DEOL, samira e.

[samira deol]

Out of all Hindu characterizations, and there are many, I have found Karma to be my favorite. Cause and reaction, give and take, a harmonious balance between debts and compliances. It came as no surprise to me that my brother was actually my twin. We complimented and complained, we fought and we forgave, we battled and we bemoaned. But deep down we were a balancing act of a gift to one another. A soundboard, a home within a home, a mind reader and instinctual empath always hovering around in each other's peripheral. Immediate partner's in crime, volumes reaching new levels the closer we grew, and the older we got. I quieted down, over time - found my father's stoic sensibility, his quiet way of teasing, of stoking fires with subtle cues and cracking smiles with enlightened vigor. Ish, on the other hand, found a spontaneity and lack of embarrassment that seemed to elude all of us. It's why I'm the future doctor, and he's the aspiring actor. We barely remember the move - Ish will claim his memories came in earlier but there's often any excuse to mention that he is 7 minutes older than I am. My father was at the forefront of an Achilles repair procedure involving the 'speed bridge' in Mumbai when word started getting around. Our maa often laments about his exhaustion coming off the long haul flights to America, the various meetings and a very tedious technical demonstration. All this time away from the children! But then came a very competitive contract in an American hospital and, over time, an extensive one for LA Rams exclusivity, and our dry heat was traded in for balmy coastlines. Maa told us we stuck even closer together, after that. Using each other for warmth instead of an Indian sun, yet soothed by rolling waves on beach weekends. All shuttled together in an apartment for a while as we were enrolled in school, adapting quickly to a language our parents had thought they’d teach us second. The amount of television I was allowed to watch would make a parent shudder these days, screens of over exaggerated anime characters and laugh tracks, slowly acclimating to the curious words and phrases and looks we’d get. For a while, we were the only children at our preschool that looked like us. I think it affected the parents more than the kids, but our parents still have a bitter taste in their mouth about it if you ask. Needless to say, the grandchildren will never go there. Our parents relocated us to Culver City when they found a house, and the street we lived on became our home. It was close enough to our father’s work, good public school systems and a two-way street of curious neighbors who brought dinner offerings before they blinked twice. Over time I knew I could knock on Ms. Rasmussen’s door for extra sugar, or run to the Ogilvy’s for family game night on Thursdays. It was a community that settled my parents, watching their children grow up somewhere they initially didn’t belong. We didn’t either, really - but as we aged, the strange space of America became our way of life. A blend of dharma and free speech, no one blinking twice at us being vegetarian. That one took me a while to figure out why, I’ll admit. Guess we were already ‘ahead of the trend’. But our principles remained true. Truthfulness, objectiveness, kindness. Understanding the universe had a balance, that wrongs would be righted to maintain harmony. When someone in my 2nd grade class cut my hair for example, his color card was changed and he cried to his parents when they found out. Sometimes things were as simple as that. Others, it all got complicated. Testing these values, making me aware of a world much more dark in its discipline. Reality is a hell of a drug, sometimes…and to be honest, I still shrink when I swear.

