the more I try to be nonjudgmental, the more I see myself being judged by others.

question 1: why do people hold family as so sacrosanct? and not just their own but mine too, in their opinion of how important it should be for me.

situation: diwali. apparently being alone for diwali is the saddest thing people (south asians) can imagine. really? even if the person being alone is me, and I am not sad about it, but rather seem to like it, to be away from all of that exaggeration and noise and crowd, and over what?!

related question: why does an honest statement that you don't miss your family on diwali dismay people? why does it make them judge me as inhuman and cold?

question 2: religiously fervent people pity people lacking beliefs and look at you with shock and abhorrence. why?

situation: because I have a cartoon of hanuman on my office desk that is in no way derogatory but still a caricature of his mythological strength. and because I'm saying that this country makes one question the very idea of religion and although I still pray I don't know what the target of my prayers is.

question 3: (and I know I've said this before umpteen times) why do women who are also mothers consider other women - who're not planning to make a family or don't seem to care for those questions - to be less womanly? and why do they talk about kids as if its my duty to have some, as if I don't have a life if I don't?

I hope someday Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich will try answering those questions on Radiolab. till then this post was supposed to only say that I love what they're doing. their podcasts are not just informative, they make me feel like I'm there with them, travelling, learning, seeing for myself. and each is heartwarming, and in some ways a revelation into human life and existence.

"one is still what one is going to cease to be, and already what one is going to become... "

its been busy. I know that when I haven't visited online sales on loft.com in a long while. and although because I'm in texas where 'fall' just means the end of scathing heat, I can't say for sure I had time to realize that winter is just around the corner.

so what's been biting me all these months? literally speaking, a small family of bedbugs that I hope is vanquished and dead (but that still gives me bouts of anxiety scanning my sheets for aliens and lint). but more broadly, I really don't know.

I know there are a couple random movies and stories and the ubiquitous phdcomic on our lives, but its still unbelievably annoying how each one of us goes through the same timeline of emotions although all of us stubbornly want to believe we are special. so I'm at that point now, where I'm on the market and about to finish, and well you should know the rest without me having to tell you.

But I do believe I'm different right, and therefore you do expect me to tell you how it is for me.

typically in the last year and a half, my campus and department, my school and its surroundings and the people have become both too new (and different; I mean why are there thousands more students around and why are there houses and buildings coming alive where there used to be fields earlier?) and too unchanged (have I really been living within 3 miles of my first apartment for more than 5 yrs? and did I really tolerate all these people for so long without a reason?) for my liking. I'm having a second life and identity crisis (the first was when I moved two-three jobs before coming back to school here and realized I'd found my calling for then at least) where I keep telling myself that I'm good, but something inside keeps asking in return, "For what?".

and here's the bit that does make me different: although I'm hunting for jobs and making multiple people spend their weekends writing letters recommending me, I am not really praying for a job. or am I but because these last years have made me a semi-atheist, the nature of prayers have changed, unrecognized? maybe that too. but the point is, I find myself instead thinking of what else I could do if that job does not come. I could make a baby while still reflecting on my calling for the next phase of life. or write a book instead. or volunteer for something I'd admire myself for but probably lack the courage to do (or else there wouldn't be self-admiration).

and then today I find (on the internet, where else; I'm an antisocial PhD candidate with no friends remember?) a classmate who was working with me for a brief period of self-searching (probably also for him) 5-6 yrs ago. and he has since then quit the pretense of academic research and is lending his head to creating advertisements, and hang on, is also publishing his first novel very soon, after having had a short story selected for some Indian award! am I shouting, that could have been me?? sort of, but I feel his sketches are way better than mine, and I still have to see his writing. but I am searching out my window at that immaculate scene of suburban america and wondering if its time to take a U-turn yet again. its been a great 5 yrs but now its beginning to sour.

happy diwali, all. I must go get a box of those samosas home that beat anything you find in India (they have Mexican cooks in their kitchen and boy have they beat us to it)!