Faith, Hope and Love

I was invited to be the Keynote speaker by Farmingdale State College Multicultural Committee at their annual gala. Following is my full keynote.

Good Evening Farmingdale State College, members of the multicultural committee, students, faculty & staff,

It is my honor to be standing among you and to share something of my journey. Thank you to the multicultural committee for this honor. Thank you especially to Ms. Sylvia Nicosia and Mr. Jon Goldstein for guiding me through the process.

My name is Swati Srivastava and I am an Indian-American immigrant, a writer-director-voiceover artist, a former woman in STEM now a woman in FILM, a software engineer turned filmmaker, an Indian woman married to a European man. In other words I am someone who has learned to make her home in that little tiny “dash” – which is the symbol of a hyphenate identity, something many or perhaps most of us in this room also may call home.

As I was drafting this keynote, I happen to come across an old saying.

“It is said that in the final conclusion only these three remain: Faith, Hope and Love.”

And I thought that is a good theme for me to address in these times. Being a writer-director I communicate best through story. So I will be sharing 3 stories today on this theme that I think would of value to this community.

My first story is one that I wrote a couple years ago, on the 20th anniversary of 9/11; the day of the terrorist attacks on the United States. It is called “Go back to your country”.

Here it goes..
—
“Go back to your f***ing country” — the words hit me like ice-cold water. I stared unblinkingly at the speaker, unable to process the words directed at me. My face still wore the awkward smile it had when I had rolled down my window to better understand what the passengers in the car next to mine were emphatically trying to tell me. We were stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Hackensack River Bridge, New Jersey, just a few miles from the gaping hole and smoldering embers of what used to be the Twin Towers. It was Sept 14th 2001.

I have never understood why when I need them the most; all my witty repartees vanish like a fart in the wind! I am a writer for God’s sake; I should know how to be funny in the face of first degree insult! Nope, never happens. Instead I stared at the 5 Caucasian teenagers — 3 boys and 2 girls gesticulating at me as if I couldn’t comprehend their verbal bullets. They seem to take this as further proof of my being a foreigner who didn’t understand English, so they did what any smart person ought to do — shout louder at me! “Go back to your country!”

I remember feeling pissed and horrified and ashamed all at once. I remember my mind racing with several logical replies — “You morons, I am Indian, and no Indians were involved in the heinous attack last week” and “I worked my ass off to earn the privilege of living in this country and all you had to do to earn the privilege of shouting at me was to be born here” and “I am with you in this, I feel your pain too.” But, none of the aforementioned thoughts took shape in my mouth.

Instead all I did was quietly roll up my window. “They are just kids, and they are hurting for their country,” I thought. I could hear them still shouting at me — their entire rage directed towards one small brown woman, who looked like she might belong to a geographical area close to where the terrorists originated from. “I promise I will do as you say if you could just point out my country or the one you are so pissed with on a freaking map!”, I muttered to myself. Besides, how could they know where I was from — for all they knew I was born & raised in friggin’ Hackensack! I breathed deep and tried to tune out their clamor, forcing myself to look ahead, blinking away tears that had formed in my eyes for then unknown reasons.
I had arrived at JFK in the year 2000 on a bright April morning, a wide-eyed young woman on a decidedly one-way ticket, with a heart full of hope and a head full of impossible dreams. I believed, like so many immigrants do, that I was going to find my destiny in America. When I arrived at the immigration desk, the officer checked my documents, flashed a big smile at me and said “Welcome to America!” I will never forget how warm those words made me feel inside…ok, the dude was really handsome, so that may have something to do with it too! But it’s not the entire reason, promise! It really means something when the first person you interact with at the border treats you as a welcome immigrant, it validates the story of America; one that is broadcast on a loudspeaker by the Hollywood dream factory to the world, that America was made by the sweat & toil of immigrants, that it is a country of, by and for the immigrants, so hey you, keep coming to America!

Sept 11th changed all that. Almost overnight, I saw the mood shift and darken. People’s personal boundaries hardened. The rules for acquiring and renewing visas became tighter and more tedious. Potential immigrants became potential terrorists. Borders started turning into walls. Welcoming America became Fortress America.

I finally received my US citizenship three years ago — yes, it took me 18 frickin’ years of paper-work, fingerprinting, more paperwork, and more fingerprinting! I could have raised a kid all the way to college in the time it took me to get an American passport, and it felt similar, with its countless moments of pain & uncertainty such as one associates with raising children, only none of the joy!

As I prepared for my oath of citizenship, my own swearing-in ceremony if you will, I thought about the day those kids swore at me, and why it had stung so hard — besides the fact that they were frickin’ swearing at me! And I realized it was because the day I arrived in America, on that decidedly one-way ticket, in my mind I had become an American. I didn’t pine for my “homeland” as many in my community do and I didn’t ruminate on the possibility that I should return “home” to India. As far as I was concerned, when I arrived in New York that bright April morning, I had come home; that handsome immigration dude might as well have said “Welcome Home.” When the towers fell, I wept for weeks and mourned alongside my fellow Americans. It took those kids’ fury to expose to me how I could be viewed by others — a foreigner, an outsider, even a potential terrorist. Those tears I blinked away were tears of not belonging.

So, that year, on the 20th anniversary of Sept 11th, I plotted my own final comeback; my own “Return of the Jedi” moment- I am a dramatic filmmaker after all! It appeared that the world was hell-bent on mourning, and sure, mourning is appropriate, for reasons far too many to count. But, we can’t mourn everything forever. Instead, I decided to throw what I called a “Melting Potluck”, inviting friends of multiple nationalities, ethnicities and hyphenate identities. I asked them to bring a dish that represented their heritage and a story/song/ poem to share their own American story. Some of us were born here, others naturalized citizens, yet others still on visas or Green Cards — but we all belonged to the American melting pot. Together, we celebrated the American spirit of inclusion and resilience.

And I thanked those poor, ignorant, hapless, rude, hurting kids for inspiring me to do exactly what they had asked me to — “Come back to my country”!

—

My immigrant journey in America started as a Software Engineer with the impossible dream to become a professional filmmaker. Impossible not only because of how hard it is to actually become a professional filmmaker – especially as a minority female, and especially before the waves of “Me Too” and “Black Lives Matter” finally started changing things, but also because my green card application was linked to my job and would have been canceled had I given up my job to study full-time. So I asked my employer in New York to allow me to work remotely so I could move to California to study film part-time. This was more than 15 years before Covid made “Zoom” a household word but my employer said yes. So I packed my life into my car and drove cross-country to Los Angeles where for the next four and a half years I worked full-time during the day and studied film part-time at nights & weekends at UCLA, learning from some of the best professionals in the industry.

It took me 10 years to get my Green Card. And if you are on a work visa now – from India and certain other countries – it can take 20-30 years or even longer to get your Green Card. So, those who ask undocumented immigrants to “get in line” – I like to ask “which line”? No “line” is available for the vast majority of immigrants and any “lines” that are, have a wait time of 25 years or more, so immigrants remain stuck in a limbo. Our immigration policy or – lack thereof – has caused and continues to cause untold anguish and heartache.

I have to admit that I have lied to you, or at least not told the whole truth. I have shared my journey so far as an “I” when the reality was different. I made this part of my journey alongside my elder sister. My sister and I were two halves of a whole. We shared everything – our grief of losing our mom as young teenagers in India, our struggle to make our way in a deeply patriotic country, and our dreams; of flying to America; the land of opportunity, of studying film, of becoming the first “Sister Directors” the world had ever seen! We arrived in America about the same time, applied for our Green Cards together, made the decision to move to LA together and studied film at UCLA together.

But during our last semester at UCLA, my sister got ill and was diagnosed with 4th stage cancer. She passed away within a few months. My life ground to a halt. I lost all meaning & purpose. I battled with nightmares, depression and PTSD for years. I had thoughts of ending my life.

I do not know how I really survived that time, but finding my husband and making a life with him was perhaps the biggest reason. That and my young cousin in India who made me promise I would go on for him.

“It is said that in the final conclusion only these three remain: Faith, Hope and Love.
But the greatest of these is love.“

And so I could say to you that LOVE saved my life. Love allowed me, forced me to carry on. It helped me bear a mountain of grief and not buckle entirely. It helped me pursue the dreams of my mother & my sister and become a filmmaker. It helped me take all those steps that brought me to stand here today.

I believe the greatest thing we’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.
But what about the other two pillars besides Love? What about Hope and Faith?

This brings me to my second story of the day for you. It is called “A Wall of Hope”. Here it goes:

—

“Delhi Burning” screamed the headlines of a major newspaper. It was November 2nd 1984, and riots plagued Delhi, after the then Indian Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi was gunned down by her own Sikh bodyguards. Sikh as in the religion. When the news of her assassination broke, mobs of Hindus filled with rage took to the streets in Delhi, seeking vengeance & killing any Sikhs they came across. Two days after her death, most areas of my city were under total curfew as the flames of communal fire erupted in neighborhood after neighborhood. Before social media or the internet, it was hard to get news. All we knew was that there weren’t enough cops to patrol every town effectively. All we saw was the smoke coming off the fire raging in our very own neighborhood; a bus had been set on fire along with its Sikh driver. All we heard were the police sirens and the recorded voice on a Megaphone telling all families to keep a packed bag in case the situation worsened such that we had to evacuate our homes.

I grew up in Delhi in a moderate Hindu family. We lived in a predominantly Hindu neighborhood in an apartment complex with 6 flats in each apartment block. I was just a little girl then but I remember those days clearly – my elder sister glued to the TV for news updates, and my mother navigating the challenge of being the only parent in our home as our father was away on a business trip to the UK. I saw her watch the smoke from our balcony; her face grim as the reality of the danger set in, packing our evacuation bag and spending the nights awake & on-guard, yet telling my father when he made an expensive long-distance call from the UK that everything was fine, protecting him from further anxiety. Everyone alive in Delhi during that time breathed the air of hate & fear, with friends & neighbors turning against each other in every neighborhood.

We had a close relationship with all the neighbors on our block- except one. I remember all the neighbors except that one family meeting at our home that evening to discuss the burning bus; our area was no longer safe and if a mob showed up, things could quickly become lethal. The one family not present was a Sikh family. People exchanged their worries – some blaming the Sikhs for being the culprits, others faulting the lack of adequate police protection as the cause of the havoc and yet others shared what they had heard on the grapevine – Sikhs were going to take every chance to kill Hindus in order to take revenge on what was happening to their community. Everyone looked at my mother at this point – she was currently alone with her kids and living directly across “unknown” Sikhs. The day after the assassination on November 1st, a Sikh family had moved into the apartment right across ours. We had barely said “Hi” to each other when the riots erupted and since then that family had not opened their front door.

I saw my mother, who had been mostly listening till this point take a deep breath and say: “If we are feeling so afraid of the one Sikh family living in our block, just imagine how afraid this poor Sikh family must be to be surrounded with five Hindu families.” There was dead silence as people processed her words. And then came a pivotal moment in my life. My mother proposed writing a note signed by all our Hindu neighbors welcoming the Sikh family to the community and telling them that no harm would come to them as any Hindu mob looking for Sikhs would have to first deal with the five Hindu families that would form a human wall. I saw the faces around us soften as her voice of reason, love and hope resonated in each heart. My mother proceeded to pick up one of my notebooks and wrote the note. A few minutes later, I saw that small woman with a large spirit open our front door, walk across to our Sikh neighbor’s flat and slid the note under their door.

