This post has little to do with photography – tips or tutorials. It has everything to do about stepping up and helping a complete stranger because their life depends on it. And, yes, you … YOU … can do something about it … NOW!

A couple of days back I received the following letter from Shilpa Nanduri:

I am writing to you because a friend of mine, Sonia Rai, who is just 24 years old, was just diagnosed with Acute Myelogenous Leukemia (AML) and is in urgent need of a bone marrow transplant.

I am requesting you to please help spread the word about Sonia and her family's effort to save her life.

They are currently organizing many bone marrow drives over the next few weeks in several cities. Visit www.curesonia.org for more information. Please keep checking back, because more cities will be added.

“Team Sonia – Sonia’s brother Sumit Rai, family and friends are organizing drives today and in the next few weeks. Please take the time to help spread the word about the drives and join the National Marrow Donor Program registry if you have not already done so.”

From Sepia Mutiny:

“As you may be aware from our previous posts on the topic, the National Bone Marrow Registry (NMDP) is in dire need of more ethnic donors. South Asians, as well as any minority, and especially people of mixed ethnicity are needed. Sonia is currently receiving excellent care at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, but in order to survive beyond the next few months, she requires a bone marrow transplant. Most matches occur within ethnicity and increasing the number of South Asians registered as potential bone marrow donors will help Sonia as well as many others who are searching.”

Please direct people to www.curesonia.org to find out how they can help. They can help by attending a drive and thus registering with the National Bone Marrow Donor program and / or by hosting their own drives (which is much easier than you would think, all the necessary support will be provided).

All new registrants added to the national registry might help not only Sonia, but also many others searching for a bone marrow match.

So, as we start the New Year today, allow me to ask you: Will you be the one to step up and register? Will you be the one to save Sonia's life or for that matter anyone else's life?

As you embrace the New Year, I also ask that you embrace this cause. This isn't the first time I am asking you to do so. Back in 2007, I appealed to you to help my cousin Vinay Chakravarthy. His friends and family rallied to have more than 50,000 people register. Yet, we are still short on finding matches for people like Sonia.

If you are the type to make every day count, shouldn't you jump in an register yourself with the National Bone Marrow Program registry today? Please remember that people's lives depend on it. Maybe even yours.

Welcome to a day filled with one's. It's 1/1/11. A very Happy New Year to you all.

My mother gave kisses like satin and embraces like warm honey. Making Punjabi-style home-made yogurt every evening was a religious practice for her. I would hover, eye-level with the kitchen counter, and gawk in awe at her magical hands that never spilled a drop. With those same bare fingers, she would flip oily, gritty and hot parathas. One time in Randall’s (a chain grocery store in Texas), in the soda aisle, someone accidentally put an eggplant on top of a 24-pack of Pepsi. It looked so out of context, so unabashedly “eggplant” amongst rows of sodas, that it spurred giggle after giggle after giggle from my mother. (Of course, my mom didn’t see the eggplant but rather baigan bharta!)

Many called her Nancy, instead of her Indian name, Neroo.  She and I are inextricably linked through the times I skipped school to create ‘busy' tasks for her; through the times I bought her bunches of her favorite bananas and playfully called her a monkey, just to see her laugh; through the times I would stand in her hospital room and just hold her in my arms, oftentimes only letting go when she told me I was suffocating her. We are linked through the drops of coconut oil she rubbed into my hair as a child, and through the drops of coconut oil I rubbed into her hair as an adult.

Coming from India in the late 60’s, my mother found herself lost in America, in a country where she couldn’t find cumin seeds and where people didn’t sleep on rooftops during summer. The story is one which has been now immortalized in books, movies, our memories, and our childhood of mothers who always wore saris to birthday parties of our white or brown friends from school.

The rest of her story has yet to be documented, has yet to be said. In what’s proving not to be such a rarity anymore for Indian families in the U.S., my father’s sudden departure from the family when I was 8 triggered severe symptoms of depression in my mother. This, combined with a complicated, abusive and rather hateful relationship with her own family, eventually morphed into biploar disorder -manifesting itself through hysteria episodes, hospitalizations, screaming, fights, multi-car trains of non-logic, and numerous suicide attempts. 

Since my pre-teens, I provided care for my mother. I tried finding creative solutions, taking great joy in the small victories, tried every resource I had at my disposal. I knew she was battling something larger than her, but her condition was not recognized by members of her Indian family and close friends in the South Asian community. This pitted me in complete disagreement with my mother’s family. Mental illness carried a stigma, it was an “American” problem, it wasn’t a real condition.

My father was often held at blame, I was often held at blame for her condition, being told my nontraditional choices and lifestyle left my mother in an “extreme sadness.” What were my nontraditional choices? Choosing to leave Texas when I felt my mom could take care of herself, opting for travel in the world instead of staying in Texas, choosing colorful boyfriends over marriage. Their medium of blame was a simplistic and dismissive answer to a complicated issue. My mother’s mental illness fell silent to her traditional family, to the South Asian community and prey to the stigma – the problem did not exist, so how could the solutions?

In 2006, my mother’s hallucinatory break-down and months of hospitalization led to her sudden and unexpected passing. It didn’t have to get to that point.

In the summer of 2008, I realized I had something to SAY. I knew the residual pain and isolation from my mother’s loss to bipolar disorder was so profound that if I didn’t channel it towards positive means, it would destroy me. So, in July 2008, I started SAY Campaign, to recognize and legitimize the fight against mental illness within the South Asian diaspora community (Check this YouTube video as well). There are hundreds more individuals in the South Asian community in the U.S. like my mother who, due to the stigma and lack of recognition, do not receive proper care. I am hoping by saying my mother’s story, sharing my story as a caretaker, it will be a catalyst for others to say their story and begin to chip away at the stigma.

I have something to SAY and I know others do as well. Join us, and South Asian artists and supporters Midival Punditz and Karsh Kale, in the SAY Campaign. Please keep an eye (or ear) out for concerts showcasing SAY Campaign with Midival Punditz and Karsh Kale in Spring 2009. Feel free to contact me at: graj@saycampaign.com

“Up until now, life has chronologically built one year upon the next: high school to college, college to job, but job to random-inexplicable-year-doing-development-work-in-a-place-I-call-“the homeland”, that does not follow the line. So instead, it is like I am currently standing outside of this lifeline and watching it progress without me. At some given point I'll hop back on this destined course and resume my position in the world of right angles, round circles, and perfect squares.

Stepping away from the beaten path lets me see something only distance can reveal. I now know something that others just do not see. That I believe I will hold on to as my secret between life and me.”

Naeema Ginwala
2004-2005 Indicorps Fellow
Women's Health and Education

Celebrating its 5th year as a fellowship program, Indicorps is adding a new January 2007 fellowship to engage young Indians willing to fully dedicate themselves to an intense service-leadership process. Indicorps is a non-profit, non-governmental-organization that provides intensive structured grassroots Fellowship opportunities for Indians from around the world. The Indicorps Fellowship is a highly challenging, personally transformative experience that enables young people to become leaders through dedicated service. As an Indicorps Fellow, you will join a community of highly motivated individuals who constantly test their limits in order to contribute to a collective impact.

For the January fellowship, Indicorps seeks committed Indians from around the world with experience, motivation and leadership potential to find constructive solutions to India's most pressing needs. Projects range from a public health/nutrition project in tribal Tamil Nadu to a marketing project with bamboo artisans in rural Maharashtra. Project descriptions and applications are available online at
http://apply.indicorps.org. The application deadline is November 1, 2006.