Indians and the Internet: Why do all brown people know each other?!

No seriously. They ALL know each other. Take twitter for example. I've seen this happen plenty of times before. One brown girl makes a twitter account, and within a month she has two hundred followers. I don't understand that. I make a twitter account I get like, ten followers, majority of which are spammers.

And then there's the little "who to follow" box that suggests pretty much everyone that you're trying your hardest to avoid. But then you decide to cyberstalking them anyway and realize that they're following all of your brown friends. Then you wonder if they'll follow you back if you follow them. But if they showed up in your box, they must have seen you in their box, right? But they haven't followed you yet, so they probably don't want to follow you, which is really depressing.

But the brown people you do follow on twitter FLOOD YOUR TIMELINE WITH RANDOM CRAP! What's with Indian girls and subtweeting? I mean really, how do I know that this person even exists? And for all the annoying little Muslim girls out there: Stop tweeting quotes about love. We all know you're cyber stalking some dirty brown boy you met in community college. More importantly, stop tweeting about how much of a "turn on" it is when a guy prays. Astaghfirullah! What would your Baba say if he read that, huh?

Facebook is the exact same thing. Except you can see all the brown people you know like pictures of all the other brown people you know. And then you're all like "ASDFGHJKL!?!! How do you bitches know each other?!" And then you realize you can't gossip about those people to each of them because they know each other somehow. And then you realize your whole life is a lie. Especially after they reject your friend request.

But there is nothing more depressing than when your timeline is full of desi girls taking ugly selfies in the bathroom that get thirty likes, and then you get tagged in one very awkward photo of you "derping." And just so we're clear, no one likes your derpy photo.

And while we're on the subject, why do all brown girls think they're models, and all brown dudes think they're friggin SRK? No one changes their profile picture more than an Indian. And it's really awkward when aunties do it. Aunties who have Facebooks are some of the most immature people you will ever meet. They friend all the young people they know and post as often as they pray. God forbid they ever discover twitter. Khuda na khasta.

Moral of the story: Brown people are taking over the Internet. Save yourselves.

Smelly awkward brown kids

There's a horrible stigma out there that all of us Indians are terrorists who eat curry all day and have poor hygiene. Obviously that's not true. But there's always that one brown kid (guy or girl) that really does smell like masala and never washes their hair and just ruins it for the rest of us.

There's a girl at my school who has her own stink cloud around her. Literally. You can't get within a four foot radius of her without being attacked by the smell of coconut oil, day-old curry and achar. And she leaves a stink trail so you can always tell where she's been. I mean really, have ya heard of perfume?!?... Or soap?

There's also always that one Muslim kid whose really socially awkward and religious. They give me second-hand embarrassment. They're as awkward in school as I am in the masjid. There's a lot of awkward hijabis at my school. My phone just autocorrected hijabis to hijacks. Apple is racist. And so is 'Merica.

Is this rude? You probably think I'm being really rude. But it's really not because I'm Indian too. That makes it okay, right? ...probably not. (But who cares? No one reads this blog thing anyway)

So why am I ranting about smelly Indians and awkward Muslims? Cuz people in my school smell bad. And they're weird. And they really aren't helping with the whole "Islamaphobia" thing. And I'm sick of being asked if I eat curry! I don't eat da friggin curry! Nobody eats friggin curry! I don't even know what curry is! And no, I am NOT being forced into a marriage to some random pakistanian dude after high school. Where are them white folks getting these ideas from? Oh yeah! I know. It's the stupid books we read in English class! (This rant actually has a point, guys.)

In English we are reading the book God Of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for supporting a sista and embraced the brownness and all that, but why is it that every time we try to get some diversity into the curriculum, it's always at the expense of the students' opinion about the culture in question?

This book reveals the hard truth about the caste system and emphasis on gender roles and traditions in India, which doesn't make for a very positive first impression. Many of the kids in this class have no idea what's going on half way around the world, and I feel like its unfair that THIS is the part of India they see. It doesn't help that the teacher makes a point of emphasizing how different "their culture" is from ours and how strange it is. He focuses on the corruption, and not the emphasis on family values and tight knit communities and the thousands of years of history. Instead he choses to teach the class about the crazy Indian woman with the weird name who beats her children and tells them she doesn't love them, and how the country's corruption fueled their incestual love for each other.

