Auroville Sadhana Forest - DAME

In Japan, the word for big no no, strongly no, or DON'T is Dame (dah-meh) and it's accompanied by a gesture of arms crossed like an "X". Today I arrived in Auroville at my volunteer assignment at the Sadhana Forest. Sadhana Forest - DAME. I was ready to leave as soon as I arrived. I felt like I was back on campus at The Evergreen State College - a place populated by crunchy white hippies with dreads, except here they are mostly from Israel.

Here's what I first encountered upon meeting one of the forest founders:

Mistake # 1: I mentioned coming to India from Japan. She and another volunteer asked if I was visiting my family there.

Just because an Asian visits an Asian country, doesn't mean he or she is from there. All Asians DO NOT look alike, and we are not the same. Uninformed assumption that I was visiting family or Japanese.

Mistake #2: She then asked where I was from. I told her. "But where are you from?" she asked. "I was born in the States (you fucking dumbass)," I said (I was thinking). "What is your origin?" she asked. If I was born in the States, that's where I originated. There are such things as Asians born in America. I wonder what her reaction would be if I asked what her origin was after she told me she was from Israel. After all Israel was settled on Palestinian land by Jewish immigrants.

Mistake #3: "You have those Asian eyes," and then she demonstrates to her daughter on her daughter's own eye's stretching them slanty. Wow, I am completely thrown back to the white kids who used to tease me for looking chinky in grade school.

Someone once shared with me that the word "assume" breaks down to ass out of U and Me. Boy did she come out as the big ignorant ass on this one.