It takes courage and a deep sense of conviction in the goodness of others to do what my mother did that day – choosing love & hope over fear & despair, building a human wall of hope and humanity. And by doing this, she planted the same seed in me.

Through my work, my writings and my life, I have chosen & committed to be part of this human wall. As trained moderator and Director of Visual Media for Crossing party lines; a national non-profit & bridging organization, I facilitate conversations among Americans across our political divide, so we can all be reminded of our common humanity. And to counter the mainstream media stories of hate & division, I launched a video series called “Choose Hope”; featuring stories of regular folks sharing a moment from their lives when they or someone they know – like my mother – faced a situation when it was easy to give in to the status quo of fear, hate & despair yet they CHOSE to take the high road of love, hope & goodness.
—

HOPE – the 2nd thing that remains.

And “Hope” it appears, is on our collective minds. No surprise – having had enough of despair and discord, our hearts are organically turning towards & looking for ways to find Hope. Several bridging organizations are creating programs around celebrating “Hope”. And I was told by Ms. Sylvia Nicosia that the theme of this Multicultural Committee for the year 2023 also was Hope.

Through my 24 years of living in America, I have learnt that no one carries hope like an immigrant’s heart does. That is because no one leaves their home, their community, their culture & everything they have ever known to travel to a foreign land, without packing a suitcase full of hope. The American story is the story of hope because it is the story of immigrants and as long as immigrants keep coming to America, America will have hope.

I had begun to forget this. I had begun to get jaded like so many others, the spirit of hope inside me pummeled by the story of our divisions and hatred and fear. I had begun to lose faith in America’s promise. But having faith in something larger than myself is essential to my life, and is to most of our lives.

Which brings me to the final story of today called “The Jazz Club”.

Here it goes:

—

“I want –to- be a part of it. New York, New York” – A group of 20 something men singing the iconic Sinatra song was blocking our way, singing and laughing, a little bit drunk, but mostly high on life. One of them spoke to us in accented English, “it’s a great show, you will love it!” There were other happy faces around. We made our way to the entrance of The Jazz Club. A lanky man in his 40s greeted us. “Good evening!” “We would like to buy two tickets for the Swing show.” I answered. “Sorry, we have just sold out,” he said.

“Oh no!” I was so disappointed.

The Jazz Club we were at, is called Reduta. It is located in Prague, which is the capital city of Czech Republic, and which is where I was exactly one month ago. Prague, called “Praha” by locals, is not merely a city; it’s a poem written in stone, a melody composed of history and legend. Europe’s art & culture has collided for over a millennia in Prague; its history, art & architecture a rich tapestry of Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Neo-classical, and Modern threads. Hilter – so loved Prague, he wanted to save it for himself, so Prague escaped the bombing that befell many other European cities during WWII, its medieval center is still mostly preserved. This didn’t mean Prague escaped heartache. Prague suffered some of the worst Fascism and Communism in the 20th century, most notably after the Prague Spring reforms of 1968 were brutally crushed when Soviet tanks rolled into Prague and quashed all attempts for democracy for the next 20 years.

But Prague endured. Czechoslovakia, as it was then, finally found its freedom through The Velvet Revolution; a non-violent transition of power, one of many inspiring examples of what is possible when ordinary people engage in nonviolent civil disobedience and do not give up no matter the odds –something I recommend all young people to learn more about if they want to find more Hope.

What also endured is Reduta; The Jazz Club in Prague. It became particularly famous for having hosted an impromptu saxophone performance by American president Bill Clinton in 1994, who had returned to Prague a few days prior to our own visit to mark their 30th anniversary of joining NATO, a day of celebration for the Czech people. Democracy is very new and precious for the Czechs and this is palpable. What is also palpable is their unease about the war Russia is waging on their neighbor Ukraine. The majority of people alive in Prague today personally remember the brutality and oppression of living behind the Iron Curtain as a Soviet satellite state. They see Russian aggression on the rise again and dread losing their hard-earned freedom. They see the NATO alliance as the bulwark against an existential threat.

And they look at America – as the beacon of hope – that many in the world still do, the same hope that immigrants still carry in their hearts. America was the country that helped birth modern Czechoslovakia at the end of World War I in 1918. America was the country that helped bring them freedom from the terror of Nazi Germany in World War II. And while they suffered under the boot of the totalitarian communism of the Soviet Union from the 50s to 80s, America was the country that gave them hope, its music – jazz, swing, blues continued to play in The Jazz Club Reduta & still does.

And now I was standing at the entrance of this very Jazz club and being told that the tickets to the Swing tribute I was there to see had been sold out!

“Oh no!” I was so disappointed. The lanky man offered a solution. “We do have another Swing concert next Thursday.” “But this is our last-night in Prague,” I answered remorsefully. “I am sorry, where are you visiting from?” he asked with a polite smile. “New York.” I answered. “New York, New York?!!” the man’s eyes grew wider and his smile got warmer. I nodded. “Then we must make sure you see the show!” He walked away into the music hall and after a few moments re-appeared, a big grin across his face. “I can organize 2 extra stools, so you can watch the show, would that be okay?” My husband and I, pleasantly surprised at the sudden VIP treatment, graciously accepted his offer.

He ushered us inside to an intimate hall packed with people sitting on sofas enjoying drinks, surrounded with walls decked with photos of the great jazz musicians who had all performed there. We spent the next two hours experiencing 4 phenomenally talented musicians who performed American classics by Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole and Ray Charles. When the lead singer led the sing-along for Frank Sinatra’s “My Way”, it was as if the Czech people were singing their own song. And his rendering of “New York, New York” brought the house down. I laughed and cried through it all, it had been a while since I had experienced such unabashed love and joy for America. It was as I had left America to find America.

As I experienced this profound moment, I suddenly realized that America is no longer just a nation – if it ever was. America has become a mythology, an idea, an ember that smolders in the heart of anyone who still aspires to reach a little higher, who still dreams a few impossible dreams and who dares to keep faith in the face of some overwhelming odds. We who live here may fight, bicker and doomsay as much as we want, but the ideal of America is alive and well in hearts all around the world. We who live here may doubt the promise of America; a luxury we can afford, but not those who live outside, their faith still strong, just like those singing their hearts out, in places like The Jazz Club.

—

FAITH – the final thing that remains.

We all need a little faith – in something larger than ourselves – to be our anchor for when things fall apart, to give us wings to reach for the stars, and to give our lives purpose & meaning.

Earlier this year, I had started designing a campaign called “Out of Many, One”, which of course is the story of America. Something else that appears to be on our collective minds. The theme of this Multicultural committee for 2024 is “United in Diversity”. “E Pluribus Unum”; the motto on the official seal of America celebrates the multicultural melting pot our country is. It celebrates our pluralism and our diversity. In other words, it celebrates YOU.

And YOU have to celebrate IT.

We have arrived at a moment in history when we all must learn not just to embrace diversity but to see diversity as our strength. And we must remember that the first & foremost form of diversity is the diversity of thoughts, ideas and opinions. This is a hard task, because we all like to think we are right and that we know better. Especially in a world where we can choose our facts, and social media algorithms profit by keeping us locked in our bubbles training us to “unfriend” anyone who remotely disagrees with us. It is harder than ever to listen to the other side, to understand why someone might think differently from us without “canceling” them, to see the humanity in “the other”.

Perhaps the most crucial thing we can do to make a difference in our world today is to make a friend of someone who has different ideas than us. And to protect ourselves from disinformation – and unless you learn about an issue from multiple sides & angles – it is ALL disinformation, which leads to despair. If you can engage in “disputatio” which is a tradition of discussion & debate, not with the intent to win but with the obligation to understand “the other side”, you are celebrating diversity – of thoughts & ideas. If you can have someone in your life with whom you have deep disagreements and still call them your friend, you are living the principle of being united in diversity.

You are keeping the faith alive for all those around the world who cannot afford the luxury of doubt.

—

I returned from Prague refreshed, my faith in the American ideal rekindled. And to the realization that “Choose Hope” and “Out of Many, One” aren’t two different projects. They are one and the same. They are connected by faith.

The hope of our country and our times is precisely that we are one, out of many, a beautiful kaleidoscope of hopes, dreams and ambitions. The love for our country requires us to ask the same question that President Kennedy once asked of his fellow Americans; not what our country can do for us, but what we can do for it. And what we can do first and foremost is keep the faith in America, that one nation indivisible shall not perish. Not on our watch.

It is said that in the final conclusion only these three remain: Faith, Hope and Love.

The story of faith, hope & love is what we need – in both our personal and our communal lives. And it is the story the world needs. We ALL need a new American Hope story. And that is the story I intend to build. I invite you to build it with me.

Thank you.

—

Introduction by Ms. Christine Larkin –

It is my honor to introduce this year’s Multicultural Gala Keynote Speaker, Swati Srivastava. Former woman in STEM now a woman in FILM, Swati is an immigrant and a multi award-winning writer, director, and voiceover artist. She has directed several short films, short documentaries, music videos and political ads that have gone on to win several awards including the “Most Important Story of the Year” award from CNN-India aired nationally in India at prime-time.

Swati is also the Director of Visual Media for Crossing Party Lines as well as a trained facilitator for Civic Discourse & Dialogue. She frequently facilitates both online and in-person discussions.

Originally from India and having spent more than half her life in the United States, Swati sees the world with a unique east meets west lens. She loves storytelling, especially through visual media. She has a penchant for politics, and has a heartfelt desire to be part of the solution for what she believes is the most challenging problem of our time; our inability to listen to each other.

Swati turns ideas into experiences. She is actively involved in her community and curates and hosts a monthly art and culture program called “A Box of Chocolates.” Swati is also an avid environmentalist and lives with her husband in a “Net-Zero Energy” house here on Long Island. It has been featured on mass media including the television station, NBC.

Please give a warm welcome to this year’s Keynote Speaker, Ms. Swati Srivastava.

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Why Choose Hope

“Delhi Burning” screamed the headlines of a major newspaper. It was November 2nd 1984, and riots plagued Delhi, after the then Indian Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi was gunned down by her own Sikh bodyguards. When the news of her assassination broke, mobs of Hindus filled with rage took to the streets in Delhi, seeking vengeance & killing any Sikhs they came across. Two days after her death, most areas of my city were under total curfew as the flames of communal fire erupted in neighborhood after neighborhood. It was found later that the reigning administration had willfully turned a blind eye dragging its feet on re-establishing law & order with the intent to teach the Sikh community “a lesson” leading to the murder of thousands of Sikhs. But we didn’t know that then. All we knew was that there weren’t enough cops to patrol every town effectively. All we saw was the smoke coming off the fire raging in our very own neighborhood; a bus had been set on fire along with its Sikh driver. All we heard were the police sirens and the recorded voice on a Megaphone telling all families to keep a packed bag in case the situation worsened such that we had to evacuate our homes.

I grew up in Delhi in a moderate Hindu family. We lived in a predominantly Hindu neighborhood in an apartment complex with 6 flats in each apartment block. I was just a little girl then but I remember those days clearly – my elder sister glued to the TV for news updates, and my mother navigating the challenge of being the only parent in our home as our father was away on a business trip to the UK. I saw her watch the smoke from our balcony; her face grim as the reality of the danger set in, packing our evacuation bag and spending the nights awake & on-guard, yet telling my father when he made an expensive long-distance call from the UK that everything was just fine, protecting him from further anxiety. Everyone alive in Delhi during that time breathed the air of hate & fear, with friends & neighbors turning against each other in every neighborhood.

