"Anika, you're kind of a badass."
I admit it: I've wanted someone to say that to me for a really, really long time. I've always been a fan of badass women. As a girl I dreamed of playing Cleopatra, Claire Zachanassian and Abbie Putnam, characters as vicious as they are irresistible.
In Shakespeare, I admired Beatrice for being daring, flirtatious and interesting, and Lady Macbeth for her passions and treasons, but I snoozed through Ophelia's tortured musical interludes. As for everyone's favorite doomed ingenue - Juliet - well, at age 13 I would rather have stabbed my eyes out than stand listlessly on a balcony waiting for a forbidden lover to show up and enliven my dull existence. ("Imagine," I once scoffed to a friend when I was in middle school, "how pathetic your life has to be that you'd kill yourself over a man.")
But life was not that easy. Growing up, I was about as "un-badass" as it is possible to be. I was a terrible liar - a memorable public humiliation in fourth grade taught me that I might as well not even try. I never cheated on tests, and I never copied a single piece of homework. Whenever my Mom or Dad argued with the cashier at the supermarket, I'd duck out the back and wait for the fight to end. In school, playing contact sports nearly made me piss my pants.
Although I seethed against being a good, polite Indian girl, it seemed to be my fate. I would play the piano, go to a good school, marry someone boring, spend several decades repressing my angers and passions and eventually die, I decided. Not exactly Juliet, but not Lady Macbeth either.
Thank god for Delhi! Of course, my badass moment was a lot less exciting than regicide or even seduction. Some friends and I recently tried to go to a music festival in South Delhi. By the time we got there, the event had run out of booze and the concert had turned into a stampede. There was a mob at the door and the guards weren't letting anyone in. I finally squeezed through the horde and harangued the guard that I was a journalist with a major newspaper in Delhi and my friend was a TV reporter. After a moment of shock, he let go slightly and let us sneak through the crowd.
A few days later, a friend of mine - who doesn't speak Hindi - had a disagreement with her driver. I was the go-between who got to dress him down. Afterwards, she was full of praise for his reformed attitude.
In India, it's critical to fight for what you want, whether it's a seat on the train, a bank account or admission to a music festival, but I've never been a fighter. Even daily scuffles with taxi drivers over the fare used to leave me full of guilt and self-pity. Why oh why does everyone hate me? I'd mourn, wandering through Delhi's dusty streets. Why can't people just give me what is right and fair?
I never intended it, but Delhi has turned me into a fighter. At some point, fed up with daily injustice, I began to tell people exactly what I thought they should do, without caring about the consequences. And Delhi is a great place to fight - everyone does it. It's liberating and necessary. There are no dark looks from other customers, no muttering about how long they will have to wait in line (all hallmarks of the US) I argue early and often, and - to my own surprise - I often win.
When I was young, my Mom often - randomly - liked to quote from the Bible. She would tell us, "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth." But what this particular beatitude skips over is that the meek will have to wait until all the other heirs - the badasses - die, which means they'll be waiting a really long time. That's fine for the meek, I guess, since they have nothing else to do, but imagine how Lady Macbeth would deal with it.
I admit it: I've wanted someone to say that to me for a really, really long time. I've always been a fan of badass women. As a girl I dreamed of playing Cleopatra, Claire Zachanassian and Abbie Putnam, characters as vicious as they are irresistible.
In Shakespeare, I admired Beatrice for being daring, flirtatious and interesting, and Lady Macbeth for her passions and treasons, but I snoozed through Ophelia's tortured musical interludes. As for everyone's favorite doomed ingenue - Juliet - well, at age 13 I would rather have stabbed my eyes out than stand listlessly on a balcony waiting for a forbidden lover to show up and enliven my dull existence. ("Imagine," I once scoffed to a friend when I was in middle school, "how pathetic your life has to be that you'd kill yourself over a man.")
But life was not that easy. Growing up, I was about as "un-badass" as it is possible to be. I was a terrible liar - a memorable public humiliation in fourth grade taught me that I might as well not even try. I never cheated on tests, and I never copied a single piece of homework. Whenever my Mom or Dad argued with the cashier at the supermarket, I'd duck out the back and wait for the fight to end. In school, playing contact sports nearly made me piss my pants.
Although I seethed against being a good, polite Indian girl, it seemed to be my fate. I would play the piano, go to a good school, marry someone boring, spend several decades repressing my angers and passions and eventually die, I decided. Not exactly Juliet, but not Lady Macbeth either.
Thank god for Delhi! Of course, my badass moment was a lot less exciting than regicide or even seduction. Some friends and I recently tried to go to a music festival in South Delhi. By the time we got there, the event had run out of booze and the concert had turned into a stampede. There was a mob at the door and the guards weren't letting anyone in. I finally squeezed through the horde and harangued the guard that I was a journalist with a major newspaper in Delhi and my friend was a TV reporter. After a moment of shock, he let go slightly and let us sneak through the crowd.
A few days later, a friend of mine - who doesn't speak Hindi - had a disagreement with her driver. I was the go-between who got to dress him down. Afterwards, she was full of praise for his reformed attitude.
In India, it's critical to fight for what you want, whether it's a seat on the train, a bank account or admission to a music festival, but I've never been a fighter. Even daily scuffles with taxi drivers over the fare used to leave me full of guilt and self-pity. Why oh why does everyone hate me? I'd mourn, wandering through Delhi's dusty streets. Why can't people just give me what is right and fair?
I never intended it, but Delhi has turned me into a fighter. At some point, fed up with daily injustice, I began to tell people exactly what I thought they should do, without caring about the consequences. And Delhi is a great place to fight - everyone does it. It's liberating and necessary. There are no dark looks from other customers, no muttering about how long they will have to wait in line (all hallmarks of the US) I argue early and often, and - to my own surprise - I often win.
When I was young, my Mom often - randomly - liked to quote from the Bible. She would tell us, "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth." But what this particular beatitude skips over is that the meek will have to wait until all the other heirs - the badasses - die, which means they'll be waiting a really long time. That's fine for the meek, I guess, since they have nothing else to do, but imagine how Lady Macbeth would deal with it.
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