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    The first time I used a laundry machine in the US, I was unaware of the concept of sorting. So of course that virgin load emerged a bright Barbie pink hue! Horrified, I put the clothes back for a wash with strong bleach, but inevitably it just turned a sickly pepto bismol color. Unfortunately, in
  • Coral Raw Silk
    Photographs of me always take me by surprise. In my mind’s eye, and in my mirror I look very different. But then I shrug and turn away, it wasn’t important how I looked. Externals are just superficial, and I had known my special power was my mind. I was the intelligent one, not the pretty
  • 1990s H4 Bride : CA driver’s license.
    I got my first speeding ticket the day I got my driver’s license in the mail. I had unknowingly “pushed” an unmarked police car. But this didn’t prevent me from falling in love with the soaring freeways which stretched out for hundreds of miles in smooth glorious splendor.. At first, I armed myself with bus
  • 1990s H4 bride: That first “Aunty”
    For the first 22 years of my life, the word Aunty was used for all older women family friends or acquaintance, a tacit honorific used for the social collective of older, usually married, women who vigilantly enforced the community rules. It brought to mind a plump, lipsticked, sari wearing 30-50 year olds gossiping over chai
  • 1990s H4 Bride: Letters From Home
    All the recent #layoffs reminded me of the anxious years I spent as a #H4bride. It was a different time, but the vulnerability to abrupt dismissal was the same. TLDR: Aerogramme nostalgia Do you remember these precious communications from family back home? Before there was email, Zoom, Skype, Facebook, Insta, Snap, & Whatsapp, this was