We had a close relationship with all the neighbors on our block- except one. I remember all the neighbors except that one family meeting at our home that evening to discuss the burning bus; our area was no longer safe and if a mob showed up, things could quickly become lethal. The one family not present was a Sikh family. People exchanged their worries – some blaming the Sikhs for being the culprits, others faulting the lack of adequate police protection as the cause of the havoc and yet others shared what they had heard on the grapevine – Sikhs were going to take every chance to kill Hindus in order to take revenge on what was happening to their community. Everyone looked at my mother at this point – she was currently alone with her kids and living directly across “unknown” Sikhs. The day after the assassination on November 1st, a Sikh family had moved into the apartment right across ours. We had barely said “Hi” to each other when the riots erupted and since then that family had not opened their front door.

I saw my mother, who had been mostly listening till this point take a deep breath and say: “If we are feeling so afraid of the one Sikh family living in our block, just imagine how afraid this poor Sikh family must be to be surrounded with five Hindu families.” There was dead silence as people processed her words. And then came a pivotal moment in my life. My mother proposed writing a note signed by all our Hindu neighbors welcoming the Sikh family to the community and telling them that no harm would come to them as any Hindu mob looking for Sikhs would have to first deal with the five Hindu families that would form a human wall. I saw the faces around us soften as her voice of reason, love and hope resonated in each heart. My mother proceeded to pick up one of my notebooks and wrote the note. A few minutes later, I saw that small woman with a large spirit open our front door, walk across to our Sikh neighbor’s flat and slid the note under their door.

—

It takes courage and a deep sense of conviction in the goodness of others to do what my mother did that day – choosing love & hope over fear & despair, building a human wall of hope and humanity. And by doing this, she planted the same seed in me. Through my work, my writings and my life, I have chosen & committed to be part of this human wall. As trained moderator and Director of Visual Media for Crossing party lines; a non-profit that is founded on choosing hope, I facilitate conversations among Americans across our political divide, so we can be reminded of our common humanity. To counter the mainstream media stories of hate & division, I am creating a video series called “Choose Hope” featuring stories of regular folks sharing a moment from their lives when they or someone they know – like my mother – faced a situation when it was easy to give in to the status quo of fear, hate & despair yet they CHOSE to take the high road of love, hope & goodness.

YOU can become part of this wall too. If you are interested in telling your own hope story – or hope song or another form of hope art – reach out to me at Swati@TiredAndBeatup.com

Together we can build this human wall – if we can find in ourselves a way to “Choose Hope”.

More than a filmmaker/storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. She is also an environmentalist and a first generation immigrant to the United States. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com

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Diwali : A Hero’s Journey for the Ages

“The hero’s journey always begins with the call. One way or another, a guide must come to say, “Look, you’re in Sleepy Land. Wake. Come on a trip. There is a whole aspect of your consciousness, your being, that’s not been touched. So you’re at home here? Well, there’s not enough of you there.” And so it starts.” – Joseph Campbell

Diwali comes from the Sanskrit word “Deepavali”, which literally means a “row of lights”. Diwali; the Festival of Lights, like almost every other major festival in India, has multiple origin stories. It has also been adopted over the centuries by other religions such as Sikhism, Buddhism and Jainism, each celebrating it in the way that speaks to their heart and aligns with their own faith, Hinduism & India offers that flexibility.

Some of my happiest childhood memories are of celebrating Diwali with my family, the house smelling of oil lamps, the neighborhood loud with the sound of crackers. My mother the greatest cook ever, would make special dishes infused with her “special ingredient that she called love”, my father would hold my hand trying to keep me safe while helping me light firecrackers. Neighbors and friends – Hindus, Jains, Sikhs & Muslims would stop by, enjoying & wishing each other “Shubh Deepavali” – Happy Diwali. That was the India of my childhood.

One of the most common Hindu stories about Diwali is celebrating Prince Ram’s return to his kingdom after being exiled for 14 years. But for it to make proper sense, I want to take a step back and tell you who Ram was really & where he comes from & why.

Hinduism is a pluralistic religion. It is complex, multi-faceted, chaotic, contradictory & complementary, a religion of many religions, everything everywhere all at once! 🙂 The word “Hindu” didn’t even begin its journey as a religion; Hindus were simply people who lived at the bank of the Sindhu or the Indus river; the Indus Valley civilization, so Hinduism was a civilization before it was a religion. There is no single doctrine that defines Hinduism, no one greatest story ever told.  Yet it remains the world’s oldest living religion and the third largest.  

There are hundreds of books and multitudes of stories in Hinduism, which is predicated on the idea that the eternal wisdom of the ages and of divinity cannot be confined to a single sacred book and that the Divine i.e. God with a big ”G” is essentially unknowable & incomprehensible to humans. But because we humans, with our limited minds, need something more specific to grasp, we visualize God in forms that we find more easily recognizable. And this is what gave the concept of multiple gods in Hinduism – but most of them are gods with small “g”. And this is where we come to the origin of Ram.

The Hindu religious story begins with “Brahman” – which is the Cosmic Principle, the single binding unity behind diversity in all that exists in the universe. In ancient books, it has been described as the unchanging, permanent, highest reality. It is formless and genderless, it just is. This primal energy of the universe is the God with the big “G”. From this primal Cosmic energy (the singular) arose the masculine consciousness & the feminine creative energy, which manifests in Trinities; The Creator, the Preserver and the Destroyer. Things come into being – so they are created, things persevere as a life-form and things die. Death is essential for life to continue, so it is all a big circle. The preserver consciousness is known as Vishnu (which means “the one who is all pervasive”). Whenever the world is threatened with evil, chaos, and destructive forces, the Vishnu consciousness descends in the form of an Avatar (incarnation) to restore the cosmic order, and protect the Dharma which literally means “to hold together”, Dharma is the innermost constitution of a thing, the law of its inner being. The male consciousness always has a female counterpart, which is where it derives its creative energy from. Vishnu’s female consort is known as Lakshmi, whose names means “she who leads to one’s goal”.

Ram whose story is one of the more common stories of Diwali is an Avatar of Vishnu; the preserver consciousness and his wife Sita is an Avatar of Lakshmi; his female counterpart.

The difficult part is over. Now to the fun part.

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Once upon a time thousands of years ago, Dashratha, King of Ayodhya, a city located in Northern India, had three wives and four sons: Ram (also known as Rama) was the eldest, Lakshman and Shatrughan are next & they are twins and Bharat is the youngest. The brothers loved each other and all looked up to Ram who was a virtuous, wise, and strong young prince. Ram married Sita and Dashratha wished to pass the throne to his eldest son. But the mother of Dashratha’s youngest son, Barat, who is Ram’s step-mother was jealous and wanted her son to be king. She manipulated Dashratha; the king, into sending Ram into exile for 14 years.

Ram, with his unwavering adherence to duty and obedience to his father, accepted the exile without any resistance. His loving wife Sita and one of his loyal brothers Lakshman adhering to their own duties accompanied him. For 13 years, the trio faced various challenges, but carried on, growing from their experience.

In a classic case of, “it is always darkest before the dawn”, in their 14th year, just when it’s time to return home, Sita is abducted by the 10-headed demon king Ravan (also known as Ravana). Ram is distraught. But with the help of allies such as the monkey-god Hanuman and an army of monkeys (sometimes understood as tribal people whose totem was a monkey), Ram eventually faces Ravan.

Now hopefully some of you are wondering what happened to Ram being an Avatar of Vishnu; the preserver consciousness that manifests to preserve the order. To answer that question, we must ask the question “Who was Ravan”? The 10-headed demon Ravan was himself once a scholar, a learned and accomplished individual, a warrior-king with tremendous strength and magical abilities. He also had immense knowledge of scriptures, music, and warfare, but over time he had lost his way & became arrogant & autocratic. The problem was a long time ago when he was still good he had got a boon from Gods that he be invincible, by being granted immunity from being killed by gods, demons, or spirits. In his hubris, he had dismissed ‘humans’ deeming them too insignificant to pose any kind of threat to him.

Over time Ravan became a tyrant. The balance of power between good and evil tilted so far towards evil due to Ravan, that Lord Vishnu; the preserver consciousness (which I mentioned earlier) re-incarnated in human form as Ram to restore the Dharma (order).

After many battles between the armies, Ram & Ravan finally face each other. Ram tries to chop off Ravan’s head but every time a new head pops up. He is then reminded by an ally to aim his arrow at the heart of Ravan or navel (its unclear). Before Ram fires the fatal arrow, he takes THREE STEPS BACK, prays to Lord Shiva (the destroyer consciousness) and then shoots at Ravan’s heart (or navel). Ravan falls.

Ram rescues Sita. And after that, they make their way back from exile to their home. The subjects of his kingdom in their jubilance light clay oil lamps to illuminate the streets & mark the triumphant return of Ram; the victory of good over evil and the return of order. Ram assumes his rightful position as king of his kingdom.

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Now lest you should think this is THE story of Ram or Ramayana, that is far from the case. There are multiple stories, numerous interpretations and many contractions, controversies & critiques. More recently it has been called a racist and sexist story. Ram’s conquest of Lanka is seen by some as the story of the northern Aryan race subjugating the southern Dravidian race of Ravan. And if you think Ram had it hard, Sita’s travails were way harder simply because of being a woman in a patriarchical society.

But what does this three thousand year old myth of demons & gods, kings & queens, – and monkeys – have to offer us today? It is so fantastical, it can only be a lie, right?

Not if we recall Joseph Campbell who told us that “Myth is not a lie. It is the truth we cannot tell in a literal way.” The power of myth lies in its ability to communicate complex, profound ideas in a way that resonates on an emotional and spiritual level. Myths endure when they tap into universal truths and human experiences. And this myth from India has endured thousands of years and is still a living experience for hundreds of millions of people.

Every aspect of Ram’s story is symbolic and representational. Its hero Ram represents the spirit of righteousness. Even its villain, Ravan was a complex, tragic figure with a deep intellectual and moral dimension, who came to represent ego and the dark side of power. Ravan’s ten heads symbolize his multifaceted personality. But they also symbolize something else. Human beings tend to deal with most problems at a surface level, without the patience to dig deep and find the root cause, as a result the problem just morphs but never goes away entirely – not until one finally finds & aims at its heart.
Sita; the heroine of this story represents the divine feminine, loyalty and devotion. Her abduction symbolizes the displacement of the feminine principle in the world, leading to chaos, and the war that follows is the rebalancing act, so Sita is the catalyst for a war that ultimately restores balance between the feminine and masculine principles.

And the army of monkeys are now understood as tribal people whose totem was a monkey, and whose rag-tag army came together with such a sense of devotion & determination that it managed to defeat the most organized armed forces of the time.
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Now let’s go back to the story and remember the three steps Ram took before he shot the fatal arrow that killed Ravana. Those three steps have great symbolic significance:

  1. The first step signifies that Ram was acting in alignment with his duty as a king and a warrior. Despite his personal grievances, Ram was not seeking revenge against Ravan but doing his duty to uphold righteousness. Because heroes don’t seek revenge.
  2. The second step symbolizes Rama’s recognition of his opponent’s power and intellect. The difference between Ram and Ravan was not of prowess or skill but of arrogance. No matter how intelligent we are, we are all susceptible to arrogance, we are all susceptible to becoming Ravan. The respect Ram shows even for his adversary makes his a victory of humility over arrogance.
  3. The third step signifies Rama’s determination to bring justice to the world. By defeating Ravana, he was not only rescuing Sita but also restoring balance in the universe by eliminating a source of great evil and fulfilling the purpose of his existence which as an Avatar of the preserver consciousness, is to bring victory of good over evil and restore the Dharma.

