This Really Happened.
I’ve been meaning to jot this little anecdote down for a while now. I haven’t quite figured out how to tell this story pictorially, so this one may just be words.
For those of you who are illiterate, I apologize in advance.
I have this friend “C.” She’s basically one of the coolest, sweetest, people you’ll ever meet in your life. She’s one of my favorite people in all the land.
C has an unparalleled affinity for all things Asian… considering she’s a black woman from New Jersey who grew up rocking out to Michael Jackson.
My first memory of C was seeing her name on a list for the Students for International Training program in which I enrolled in 1995. I studied for 5 months in New Delhi. As I scanned the list for any other souls that might be black, I saw C’s name (which, you will have to trust, has a very Indian ring to it) and was like “huh. She must be Indian.”
Imagine my surprise when I saw her on the plane. She’s black y’all! Darker skin then me.
Shenanigans at the YMCA in New Delhi.
We became fast friends. We became sisters, even. We lived for about a month in a small town in Northern India called Udaipur. (It’s where Octopussy was filmed. Octupussy’s lair, in fact, is the Lake Palace. It’s gorgeous.) Continue reading