AARON Ahimsa (Non-violence) is a positive and dynamic force, that means benevolence or love or goodwill or tolerance (or all of the above) of all living creatures, including the objects of knowledge and various perspectives. Ahimsa. It's what I wish Aaron had at all hours, at all times. A sense of peace, not the urge to look over his shoulder, shrink his frame if he had to, keep quiet and keep under the radar. It wasn't who he was as a person, but it was who he had to be because of his circumstances. He was in our lives early. I remember when he first transferred, was this kid who looked like he belonged but always seemed out of place. Not eager to be like the others, per se, but content with just...being. Unnoticed, almost, like a ghost that hovered in class, absorbed what he needed, and lingered well after everyone else. Unfortunately (or fortunately, I believe), Ish and I were in the same class that year and he couldn't have avoided us if he tried. Ish has always had a beautiful way of connecting with people - natural, outgoing and brash. He scooped Aaron up before he even knew what he was doing, depositing him onto the threshold of our lives. In turn, Ish got a best friend. And I kind of got everything else. A friend, too. An adolescent crush. A nascent curiosity. An unconscious desire to help, to heal. It was years into my schooling that I realized he was where this interest had stemmed from. Plastic Surgery had never been on my parent's short list - their expressions were schooled but mildly horrified when I mentioned what I'd like to specialize in - but the flame had flickered in my youth, and I'd followed it blindly to my current destination. I'd always been nurturing, which should have lead me to pediatrics...but I think I was also the first to notice the bruises. That they were consistent, never seemed to disappear for too long. One would slide out from a sleeve, or they'd speckle across his calf, excuses as childish as we were. I didn't have the tongue to speak up then but I had the one to ask questions and act on them, stealing the blocks of frozen paneer my Maa always kept in the freezer to place against what he couldn't fully hide. I wish I'd known the extent, back then. That we weren't taught to live as simply as we did. But it wasn't anyone's fault that it took so long; things were always meant to run their course. It got worse before it got better. The long absences, the longer hours at our home. The long looks my parents would give one another while making tea, the longer silences that would fill the air when they wondered what to do. Concern hidden away as we all did our homework at our working table, Aaron just as welcome as we were, shoes always tucked away alongside ours in the mudroom. Sometimes I looked at them, wondering how someone who gave the appearance of relative normalcy could endure what he did. That the facade on the outside consistently worked, even if we saw through it. It got to a point where Maa or Papa would stitch his split knuckles up right in front of me. That when I splashed alcohol on torn skin, he'd barely even flinch. It was devastating. And I loved him all the same. I can't say it was easy, growing up in a family dynamic with someone that I inevitably fell for. We were each other's first kiss at age 12 - an incredibly unromantic box check if I had to admit. I asked if he'd ever been kissed before, swinging my feet off the edge of my bed, and when he shook his head I said me neither then asked if we could kiss. Like a science experiment! It was about as clinical as that, too, a peck that made us blush but shrug our shoulders, carry about our days. We hardly knew what romance was back then, just a word in a textbook, a notion in love songs or television shows. But we figured it out down the line, Ish the strange guiding light that believed so deeply in truth, Satya, that he couldn't deny the shift everyone saw before their eyes. Awkward and predictable, we settled into a summer that drifted like sand through a sieve, ever wary of the time we were spending. I feel that's where our wires eventually sparked, crossed. One of us saw it as an ending, the sand run to the bottom of the sphere. The other yearned to flip it back over, the grains limitless and smooth. Shattering entirely after a year of long distance, a cold reunion. I'd gone halfway across the United States to school, studying biology at Duke. He'd seeped back into the sepsis that was his own father, ideas so fraught and conditioning so embittered in his brain, on his body, that he caved. I learned through Ish that he'd enlisted. Coward, was the first word I thought. That he didn't tell me he was thinking about it, that he'd done it without my knowledge, that he was going to ask for my forgiveness for the first time in his life instead of my partnership. When he came to visit campus my Sophomore year it felt like thin ice. The Dear John letter came in the form of verbal exasperation, something lingering under the tone of his voice he wouldn't say. I could tell that night that he was letting me go. His fight was physical, and elsewhere. I was a casualty in those mindless numbers. Undergrad is a blur, now, in part because of the loss and in part because of the medical terminology now taking up the active capacity of my brain. The highlight (not sure if I would call it that now) came in dating JJ Hastings, a prolific Duke basketball player who helped lead the Blue Devils to a National Championship our junior year. He then proceeded to be drafted to the NBA and dump me that same evening. With millions came more opportunities, it seemed. And I was not the prize he sought. I hated men the rest of my time there, pouring my fury into books and my compassion into friends, content but apprehensive to return to the West Coast when I was accepted into UCLA's medical school. I'd miss the seasons of North Carolina, but California held my family. I could take a few waves getting tossed in awkward reunions if it meant being closer to everyone. Ravi was just a pleasant surprise. RAVI Ishwar Pradihan (Regular prayers) requires the student to surrender to the will of God, perform every act in a selfless, dispassionate and natural way, accept the good or bad results, and leave the result of one's deeds (one's karma) to God. There is little to wish for Ravi, simply because he's the embodiment of what you want for him. We met at a medical conference our sophomore year - I noticed his warm face between the pamphlets and keynote speakers, then at the evening happy hours where he was the first person to broach a non-medical conversation with me. I remember it was some comment about the shrimp-on-ice tower, that I'd laughed into my wine glass, and we'd slowly drifted to our own little corner after prerequisite introductions. He was Neuro, at Stanford. I was Plastics, at UCLA. He was shy, reserved but so observant. I was loud, boisterous around him because he encouraged me to fill rooms. He liked painting, movie analysis and cozy evenings. I liked karaoke, pottery and nights at the theater (plays, movies, the like). It was such an opposite balance that it put us in parallel, that perfect harmony we'd been guided to look for and live by our entire lives. My parents loved him immediately, of course. A man of the same faith, the same skin - but I could read their initial hesitance upon our first arrival. Aaron lingering in their minds much as he did mine, digging up some of his things in my old closet as I sifted for scrapbooks. It took me a moment longer to return than I'd like to admit, staring bleakly at an old leather glove and wondering what type of world he was looking at. We still communicated but it felt stilted, brief. Like a weather report, or the stock exchange. I knew he and Ish were still close but we were blood and spice, 7 minutes apart swearing him to silence about any of my updates. I don't know if he ever asked Ish, about me. I didn't, in fear of what I'd hear. Or what I wouldn't hear, shrieking nightmares prevalent some nights when my notecards would melt into my dreams. It was always him, with the damage I'd have to remember to fix. Sometimes I couldn't, and what was worse is that I never knew if it was his father or deployment that put them there in my head. Ravi was an icepack on those singed wounds. A distraction, a partner and a discipline to keep going. The years were easy, flew. When we decided to couples match for Residency we discussed at length where we'd want to end up, Stanford being his true, passionate choice. The tremor in my hand as I mimic'd him had me questioning that choice but I still submitted - silently, secretly, crossing my fingers for our second option. A rare diversion for me, tied to the Bruins and the campus, the familiarity and my friends. I was elated when UCLA, our second choice, ended up being the one. I was shocked when, two years later, he asked me to be The One at an unofficial white coat ceremony our families were hosting. It wasn't that I didn't want to say yes. I said Yes. But it was a moment for accomplishment - of hard work falling in our favor, of a celebrated chapter and success for myself and the pride of my family. I guess I can see now that the whole thing was likely a ploy for an engagement party, but I took pride in my studies and my campaign to become a Doctor. Overshadowing it with a proposal, a celebration of his actions and my reactions, tainted the preconceived mood. I never said this aloud, of course - but now it's coming up on 2 years and the wedding binder has been collecting dust in our office. Residency will do that. Shift priorities.

jill . simone ashley . resident (ha)