They Called Me 'Gandhi' on the 5th Grade Playground

As Indian-Americans, we have all had those completely necessary moments in life where we were rudely smacked with the realization that we were outsiders. And still later, the enlightening moments that taught us that we were okay, no matter who we were. The following essay captures two of those moments for me. I thought it was time to publish it, in honor of my first trip to the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine Center here in Los Angeles yesterday. Enjoy. --rm

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Up until I was 10, I had no awareness that I was somehow "different." The most noticeable trait that set me apart from other kids my age were my weekends. My typical Saturday/Sunday was spent with family, in another family’s living room, which had been converted into a makeshift shrine of several of the Hindu Gods, using simple patterned bedsheets draped over carpets, as 60 of us, brought together by our common last name, would sit and chant Om Jai Jagdish Hare, if we knew the words. Fruit baskets and halwa offerings lay ready to be scooped up out of stainless steel dishware and passed around in mini Dixie paper plates. Halwa was from the Gods, so you had to eat it. If you just couldn’t, you had to give it to a parent. You never threw it away. Such were the rules. So, while I would be yawning through the pooja, wondering how come the older kids were getting away with watching Lethal Weapon in the other room, and passing the Dixie on the left hand side to my mom, the rest of the kids from my school were out at the Mall, scarfing down dollar slices of pizza, throwing away the crust and flirting with boys over a game of skeeball. Yeah, I was different.

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Especially compared to fellow fifth grader Ashley Jacobson, an obnoxious, obese, 110 lb. 10-year old terror of an Aryan-raced girl. Of course I just saw her as "bully." She was the girl that I would often let cheat off of me because either I was nice, or she was mean, I couldn't tell which. The girl who outed herself in the school bus as having already started her period by age nine! Bragged about it, actually. Is that even something to be bragging about? “Congratulations Ashley, you can get pregnant now. Wow, seems like just yesterday, you were eight!” Hey, in her culture, the sooner you probably got to womanhood meant the sooner you could do EVERYTHING. I don't know why it was then, that someone who already saw herself as having the upper hand on me, had to lash out against me even more. For it was this girl to take the high honor of being the first person in my life to point out my race to me like it was a bad thing.

It was a hot day at Rees Elementary in Houston, Texas. We were on the blacktop at recess. We were playing four-square. Someone made a move that wasn't too favorable to her. My only-other-Indian-besides-me friend named Payal and I took sides against her. Suddenly, Ms. Immature-Yet-Premature honed in on the two of us and, rather than arguing the bad call, instead started chanting, “Gandhi! Gandhi!"

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I don't remember very much about what happened next, but I know I didn’t hit her. Smirk. Maybe my face got as hot as the blacktop. Maybe the game resumed around me, among my now normal classmates. Maybe a teacher came over and separated Ashley from us, because for a young person like Payal, who came from an educated, politically aware Indian family, she had the wherewithal to comprehend that you don't say that, that's wrong, I'm telling a teacher!
But that was it. Ashley was told to stop, and that was it. There was no apology from her. There was no hushed conversation between the fifth grade faculty about whether or not they should “sit their foreign students down and talk about their feelings of foreignness.” No appeasing notes sent home with us from the Principal, telling our parents how pleased he is that such bright, hardworking students attend his school. Worse yet, nothing occurred to smack Ashley’s previously-closeted-now-out home-taught racism upside the head. Who knows how many more she would go on to terrorize, tossing back-pocketed playground insults at young impressionable Chinese, Black, and Polish kids, on long bus rides home from school. We were literally left to our own devices to sort out what had happened on our own.

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Now that I’m older, and have read enough, and have experienced enough to know that I wish to pursue a life that is based on Truth and Love and Justice, it really sucks that the only memory I have is not that Ashley Jacobson hurled the name “Gandhi” around like it was an insult, but that I took it like an insult. I mean, how could yelling "Gandhi" at someone possibly be construed as an insult? That's like coming up to a young Argentinian kid, knocking over his ice cream and waiting till he starts crying to chant, "Che Guevara! Che Guevara!" Makes zero sense, right? Now, if she had called me "Ravan," a mythological demon from the lore of Hinduism, or even "Gabbar Singh," the sex offending villain from the 1975 Bollywood classic, Sholay...well, then Ashley just plain deserved a ladoo for knowing that information!
But seriously. She uttered the name of a fearless leader. Greatest father of a nation to have ever walked the path of a human. Someone who got beat, punched, spat on, clubbed, kicked... and did nothing violent in retaliation to stop it. Kind of sounds like me at that moment on the playground, only I hadn’t quite mastered the part about holding your head up high.
I know now that the only reason it read like an insult is because she conveyed it as one. It all replays in my mind like the fight sequence of a movie: Slo-mo. Like a mad hound foaming at the mouth, "Gandhi" spills from the ignorant rottweiler's lips. Pan to Payal, who aborts the dodgeball game with an air of CODE RED! Cut to me, with a sick, tightening in my gut like I’ve just done something wrong. Close-up on the beads of sweat. Cut back to Ashley laughing, pointing, satisfied at how her treachery lands. Crane shot of me, head hanging down, defeated. Fade Out.
I was only a child of 10, but God, I wish I had known!
Known what to say back. If I had been slightly more well-read, slightly bolder, and slightly bigger in stature, I could have faced that 130 lb. godless porkchop and tossed back, "Oh, you’re calling me Gandhi? Why thank you! Yes, after recess, I do have to go to my locker and grab my cotton loom. Next year, I can start wearing a training bra that I weaved all by myself! Oh, what did I bring to eat? Nothing. Yup sorry, Ashley. I can’t trade your string beans for a pudding, I'm on a strict fast here. Yeah, since I'm Gandhi and all, I'd say that pretty much puts me in charge. What say tomorrow for recess, we all go on a march and dump some Morton Salt in the bayou behind the school? Wear good walking chapals.”
I know, I know. You’re saying, “Gandhi never used sarcasm.” I know. He used authenticity with a knowing smile on his face. Well, that takes practice. So does taking an absolutely unwavering stand for humanity, coupled with the grace of humility.

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I do remember not staying mad at Ashley that year. Sometime during the spring, we found ourselves together again, drawing on the classroom chalkboard, during indoor recess. She was being nice to me because she had just cheated off my Reading Comprehension test. She began telling a few of us about a show she thought we'd like. A show which would end up forever changing and shaping the rest of my life. In big, white chalky letters, she wrote out the syndicated time slot 5pm, ch 13. Then very simply, she wrote out, The Monkees.
Maybe I made a point to watch it because she told me about it, and I wanted to feel like I had something in common with her. Maybe I wanted to bridge that gap. Maybe her 165 lb. frame just scared me. Either way, she was dead on about me. I loved the show, immediately connected with the silly style of humor, and the next day I strutted into class sporting a healthy new crush on Peter Tork and couldn't stop talking about it. She smiled and we went back to our school work.

When I was working on this conclusion, I sought out to find a really great quote by Mohandas Gandhi to wrap things up. Something about conquering your enemies with love or how your enemies sometimes come bearing the greatest gifts. But instead, I found this:

“In the dictionary of Satyagraha (civil disobedience and nonviolence), there is no enemy.”

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