Sharukh Kumar
America, a promised land of desires and dreams, took me by complete surprise when I moved away from my familiar Indian soil. The transition from India to America was difficult, to say the least. Most prominently was the fact that America presented me with a radically different experiences. In India, we never had to do homework and take tests every week. American education propelled me out of my confident, dependent self. Binders, notebooks, lockers, and planners were all foreign to me. Organization, responsibilities, money and food were things that I had to never worry about before. My mother and father had always provided these things for me in India. I had lived relatively sheltered and comfortable life to this point, but now I was plunged into a different world.
I was caught in my nostalgia. I could not forget India and the memories I had attached to it. I could not forget playing cricket with my friends on the street. I wanted to dance all night to Indian music with my friends. I started to develop a deep wistfulness and appreciation for my culture. In America, I did not know anybody. Oftentimes when I spoke, people laughed at my Indian accent or they would tell me to go away. I could not keep up with the rapid pace at which people spoke in English. I often had to ask people to repeat what they had said. The jokes were all foreign to me and I felt like an outsider.
Despite the social challenges, however, Woodside Priory School provided me with excellent academics, a multidisciplinary athletics program and a multi-cultural blend of students. Still, the first few months were a bit of a disaster I had to get over the cultural shock and the differences in academics. These months were the hardest I have endured thus far, but I never gave up. I decided even before arriving that I would try my best to get accustomed to the foreign culture I was entering. The transition from basketball to cricket was quite horrific. There were almost no similarities in the two sports. I could not figure out how to shoot the ball. It was all alien to me. However, I adapted and got a feel for the game.
My adventure to America surely changed the direction in my life. Before I embarked on this challenge, I saw the world from only one perspective: that of my sheltered life in India. I never knew that people could be so radically different in their languages, customs, and behaviors. My new home is diverse, Westernized and completely different from my childhood home. And yet, all of the challenges and opportunities have helped me to search for who I am amidst the cultures of America and India. I never knew I could fit so well into the American society which, until this point, was only seen in myths and legends in my small-town mind. The adventures of moving to a faraway land and learning to thrive have proven to me all that I am capable of, and shown me all I have yet to learn. After moving to America from India, I know that I can conquer any frontier and overcome any challenge. The world is mine to explore.
Sikander Sohail
"So...
Soldiers compare scars;
each calls forth a memory...
but mine tell no tales.
you jokingly say you've been scarred for life but if that were the case-
would you know it?
could you pull back your sleeve a month from now, thumb the jagged, dead mountains on the map of your skin and and bring it to life long enough to tell a story?
could exposure conjure a ghost long enough to tell a cautionary tale?
"This is how I died. Take care you meet not my fate."
For I'll sit down with anyone who can pull back the sleeves of his persona,
reveal the flesh of her psyche,
and tell the story of every single scar, how it got there, why.
I'll listen to anyone who can conjure those ghosts to whisper of martyrdom and suicide
of dragons ablaze or honorable duels to the death of innocence
or rationality,
the carving of jade into any of 6 billion animals of the orient...with awe
with attention
with reverence for the reverse engineered blueprint of the human bieng
split 6 billion ways from
Sunday,
Sunday,
SUNDAY!
But.
I won't compare scars
I can't roll up my sleeves yet
and speak for the dead.
Sorry."
Monica Weber
Heart is where the home is.
These, my varied people, gathered
as wind-blown leaves in the silent damp
of a New England Autumn.
Scraped together by the tugging ties of blood
A multiplicity of color, of a frantic pile of names
Blown unwilling by the Wind of Love and Neglect.
We gather in a sacred spot of ritual,
A shrine to our fore-bearer's past,
Of knickknacks, hands, and memories
All worn by time that fades their sharp newness.
The muffled silence
Of closing my mind to Their faults
Rings in my ears.
My blindfold itches but I tie it tight.
These, my wearied people, gathered
before me as scared deer mice,
Groping for companionship,
To reestablish bonds and then forget them,
To return to their windblown lives.
This mask, my face, moves as they want it to,
Bound to my love for Their shrine,
The knickknacks I have sacrificed there
To become dusky memories.
My heart, a basket for Their needs,
Weighs heavy as I sit at their window
And watch the running leaves
Grow still in Their field of frost,
Of cold relationships, of ice bitten spring.
As I stand and lay hand upon my suitcase,
The deer mice scatter. We are no longer blind,
Desperately wide-eyed in the dark ice night.
We see our fellow strangers in the damp light of day
And bid goodbye with a fond smile,
A promise of next year's Autumn.
Nathan Feldman
Monica Weber
I step onto the ferry
The blackberry wedges of the sky scrapers
Shuffle towards the predawn horizon
I stare out over the sharp surf
Sleepy and repentant.
The sorcerer clock ticks faster
And the minutes from an oblong disk
Slowly pinning me to the receding skyline,
I sigh and reach for my morning coffee.
