Story: Waitlisted

Kaitlyn woke up on the couch that sat in her mother's hospital room as she heard the door opening. A figure wearing a white jacket strode in with a handful of papers and no discernible expression on her face.

"Katherine Meyer?" Kaitlyn sat up straight to answer the doctor.

"I'm her daughter, I'm allowed to know." Kaitlyn responded. She still couldn't determine what kind of news the doctor was about to deliver. Her mother had been suffering through the middle stages of liver failure and was awaiting test results to see whether a liver donor was required.

"I'll come back later to talk to your mother myself, but it looks like she is going to need an immediate liver transplant. The scarring is too severe to treat." Kaitlyn fought back tears.

"But I-I'm not a match for her blood." Her voice cracked.

"Yes, your mother will be placed on the transplant list until a match becomes available." Kaitlyn wondered how someone could be so robotic in delivering news like this.

"But she needs one now." Kaitlyn couldn't help raising her voice slightly at the disappointing news.

"Until a match becomes available, which can take up to several months, your mother will have to be monitored closely and need to stay as healthy as possible, which means eating a balanced diet and cutting out alcohol completely. It looks like it'll be your job to make sure these things are carried out." The doctor looked at 20 year-old Kaitlin with almost a hint of sadness, but it disappeared quickly.

After the doctor left, Kaitlyn fast walked to the bathroom on the fourth floor and immediately starting crying in a stall.  Why couldn't she save her own mother? And how long would her mom last without a transplant? She was barely awake most of the time due to her illness, and when she was awake, she was nauseous and had no appetite. Other time, she was completely confused and called Kaitlyn by her brother's name.

Then it came to her. Her brother! He could possibly be their mother's donor and save her. Her older brother had been long gone. Right after college, he left for a manager position at a big technology company on the west coast. After their mother's long struggle with alcoholism, he didn't want anything to do with her. Kaitlyn decided to call anyway.

Surprisingly, the phone picked up.

"Hey Erik, it's Kaitlyn."  A long pause.

"What do you need?" he asked, sounding inconvenienced.

"It's Mom." Another long pause.

"You know I can't deal with her addiction anymore. I did for ten years and I refuse to put myself through it again."

"Erik, she's dying. Her only hope is a transplant and she's on the list for one but it might be months and I don't know if she'll last that long. Please, Erik, you might be able to save--" The dial tone sounded.

Kaitlyn sat down on the toilet and cried again. Erik was the only one who could save her in time and he had refused. Their mother was in so much pain and all he could think about was himself and her past mistakes. Now, their only hope was someone on the list.

------------------

Six months later, Kaitlyn sat in the same hospital, two floors up, helping her mom pack up her stuff to leave. Her mother ended up getting on the list, and an anonymous donor gave their liver a month and a half after calling her brother.



A/N
This story is based off of a story I found in Sacred Tales of India called "The Wife of Yama". So in the story, there's a brother and sister named Kausik and Bijaya. Kausik and Bijaya had performed a special ceremony to Parvati that gave them each one wish. Kausik had wished to be a king so it happened, and Bijaya asked to be the bride of one of the ghost beings from the land of the dead. She married Yama, the prince of death. One day, she was strolling through the forest and saw her mother among the souls suffering in hell (because of a sin her mother had committed), so she asked her husband to get her mother out of there. He said he could not, and her last hope was if Kausik, her brother, gave up his wish. He refused because he did not want to give up his throne. Eventually, Bijaya found a woman who also performed the ceremony and had one wish given to her. This woman was kind enough to give Bijaya's mother the wish and so her mother was released from hell.

I wanted to modernize the story, so I made "hell" a sickness that their mother was dying from due to her own choices in life. So, I chose Cirrhosis of the liver since alcoholism would put her at risk of liver failure. The estranged brother in my story represents Kausik, who was unwilling to leave his job on the west coast to give part of his liver to his own mother. The anonymous donor plays the role of the woman who, although she didn't know Bijaya's mother, gave her life anyway.

Bibliography: Sacred Tales of India By Dwigendra Neogi. Link to reading guide.

