my mother's family have lived and died, India, the place where my father was born and partially raised, has always remained shrouded in mystery (or was that pollution?).

I've read that it's foolish for anyone to expect to know India. The land is far too expansive and diverse to be understood by any one mind. But maybe, if I'm lucky, I'll come to know something else over the next 5 months, the missing piece of my family puzzle.

tomorrow

i leave for india
as usual i have nothing packed and am going to yanagi sushi

kate hudson, save the children, and australian shiraz

i am currently lounging on an extremely comfy bed at the ritz carlton kapalua eating a volcano spiced (whatever the hell that means) chicken sandwhich with crispy onions and drinking a 2006 shiraz from southern australia. life is both plush and tastey. an hour ago i was on an elyptical machine in the same room in which kate hudsen was performing calestenics. my parents are at a wedding somewhere and i am sitting on my ass achieving absolutely nothing without a pinch of restlessness or guilt.


guiltless? but how, kalei, after your vast travels to some of the poorest nations in the country? don't you see begger children staring, wide-eyed and emploring, at you from your 11 dollar strawberry smoothie that you didn't really want as you lounged at the brand new pool that was designed to look exactly like the old pool?


how? because, despite how plush and fabulous sweating off chocolate lavender cookies 20 feet away from movie stars is, my day wasn't any better or worse than any of the days i had in africa.


life in africa isn't so hard when you're there. i mean, sure it is hard carrying 20 pounds of water on your head for a mile. but at the same time, college applications are just, if not more, daunting. in africa, people stress out about having enough food. in the west, people with eating disorders stress out more about eating food.

i'm not saying that i'm not grateful to be from such an amazingly privleged life. fuck, my life is awesome and i wouldn't want to change a single aspect of.

i mean that.


and maybe my experience in africa wasn't as shocking or heavy as it should have been because i realized while power-walking through the slums of accra that soon i would be back at the ritz, but honestly, poverty didn't shock me like it "should have" (according to some people).

life for people in africa go on just as life goes on for students at punahou. both worlds have things more challenging than the other and both worlds have advantages. what those save-the-children ads on lifetime doesn't show are those dirty, half-naked kids playing soccer in the street all day, every day. juxtapose that with an asian mother who forces her 7 year old kid to practice piano for 2 hours after coming home from primary school and before going off to tennis and tutoring that night.

life in africa is hard, but the people there don't nessisarily know any other way. does that vindicate injustices of the west that perpetuate this extreme poverty? does that mean that we don't have any responsibility to end the common offences on basic human rights? obviously not.

well, what does it mean? honestly, i have no idea.