Quotes by Scaachi Koul

Fear always reaches a breaking point and turns into anxiety or rage, and I dont have enough storage space for more fear in my life. Namely when it involves people Ive never even met.

When Sweetu wasn’t being reduced to merely existing as a bride, as a piece of meat to be handled and prodded, to have decorative contraptions stuck into her skull, her interests were otherwise unexpressed. She rarely complained, hardly asked for anything, and maybe that’s because Indian girls grow up going to weddings and we watch the procedure and we know our roles: be demure, don’t complain, cry but don’t scream, get tea for anyone older than you, and calmly meet expectations.

If Indian weddings for Indian people are the furthest from “fun,” trips to India for Indian people are the furthest from “vacation.” When I told my friends about the upcoming trip, everyone purred about what a great time I’d have, told me to take a lot of photos, told me to eat everything. But if you’re going to India to see your family, you’re not going to relax, you’re not going to have a nice time. No, you’re going so you can touch the very last of your bloodline, to say hello to the new ones and goodbye to the older ones, since who knows when you’ll visit again. You are working.

Mom has reorganized the kitchen so that the one room that was everyones room is foreign to me. My visits are punctuated with me whipping around, angrily demanding, Where are the forks, WHY DID YOU MOVE THE FORKS? and she has to calmly open the drawer on the other side of the kitchen as if she moved it just to ruin my life. I just found out where she puts the bowls and their new location feels like such a personal attack that I can barely talk about it without raising my blood pressure.

There is no cowardice in removing yourself from a wildly unhealthy and unwinnable situation . . . You shouldnt feel like you have to play . . . you dont owe anyone anything. You dont have to be available to everyone. You can stop.

I like being present in spaces where I am not welcome because you do not deserve to feel comfortable just because youre racist or sexist or small-minded.

Im not white, no, but Im just close enough that I could be, and just far enough that you know Im not. I can check off a diversity box for you and I dont make you nervous - at least not on the surface. Im the whole package!

Mom talks about moving to Canada as though my father had requested she start wearing fun hats. Why not try it? she thought, instead of This fucking lunatic wants me to go to a country made of ice and casual racism.

She used to call me on the phone and scream, “I LOVE YOU SO MUCH, I AM GOING TO CHOP YOU INTO PIECES SO SMALL, YOU WILL BE A POWDER AND NO ONE WILL FIND YOU.

You know what would be fun,” our school’s administration likely thought, huffing glue out of an old sock. “What if we make our cruellest eleven-year-olds assess each other in wet spandex for an hour every day for a week in the dead of winter?

I peeled the shorts off my sweating skin and stepped into the skirt. It slid up my body, resting on my waist, and I pulled the zipper up towards the lord. It didnt just fit. No, it did more than that. It melded to my body, beautifully, as if it had been cut specifically for me, to mask and smooth and elevate. I would be better in this skirt. The dream was happening! I had the all-knowing smile, my hair was suddenly more luxurious, I felt thinner, more acceptable. Girls who had been mean to me in high school would see me in this skirt and think, Is that Scaachi? and Id say, YOU BET IT IS, YOU DUMB BITCH and then punch all their boyfriends in the teeth. (I have not thought this fantasy through; just let me have this.)

Do other dads not end their phone calls with existential despair? Because thats what my dad does. Papa ends most of his calls with me the way you might close a conversation with someone you want to menace. Anyway, hell say, Ill be here. Staring into the abyss. Or, when I have given him good news, The talented will rule and the rest will perish in the sea of mediocrity. Or, when I have given him bad news, I am for for everything that happens to you, as everything is my fault. He never ends with anything that couldnt one day be construed as a tragic yet comic last word.

The mistake we make is in thinking rape isn’t premeditated, that it happens by accident somehow, that you’re drunk and you run into a girl who’s also drunk and half-asleep on a bench and you sidle up to her and things get out of hand and before you know it, you’re being accused of something you’d never do. But men who rape are men who watch for the signs of who they believe they can rape. Rape culture isn’t a natural occurrence; it thrives thanks to the dedicated attention given to women in order to take away their security. Rapists exist on a spectrum, and maybe this attentive version is the most dangerous type: women are so used to being watched that we don’t notice when someone’s watching us for the worst reason imaginable. They have a plan long before we even get to the bar to order our first drink.