So two of the major takeaways of this story are the triumph of humility & duty over arrogance & selfish desire and of good over evil. But there is a third takeaway.

According to Hindu mythology, it was the divine purpose and the specific qualities of Ram that made him the only one capable of defeating and killing Ravan. What is worth noting is that even though Ram is understood to be an Avatar of God, he is not spared the trials and tribulations of the human experience. He is thrown out of his own kingdom, is forced to live in exile, his wife is kidnapped and he has to fight a war to get her back. In going through these travails with grace and a sense of duty & purpose, Ram becomes a teacher, a guru. He presents a manifestation of potential and possibility that lives inside each of us. The Hindu dharma tells us we are all an avatar of the divine, all manifestations of pure consciousness. Our human journey like Ram’s is full of travails and often entails some form of exile; a disconnection from our whole selves. The work of integration requires much grace and a sense of duty & purpose. In every exile, a King (or Queen) who presumes a birthright to rule dies. After every exile, a King (or Queen) with a divine purpose uniquely their own is born. The exile is an inner journey of wholeness, of finding humility, of coming home to oneself & becoming one with the world. A journey we all must undertake as humans.

And that to me is the essence of the myth known as “Ramayana” (the story of Ram) – that has been celebrated in India for thousands of years, and is being celebrated today – along with us.

Swati Srivastava is an immigrant and a multi award-winning writer, director, and voiceover artist. A filmmaker & storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. She is also an environmentalist and an immigrant to the United States. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com

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Starry, Starry Night

“Aloha Kane and Wanine, e Komo Mai”; “Ladies and Gentleman, Welcome to Hawaii” announced the air-hostess as our plane touched down in Oahu, Hawaii. Didi (meaning elder sister in Hindi); my elder sister turned to me and smiled, I smiled back. We were together on the 6 hour flight from Los Angeles to Honolulu; a trip I had planned to celebrate Didi’s 35th birthday.

As soon as we stepped out of the airport, it felt like hitting the reset button. We were surrounded by rugged cliffs, blue water, and green mountains that seemed to disappear into the clouds. Everything moved at a different pace—slow, unhurried. There is a steady rhythm to Hawai’i. You find it in the wind, in the ocean, and in the way people live, connected to the land without making a big show of it. It’s the kind of place that lets you exhale.

Honolulu is on the island of Oahu. It’s the capital of Hawaii and the state’s largest city. We spent the next couple of days there. My strongest memory of Honolulu is visiting the Pearl Harbor Memorial that honors those who lost their lives during the 1941 attack. Centered around the sunken USS Arizona, it’s a solemn place where history feels immediate, and the calm waters stand in stark contrast to the events that unfolded. It is a beautiful understated memorial that doesn’t seek to exploit or capitalize on those horrific events or the emotions that it evokes, much like the 9/11 memorial in New York City.

Next came Big Island; the biggest of the six islands in that region. Big Island is most famous for its active volcanoes. I had planned a helicopter tour for the two of us. It is something of a unique experience to fly above a volcano, the red lava pouring from the black craters into the blue ocean, releasing steam that the pilot must carefully avoid. As we were looking down spell-bound at the scene below, the pilot made a joke over the Intercom “you know how they say; they are not making any more land? Hawaii is the only place on Earth we are still making new land.” Finally, a way to solve the problem of rising real-estate prices!

For Didi’s birthday night, I had planned a very special trip to the top of the Mauna Kea. The tallest mountain in the world when measured from its base, which is deep beneath the ocean. From its base on the ocean floor to its peak, it rises over 33,500 feet making it taller than Mount Everest. Measured from its base above sea level to its summit it is almost 14,000 feet. The most famous thing about Mauna Kea is due to its high elevation, clear skies and lack of atmospheric distortion, it is home to the world-renowned astronomical observatories and the home of the powerful keg telescopes.

I had booked this trip as part of a stargazing group. We were picked by the van at about 3pm. The drive to the Mauna Kea summit from the base takes about 2 hours, climbing from around 6,000 feet to over 14000 feet, so the road is winding and steep and the driver stopped twice for about 20 minutes each time so our bodies could acclimatize to the changing altitude and lower oxygen levels, and avoid altitude sickness.

We reached the summit about 5:30pm, an hour before sunset on Didi’s birthday. The view was breathtaking to say the least; the entire Big Island spread out beneath us, with clear views of the Pacific Ocean on both sides. The horizon seemed endless. At the time I would have said that it was the highlight of our trip but the highlight was still coming. The sun dipped below the horizon. And we saw the massive windows of the Keck observatory open slowly and sleek, metallic noses of the Keck telescopes jutted out, positioning themselves like giant sentinels ready to stand guard & observe the depth of the cosmos. At the time I would have said that it was the highlight of our trip but the highlight was still coming. Our tour guide began to setup his own telescope – tiny in comparison of course.

And then suddenly it was dark. And a hush came over the tourists standing atop the summit, as we all looked up at the sky.

It is impossible to put in words what the sky above Mauna Kea looks like. One learns in science that the universe is full of stars, but I don’t think one realizes HOW MANY stars there are. Above us the sky was a canopy of stars, a canvas of a bazillion shimmering shining dots, there were as many dots above in the sky as there are grains of sand on an ocean beach. The universe is a traffic jam of stars. It is at once a scientific and spiritual experience.

Didi & I stood spell-bound. Then Didi spoke, no she sang; a Hindi song; her favorite love song for her little sister whose name “Swati” means a star; a constellation – “kabhi kabhi mere dil main khayal aata hai, ki jaise tujhko banaya gaya hai mere liye, tu abse pehle sitaron main bas rahi thi kahin, tujhe zameein par bulaya gaya hai mere liye.” – “Sometimes this thought comes to my mind, that you were made just for me. Before this time you were living somewhere among the stars, you have been brought to this earth just for me.”

“Happy Birthday, didi” I said in return.

Didi passed away not long after that trip. Maybe she became a grain of sand on an ocean beach. Or maybe she resides among the stars herself like the words of the song she once sang for me. But the memory of standing next to Didi atop the tallest mountain on Earth, in a place where they are still making new land, on that starry starry night is one I will never forget.

Swati Srivastava is an immigrant and a multi award-winning writer, director, and voiceover artist. A filmmaker & storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. She is also an environmentalist and an immigrant to the United States. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com

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When Daylight Changes

“Wake up, it’s time to go.”

I opened my eyes, it was still dark but Didi; meaning elder sister in Hindi, was all dressed.

“Go where?” I asked half-awake and half-annoyed. It was a Sunday and I wanted to sleep.

“We are going for a drive. We need to leave before sunrise.” She replied in the no-nonsense, don’t argue with me, I am not hearing it way Didi would say things. I woke up.

While I was getting ready, she gave me a volley of information. She had already prepared tea, sandwiches, boiled eggs for wherever it was that we were going.

Within 15 minutes we were in the car.

“You are driving”, she handed me the keys. I got in the driver seat as Didi unfolded a paper map of the lower Hudson valley. Pre-Google, one had to learn to read paper maps. Skills that are now languishing. Didi was skilled at reading paper maps. She charted our course.

We used to live in Montvale, NJ, about 20 minutes away from Bear Mountain, NY, the gateway to Catskills. It was the Fall of 2002; and the last Sunday in October; the day when Daylight Saving Ended – before it was changed to the 1st Sunday in November. The Fall colors in the Lower Hudson Valley were at peak.

“Make a left to get on Palisades Parkway North”, Didi gave instructions while I drove. The sky was getting pale, clouds catching the first pink, orange, and red hues of the day. It was nearly day-break. Within 20 minutes we were at the entrance of Bear Mountain State Park.

“Now what?” I asked Didi, fully enrolled in her plan. Enthusiasm is contagious and I have always been happy to catch that disease! Besides I was fully awake, it’s amazing how that can improve a person’s mood.

She gave me further directions – left, right, left, we drove through some winding roads in the park and came to a parking next to a trail. “Let’s park here.”

We parked the car. Didi jumped out and grabbed the bag of breakfast items she had prepared & the Thermos with the tea. We walked together for a few minutes on the trail. The air was crisp. There was no one else in the park at the time, just the two of us. The only sound was out footsteps crunching the leaves. And birds getting ready to greet the morning. It was a Sunday, people were catching up on sleep, people without devious sisters! 😉

We reached the opening. And stood spell-bound. In front of us was Hessian Lake – nestled at the base of Bear Mountain that was awash in brilliant hues of gold, orange, and red. Its reflection in the lake-water formed a perfect mirror, doubling the fiery splendor of the foliage. The stillness of the water enhanced the symmetry, and the scene felt like a painting, with the vibrant colors of fall blending into the soft blue sky above. The sun was jusssst coming up.

“Wow” I said.

“Wow” Didi echoed.

We sat down on one of the picnic tables and watched the scenery in companionate silence. Two Indian girls who had bent the will of their culture, rejected wholesale the plans laid out for their lives as per the mores of their community, and had instead decided to craft their own destiny. Didi and I were birds too – who had dared to fly. And that flying had come at some cost. But that scene right there felt like a reward of the fraught journey we had embarked on together.

Didi broke the silence. “I saw a photo of this spot in the NY state guide book a few weeks ago. And I thought today was the perfect day to do this. Tea?”

She poured me a cup of tea from the Thermos she had packed at home. I accepted, grateful for the warmth in my hands.

“We can have breakfast here if you are hungry, or at our next stop…” Didi said.

She pulled out her the and showed me the plan for the day; her finger zigzagging through the back-roads of lower Hudson valley, crossing the bridge from West Hudson to East Hudson and moving through towns like Hyde Park, Pleasant Valley, Rhinebeck. I looked at my watch. “Can we cover all this today?”

“Yes we can! You know we get an extra hour added to our lives today, right?”

“I know it’s crazy”, I answered. Day light saving is an odd concept for people who grow up without it.

“And we didn’t even need to fly through other time zones to get this extra hour added to our lives!”

“Or get jet-lagged!” she added.

“I don’t know about that. I feel a bit jet-lagged right now.” I quipped, alluding to being woken up at the crack of dawn, NOT my favorite activity. She rolled her eyes.

“Listen I will that anything that adds time to my life. I am old.”

“You are 30.”

“Yes. Old!”

We continued our banter as we headed back to our car. We spent the rest of our day driving through the back-roads of Rockland and Westchester County, roads under a canopy of trees, the autumnal sun casting a warm, golden glow, softening the crisp edges of the cool air, its light dancing through the fiery leaves. We stopped at local cafes for coffee, and ate our own breakfast at a vista point overlooking the Hudson. We finished our journey at the Roosevelt National Historic Site in Hyde Park. We had our fill of autumn.

And that began an annual ritual that we repeated for the next several years until we moved out to LA.
Years later I came back to NY now but Didi was gone. I have made the same trip again – with tea and breakfast and Mark. But no Didi of course.

