My relationship to India and Indians is something that has always made me… uncomfortable, mostly because I don’t really have one.
Though I was born in New Jersey and spent that part of my life until age 7 in an environment where Indian culture was more accessible, just before second grade, we moved to South Carolina. Though it is getting better, I think it is fair to say that the Indian population of SC doesn’t even remotely compare to that of mid-Atlantic east coast and California.
Other Indians like to decry my parents’ failure in not speaking solely in Punjabi to me at home. But long before we moved to SC, I had already started refusing to speak my parent’s language because as an overly sensitive child, I couldn’t endure the teasing I received from my father’s Indian friends, and simply pretended I could no longer understand. And now, I am unable to speak and can understand only the kinds of things that are commonly said to children “let’s go upstairs”, “what do you want to eat?”, “look at that black cat!”
I’m told that as a little girl, I would sing along to Indian music, but now I can only just pick out the meanings of some of the words. Bollywood movies have rarely met my standards as a worthwhile use of my time, but perhaps I would like them better if I could understand them without subtitles. And whenever I have gotten together with my Californian cousins, I am completely unable to relate to them. To them, I am just another “gori,” or white girl, even though they are fair skinned and have light hair, because I do not idolize Indian movie stars, know nothing about Indian clothes, cannot speak to our family, and cannot play the word games they play with Indian songs.
Indian people have thus always made me uncomfortable because first they assume that I can relate to them in some way in the Indian or Indian American experience…and usually I can’t. And their assumptions just make me uncomfortable.
But more, I think I avoid them in order to avoid that moment of realization that they will inevitably have, the look of sudden distance, perhaps a tinge of pity, and the slamming wall of politeness that comes down over their faces when they realize that I am not like them. It is even more a wall than they would have in interacting with white Americans, I think, because they do not expect those people to have access to their Indianness. But somehow, I am a traitor to my culture, I am somehow wrong, I willfully rejected things that were important to them by not being more Indian. Or at least, that is how I feel people sometimes think of me.
Indians even have a word for people like me. ABCD. It stands for “American Born Confused Desi.” For those of you who do not know, ‘desi’ roughly means ‘countryman’ and for those Indians who use the term ABCD, the only country of which to have countrymen is India. It is a derogatory term for those of us of Indian descent who do not speak an Indian language, do not actively practice an Indian religion, do not want arranged marriages, may not even marry another Indian, and do not preferentially choose Indian friends.
Moreover, ‘ABCD’ carries the mild connotation of a lost soul who has given into Western hedonism and immorality, someone who does not dress or behave modestly, and is therefore a binge drinking, drug using, godless slut. I have even been accused of hating India by somewhat backwards family members. I was so shocked, I didn’t know what to say. How can I hate India when I do not know India?
I cannot even read books about the Indian American experience, books by Jhumpa Lahiri and the like. It seems a new crop of authors has arisen, describing the experience of those people torn between cultures. But even these books just seem intrusive, like they too cast me in a position that I am not in, do not relate to, and cannot understand. Like I am not even Indian enough for the conflicted experience of a first-generation American.
But even as I never could feel comfortable with other Indians, Americans too expect me to be more Indian than I am and sometimes speak to me in ways that are well-intentioned, but somewhat racist. I just do not know how to answer someone who asks me how I like America. “I was born here,” I say. “I have lived here all my life,” I try to explain. “My parents lived here for 5 years before having me,” I add, as if to increase my authenticity as an American.
But these protestations are often followed by the question “Do you think you would ever go back home to India?” How am I supposed to answer that? India has never been my home. I’ve barely even visited. And yet, when I introduce myself to people and they hear the sound of my name, the next question is always “Where are you from?” or occasionally the less graceful “What are you?” When I am in a good mood (usually), I say “I was born in New Jersey, but my parents are from India,” though I have before been known to say “I’m from New Jersey. Where are you from?”
I appreciate the accommodation of people who ask if I eat beef (I do, not being even remotely Hindu), but am uncomfortable with people who make the completely uninformed assumption that I am a vegetarian. And I do not know how to answer the electrologist who, while zapping some of Indian inherited hairiness off my face, asks “So, are you parents finding a nice Indian doctor husband for you?” No, no they are not. Are yours finding one for you?
And there was always a cultural in-between area, the space in which I didn’t know the appropriate conventions of behavior for my situation. In my home and in the homes of every other Indian I know, shoes must be removed prior to or just upon entry to a house. Some more Americanized Indians wear shoes on vinyl, tile, or hardwood floors, but never, never, never on carpet. And most keeps stacks of chappals (flip flops) by the doors to wear indoors. But in the houses of my white friends, I never knew what ettiquette to follow. Shoes, or no shoes?
There were other dilemmas. Is it rude or wrong somehow for me to drink my milk out of the bowl when I am finished with my cereal? (I still don’t know the answer to that one. All I know is that many of my white friends just wash the milk out of their bowls when they are finished and it seems a terrible waste.) I’ve gotten over the fact that I eat with my hands more often than others do, though I used to worry that I would be percieved as uncouth, reaching for things with fingers instead of forks. I only recently (like after age 20) learned that one is supposed to tip when one gets a haircut. Tipping ettiquette is something that Indians often seem to be lacking in. And I don’t know any Indians who tip over 15%.
But even with all of the feelings that would lead me to avoid my connections to India, I do not want to do anything of the sort. Over the past several years, I have wished that I could speak Punjabi. I have wished that I had had the opportunity to visit India more. I wish that I were not so terribly awkward (and sometimes hostile) to other Indians when I first meet them, and they are clearly enthused to meet another Indian. I wish that I had anything to share that I could pass on to my children who will most likely be half-Indian.
But I know that any knowledge will end with me. I can only sort of remember the rhyming games my mom would play with me when I was small. I mostly remember the rules to a game she showed me how to play with rocks, similar to jacks. I take solace in the fact that I will be able to cook a solid Punjabi dinner for my children any night I’d like. But I worry I won’t learn how to make all of the small food things, barfi, samosa, rasmali, from scratch before there is no one left to teach me. I know that if I ever took my future children to temple, I would not be able to sufficiently translate anything for their benefit. I will never have the skills my mother had, in managing a farm, plowing fields, milking cows, weaving blankets and rugs, sewing fine Indian clothing from yards of fabric.
This is my reality. So I practice my Indian cooking, the one thing I know I will be able to pass on. And I imagine crazy situations where I become fluent in Punjabi. And I insist to my mother that she must move in with me when I have kids and teach them what I cannot. I shove my mother out of the way when making roti’s out of corn flour “It’s too hard, Amandeep, you have to put your hands in boiling water.” But I will never learn later, Mom.
And I prepare for my upcoming trip to India, possibly the last one I will ever take. I will never be able to go on my own and will not forever have people to take me. And I prepare to record everything I see and learn what I can learn, so I can take with me what I can.
