Vikram’s Talking Points

To lose an uncle - the first death in your parents’ generation.

To see the good man in the casket: taut, lifeless and silent.

To see your father cry for the first time as he recites the Gita, which proclaims the Self is never born and never dies.

To see your cousin sitting in silence, her mind still denying the finality, knowing that you too will one day sit in silence in front of your father’s body.

To witness the tension between Hindus and Sikhs over the performance of final rites. It matters not at all. It is the only thing that matters.

To ask, as his casket is swallowed by the grumbling cremation machine, "Where is he and what is he now?"

To emerge from the funeral home into the open air of Southern California, where it is impossibly sunny and warm.

To discard your funeral clothes and take a final bath, and to feel strangely purified.

To cry in the airport in the eye of an indifferent world.

Changes your life - just a little.

Senator George Allen is defeated  in Virginia. Allen called, S.R. Sidharth, an Indian-American campaign volunteer for his opponent, a "macaca," after sardonically "welcoming" him to America in a small Virginia town. The slur loosed a torrent of protest in the second-generation community; it seemed to rankle little among the India-born.

Why so? Because we can lay claim to no other country. India will always be theirs, no matter what their passport says. For many of us, the only time we are actually identified as American is in India. When Allen welcomed us, he tapped into a deeply-felt anxiety.

Some have linked macaca to North Africa and Portugal. It apparently refers to a species of monkey, and is wielded in derision at black Africans.

For us, the slur wasn’t specific enough. When we heard it we knew it was bad, but couldn’t offer much more than that. It suggested generic marginalization, that we were one of any number of brown communities loitering on the periphery of white and black America, easily dismissed. Our indignation was ultimately a cry for the recognition of our singularity.

I doubt we achieved that, but I’m still glad he lost.