The memories of that drive; the reflection of Bear Mountain in Hessian Lake, the azure sky, the brilliant fall colors come alive for me during this time of year. They form some of my favorite memories with my sister – those last Sundays of October, the day that one extra hour was added to our lives, and we made the most of it. The time when day light changes.

Swati Srivastava is an immigrant and a multi award-winning writer, director, and voiceover artist. A filmmaker & storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. She is also an environmentalist and an immigrant to the United States. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com

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AMERICAN HOPE

Supported by Crossing Party Lines and Braver Angles Long Island Alliance

It has been said that to some generations much is given, of others much is asked. Ours is a generation that is defined by both. We live in the richest country in the history of the world. Science has brought all manner of conveniences to us that were unheard of since time immemorial. Yet, most of us are feeling the flip side of this new global growth – isolation, disconnection, and hopelessness about the state of affairs & our collective future. There is a sinking feeling that as a people we have got stuck in discord & fear – for our communities, our country and our world. The promise of a “more perfect union” seems to be faltering, and at a pace.

We find ourselves at a moment when each of us has a choice to make – give into the status quo of “US” vs. “THEM”, fearing & hating the “OTHERS” who do not understand or agree with us, packing our bags or packing our guns OR we TAKE A STAND ON THE SIDE OF HOPE by refusing to believe the pundits and the doomsayers who are telling us that our fellow Americans are our enemy, and DEFY THEIR DEMANDS to hate each other.

HOPE IS AN ACT OF DEFIANCE. DEFY WITH US.

To counter the mainstream media stories of hate & division, we are creating a video series called “American Hope” featuring stories of regular Americans sharing a moment from their lives when they or someone they know faced a situation when it was easy to give in to the status quo of fear, hate & despair yet they CHOSE to take the high road of love, hope & goodness to do the right thing.

Think of a time when when you (or someone you know) chose hope in your (their) own life. Maybe you made a friend out of a bully, or maybe your dad chose to be accountable when he could play the blame-game, maybe your mom spoke up for a neighbor who looked different than others in the community, or maybe your friend reached out to you when things were too fraught between you. The unsung choices and acts of hope in everyday life made by ordinary people are what keeps a community and a country alive. The time has come to make those unsung choices be sung and spoken out loud. For fear is contagious, but so is hope. Together, we can form a human wall of hope & humanity against the corrosiveness of our collective despair.

Reach out to Swati@TiredAndBeatup.com with the subject “AMERICAN HOPE” and our editing team will send you recording instructions. If you need help telling your story or think you only have a fragment of a story & need help finding the rest of it, reach out and our storyteller team will help you craft it. You can also read my own story “Why Choose Hope“; the inspiration behind this project.

Look inside you and around you for goodness. Choose Hope. Share Hope. Be Hope.

More than a filmmaker/storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. She is also an environmentalist and a first generation immigrant to the United States. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com

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My American Journey

“Houston, we have a problem”, said Didi; which means elder-sister in Hindi. In this case, MY elder sister, was in the passenger seat while I was driving our 2000 Dodge Neon. We were on the Interstate I-80 somewhere in the middle of New Jersey. It was 1st of July 2004 and we were in the midst of another big move of our lives. Over the past several months & weeks Didi & I had packed up our lives on the east coast in favor of Los Angeles; the city of angels. We had arrived in America 4 years earlier as Software Engineers but with the dream of becoming “Sister-Directors” and we had decided it was time to pursue that dream for real. So we had packed our belongings on an ABF truck that was on its way to LA separately from us, while we were on our own cross country drive from New York to Los Angeles; our journey through America, from sea to shining sea.

A 2-week journey that spans the length of a country; especially a country that you had arrived in just 4 years earlier and barely knew anything about, requires careful planning. Especially as you consider that this journey took place when Google barely existed. Cell phones were rare. And Social Media wasn’t even a gleam in the eye of Mark Zuckerberg. Didi and I had slogged together for weeks researching and calling motels across the country making reservations. We had saved all that information including the driving directions from Point A to Point B for each day in the one laptop we shared between us. We did have a printed sheet with contact info for all the hotels but everything else was in our laptop – which we had intended to charge on our journey through an inverter that was meant to give 120 volts AC from the cigarette lighter socket on the car. With teary eyes, we had said Goodbye to our life on the east coast and embarked on the journey. 2 hours later we had stopped at a gas station on I-80 and now we were back in the car to resume. I was ready to drive and was waiting for Didi to boot the laptop again so she could give me the directions to Pittsburg. But the laptop failed to boot. Entirely.

Houston we had a problem – not as big as the astronauts on Apollo 13 of course, but a pretty big one. We went through the customary stages of grief – denial; trying to boot the laptop over & over in hopes it will somehow resuscitate, anger; after all this effort how on earth could this be happening on the 1st day of our trip?, bargaining – come on laptop, just work once so we can make essential notes, depression – we are doomed, this entire journey is doomed, and eventually acceptance. Having learnt our lesson – never to trust technology exclusively – Didi pulled out an old paper map which we did carry in the back of the car. We could at least make our way to Pittsburg and figure out way around the city & to our hotel later.

And so we did. We reached Pittsburg. We bought a city map. At the hotel, we begged & were allowed to use their computer to make paper notes for the driving directions for the next couple of days. We did the same for every city we stayed at – relying on paper maps, our hand-written notes and some good-old asking for directions from strangers – who were almost always curious, friendly and kind. Our journey took us through the heart of America; in Pittsburg we saw the old steel mills that fueled American capitalism, and in St. Louis Missouri we saw the most impressive 4th of July fireworks. We visited majestic national parks – Yellowstone, Ziii-on, Bryce and Grand Canyon, and we saw cities shaped by the hand of man such as Salt Lake City and Las Vegas. Those were some of the places we had hoped & planned to see.

And we got lost – a lot. That showed us the America we hadn’t planned to see, the America we didn’t know existed, the America that shook our immigrant naiveté. For example, there was the time when we were stopped at a gas station in the middle of nowhere and I asked for directions from the Caucasian couple filling their tank in the car next to us; they looked at us with disdain and refused to answer; that told us there were American towns where residents didn’t like brown people. And there was the time when a bunch of Caucasian guys in their 20s standing outside a hotel called us “maid service”; racism at its best! And there was the time when we lost our way through South Dakota and instead of Mount Rushmore National Memorial ended up at Crazy Horse Memorial – which gave us a lesson in American history so stark, so brutal & so unlike the America of our imagination, it shook us to our core.

It is almost exactly 20 years since I undertook that journey. There have been other times in my life when I have lost all direction and had to improvise. I even lost my co-pilot when Didi passed away from cancer not long after that cross-country trip together, and for a while I lost all bearing. I had to learn to navigate by my own internal compass – aided sometimes by memory, sometimes by little bits of paper on which I wrote & which were my sustenance, and sometimes by asking for & relying on strangers’ help.

The journey we undertook was nothing like the journey we had planned or imagined. It was by getting lost that we found something – something precious. At the end of our journey as we stood in front of the Pacific Ocean, I knew I had barely scratched the surface of the country I now called home. But also that in order to love anything completely, one must have the courage to learn & tell – the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. For it is the darkness that gives depth & meaning to the light.

The journey I had planned was a journey through America, it took getting lost for it to become My American Journey.

Swati Srivastava is an immigrant and a multi award-winning writer, director, and voiceover artist. A filmmaker & storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. She is also an environmentalist and an immigrant to the United States. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com

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The NINTH PLANET

The Ninth Planet By Swati Srivastava

“There was a NINTH planet after all. 
Mercury, Venus, Prudukshin, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. 
The sister planet to Earth, Prudukshin is only 3 million miles away at its closest point. 
A planet that could be seen with naked eye all the way until the era of modern Physics on Earth, 
 when it traveled to the other side of the sun, and stayed hidden behind it for the next 400 years. 
Now, it is emerging from behind the sun and we will be able to see it soon. 
That maybe good news to us on Earth, but very bad news for Pruduskhin….” 

–Excerpt from my upcoming book “The Ninth Planet”; a sci-fi short story set on the planet we never knew existed. Stay tuned! 

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Story of Pride – Part III

“Mummy, Dada! I came top in my class of 800! Are you proud of me?”, the message pops up on my phone. It’s Sophie; our exchange student-daughter. She is texting from France where she returned after staying with us for a year of high-school. During her year with us, we became so close that she started calling me mummy and Mark dada. We fit perfectly like pieces of a puzzle. When she left, it was like going through surgery, no one wanted it but it was mandatory. Back in France she is at a top college. And of 800 students, she is the topper, pretty impressive, huh?

Mark texted back effortlessly, “yes proud of you – and missing you – love Dada”. I wrote, “ummm…only a little bit” with lots of naughty emojis.

Later I confess to Mark – I didn’t know how to properly respond to Sophie’s question. Mark asks me why.

I find myself breaking into tears.

I grew up in an Indian household with a demanding, hard to please father. He held me – and my sister – to a high standard, we had to earn his love. He told my sister & me how hard he had worked to earn his station in life – which was true. He was a self-made man, the eldest son in a poor family who rose to become a successful engineer earning two doctorates, and winning numerous national & international awards. Most people we knew looked up to him as a paragon of success. He looked up to him as a paragon of success. He was proud of himself. – Just a little too proud – for humans around him.

I don’t recall ever feeling that there was a pre-requisite to earn my mother’s love. With her, I felt safe. But that safety shattered when she passed away when I was a teenager. The ensuing years were difficult – my father quickly remarried – and now we seemed to have an avatar of the fairytale step-mother. She took the crack between our father and us, and turned into it a gulf. My father became more & more proud of himself – and harder & harder to impress. – But children are children and they continue to seek validation from their parents long after they reach adulthood. Somewhere deep inside, I wanted my father- my one living parent – to see me, to acknowledge me, to say he was proud of me. But – the words never came. Even when I won the All India Gold Medalist award at my masters, he didn’t say those words. Even when my sister & I moved to America to follow our dreams, the dreams that he himself had inculcated in us, he didn’t say the words. Even when we finished our UCLA course in film with multiple distinctions – an education from a top film-school that we had self-funded, he didn’t say the words.

And then my sister died of cancer. And all the words felt frivolous. What did it matter what we said or didn’t say? No words mattered to me anymore – for a while.

Then I met Mark. After living together for 7 years we got married. As a wedding gift, I gave him a folly, a trifle, a t-shirt with a funny line that said “proud husband of a freaking awesome Indian wife.” I thought he would wear it once and we would have a laugh. He did wear it – but not just once. Instead, he wore down that first t-shirt and then bought another one and then another. He wore it on the film sets where I was directing and he wore it when I was invited as guest speaker at occasions. He wore it during fun times and he wore it when I was sick, and especially on days I felt anxious or depressed. I have only just started to realize he is trying to tell me something! 🙂

For years my relationship with the words “pride or proud” has been difficult. I have never felt or uttered the words “I am proud of myself”. For I have seen first-hand how pride in oneself can turn into arrogance & how destructive that can be for relationships. And being proud of someone else requires a sense of “ownership” – it makes a bold statement to life that says, “you are my person – and you are cool – so I am proud of you”; losing my sister who I had claimed from life as my person makes that difficult for me. That is what made my reply to Sophie so complicated. She has her own family in France, her own people who claim her, who ought to be proud of her. Who am I to make that claim?

I – don’t – know – what happened – but this week for the first time in decades and out of the blue my father posted a picture of me on his Facebook wall with the line “I am proud of your accomplishments…keep it up”.

