Thank God, I thought, as the aromatic plate made its way closer and closer to my table. I tore off the mask I’d been wearing since entering the dimly lit restaurant, noting the lip gloss imprint on the inside. Yup, that’s going in the trash once I get home.
It’s not like there’s ever a “good time” for someone to die. Even the long, drawn-out deaths — the ones that you know are inevitable — still come as a shock. You’re never really prepared for it, as much as you may think you are.
On Oct. 13, 2019, over 100 wildfires broke out in Lebanon, setting the scene for the insufferable year ahead. Over the course of the last year, Lebanon has experienced an economic crisis, a global pandemic and an explosion at their largest port, all while citizens are revolting against their corrupt government. Though the wildfires have been contained, Lebanon has been up in flames for the past year, growing more disastrous by the day.
In 2016, now-President Donald Trump won Michigan’s electoral votes by a slim margin of only 10,704 votes, a number that decisively allowed him to win the presidential election without winning the popular vote. This was a watershed moment for many South Asian Americans, including myself, in the state of Michigan, who retrospectively look back on 2016 with regret, some believing their lack of action may have been a reason for the results.
Content Warning: The following piece contains spoilers of the films “Night of the Living Dead” and “Get Out”
I’ve never been a fan of old horror films. Though I can understand why people love movies like “Psycho” or “Frankenstein,” I can’t seem to find them satisfying or entertaining to watch. That was until I watched the 1968 independent horror film, “Night of the Living Dead.”
You’re either sitting at the table, or you’re on the menu. That’s what my dad’s mentor told him when he first immigrated to America, and that’s what he told me when I left for college. He made me feel like I could achieve anything if I put enough work into it.
— Nada Eldawy, MiC Assistant Editor
Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness: a phrase nearly all Americans have come to identify with. What makes the construction of this proverb relatively unique is that it progresses in an order of necessity; you need life to obtain liberty and liberty to obtain happiness. At the very least, it is impossible for an individual who is not free to choose their way of life to be happy. But the pursuit of happiness is a misleading phrase, a wild goose chase.
As she braids oil and red thread through my hair, my grandmother tells me that her greatest fear is dying alone in her own home. Because her home had no longer remained a home, rather it was simply a place of half remembered dreams and visions of a life once lived, of a certain sort of stale and heavy air that rendered the tea no longer sweet and the soup sour, lining your throat with itchy cotton and sticky honey so that screams and cries and laughter became muffled.
When the Academy announced its controversial nominations for best acting roles in 2015, its choices were instantly criticized with the trending hashtag #OscarsSoWhite for blatantly snubbing people of color.
In the coming week, Bengali Hindus around the world will begin Durga Puja celebrations. Durga Puja is an auspicious period where we offer our devotion to Maa Durga, the Mother Goddess.