For Liver info: Web MD

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Reading Notes: Sacred Tales of India Reading Part B

A brother, Kausik, and sister wanted to do something to worship the goddess Siva and her husband Parvati, so they started taking care of a bull, which was Siva's favorite animal. Unfortunately, some thieves came and took the bull, so they went out looking for it. While in the forest, they met celestial beings doing a ceremony and the beings told them that the bull would come back if they  performed the Budhashtami ceremony on their own. Parvati was pleased with their sacrifice, so she granted them each a wish. The brother asked to be a king, and the sister asked to marry one of the celestial light beings in the forest. She ended up marrying Yama, the god of the dead. One day in the forest, she saw her own mother suffering in the equivalent of hell and asked Yama to save her mother. He said the only one who could was Gautami, a young woman who also performed the same ceremony. Her terrible brother refused to give up his throne to help their own mother!  a complete stranger, gave up her wish to help Bijaya's mother.

Chand fighting Padma, Dolls of India

Another interesting story from the section I read was from "Chand, the unbeliever". Mahadeo, god of earth, visited in human form and saw a woman of low caste but fell for her anyway. Their daughter was born completely full-grown. Bhagavati (Mahadeo's wife) sees a random woman walking alongside him and immediately feels jealousy, so she tears out one of Padma (his daughter)'s eyes. Padma and her new friend Neta met a millionaire named Chand. However, Chand didn't believe that Padma was the daughter of a god, so her refused to worship her. Padma ended up marrying Jaratkaru and had sons and daughters that were snakes. Padma sent her sons and daughters to bite Chand's children, but he still refused to worship her. She went on to even reincarnate her aspara couple friends as one of Chand's new children to try and convince him that he should worship Padma.


Bibliography: Sacred Tales of India By Dwigendra Neogi. Link to reading guide.

Reading Notes: Sacred Tales of India

Manasa, goddess of snakes, Wikipedia

Padma and reptilian animals are worshiped in the Manasa Ceremony, which falls at the beginning of the rainy season since reptiles start to infest most areas at that time.

Krisidhan was a rich farmer. He had seven wives and the youngest was Lahana. Her idea of a perfect day was to eat kol fish and then have no work to do the rest of the day. The fish turned out to be divine serpents, named Ahiraj and Maniraj. For a whole month, she fed the two snakes until food became scarce. Someone found them in the kitchen and in the store-house, so Lahana kept having to move the snakes. The two snakes went back to their mother, Manasa, and said they wanted to repay Lahana for her kindness by being her home. They came to get her by pretending to be her brothers, and along with them they brought a train of snakes carrying presents for Lahana. The cute part was that they basically forced a nearby king to be her father so that Lahana would have a home like the other wives.

The Savitri ceremony is based on a woman who technically was a princess, but made herself live in the forest to practice self-discipline. Savitri, when she was a young woman trying to find a husband, saw Satyaban and immediately fell in love. Her father tried to get Savitri interested in various princes, but she wanted this son of a hermit. However, the only problem is that Satyaban has been cursed to die within a year of marriage. Nevertheless Savitri wishes to marry him because she says that one day married to Satyaban is worth the lifetime a widow. The newlyweds are blissfully happy in the forest, though they have little of luxury. Satyaban has no clue that he has this curse on him. The day he is doomed to die, Savitri manages to convince the gods to not take her husband's life.

Bibliography: "The Divine Brothers", "Snatched from Death", "By Itu's Favor". Sacred Tales of India. Link to Reading

Reading Notes: "On the Track of Love" and "Indra Gets Caught"

Since I have included a small comment about Krishna in my Introduction for my storybook, I decided to focus on stories that included Vishnu or Krishna, who is one of Vishnu's incarnations. The first story I read about Vishnu was called  "On the Track of Love". Some background about Vishnu--Radha is his main love interest when he is incarnated as Krishna, so she is the girl in this story. The other important character is Narada, who basically follows Vishnu around through spacetime, singing songs of love to Vishnu day and night. The story starts out with Narada becoming really jealous of a man called Muthu Mohan because he realizes that Krishna visits the hearts of all his followers, even this guy who only devotes 2 minutes per day to Krishna. Narada fancies himself as a better follower since he praises Krishna all day. To sort through his feelings, Narada recalls a time when Radha became similarly jealous. One night in a forest, Radha was invited to dance with Krishna. In the midst of dancing, she opens her eyes and notices that Krishna had multiplied himself so he could be with all the devotees present at the dance. She ran off, crying. Krishna had tried to explain to her the "Whole remains whole" aspect of being a god, but she couldn't forgive him. Narada remembers that Radha is human and cannot understand these things, but he has the choice to realize that Krishna must be present for all of his worshipers. Narada later asks Krishna why Muthu Mohan was such a great devotee of his. Krishna explains that even a second spent with him is eternity. So when Muthu was spending 2 minutes a day of his busy schedule to pray, he was completely present, which is something that Narada did not do.

