Suomen Soliloquies

 My mother once gave me the sound advice to avoid holding tightly onto things (she was specifically talking about people at the time) because if you do, they have a habit of slipping away. She did this through a marvelous metaphor that went like this: If you have sand in your hand and make a fist, the sand begins to fall out and you are left with less sand than you started with. If you gently cup you hand and let the sand come in however, it remains in your hand, and you can perhaps even add more. This metaphor has stuck with me because it helped me with the problem that I was having back then. But I’ve come back to it again and again and slowly been realizing the smaller and more subtle ways that I grab onto things. These things are now always visible or tangible, but they still have important implications. Take meditation. I meditate every day. It’s like brushing my teeth, I simply can’t skip this part of my day. But unlike brushing my teeth, which is a methodical and easy ...

Two weeks ago, my husband and I tried making bagels. This wasn't because of some sudden ambition on our part or a particular fondness for baking (though I do like baking if it involves dessert and he is our designated bread maker). It came out of necessity because he has been missing the bagels in NYC that we bought from the local grocery store whenever he visited. We would eat them for breakfast lathered with cream cheese and veggies. They are however, apparently not a thing in Finland so our only option was to make them ourselves. Bagels, in case you don't know are notoriously difficult to make. I knew this. He brushed my doubts aside and said happily "Let's try." Bagels take a day and a half to make. You make the dough, let it rise, shape them, and then let it prove for 12-24 hours before boiling and then baking them. We didn't have some of the ingredients, starting with the right kind of flour. My husband said it didn't matter and powered through. Aft...

I started this blog with the intention of writing about Finland for the benefit of everyone back home. For the first year, this goal made sense, there was plenty to learn about Finland and plenty of experiences as I explored the new country I was temporarily in. Now though I am back here but with a very different mindset because this time, it's not just an adventure but about creating a space and a community for myself. This has changed quite a bit how I look at Finland. It also has changed how I see this blog. For the past two years I wasn't quite sure what to do with it but now I have a purpose. My work has shifted to thinking about immigrant families. I've been immersed in theory on immigrant identities, practices, memories, culture. The articles I have been reading have been from the perspective of parents, teachers and children or from non-human perspectives like policies, depictions in the media or the language used to talk about immigrants. So when I moved to Finland...

We have these mugs in our house that have Japanese-anime-style whales on them. Their smiles are wide and innocent, the shade of blue in which they swim is pleasant, not the sad kind that makes you cry inside. Years ago, my parents decided they wanted more of these mugs but the store they bought them in no longer stocked them. So we went online and discovered that there were yellow monkey mugs, and pink rabbit mugs too, a whole world of cute animal mugs that kept their chai hot long enough for them to slowly drink it each morning while they read the paper and ate khakra. So they ordered the monkey mugs. My mother only had my dad order 6 of them. Each mug is $12 so this felt like a splurge. The monkey’s joined the whales in the shelf, breaking up the sea of blue with their gentle yellow. She now regrets that decision. These mugs were already a Prized Possession then for their superiority to other mugs. But they are more valuable now because we can no longer find ...

Picture announcing the revival of the Ramyana and Mahabharata (bottom) When India suddenly announced a lock down for three weeks in March, it was a big deal. The entire country was now stuck inside with limited means of entertaining themselves. The TV networks took this as an opportunity to revive some favorites, specifically, two Indian serials from the 1980s that had held the nation enthralled while they were running. Both of these were based on Hindu epics, The Ramayana and The Mahabharata.  My family has also been watching the Mahabharata as a nightly ritual. This is quite a commitment since the serial has over 90 episodes that are each 45 minutes. Arjun listens to Lord Krishna tell the Bhagwad Gita But this is a commitment that I think we all hold onto eagerly (though my father admitted one evening that he as other shows that he wants to watch and so would be happy to take a break from it for an evening. He was overruled). This is because the Mahabharata, speci...

Two weeks ago it felt like the world was ending. The numbers from New York, which captured me with their stunning speed and the realization that I had left just before the situation became so much worse, grew rapidly each day. It began to dawn on the US that this was going to change everything. The grocery stores were filled with empty shelves. Empty shelves could only indicate that the world was ending. Until I heard the birds singing . I was on a run in a park when I heard them. They jolted me out of a reverie thinking about the headlines. Pandemic, economy, toilet paper. I looked around at the space around me in the park. The prairie grass expanded around me even in its dormant winter state. I saw the sky, blue with flecks of white clouds drifting above me. Nature is still in business. Even though the news is dire and the world we humans have built seems to be falling apart at the seams, buds are appearing in the trees. I see birds now on the roof through my childhood bedroo...

The past week in New York was jarring to say the least. Though the city still makes me overwhelmed by even the smallest of tasks (where do you go to buy a pack of cards??), I have begun to slowly get used to the constant movement of the city and everything that comes with it. The sound of airplanes flying constantly from La Guardia over my apartment doesn't register any more. I can estimate how crowded the train will be based on what time I am leaving my apartment in the morning or TC in the evening. And although the feeling of always needing to do more still raises the specter of anxiety to make everything I do feel inadequate, I've become resigned to its presence to the point that it is part and parcel of the city itself. Solitude is rare in the city, but last week it was the norm All of these things fell apart this week though, one by one, as another phantom seeped into our lives. Starting with an email from our college president that optimistically called off only no...

