I came to America after spending the first five years of my life in South India. The American experience started with six months in Naperville – a suburb of Chicago. Then a car move to Brooklyn Park – a suburb of Minneapolis. Everything went well, until second grade. I fell into remedial English that took me two years to crawl out of. Not something people generally look for in an author During these two years my best friend moved away, and I stopped walking. The only place to go was up.
That just so happened. I ended up in the highest math and reading classes. Sixth grade was just the beginning of high academic achievement. A move across town switched around my junior high school. This thus added very little to losing a second best friend and the ability to push a manual wheelchair.
Junior high garnered all the physical help I required for attending school in the form of a paraprofessional. This agreed with being a good Indian schoolchild i.e. focusing on academics and leaving almost no room for anything else including friends. Having an “adult” with me during school all but guaranteed this state. Beginning a good Indian child was just something I followed independently out of coincidence. This focused lifestyle brought A honor roll all the way to graduation.
If you asked me now if I regretted my reticence, the answer would be wholeheartedly yes. This change resulted from years of work, as with everything worthwhile, and more experience. Around tenth grade, I went down the rabbi hole of meditative practice. This eventually pushed me forward into a whole different person. A few near death experience grounded these changes. During this eight-year transformation, I lost the ability to feed myself, write by hand, breathe, eat through my mouth, and speak without lip reading. I’m still the same person, definitely a better person.
That’s about everything. One more thing, I started writing seriously six years ago.
Girish Karthikeyan 