Narada Visits Krishna, Pinterest 

The other story I read was called "Indra Gets Caught". In it, Indra is trapped in Ravana's dungeon and calls Brahma to help him escape. It was really beautiful to read because the dialogue switched between Indra's sad complaints and Brahma's calm reassurances. Brahma tells him to let go of the anger he has, since that is imprisoning him more than the chains are. Eventually, with some persuasion, Indra focuses on meditating to find a way out of the dungeon and is surprised to find himself free again.

Bibliography: Ganesha Goes to Lunch by Kamla K. Kapur.

Week 8 Growth Mindset

                                                   Image: Pinterest 

In looking at the chart of growth mindset dimensions, I've made my own list of weaknesses and strengths:

Weaknesses:

-Doing the minimum

-Focusing on Grades instead of learning

-Thinking I cannot improve

-Doing things at the last minute

-Comparing myself to others

Strengths:

-Finding motivation inside myself

-Choosing what's hard (if it interests me)

-Being willing to learn from mistakes

-Asking lots of questions

-Taking risks

This class has helped me realize that I am willing to take more risks, like with my writing, than I am used to. Writing is a very personal thing, and being brave enough to post stories on topics that matter to me has been an experience that has allowed me to step out of my comfort zone. One thing I'm going to start working on for Indian Epics is doing the minimum. I want to start doing the extra credit options each week. I'll start with just one extra per week and hopefully do more as the semester progresses. Another thing I want to work on is doing assignments at the last minute. We all made a schedule at the beginning of the semester on how we wanted to split our work up for the week and I have not been good about sticking to mine. Instead of working on Monday mornings on readings, I've been sleeping in. Indian Epics has also helped me to stop comparing my work to other students'. Reading other people's stories has helped me realize that everyone has a unique way of thinking and writing, and we can't possibly compare them. 

Week 8 Reflections

I haven't missed a reading yet, and I've tried to stay away from summarizing the plot of each reading, which really helps when it comes time to write the weekly story. In looking back at my reading notes, it looks like writing about places being described was my favorite thing about the Ramayana, whereas with the Mahabharata, the parts that captured my attention were the little story lines that each character had. For example, I took notes on the story where Shantanu and Ganga fell in love and Ganga kept throwing her babies in the river and then another note on Satyavati's story. Overall, I think I'm doing pretty well transitioning from my reading notes to storytelling, since I really only write about details that make me think or parts that I liked. The Mahabharata and Ramayana have been fun to read, but my favorite "readings" so far have been watching the short films that the professor has posted as options, like the "Mahabharata Epified" and "Sita Sings the Blues". I'm excited for weeks 9-14 because I've checked out "Ganesha Goes to Lunch" and read a couple of stories already from it, but now I'll be able to delve into some deities that we haven't really covered yet in the two epics we've studied so far in class. I also want to look at "Hindu Legends" and "Fables of Bidpai".

I have been pretty happy with how my stories have turned out. I've noticed that, with the exception of my second story about Thataka's beginning, I draw inspiration from modern everyday life. Settings for my stories have been poverty-ridden towns, boring cubicle farms, biology laboratories, and college classrooms. I love how ancient Indian epics have timeless lessons and themes that can be applied to any setting. In the weeks left, my goal for storytelling is to explore dialogue. I don't usually add a lot of dialogue to my stories because I'm afraid it won't sound natural, so I'm trying to read more of other people's stories to see how they make modern dialogue sound.

 I am happy with my choice of doing a storybook. Although my storytelling collection could be used in a portfolio, I wanted to start a fresh project that would allow me to be creative and add some humor to Indian epics.

  Sometimes I see some things that I want to avoid in my future stories by looking at other peoples' blogs. This goes beyond simple grammar mistakes. I'm talking about mistakes like not adding enough detail or not using colorful and interesting words. Sometimes, stories don't flow very well and as a result you can lose interest fast. Other students are continuously impressing me with their creativity in this class. I've seen some great examples of suspenseful and funny stories that have inspired me to try and recreate the same mood.