Summer classes are in full swing, but I’ve been having a hard time getting back into that workaholic mode that characterized the fall and spring semesters. There is time every morning to go through my elaborate morning routine that I consider to be my “me time” before I start classwork. And each day I try to go outside to soak in the sunshine and the few oases of greenery that are close by. The luscious yard of a home in New Jersey Yet for three days last week, I did none of these things. My morning routine went out the window, as did the chance to do any classwork. Instead, I spent it wrapped in the love and joy of family as a beloved aunt, uncle and cousin came to visit. My brother also made time to take a whirlwind trip from Boston so we could all be together. My cousin spent a night at my place and my aunt asked me if she was the first visitor to stay with me. I told her no. The bf has visited, as has a close friend and my parents. But as much as ...

The first year is done and so, in my effort to procrastinate on working on the dreaded certification exam that we have been hearing contradictory information about all year (the exam is required for first year doctoral students in my program to determine if we get to stay), I thought I would take some time to reflect on the other kind of learning that has happened this year. This is the learning that is not within the curriculum. It is not what is necessarily intentionally taught but is the growth that happens alongside the theories and articles and papers and statistics that we learn in the classroom. In education, we call this the hidden curriculum, which usually refers to the ways in which children are socialized to learn their "place" in society, such as along class lines. Making children walk the halls in quiet, orderly lines, emphasizing Standard English over student dialects are ways in which the hidden curriculum silently, subtly, teaches children what society deman...

The Department of Curriculum and Teaching at Teachers College has a reputation for being difficult, especially at the doctoral level. It isn’t difficult in the way my advanced data analysis class is difficult, where we are expected to learn complex statistical concepts while also learning how to code in the dreaded Stata software. Instead, it is impossibly abstract and theoretical, with most classes requiring us to write papers where we construct complex arguments supported by plenty of other people’s theoretical musings. These frameworks challenge us at our very core, a process that is fraught with emotional ups and downs, so much so that a professor in the department has called the program as a “Pedagogy of Monsters” and written an article about it. The program has changed the way I see the world. For example, I recently went to go see Isn’t it Romantic with some colleagues from the Writing Center. Besides the social aspect of actually going somewhere that wasn’t to work or acc...

One of the most exciting aspects of living in New York City is that I suddenly find myself in proximity with many movers and shakers of the world. Granted, most of these celebrities are way beyond my sphere of influence (though in some circles several of my professors are celebrities), and I so rarely leave the bubble of Teachers College that I have yet to have a celebrity sighting like some of my friends have had, but I had the chance to meet with a mover and shaker who I’ve been admiring for the (short) time that I’ve been exposed to her and her work. I wrote about how this meeting came about in my last post. This mover and shaker is a journalist who writes about Indian experiences in the US. She does so in deeply reflective ways that unpack the layers of Indian experiences and reveal a strong intuitive theoretical understanding that our program takes an entire semester to cultivate in us doctoral students. All of this meant that I was bursting to talk to her about a whole...

Back when my parents were in Dallas, newly married and just beginning their life together in a new country (for my mom) and a brand-new city (for both), my dad happened to take a marketing course with an Indian professor. Because they were Indian, and secondarily because they were new to the city, the professor took on a mentor role and invited my parents frequently to his home. He and his wife brought my parents in contact with other Indians in the university and created a community of brown solidarity. My parents hadn’t been in contact with this professor in years. But last November, my dad emailed him after coming across an article that was written by a woman with the same last name who made several references to her father that seemed to match to the professor. A few hours later, my father got a reply that she was indeed his daughter. I was home for this revelation and suddenly, I started encountering more of her articles upon returning to New York, all ...

This is something I wrote just trying to think about some of the things we have been learning and thinking about. My classes this semester are much more interesting and leave me feeling like connections are coming at me left right and center but the only way for me to process these connections is to write. So here is the first of (hopefully) many where I synthesize the ideas that are going through my head. I invite you to think with me and grow with me by commenting below (I do see your comments! I may even reply :) ) I want to spend some time reflecting on what I have been learning lately. My classes have been converging towards the practical spaces, realities and pedagogies that go into creating a multicultural, anti-racist educational system. I am drawing on three readings in this reflection that came from the same course. All were about teacher education. Two were easy to contrast. One was called the pedagogy of difference and the other was called the pedagogy of fear. The fi...

To me New York City is associated with a constant barrage of sounds. My heater makes a racket at least once an hour for ten minutes while it spews and spits steam to warm my room enough that I have the window open even in January. When the heater isn’t making a racket, my fridge is buzzing and thrumming. This is not to mention the sounds that come from outside. Sirens are a constant (though blessedly not between 10pm-7am for some reason). And loudest are the garbage men who come twice a day (some times) and bring with them sounds of yelling, the whirring of the truck and banging that all carry to my ninth floor room. They can come any time between 7 or 8 in the morning and often spur me to go work out earlier than I might have to get away from the noise. At night, between my heater and fridge there is constant noise while I sleep. One night when I lay awake in my bed, I suddenly realized that the room was completely quiet. No sounds coming from outside, no ...

I just came back from my first visit to Finland after officially moving back to the States. The trip was important for many personal reasons (I miss Finland, I miss hearing Finnish, I miss Fazer chocolates, you get the idea) but the most important reason for going back was to finally experience a Finnish Christmas. Aurajoki on a crisp sunny day I have my boyfriend’s mother and sister to thank for giving me that experience. They planned the day down to a T and, while it was very different from what I had expected, it was still wonderful experiencing a holiday that has had little meaning for my own family through the eyes of a family who cares deeply about it. First, let me say what I was expecting. Holidays in India are a chance for families to all come together. Unlike people in the US, for whom families coming together is associated with a great deal of stress and angst, for Indians the family together means a happy state of constant happy chaos, eating and usually ...