I have nothing against this book. It is interesting and heartbreaking and well written, but it was definitely not a good choice for the class. There are plenty of other perfectly good books he could have chosen instead. (The Namesake, Sercing Crazy With Curry, The Village Bride of Beverly Hills, Veil of Roses)

It's the same as how Slumdog Millionaire pissed off everyone in India. I mean, the book is great if you're Indian or you can appreciate the culture, but if you hand it to an American who doesn't understand the culture, it's just not okay.

Maybe I should write a book about how messed up I think American culture is just so they know how I feel...am I the only one who gets pissed off about these things?

Honestly I feel like we always read the bad things about other cultures, and we never hear what's wrong with American culture. I just really wish they'd look at things from an outsider's perspective.

Sorry this rant wasn't very funny. I'm just really pissed that people are stupid and don't know anything.

And guess what our next book is!?! The Kite Runner. Fml.

Moral of the story: Don't be a smelly/awkward Indian. I WILL hold it against you. (And America is racist)

The Name Game

 

 

Let's be honest. Sometimes having an Arabic name kinda sucks. I mean, they sound fine to you and me, but chances are, having to pronounce your name is your teacher's worst nightmare. With any luck, your teacher will butcher your name badly enough for it to only sound like some sort of rash. Or the cream that gets rid of the rash that sounds like some other brown kid's name.

And before you go complaining about how awful your name is and how hard it is for 'them white folk' to pronounce it...My name is Anbiya. It means prophets. Even if you are Muslim I bet you five bucks you pronounced it wrong (and if you said it right, good for you, Glen Coco! But I ain't really giving you five bucks because betting is haram). It's pronounced Um-bee-yuh. Alif, noon, meem makes an "um" sound. It's like Columbia without the "Col"...At least that's what I tell people.

I've endured 12 years of teachers, counselors, and classmates mispronouncing my name. For a while I was a stickler about correcting people. I thought, "hey, if you're gonna make me say your crazy-assed white last name properly, the least you could do is get my name right." Or even partially right. I'll settle for at least one syllable!

In eighth grade I tried to shorten my name to just "Biya" because apparently its too damn hard for people to pronounce the "An" as "Um" no matter how many times I remind them. High school is almost over and by now I've just given up. At this point I usually respond to "You in the back."

Very recently I've discovered that my name isn't even a name. I checked all the muslim baby name websites I could find. And I've never met or heard of someone else with my name. My parents gave me a name that isn't even a name. Great.

But you know what the worst part is? I can never find my name on a key chain!

Moral of the story: When you grow up and have you own children (insha'Allah) don't subject them to this kind of torture. Choose your names wisely.

I'm awkward and I'm proud.

I went to the masjid with my family this weekend. You know what that means? It means on the way there I sat in the car for an hour playing Temple Run on my iPod while my dad lectured my mom, my sister, and I about things we already knew. And when we finally got to the masjid we were the only ones there, which made us all question if there was even a khutbah that night. So naturally we all sat in the car for ten minutes waiting for other people to show up.

I always feel out of place in the masjid. Is that bad? I always see all these other girls in abayas and pretty scarves and it's obvious that they're all full time hijabis (unlike me) and everyone looks like they know exactly what they're doing there and finds their seats, and I'm standing there like "Mom! Can I pray now?!" ...Maybe that's an exaggeration (or not).

I feel like it's really obvious that I don't know what I'm doing. This may or may not be due to my inherent inability to properly tie a scarf around my head. But at least my hair gets covered (mostly). That's what counts, right? Apparently not, because every time I leave one of these khutbahs I feel like a terrible person. But I'm pretty sure that's supposed to  happen.

And then on the ride home we were talking about the lecture, and somehow the conversation turned into a fight over which one of us is more pious, and how my sister and I need to stop asking for things "Because starving kids in Africa would die for one tenth of what we have and we should feel very grateful."

Moral of the story: I can't have new shoes because the Imam told us not to "live the high life."