I was struck. What just happened? What did I suddenly do to be worthy of his pride? – Maybe the ice between us is thawing. Maybe time; that great healer is doing its job. Maybe the father is beginning to see his daughter. Whatever it is, my eyes misted over as I read that line on his wall over and over again. I wrote back a simple thank you.

But receiving that unexpected gift reminded me of something significant. Everything is possible in life. It is possible for a father to send an unexpected answer to a question his estranged daughter was grappling with, and it is possible for a half-mom to claim her French student-daughter as her own. For the truth is no one truly belongs to us, we only belong to life. But being proud of someone is an act of courage – it says no matter what happens tomorrow, but for this moment in time – you are a part of me and you are cool and I am proud of you.

So I sent Sophie another message, it said “Dearest Sophie, I am proud of your accomplishments, keep it up….love mummy”.

And I wore this t-shirt.

Swati Srivastava is a proud wife, mom and sister. She is also an immigrant and a multi award-winning writer, director, and voiceover artist. A filmmaker & storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. She is also an environmentalist and an immigrant to the United States. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com

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Story of Pride – Part II

“Your daughter is the best thing that ever happened to my son.” Mark’s dad said as he shook my father’s hand. “She is just marvelous. You must be so proud of her.” he added. My father looked surprised, confused, mystified. He appeared to be at a loss of words; my father is never at a loss of words. One thing he didn’t appear was proud.

We were in England visiting Mark’s family. As we were planning our trip from America, I had come to know that my father was traveling at the same time from India to Amsterdam. Mark and I had been together 6 years. My father had met Mark twice when we had traveled to India, but so far he had not met Mark’s family. I leaned in to the universe – it was the right time for our two families – Mark’s dad, mom, sister, brother-in-law, nephew to meet my family – my father. My mother had passed away from a stroke when I was a teenager, my sister had succumbed to cancer 6 years prior. Our every loss had estranged us further; my father withdrawing from the world to nurse his wounds, I opening up to the world trusting it to heal my heart.

When I met Mark’s father for the first time, my entire idea of fathers was challenged. I grew up with a father who was demanding, critical, a hard task-master. He was reserved and hard to please. He had accomplished great things in life – a son of a clerk he had built himself from the ground up – becoming a top engineer in All India Radio, traveling the world, his name was in the “International who’s who” book in the 1990s – something he mentioned often. My father was so well-educated; he was not just a Dr. but a Dr. Dr. due to the double PHDs he had earned. My father had earned his station in life. You had to earn his love.

Mark’s dad – on the contrary – seemed easygoing, understanding, demonstrative of his love. A WWII Polish refuge who spent the formative years of his life moving from a gulag in Siberia to the British refugee camp in Kenya, he had learnt his lessons from the book of life. When he arrived at the age of 16 as an immigrant in the UK, there was neither time nor opportunity for him to pursue higher education. Instead he became a craftsman, a machinist, a lathe operator, making parts for aircrafts and mining equipment with such precision & skill that an error a hundredth of millimeter (less than a thousand of an inch; it’s called a “thou”) was unacceptable. He didn’t do a doctorate, he didn’t travel the world – although he did go back to Kenya to visit the home of his childhood – he too excelled in his work. But his legacy was his children. He adored his children. He adored Mark.

I was a young teenager when my mother passed away from a stroke. My father – who was not a homemaker – that was my mother’s thankless job – at a complete loss with what to do with two teenage daughters, got remarried within a year. He abhorred loneliness and he desperately wanted his daughters to have another mother-figure. He was a world-renowned engineer so naturally he missed reading any of the numerous step-mother fairytales. Our step-mother was so kind to us that the day she arrived in our lives, we magically turned into Cinderellas. The ensuing years were painful both for my sister & I, and for him, as we grew more & more estranged, neither able to listen to the other.

My sister and I decided to move to America to follow our dreams – something our father had inculcated in us since we were children, something he could have been proud of. But he was not proud. You are not proud of strangers or of people you are estranged with. Pride requires a sense of “ownership” – it says, “you are my person – and you are cool – so I am proud of you”. My father and I were not each other’s person anymore.

Before I met Mark, he was married to another woman, who suffered from mental illness & had an uncompromising personality. Over time their marriage became a shell. Mark stayed, she had nowhere to go, she was self-absorbed and had difficulty keeping a job, how would she survive? So he continued in a loveless non-marriage for over 16 years. It aged him. And it aged his dad. Mark finally found a way to end his marriage without abandoning her. Then I showed up in his life and 16 years of winter turned into spring.

Mark’s dad saw his son having a true partner for the first time. Every time we visited England in those days, his dad would tear up & say to me “you rescued my son. I will be forever grateful.”

So when he said those words to my father about his daughter being the best thing that ever happened to his son, he meant them. My father at a loss – both at the story behind the words; I had never told him about Mark’s past – and of his own connection with me; through our years of estrangement our lives had taken us far from each other, he barely knew who I was, who I had become. He smiled – a bit uncomfortably and followed with a non-sequitur.

I looked at my two dads – one who had brung me in this world, raised me, taught me so much of what I know, instilled in me the high-minded ambition that brought me to America & that is part of my cellular structure. The man who didn’t know how to be proud of me anymore.

And my other dad, who had met me barely 6 years ago, didn’t have anything in common with me, but who somehow had the capacity to see me for who I was, who I am. And who had permitted himself to fall in love with me, a total stranger, such that I was now ‘his person”. The man who was proud of me.

Swati Srivastava is an immigrant and a multi award-winning writer, director, and voiceover artist. A filmmaker & storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. She is also an environmentalist and an immigrant to the United States. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com

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Story of Pride – Part I

“You must be so proud of your dad”, the lady in the dazzling white sari said at the award ceremony. “He is a very smart man. Are you as smart as he is?” she asked me. “I am.” I answered without missing a beat, I was 9 years old. This evoked laughter among the adults around me. “She is your daughter indeed, Srivastav”, the lady said to my father with a chuckle. My father smiled benevolently at me, neither acknowledging nor refuting my statement. Maybe he thought I was as smart as he was. Or maybe not. Maybe he was just too busy doing the smart things he did. In his young life, he had accomplished a lot. A self-made man, he came from a poor family in a small village in India; his life was a shining example of being a family record-breaker. The first one to go to college, the first one to become an engineer, he got a job in All India Radio; India’s equivalent of the BBC, establishing the first computer department there. He traveled abroad – Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, UK, US. He presented papers at international conferences on Radio technology. At home, we were the first family in our neighborhood to have a color TV, the first to buy a car, the first to have two cars. He was obviously the smarter, cooler person in most rooms he inhabited, a cut above the rest. When he spoke, people listened. And he spoke – a lot. He had a lot to say of course. He was so smart.

And he was my father. And I was like him. I was smart too. So he was proud of me. Maybe. Or maybe not.
I definitely wanted to be like my father. I was what the west calls a “daddy’s girl”. In the India of 1980s, this was most unusual. It was unusual that he expected me and my sister to have careers of our own; he wanted us to study, study, study, to ace everything we did, to come top of our class. He wanted us to be smart. And not stupid. Definitely not stupid. I didn’t want to be stupid. It was very clear that my father didn’t like stupid.

I spent most of my childhood working hard and studying hard. I liked studying and I was very ambitious. When people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would say “India Gandhi”. For those who do not know, Indira Gandhi was the prime minister in the early 1980s; the first female prime minister of India, we had a female head of state in 1967 people!

When Aunties and other female elders asked me if I knew any of the “girl crafts” like cooking, I would turn up my nose and tell them what my father taught me – my job in life was to do great things; such as becoming an engineer or a doctor or a political leader, I could leave simple things like cooking or other accouterments of home-making and house-keeping to the less educated, less smart people around me.

I wonder what my mother thought about me saying those things. After all she was fairly well educated lady; a great cook, an extremely efficient home-keeper, a sitar-player, a brilliant hostess who could throw a get-together of some 50-odd people on her own. A devoted wife and mother, she was adept at all those things that women of her generation neither got paid nor got thanked for – the delicious home-made meals infused with love, the prim and proper home ready to receive guests at the drop of a hat, the caretaking of older family members, the constant & stable presence for kids to come home to & share their hearts with. My mother was also a talented tailor and knitter who made my sister & me dresses for all the special occasions of our life and knitted her husband his sweaters, saving precious money for our family. My mother was like the anchor to our sails, the ground to all our flights. She made our house a home.

But she wasn’t an engineer or a doctor or a political leader. Being a house-wife she didn’t earn actual money. This meant she wasn’t smart. At least not in my father’s eyes. So he criticized her, ridiculed her, dismissed her. He called her stupid and ignorant. He told her she wasn’t worthy of him.

I wonder what she thought about that.

Back to the award ceremony; the annual gala of the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting union, where my father was going to receive his 5th consecutive award for a paper he had written & presented as a radio-engineer. Surrounded with people who admired & idolized him, he seemed entirely at home. He was a self-made man who had pulled himself by his boot straps. It was clear to the slighted that he was proud of himself.
The ceremony began. My mother and I were sitting next to each other. My father was backstage. The welcome speech was followed by a classical dance performance; I could see my mother enjoying it from the vantage of someone who has insider knowledge of a craft. Under the burden and busyness of her domestic life & obligations, her own sitar was languishing somewhere in the house, her own writing journal forgotten in the closet.

Next came the awards. Person No.1, Person No.2, Person No. 3 – my father’s name was called, the name of his paper was mentioned, it was announced that he was representing India at the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union awards. I saw my father emerge and go up the steps to receive his award. I excitedly turned to my mother to point out I had seen my dad but the words remain unsaid in my mouth. I saw my mother’s face – awash with tears, her eyes looking at the man ascending the steps of recognition and glory, the man whose life & home she had anchored through her own life-force, the man whose ambitions were underpinned by the sacrifice of her own dreams, the man she loved.

The man she was proud of.

Swati Srivastava is an immigrant and a multi award-winning writer, director, and voiceover artist. A filmmaker & storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. She is also an environmentalist and an immigrant to the United States. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com

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Harmonizing

“I was placed in a foster home when I was 9 years old, my 3 older siblings were placed in other homes as well,” said Lynette; an African-American woman in her early 50s. It was May 2023 and we were at a conference at Suffolk County DSS; Department of Social Services, sharing our reasons for being there. The question was what had inspired each one of us to want to become foster parents. Lynette; was sharing her story.

“My parents divorced when I was 7 and although my father paid child support, which meant my mother didn’t have to work, she had no capacity to raise 4 children.” Lynette continued. ”My mother had a lot of psychological issues – she had no friends, she was a recluse, she had trouble keeping the house in order, she mostly spent her days sleeping. Finally someone made a complaint and the state stepped in. My siblings were all in their teens, we were placed separately. I was placed with Mrs. Judith. Mrs. Judith was to my mother – as a cat is to….a banana!”

We all laughed. While listening to Lynette, I was also thinking of how I was going to answer this question myself. It’s amazing how our brains multi-task! The short answer to the question for me – and for Mark – was that although we didn’t have biological kids, our experience hosting our two international exchange students – someone else’s children – had been so rewarding – both had become our daughters for life – that when one of the girl’s coordinators told us about the world of fostering, it had felt like a natural next step. But that WAS the short answer. Answers to the bigger questions of our lives are seldom that simple.

