1001 Ways to Embarrass Yourself While Avoiding Injuries

In this increasingly neoliberal world where everyone is trying to run away from their cultures and roots, is it the pertinent move to migrate, metaphorically, back to one's roots? Should I date an Indian boy? Or more specifically, an Indian American boy? Plus, there are so many different sub-ethnicities to navigate, like are they North indian or South Indian? Are they Punjabi, Malayalee, Tamil, Telegu? Do you they even curry? Well, I'll let you know on the next segment of: Indian boyfriend??

Money is a many splendored thing. I spend time worrying about money like someone who cares about the planet spends time thinking about all the ways Mother Earth could combust or collapse from all the fucking terrible stuff we're pouring into her. I dream about money, all the ways I could spend it, the clink-clinking sound of coins dropping onto cold, hard marble-topped counters ringing in my ears. Man, nobody wants money like I do. I dream of holding it in my hand, the green dollar bills crisp and tight and smelling like Wall Street Greed, which to me, smelled like bagels and lox. It smelled like high-end sofas and shit like that. It's a pity when when Gordon Gekko said, '' Gimme guys who are poor, smart and hungry," he forgot the girls and he definitely forgot someone like me. I kept a copy of the Wall Street Journal under my pillow at night and I read it like the Bible. People around me always aspiring to be doctors to cure cancer, engineers and lawyers- sure,...

I'm so indescribably happy; it's as if someone has put me on the highest cloud and allowed me to glimpse upon humanity. Somehow, from up here, I can only feel tenderness for how frail and fragile we humans are, and ebullience at how perfect we are. How we can FEEL, and love and hurt and anger and sadden and then gladden our hearts again and again. I can feel the connection between my soul and whoever I am meant to meet, their happiness pumping vibrantly into my own bloodstream. How red and beautiful the union; and suddenly I am aware. Hyperaware of the world. I can almost see the light rays split into the spectrum, is he listening too? Can he hear my heart beating up-down-up-down like I can feel his? A breathtaking moment suspended in time and space, and all the anguish is gone. I love you, I whisper into the air, and I know the wind is carrying these soft words of love to his ears somewhere in the distance. The human heart has felt all this before, and still, every t...

Okay so basically I have so much to tell you!! I found out that Ling Ling is a jealous and super-fake girl, and her best friend Ursula is also pretty fake. Ling Ling is so extra but she calls me extra? Like waddafk? It's really weird because whenever someone gives me compliments she's always like, "What? It's just(insert denigrating statement here)." Like today during colour run everyone was complimenting my eyes and Ling Friggin Ling was like, "Oh it's just the sun." Like, BEYOTCH, the sun don't shine on you coz you repel light. Coz you evil!? And apparently, Jane told me that Ursula said that I repel dick?? Well, she's super fake and guess who's not going to help her barely pass her homework anymore? Me. That's who. On the plus side, which was a lot, roomie is back and it is lovely as always to see her and found out that R. the gappie might potentially be Jewish. According to Ursula, I repel dick so she thinks I have terribl...

Interestingly, she did not mind having an unfairly, unconventionally beautiful family. It made no difference to her, and in fact was beneficial though she was undoubtedly pretty but it was unlike the eccentric beauty of her brothers and sister. She was proud to announce to her friends, their presence because indeed for an ordinary person the mere presence of someone beautiful who is related has a positive beatific effect on that person, who possessed less extravagant beauty. She was certain that by pointing out her sister, Simran, she would too gain some of this benevolent halo-ic effect. Perhaps the beholder would see a similarity somewhere in there- the same curve of the lips, the same hollow of the necks, the tilt of her nose. It was now then established that she too was elevated. And wonderfully, with minimal effort.

She fingered the cross around her neck. Quinn Chan, the devout Christian, the most faithful, the good Protestant fundamentalist daughter- she it was who now had no faith. Looking at the bible on her table, she turned her face away and stared at herself in the mirror. Her once long, thick black hair had been cut short, close to her chin. It was now more fashionable, as Mr. Quentin said, her Geography teacher, longer at the back and short at the front. Like a horizontal upward sloping slash. She watched carefully the gap between her two front teeth, her pale almost purplish lips, her mole just above her chin that stuck out slightly. Where was He? She'd sat with Cosima, crying her eyes out. Her sallow hands clutching at darker ones, wringing them again and again. Where was He? Cosima shook her head, I don't know. I don't know. She'd always felt this inescapable sense of people leaving , always leaving her life. Johnny had left, and for months afterwards, she saw ch...

The heretic alone stands, innocent, Condemned yet with no blood on her hands- Who is guilty and who is just? God will not ask who did not cut their hair? What is so hurtful and cruel about your words that seek to damn and scald and wound are not your words themselves but the fact that they are coming from you. You who this apostate loved, loved so deeply too much sometimes that she couldn't open her mouth for fear that tears would fall out. The world outside rages in war and conflict and pain but the apostate's beloved ones are too busy sentencing This apostate for her sins. You are not a proper not a whole not a true Sikh how Can You be if you do not, it's because you do Not! Goodnight, the apostate says, I am going to seek something deeper I love you still, dear ones, I cannot forsake you And I am apostate Like you have forsaken me.

Go home, he said, with a glint in his eye, and a bat in his hand, begging me to disagree so he could take a swing, and by hitting me dissolve all his problems. Go back to your country, he hissed, with the weight of his words hanging in the air like a wall between us and it was painful to think that But for the shape of my eyes and the scars on his hands, we are the same, marked by the same stamps and regulations- We are both, for better or worse, Malaysian and we both sing everyday the pledge to die for king and country and in our own Perverse ways, we mean everything we say, and that is not a lie. Stop, I wanted to whisper but the scent of his hate choked my reply. Step by step, foot in front of another, I said to him, YOU ARE MY BROTHER, This country is as much mine as thine, This land of plenty is too my mother. He faltered, hand wavering, I back up, slow stammering, and we fall slowly to the ground crying for this land of our birth! Forever connec...