Image: QDT

Story: Little Gray Dots

Dr. Adams was declining as a researcher. Although he had previously had many good ideas in the past, he hadn't been published in nearly a decade and would have been fired had he not already received tenure. Ten years ago, he was known around the world for his research in cell growth that was used to study cancer tumor growth, but his spring of ideas had quickly run out. One night as he was looking at old science books that he used to love. The flawed experiments from the 1800s where flies were thought to spring from slices of old raw meat caught his eye. 

"Something out of nothing," he whispered to himself. His spark suddenly came back. He started formulating a similar experiment that could be capable of creating completely different cells from tissue. It would be reminiscent of the old experiments he had read about, except in his version, it looked like actual living things might be capable of growing in his petri containers. Months of research later, he created a special serum that would hopefully grow into a strain of bacteria. He was careful to make sure that the serum contained no living cells. The petri dishes were cleaned and sterilized to ensure the same condition. He put the serum into the containers one night and waited for something to grow. Throughout the months, the containers were kept closed off from the outside world. To create a control group, he made some of the petri containers transparent, and some coated with black paint to keep light out. 

The transparent containers started to grow impressive colonies of living cells. Most were brightly colored and the colonies created beautiful, symmetric shapes in the dishes. Dr. Adams gazed with wonder at his new life. Photographers came to document his success, and other scientists began to try and develop a similar experiment. Finally, it came time to check the black-painted dishes. These cells were completely different than the others. The cells were a light gray color and only a few sporadic colonies were found inside the dishes. 

Now, the testing began. The colorful bacteria were distributed throughout the world to leading biologists, but Dr. Adams kept the light gray bacteria to himself. He had a peculiar feeling about them. It might have even been fear. Over several years, the colorful strains ended up being used in medicines since they were found to have unique qualities that attacked other bacteria. 

After several years of keeping the gray strain out of the public, scientists were beginning to get impatient. One night, a young grad student of Dr. Adams broke into lab after hours and stole a small sample. He sold pieces of the sample to biologists around the world. Unfortunately, the grad student was not careful in handling the sample. Before any research could be done on the gray strain, the student became violently ill one day. In turn, his roommates showed similar symptoms. Soon, the mysterious illness spread to the whole campus before the government could do anything to stop the spread. 

Dr. Adams was furious at the breach in security. He and a team struggled to develop a vaccine. A week after the first death, they were successful. The day after that, the government came to lock up the remaining samples of the strain. Dr. Adams watched as the innocent-looking, gray dots that he was responsible for creating were placed in an air-tight box by hazmat-wearing officials. 

A/N

The story that interested me this week was the story from the Mahabharata of the king and queen who wanted children, so they created them out of lumps of flesh from the gods that they put into 100 vats of oil. They noticed that the firstborn son that was born in this manner, Duryodhana, seemed more evil than a normal child. It turns out that he actually was, and was responsible later for the war against Arjuna. I tried to create a parallel with the world of scientific research. 

Bibliography: Mahabharata Epified Part B

Image: Wikimedia Commons 

Reading Notes: Mahabharata Epified

For this week's Mahabharata reading, I chose to watch thee "Epified" Mahabharata video parts A and B for Monday and will watch C and D for Tuesday. I personally found it easier to follow the story when it was being illustrated in real time. Details that I might have missed in the public domain edition were much easier to pay attention to in the video. For example, I wrote last week that I was having trouble following why Ganga had to throw her babies into the ocean. The video did a great job of explaining how there were celestial spirits that Ganga had promised to help. The spirits were being punished by being forced to live as mortals for eternity, so she agreed to birth them and kill them to free them from mortality.

Another part that made more sense was Devavrara stealing the three princesses. I was initially confused why he stole them in the first place, but thanks to the clear explanation and illustrations, it made sense that he wanted his brother to have wives and children so that an heir would come about soon.

From Part B, a part that was confusing for me in the PDE version also made better sense. This part was the lump of flesh that they split into a thousand pieces and put into one thousand vats of oil to make children. It seems like the Indian version of Frankenstein, so it wasn't surprising that the first born child was sort of demonic.

Overall, I believe that being able to follow the illustrator as he/she draws the epic is not only a creative idea for a short film series, but also makes it easier for readers to follow the epic. The PDE and the film are very similar, but the easier language of the video and the pictures really add a new dimension to the Mahabharata.


Bibliography: Epified Mahabharata

Image: Facebook