When Mark and I first met, we were both grieving. I was grieving the loss of my beloved sister – my person, my family, my co-dreamer and my fellow-walker. Mark was grieving the end of an 18 year old marriage to someone who was not able to be a wife due to her own mental challenges. Neither of us had any kids. We talked about having biological children. But that conversation almost always ended in tears. Memories of my sister & me dreaming about raising our kids together remained sharply hurtful.

But we were sure – Mark & I – that we wanted to adopt. We looked into adoption, even international adoption – from India – and all of it felt like a tedious, bureaucratic affair that took years out of one’s life. And our lives & work spread across Los Angeles, New York City and Long Island were already full to the brim. How could two immigrants – with demanding careers and without a family or village of their own – adopt & raise kids in a country that offers little to no meaningful form of governmental support to facilitate child-rearing. The process looked daunting, especially to our weary hearts, we still had a lot of grieving to do.

Time passed. Mark and I made a life together and helped heal each other’s heart.

Then Covid happened – forcing us and allowing us to fully move our lives to Bay Shore, to finally be in one place. In 2022, while recovering from a major illness and seeking companionship & community, I saw a post on Nextdoor asking for families to host international students. Thank you Barb for holding our hand and helping us fill-out the paperwork to be approved in time for the school year. We went from having no children to having two teenage daughters from two different countries in a matter of weeks. When it rains, it pours!

It was a match made in heaven, we adored the girls and they adored us right back. We came to learn they also needed healing from their own personal traumas, and we learnt that we were able to help them through some very challenging issues. So when one of the girls’ coordinators told us of her prior experience working in the foster system & said “there are so many kids in the foster system who would love to have you as their family”, we knew that life was talking to us.

But a doubt nagged – kids in the foster system have often been severely traumatized, what if they are beyond our help? What if we they don’t let us in? What if..?

“Mrs. Judith was a gregarious lady.” Lynette continued “Her door was always open to her friends. She worked in the community, listened to people’s troubles, hosted many get-togethers and had a big laugh – I can still hear it.” Lynette paused as if she could really hear the laughter. “Being in her house taught me how it feels to be truly alive and what it means to live. We were finally sent back to our mother, even though she was never fully functional and always blamed the state for taking her kids away. I was not allowed to speak about Mrs. Judith even after Mrs. Judith passed away. When I got on my own feet, I told my mother I wanted to foster kids too but my mom told me that would make her feel like a failure. So I never did.” Lynette started tearing up, “My mother passed away last year. And although I am sad at losing her, I am finally free to foster children – so I can say to Mrs. Judith – you taught me how to live – and I am ready to pay if forward. “

We were all in tears. When my turn came, I gave the short answer. We spent a whole year training and preparing the house. We finally got certified last week.

When I feel nervous about what this new chapter might entail, I remember Lynette and her Mrs. Judith. And I know this. When Mark and I met, our hearts were singing their own sad melodies. But somehow through life’s grace our melodies harmonized. And we were able to write a new song together. Something similar happened with our exchange student-daughters. Soon we will have foster-kids, their own broken hearts singing their own melodies. But with life’s permission – and with the support of our new village – I am hopeful that our melodies will harmonize too.

And there will be a new song.

Swati Srivastava is an immigrant and a multi award-winning writer, director, and voiceover artist. A filmmaker & storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. She is also an environmentalist and an immigrant to the United States. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com
 

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The Jazz Club

“I want –to- be a part of it. New York..” – A group of 20 something men singing the iconic Sinatra song was blocking our way, singing and laughing, a little bit drunk, but mostly high on life. One of them spoke to us in accented English, “it’s a great show, you will love it!” There were other happy faces around. We made our way to the entrance of The Jazz Club. A lanky man in his 40s greeted us. “Good evening!” He had the eyes of someone who had seen history. “We would like to buy two tickets for the Swing show.” I answered. “Sorry, we have just sold out,” he said.

“Oh no!” I was so disappointed.

The Jazz Club we were at, is called Reduta. It is located in Prague, which is the capital city of Czech Republic, and which is where I was exactly one month ago.

Prague, called “Praha” by locals, is not merely a city; it’s a poem written in stone, a melody composed of history and legend. Europe’s art & culture has collided for over a millennia in Prague; its history, art & architecture a rich tapestry of Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Neo-classical, and Modern threads. Hilter – so loved Prague, he wanted to save it for himself, so Prague escaped the bombing that befell many other European cities during WWII, its medieval center is still mostly preserved. This didn’t mean Prague escaped heartache. Prague suffered some of the worst Fascism and Communism in the 20th century, most notably after the Prague Spring reforms of 1968 were brutally crushed when Soviet tanks rolled into Prague and quashed all attempts for democracy for the next 20 years.

But Prague endured. Czechoslovakia, as it was then, finally found its freedom through The Velvet Revolution; a non-violent transition of power, one of many inspiring examples of what is possible when ordinary people engage in nonviolent civil disobedience and do not give up no matter the odds.

What also endured is Reduta; The Jazz Club in Prague. It became particularly famous for having hosted an impromptu saxophone performance by American president Bill Clinton in 1994, who had returned to Prague a few days prior to our own visit to mark their 30th anniversary of joining NATO, a day of celebration for the Czech people. Democracy is very new and precious for the Czechs and this is palpable. What is also palpable is their unease about the war Russia is waging on their neighbor Ukraine. The majority of people alive in Prague today personally remember the brutality and oppression of living behind the Iron Curtain as a Soviet satellite state. They see Russian aggression on the rise again and dread losing their hard-earned freedom. They see the NATO alliance as the bulwark against an existential threat.

And they look at America – as the beacon of hope – that many in the world still do, the same hope that immigrants still carry in their hearts. America was the country that helped birth modern Czechoslovakia at the end of World War I in 1918. America was the country that helped bring them freedom from the terror of Nazi Germany in World War II. And while they suffered under the boot of the totalitarian communism of the Soviet Union from the 50s to 80s, America was the country that gave them hope, its music – jazz, swing, blues continued to play in The Jazz Club Reduta & still does.

And now I was standing at the entrance of this very Jazz club and being told that the tickets to the Swing tribute I was there to see had been sold out!

“Oh no!” I was so disappointed.

The lanky man offered a solution. “We do have another Swing concert next Thursday.” “But this is our last-night in Prague,” I answered remorsefully. “I am sorry, where are you visiting from?” he asked with a polite smile. “New York.” I answered. “New York, New York?!!” the man’s eyes grew wider and his smile got warmer. I nodded. “Then we must make sure you see the show!” He walked away into the music hall and after a few moments re-appeared, a big grin across his face. “I can organize 2 extra stools, so you can watch the show, would that be okay?” My husband and I, pleasantly surprised at the sudden VIP treatment, graciously accepted his offer. “Look” the man steered me towards a large sign-in book, flipped one page, and there it was; Bill Clinton’s signature with the words “my third wonderful visit, thank you. March 10th 2024”.

He ushered us into an intimate hall packed with people sitting on sofas enjoying drinks, surrounded with walls decked with photos of the great jazz musicians who had all performed there. We spent the next two hours experiencing 4 phenomenally talented musicians who performed American classics by Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole and Ray Charles. When the lead singer led the sing-along for Frank Sinatra’s “My Way”, it was as if the Czech people were singing their own song. And his rendering of “New York, New York” brought the house down. I laughed and cried through it all, it had been a while since I had experienced such unabashed love and joy for America. It was as I had left America to find America.

As I experienced this profound moment, I suddenly realized that America is no longer just a nation – if it ever was. America has become a mythology, an idea, an ember that smolders in the heart of anyone who still aspires to reach a little higher, who still dreams a few impossible dreams and who dares to keep faith in the face of some overwhelming odds. We who live here may fight, bicker and doomsay as much as we want, but the ideal of America is alive and well in hearts all around the world. We who live here may doubt the promise of America; a luxury we can afford, but not those who live outside, their faith still strong, just like those singing their hearts out, in places like The Jazz Club.

Swati Srivastava is an immigrant and a multi award-winning writer, director, and voiceover artist. A filmmaker & storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. She is also an environmentalist and an immigrant to the United States. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com

The website for Jazz Club Reduta is https://www.redutajazzclub.cz/en

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Mar 19th in Venice

“Close your eyes and open your hand”, I told my sister. She followed my orders. I placed a travel guide in her hand. “Open” I said. She opened her eyes and saw the travel guide in her hands. “Venice”, it said. She gasped.

“Happy Birthday, didi bahen” I said beaming. Didi means elder sister in Hindi and bahen means sister, so Didi Bahin meant elder sister sister, grammatically incorrect but that is how I called her.

“Oh wow.” She said as she flipped through the book at the picture perfect postcards of the city known as La Serenissima; the most serene one, the Queen of the Adriatic, City of Bridges, City of Canals, and to my sister and I, the City of Dreams. After our mother passed away, Didi and I had spent almost a decade living in Delhi in a family devoid of love and rife with emotional abuse. Our reality had been quite shitty and we had learnt to find joy from our dreams; first to go to America & make something of our lives, and second to visit Venice & ride a gondola. Now that we had been living & working in New York for a couple of years, I had planned a surprise trip to celebrate her birthday; Mar 19th in Venice.

Didi looked up at me, both our eyes brimming with tears. There was no need for words. We understood.

Stendhal was a 19th-century French writer. I do not know much about his writings, what I know is he gave the term “Stendhal Syndrome” , which refers to a collection of intense physical and mental symptoms you may experience while or after viewing a work of great beauty, art or architecture. Its worst symptoms can include dizzy spells, disorientation, palpitations and exhaustion. Some call it “Art attack”! More commonly it registers as a feeling of overwhelm, an incapacity to bear the beauty of the thing one beholds. Stendhal famously experienced it when he visited the city of Florence. To me and my sister, it was visiting Venice. The Grand Canal’s majestic waterway, the city’s architectural splendor, the narrow, winding streets, arched bridges, intimate squares, the soft, reflected sunlight on the canal waters especially during sunrise and sunset, the floating palazzos, the enchanting masks and the romantic atmosphere can be – literally -breathtaking. We stepped off the train & found – and lost – ourselves in La Serenissima. Of course we rode a gondola!

One trip wasn’t nearly enough to absorb our city of dreams. In the ensuing years, I planned another trip, and another, always to celebrate Didi’s birthday, March 19th in Venice.

Didi passed away in India after an intense battle with cancer. Half of me died with her; the half that laughed, that hoped, that dreamed. After her death I stayed in India for a while, my father insisting I give up on my life in America and move back with them. I felt like a ghost invisible to myself with no reason to go on without Didi, in America, India or elsewhere. I remember taking a shower one day feeling the water on my skin when the thought came to me “I must go back to Venice.” Amidst all the thoughts of death & dying, the first living thought that came to me was about Venice.

So I did. I left India and flew back to America to my empty life. I got back into work. Amidst nightmares of losing Didi and days of bawling with grief, I somehow planned a trip – to spend Didi’s birthday; Mar 19th in Venice. Human beings are strange.

I spent Mar 19th in Venice again – this time just me. I sobbed at every place we had visited together, in St. Mark’s Square, on the Rialto Bridge, in the cafes & restaurants we ate at, on a gondola. When I returned to the US, I did not know if I would live to see Venice ever again.

