|
Young World
Where do I belong?
NIRUPAMA HEGDE
|
She is a second generation Indian studying in the tenth grade, in New Jersey, U.S.. She visits Chennai every year. A first person account of what it means to be caught between two worlds.
|
I could never understand why my mother cried when we landed in India every summer, then cried again when we left — until the year that I cried too. We landed that summer on July 27, my birthday. We almost always leave the U.S. on my birthday, so I celebrate it in three different time zones, three different airports.
By the time the plane finally landed that year, my mother and I had the routine down to an art: get off the plane as soon as possible, run down the escalator, and get first in line for immigration. My mom opens the flap cover of our special travel blue postman bag, and pulls out our small matching American passports. We stand in Madras airport, under the fluorescent yellow sign saying `Foreigners' in bold black letters. I always find it ironic that we travel so far every year to come to the country we call home, only to be branded as "foreigners.'' We have to stand in the same line as the white tourists with their Hawaiian shirts and travel books.
Every year, these same thoughts repeat in my mind. We should not have to
stand in this line; we are Indians, not foreigners. But then it hits me again, my mother is Indian, she is not a foreigner. She was born here, raised here. She deals with a different divide than I do. She was raised in one country, but raises her child in another. Her life is split down the centre, half in India, half in U.S.. My life is split simultaneously between two countries.
So where do I fit in? In India, the place that is supposedly "my country'', I am an outsider. Indians don't look at me as one of them; sure I'm of Indian descent, but not a true Indian. My brown skin, my long black hair, my dark brown eyes are obvious; I'm all-Indian in appearance. Then they hear my broken Tamil, my strong accent and the way I pronounce my ts as ds. They see my New Balance sneakers, my Old Navy sweatshirt and black Jansport, and suddenly I'm a different person, a confused little girl with no sense of who she is. They feel sorry for this girl with a beautiful Sanskrit name, Nirupama, but her American accent is too thick, she cannot pronounce it properly. She is neither Indian nor American, somewhere in the oblivion that lies between. She does not know who she is; no one can quite figure it out. It seems no matter what time zone I am sleeping in, which airport I am celebrating my birthday in, or what language I am speaking, I am never whole. Never a complete American, never a complete Indian. I'm neither here nor there. This chaos rages in my mind every year, and my identity suffers, as I stand under that same yellow sign.
The question "Where are you from?'' seems easy enough to answer, but believe me, it's not. When my cousin's mother-in-law in India asks me where I'm from I smile and say, "We live in New Jersey''. I can never say, "I am from the U.S.,'' because I don't believe that is true. When the girl sitting next to me in History asks the same, I feel confused and slightly hurt. I am from America, why should she ask? I always say, "I'm Indian, but I was born here.''
After we give our passports to the small, bespectacled man at the desk and he stares at us, trying to make sure we are the same people our passports say we are, we collect our baggage and go outside. Once again, the routine is set. My grandmother is dead. We used to travel hours to see her silvery long hair, smell the scent of perfumed powder upon her fragile frame. But now that scent is only in a bottle, and the once- chauffeur-driven car is now a hired taxicab waiting with a sign. She used to be the reason we came. Now that reason is gone and we're not quite sure what forces us to return. What we once used to go home to, the huge house, 16 Cenotaph Lane, with the hibiscus plant, red roses, tall palm trees and green marble floors is now a three-bedroom apartment on the other side of town with nothing but a bed and bare walls. The modern apartment symbolises our transition from her slow, luxurious pace to our brisk transnational convenience. My mother looks at me, with tears in her eyes, "Every year it gets worse, why do we still come?'' But we come every year anyway; it's a part of our life.
The year I began to cry was the first year these thoughts entered my mind. When I was younger and still proud of my little American passport and Nikes, coming to India had no consequence, I could come and go, it didn't mean very much. The year I began to cry was the year I looked around. I saw myself lost in the middle of overlapping cultures, drowning in the confusion of it all. Not considered an American or an Indian, I felt undefined. That year, when the taxi came to pick us up and our flight back to Newark was in three hours, I was confused. I cried because there was so much I didn't know, so much I didn't think I would ever learn. I cry because I still don't know, and I still haven't figured it out.
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Young World
|
