Lost in Dot

Personally, I don't know much about my family history. Not that I haven't wanted to learn about it, but more so for the fact that much of it wasn't documented. For example, none of my grandparents know what their actual date of birth is. None of them have true birth certificates since they were born in obscure villages where documentation was not seen as important. There are very few pictures from my parents' childhoods because the only cameras available to them were in studios that required appointments to be made. This leaves a great deal of mystery for my relatives and me. After all, we want to learn more about our past, but how can we do that if we have nothing to lead us? Aside from my past, I wonder how my posterity will react to me. If they want to learn about their past, they'll have the opposite of me: an abundance of information. From my Instagram profile, to my Snapchat memories, to even my VSCO profile, social media will provide them with as much infor...

Whether it lies in food, culture, or appearance, our world is full of diversity. Unfortunately for humans, accepting diversity has proven to be difficult. In history, people tended to favor those who fit the "ideal standard" over those who diverged from it. However, that leads me to ask, what is this "ideal standard"? Unsurprisingly, beauty standards differ across the globe. For example, in America, it is said that we favor slender women to those who are curvier, whereas, in some other countries, a curvier woman is preferred because of her "ability to bear children". If we have so many different opinions on beauty, what is even considered beautiful? When I did some further research, I found something that was somewhat universal. The emphasis on skin tone is heavy in most countries. Here, the idea of racism solely exists for the fact that people with whiter skin were treated better in history than those with darker skin. Today, the theme of lighter ...

In our day to day lives, we use names to identify not only ourselves but also everything around us. For example, my name is Dhatri, which means "mother earth" in Sanskrit. My parents chose it for that reason, as well as the fact that it matches my brother's name: Dhruv. By standards, my name is my primary identification factor, just like anyone else's is for them. However, this leads me to ask the question: how powerful is a name? "...the avenue...had always been and would always be known as Mains Avenue and not Doctor Street." - Toni Morrison Perhaps, the power doesn't only lie within the name, but also within the people who are deciding on a name. In "Song of Solomon", the black community members wanted "Mains Avenue" to be called "Doctor Street" in order to remember the first black doctor who lived on that street. It was a symbol of cultural and historical significance for them. However, the legislators were able to o...

Since I was born, I've never had to worry about any major circumstances. My family always had a house to live in, food on our table, clean water to drink, and nice clothes to wear. Even in times such as The Great Recession (2008), I never felt the need to worry about money. In contrast, my parents' upbringings were quite the opposite. Both of them were born and brought up in a small village in India called Panidem, where the primary industry was agriculture. My dad and his three sisters lived in a mud-based hut with one room that was destroyed twice by cyclones, forcing them to rebuild it. They would wake up extra early to go work in the fields, and then attend school in the small schoolhouse next to their house right after. There were times when my dad's family went to bed hungry because there wasn't enough food to feed them all. My mom's experiences were similar to these, as most people in the village lived the same lifestyle. Fortunately for me, I never h...