Then I met Mark. Mark was deeply sensitive and caring – just like Didi. And just Like Didi, Mark was a March baby. And as if all that wasn’t special enough, Mark’s dad was born on March 19th! After an LA to NY long-distance relationship, Mark & I moved in together. Over the next few years, we made a life together. If it was up to him, he might have proposed to me in the very first year. But he knew my heart had a lot of mourning to do. I think I even told him not to bother proposing, I wasn’t going to be ready to celebrate for a long time.

Someone wise once said, “Let mourning stop when one’s grief is fully expressed.” Years passed and the day came when Mark knew it was safe to propose to me. So he did. Now the problem was where to have our wedding. With family and friends on three continents; England, India and the US it wasn’t an easy answer. Amidst the pressures of my father; to have a big fat Indian wedding and Mark’s father getting diagnosed with cancer & expressing his wish to see us married while he was still alive, we knew we had to do something. But that something had to be right for us.

“How about – Mar 19th in Venice?” The moment I uttered the words, they felt right. We spent the next few months planning a ceremony with rituals that spoke to who we were. We decided to have zero guests, no show-off, no drama, just two hearts making a commitment to each other. I returned to Venice 7 years after I had last been there mourning my sister, saturated with death. This time I went to celebrate with my fiancé; the tenacity of life. We had the most beautiful ceremony with rituals honoring the lives of my mother and my sister.

As we disembarked the vaporetto for the train station, I looked back at our city of dreams and said to Mark, “how about we come back to celebrate our 7th wedding anniversary?” Mark said “yes darling!” Mark always says “yes darling”! 🙂

At the time 7 years felt like a long time. And yet here we are. It’s February 7 years later. We are planning another trip to celebrate – Didi’s birthday, Mark’s dad’s birthday and our wedding anniversary. On Mar 19th in Venice.

More than a filmmaker/storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. She is a loved wife, sister & mother – of cats as well as two daughters; her miracle-children. She is an immigrant to the United States and also an environmentalist. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com

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A ball, A cop and John Lennon’s Imagine

When we first came to America, my sister & I worked in New York. We were overcome – by the Statue of Liberty, the Twin Towers – it was before Sept 11, Broadway, Times Square, the museums, the art and the vibe of the city. It was if the pages of our Encyclopedia – this was before Social Media and Google– had come alive. I remember us walking around the streets of New York like kids who had found their hand, their toes and their mouth in the cookie jar! New York was it, and we had arrived!

As the year passed, we discovered a phenomenon called “New Year’s Eve at Times Square”. It was all anyone would talk about – the exhilaration of the countdown leading to the ball drop and the romance of kissing a lover under a rain of confetti to the tune of John Lennon’s Imagine reminding us to live for today. Some called it a once in a lifetime experience. So we researched it; definitely a thing to do IF one could get in line in the wee hours of Dec 31st to get a space close to the ball, figure out the logistics of being without a bathroom for hours on end and most importantly for our tropical Indian asses, survive the freezing weather for best part of a day. Our odds were slim. Besides we didn’t have lovers to kiss to the tune of John Lennon’s Imagine. So we did what any respectful wannabes or in this case “wanna-dos” do – we put The Times Square New year’s Eve experience on our dream list! And got on with our lives.

Fast forward 10 years. I was living in Los Angeles and had recently met a wonderful British man who lived on Long Island. We were like two pieces of a puzzle with 3000 miles in between. So far I had never visited him in New York, instead Mark flew out to LA once a month – not just to be with me, but to help me put the shards of my life back together that had been terribly broken by the loss of my beloved sister. The color in my life was gone. And so were the dreams I had once dreamt with her.

But I wanted to do something nice for Mark. I thought how about I make a surprise visit to New York to spend a weekend together in Manhattan. And then another thought – could we watch the ball drop TOGETHER?

I was convinced after losing my sister that I won’t survive for long, so I didn’t particularly care for money. I called the Marriott Marquis right on Times Square and asked to book a room for a couple of nights. The only rooms they had available were not the ones facing Times Square. I made the reservation. A few days later I told Mark I was coming to NY – to his delight of course!

On Dec 30th we arrived in Manhattan, I on a cross-country flight, Mark on the LIRR. We checked-in to our room at the Marriott. The next day Mark asked the concierge whether we could step out of the hotel onto Times Square around 10 or 11pm to watch the ball drop and were told NOPE. If you want to watch the ball drop, either get in line, wait in the cold meaning no bathroom & the usual routine OR pay the exorbitant fee to watch it from the warm comfort of the hotels’ restaurant that faced Times Square and was hosting a New Year’s Eve party. The concierge also cautioned us that if we were to go out, to not misplace our special room key which would allow us access through police lines back to the hotel.

We didn’t have any appetite for a loud, expensive New Year’s Eve party, and standing still for hours in the cold was still out for my tropical Indian ass. And – it wasn’t that important anymore – not for me anyway. Mark suggested dinner at an Indian restaurant he liked. We left our hotel around 7pm & spent the next couple of hours in the cozy comfort of the restaurant and each other’s company. Then we walked north, streets were cordoned off all the way up to Central Park so we went up to the park and made our way down to Times Square on the east side of Broadway until we were level with our hotel. Bear in mind the hotel is on the west side of Broadway. Now between us & the hotel was Times Square. Because we were on the cross-street, there was not much view of anything except an entire precinct of cops holding back anyone trying to get onto Broadway. It was about 11:40pm.

Suddenly Mark turned to me and said “I have an idea.” “Okay…” I said with no clue to what he was thinking. We stood where we were for the next few minutes listening to the sounds & music from Times Square. With about 6 minutes left to midnight, Mark charged ahead – my hand in his – approaching one of the cops stationed at the entrance to Broadway. Very respectfully he said “Officer, we need to get back to our hotel please.” The cop looked at Mark who was waiving the special Marriott Access card in his hand as proof. The cop looked at his watch and said “Follow me” as he started to lead us through the crowd cutting across Broadway to the entrance to the Marriott. We politely followed him.

And then – once we were smack bang at the center of Broadway, Mark pulled me away from the cop and into the crowd. “Take off your hat” he said. I took off my hat and Mark took off his, just as we melted into the crowd. It all happened very fast and as realization dawned on me, I started laughing. Whether the poor cop turned around, I do not know, there was no way the poor chap could have found us among the throngs of people.

But what happened next was exactly how my sister and I had imagined all those years ago – the countdown leading to the ball drop and the romance of kissing a lover under a rain of confetti to the tune of John Lennon’s Imagine reminding me to live for today.

More than a filmmaker/storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. She is a loved wife, sister & mother – of cats as well as two daughters; her miracle-children. She is also an environmentalist and an immigrant to the United States. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com

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To My Santa

“Maybe look under your pillow, in case Santa Claus left you a gift.” said my father casually while he stood shaving at the sink.

It was Christmas morning and I had just woken up. I was 8 years old and had never received a Christmas gift before in my life. This is because I grew up a Hindu – in India; a country with only 5% Christian population. Christmas was a minor holiday for the majority of the country and in an era before the Internet or Social Media, we had very little knowledge about this Christian festival. Indeed my sister and I had only that year found out from reading in an Encyclopedia that there is an entity called “Santa Claus” who brings gifts to children around the world on the night before Christmas!

I chuckled and removed my pillow to humor my father, entirely sure he was making a joke. To my utter surprise, I found a white envelope with my name on it spelled S-W-A-T-Y instead of S-W-A-T-I.

“Wha…t?” Didi (meaning elder sister in Hindi), my elder sister who was almost 14 exclaimed as she removed her own pillow. No gift for her!

“So Santa Claus gave her a gift but not me?!!” she complained loudly.

“Maybe you have aged out!’ said my mother, her nose crinkled, obviously pulling her leg.

“So what did Santa Claus get you?” Didi asked, her tone a mix of envy and curiosity.

Still shocked from the unexpected turn of events, I opened the envelope, it had a milk chocolate that was clearly not a regular Indian one, and a couple of postcards – from Finland. And a hand-written note.

“Go on!”, Didi egged me.

I opened the letter, written in curly hand-writing with a lot of flair, it said “Dear Swaty (spelled with a “y” instead of an “i”), you have been a great daughter, sister and student this year. You deserve good things. Love, Santa”

What a compliment! I started crying. Didi who was still sitting on the bed next to me, gave me a big hug. Then said with a complaining tone “So does it mean I have not been a great daughter, sister and student?”

“You have just aged out!’ repeated my mother, laughing.

That year began the tradition of Santa’s gifts for me. Every Christmas morning, I would wake up and look under or around my pillow. Every year I found something. As I got older, the gifts got more interesting, things I had really wanted that year. My wish list was simple; books, journals, pens. Santa’s note always had the same handwriting, the same flair and the same wrong spelling of my name! Somehow Santa knew me all the way from Finland but couldn’t figure out the correct spelling of my name spelling it SWATY with a Y at the end!

The year I turned 13, Didi got into college. For 10 days spanning Christmas and New Year, she had to be away on a college trip. “Don’t open Santa’s gifts until I get back on the 2nd…if you can hold it that long”, she had ordered me before taking off.

On Christmas Eve my parents and I had dinner together, watched TV, and then I went to bed. I used to be a heavy sleeper in those days, my mother used to joke she could beat the drums and I won’t wake up. So I only woke up vaguely when I heard my parents in my room, whispering, opening & shutting closet doors, apparently searching for something. And I only vaguely felt the crinkle of the gift wrapper from the gift being placed under my pillow.

I woke up on Christmas morning, my father doing his usual morning routine and asking me if Santa Claus had left me anything. I removed the pillow and saw my gift! But as soon as I touched it – the penny dropped. Suddenly it was all clear to me – it had been my parents the previous night looking for the gift in my room and it was them who had placed the gift under my pillow.

I burst into tears. The magic was over. There had been no Santa Claus, it had always been my parents. They let me cry and then took me out to change my mood. The next day my father sat me down and told me that there is no Santa Claus and that I was old enough to accept that.

Fairly depressed, I went to my mother. “What are we going to tell Didi when she gets back?”

My mother remained silent for a few minutes. Then she looked at me in the eye. And somehow I knew.

I left my gifts unopened as per Didi’s instructions. She arrived as scheduled on the 2nd of Jan. My father brought her home from the train station. She came directly to our room and asked me in her usual loving bossy way “And?”

“All the gifts are here.” I told her. “Let’s open them together!!” she said.

I do not recall at all what the gifts were that year. What I recall is this: At the bottom of the gifts was a note I had written for my sister, in an envelope that said “To My Santa”. Didi looked at me stunned. “Go on” I said. Didi read my note and started crying.

The year we had read about the existence of Santa Claus in an Encyclopedia; when I was 8 and Didi was almost 14, I had wished that Santa would bring me gifts, and she had decided she was going to do that for me. She had enrolled my parents into it; saving postcards from my father’s trips abroad and going to special shops in Delhi to find those international looking gifts. She had packed the gifts and written the notes in an unfamiliar handwriting. The year she had been away for her college trip, my parents couldn’t remember where she had hidden my gift and had to search for it in the middle of the night!

My note to my sister thanked her for being my Santa all those years. It ended with the words. “Dear Santa, you are a great daughter & student. And you are the BEST SISTER in the world. You deserve all good things. Love, Swaty” – spelled with a “Y”!

More than a filmmaker/storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. She is a loved wife, sister & mother – of cats as well as two daughters; her miracle-children. She is an immigrant to the United States and also an environmentalist. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com

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