I absolutely, totally love New York City. I feel like I have found my hometown for this lifetime. There is absolutely nothing like it. (My Back Against The Wall, Madonna: I Love New York, If You Want To, Me, Ethiopian, KY, IN, Not Going Anywhere Outside The City, Moved)
I came to Kentucky in Fall 1996 where I had a wonderful freshman year. I was so glad I was not in Nepal. Being Madhesi in Nepal is that tough. But then I had a record-smashing success in the student government and found myself face to face with the deeply ugly face of institutional racism. And it felt like I had moved to a different plane, but it was still Nepal.
I came to New York City looking for a hometown. Career was a secondary consideration. It is not like there is no racism in this city. There is plenty of it. There is plenty of racism, sexism, classism. There is poverty, there is homelessness. But this is also a progressive city, there is unimaginable wealth. Living in this city is like going into the ocean depths: you see all sorts of exotic life forms. You see prejudiced thoughts, and social patterns, and they guard their borders with tremendous intensity. You meet racists and internalized racists who express their racism with the passion of a freedom fighter.
The city is just so big. You often hear remarks like, you are so nice, you must not be from this city. And that is a size thing. If family is circle one, close friends are circle two, and so on, most New Yorkers, when they meet in person, are meeting people in the outer circles for the most part. Most people you see once and never expect to see ever again. They are merely passing. They are part of the landscape. When was the last time you were nice to an artifact at an antique store?
I have been so pissed off at the Madhesi plight in Nepal, if it were not for the Nepal democracy movement, I had no plans whatsoever to reach out to and get to know the Nepalis in town. I was going to go the Desi route. I am half Indian anyways. India is a dirty word in the power circles of Nepal. One of the best parts of coming to America has been the opportunity to reach out to the Indian in me. Kathmandu is not exactly the place for that.
When you get hit, you hit back. Often you get hit with words, not off the chart words. Plain spoken words, but tough words. New Yorkers want to know if you are tough. The question is can you think on your feet? You have about three seconds to decide and hit back. But you can not appear to be hitting. You must just speak like you were in polite company.
Being in New York City is like being inside a crowded Kathmandu city bus, socially speaking. There is only so much wiggle room. Bill Clinton said, politics is a contact sport. Well, New York is a contact city, it is a sport. Either you love it or you hate it. I love it. There is more space in Brooklyn than in Manhattan. Brooklyn is more residential, cheaper too. Costs factor in.
Class is a dynamic concept in the city, very dynamic. You get x-rayed. People ask you what you do before they say hello. What do you do? Where do you live? Are you taking the train or the cab? There are lawyers, bankers, and others. Some live in Manhattan, others in the other boroughs. Some people take cabs.
That cab part is amusing. Every place else in America you got to have a car to do anything. If you want to go grocery shopping, you need a car. So after moving into the city, I loved it that I did not need my car no more. I still have the car: it is all paid for, and it is not worth selling off. I just loved it. So it was a culture shock to realize cabs are status symbol. I don't get it. I love the sight of crowds in trains. They are so New York.
Classism is like racism. Classist comments are like racist comments. Or at least that is where I stand. But then when someone comments here, you don't dream of a civil rights movement: you find an ism the other person falls in, and you hit back. Like I was at this political event, and a candidate for governor in some other state was at hand, raising money, and a local guy, short, embittered, balding white male, asked him a tough question, slightly belittling. The politician shot back, the thing about New York, he said, is that "You are just so big," emphasis added. One white male hit another with physicalism. It was well deserved. It was give and take, fair game. That is the New York style. Have your barbs at the ready, because you sure are going to get hit. If you can't survive in the fast lane, stay to your right. New York is life in the fast lane. Cars are whizzing by. People move fast like cars.
This city is weird, this city is amazing.
"This city is an ocean," Krishna Pahadi said. I was walking with him after his event at New York University. He was dead on. It is an ocean with all the associated life forms.
This city has to be compared to an ocean, or to the Amazon forest. The buildings are really trees. Human beings are life forms. There are as many different kinds of human beings here as life forms in the Amazon.
I came here to cultivate a few business ideas, but the Nepal movement sucked me in. It has felt like a 24/7 involvement. And in the process I have had to interact with the Nepalis in the city, or at least a few hundred of them, with the knowledge you know the rest are there too, in the background.
One of the weirdest parts of getting to know some of the Nepalis has been their intense internalized racism. You bump into these people who are so clearly not white, but the weirdest anti-black stories and stereotypes I have heard have not been from the white people in Kentucky. They have been from the Nepalis in New York. It is as if racism is like radioactivity: it is in the air. They come in, they breathe the air, and somehow being American is being anti-black. You need the communists in Russia to be a patriot in America, and when the communists are gone, you find Bill Clinton and his wife. The blacks are commies.
I have personally been targeted. Obviously my reputation preceded me. I don't know of another Nepali or Indian or African who became student government president at any American college. And so there have been stories about me circulating in the Nepali circles that surprised me they were. But the internalized racists retell the stories in a way to side with the racist whites of the yore. Some are simply being Bahun. Others are trying to inflict pain on you so maybe you will feel the pain they feel on a daily basis when they rub against the glass walls and ceilings in the city that are racial.
I don't put up with that. Racists and internalized racists are mirror images of each other. They ask for similar treatments because they act so alike. Race relations are one of my specialties. But if you want me to understand your pain, you talk to me about your pain. You don't attempt to inflict pain. I can help you talk, I can help you articulate the pain. I can help you deal with it. Heck, I can help you attain the political empowerment that could be your first step towards curing yourself in the long run, but don't you be making racist comments on my person.
Okay, so I have been famous enough to make it to the tabloids before, as have aliens, the real aliens, but then I was also in Indiana for a while where the KKK is the most active of all places in America. I never lost sleep over them. They are just political reality. You too can become political reality if you so desperately want. You just will not be welcome in my personal space.
I have been at the receiving end of some real ugly demonizations, but then if you go by the tabloids, Bill and Hillary Clinton were at one point for years accused of murder, but that Whitewater and Vince Foster evaporated off with the end of the Clinton presidency shows the whole miasma was a political weapon in the first place, and both sides knew it from the very beginning. I did not put up with it from white folks, some of whom felt really powerful, cloud in the heads powerful, will break your back or career or both powerful, I am not going to put up with it from brown folks. And, by the way, you are not that important.
Okay, so I have had enemies. Would you like some? Come into the ring.
I am a political worker. I am gifted. I am good at what I do. I do it full time. I am a political worker like someone with a Ph.D. in chemistry might be a chemist. It amuses me to see people think the kind of work I do is just common sense, anyone can do it, but they will not say the same about some chemist. No offense taken. And you often bump into some bloke who feels like your entire political career lies hostage with that one person who to you is just statistical, but he gives that attitude. And there are political purists - democrats - who are so hung up on that one thing they stand for, that they do not appreciate someone like me has to listen to that one person, and a hundred others with divergent opinions, and all of them count, should count.
At one level, the whole thing is fascinating. This is raw material you are talking about. At another level, you do have to protect yourself. I see circles. Life goes on, and you just get more and more involved.
There just is something about this city. This is the capital city of the world. There are people here from every single town on the planet. I did not say country, I did not say city. I did say town. That's right.
And treat that cabbie with respect. You never know, he might as well be a freedom fighter with a national reputation.
Millions of New Yorkers are waiting to march to voting rights for themselves.
No Taxation Without Representation. Dump some tea into that harbor for me, will you? And get on with it, you are not white. Shut your mouth on racist comments. Keep it shut while you eat.
