For many of us this site is a place where we can explore the desi experience, not just as it plays out in news or culture, but also on a personal level. As a community we are coherent but not cohesive, united by a diasporic experience but keen to its many variations. What it means to be desi is still very much under negotiation, which is good: it means that we haven’t congealed, nor been taken over by ideological disputes or anointed leaders. This, combined with tools like the Internet which previous diasporas did not enjoy, has helped to keep the conversation open, generally productive, and most important of all, conducive to sharing personal experience.
For some of us, the idea of being desi comes with self-questioning built in, because we are of mixed race and ethnicity, products of unions where one partner was desi, the other not. I know there are a lot of people who read this site who belong to this group, and many more who are having, or are likely to have, mixed children. Among the regulars here who identify as both mixed and desi, the most outspoken in the past year have been DesiDancer and myself in the U.S. as well as Bong Breaker in the U.K.
Recently DesiDancer (portrayed here as a young macaca) and I began a conversation that aims to explore the experience of being a mixed desi in America today. It is also a blog experiment: A different format than usual, and a new way of engaging the many people here who have been so generous and thoughtful in sharing their stories. We are corresponding by IM and editing the transcripts for coherence and pace. And by making it a series, we can absorb your responses to each instalment as we prepare the next.
Today, in “Gettin’ Down with the Brown,” we talk about how we came to identify as desi when we had the choice of not doing so. Later we’ll discuss the ways we — and others — live, deploy, engage our “desi” and “mixed” identities in the world today. Whether you are mixed yourself, or the (potential) parent of mixed kids, or neither, your responses will help shape the discussion. (You may also share thoughts in confidence with either of us.)
So, here goes:DesiDancer: “Dude, you look so exotic… what are you?”
Siddhartha: Exotic, eh? Like you, I’m mixed. My dad is Bengali, and my mother is Jewish American. That’s why I am so “fair.” My aunties in Calcutta always liked my skin color, the fact that it was achieved through miscegenation didn’t appear to concern them.
DesiDancer: Do you know of any other mixed marriages in your family?
Siddhartha: My uncle married a westerner. He is my dadÂ’s only sibling, and older by a few years. He married an Italian woman. It was a little complicated for them, in terms of approval and how they handled it, and my grandmother wasnÂ’t too thrilled. But it ended up paving the way for my parentsÂ’ marriage. Beyond that, I think pretty much everyone else in my Indian family married Indian. I have a female cousin who married a guy who is half-Indian, half-German. They live in Delhi. What about you and your family?
DesiDancer: My dadÂ’s uncle came to the US, several years before Dad did. My uncle met an American woman — I believe at the university — and they got married a few years before my Dad came over. Again, it sort of paved the way for my Dad because when my parents got married it wasnÂ’t something totally new. I donÂ’t know how supportive or unsupportive my DadÂ’s family was… they were always fantastic to me, but IÂ’d be naive if I didnÂ’t suspect there was some talk behind my parentsÂ’ backs. IÂ’m sure it wasnÂ’t easy for them, but then again we lived here, and the family lived in India. As for my generation of the family, weÂ’ll see how it plays out — the cousins in India are all marrying Indian, but the cousins here seem to have a wider perspective when it comes to dating.
Siddhartha: ThatÂ’s an interesting similarity. How big an (Indian) family do you have here in the U.S.? I just have my sister — there are some more distant cousins but IÂ’m not really in touch with them. I guess I should ask how big your MomÂ’s family is in the U.S. as well, since I think you told me your mom was not originally American, but naturalized?
DesiDancer: Up until a few years ago, I thought the only family here from DadÂ’s side was us, and the aforementioned uncleÂ’s family. A few months after I went to India in 2002, I got an email from one of my uncles there. His English is a bit disjointed, so all I could understand was that someone in our family was coming to the US… or something like that. Turns out my dadÂ’s cousin was living in the US, with her family, and theyÂ’d been here for YEARS! So we reconnected, and they introduced me to the rest of the family. Technically all of my cousins here are from my DadÂ’s cousinÂ’s husbandÂ’s side (does that make sense?) but it doesnÂ’t really matter to any of us — weÂ’re more like siblings than anything else. So now I think I could count about 8 cousins, in the rediscovered family, and 3 sets of aunts and uncles. We lost our grandfather last year, but there were 4 generations living here — and unbeknownst to me. My momÂ’s family is in Canada and some are in the US, but thereÂ’s such a huge age gap between me and my cousins on that side… I think itÂ’s 14 years between me and the next oldest (not counting my brother and sister, of course). How about you — is there a lot of family from your momÂ’s side here?
Siddhartha: There is, but IÂ’m not close to that many of them. My cousins are a lot younger than me. A similar situation. Then you get to second cousins and whatnot. I guess what this makes me realize is that IÂ’ve always lived mixedness my own way, by improvisation; I was never part of a “mixed” self-identified community, let alone one with my particular mix. All this being underscored by the fact that I spent most of my childhood years in a third country that was neither my momÂ’s nor my dadÂ’s — France — and further, that I am a bit older than the big wave of desi Americans, since I was born in 1967. So itÂ’s always been a bit of a solo thing, shared only by my sister.
DesiDancer: I was actually just going to ask you that: how did you and your sister identify with your heritage? My brother and sister donÂ’t seem to identify as “mixed” or “Indian”… and itÂ’s never really something weÂ’ve had much dialogue about. I think part of it may be the age differences, and part of it I think might be because I went to India when I was 2, whereas they never went… I wonder if somehow it made such an impression on me that I felt somehow more impelled to get down with my brownÂ…
Siddhartha: Yes, you do seem to be more “down with your brown” than I think I am. But then again, we know each other from SM, which is a place where people are doing just that, so itÂ’s hard to judge. But… I think weÂ’ve always thought of ourselves as Indian, or at least semi-Indian. We too both got to go to India at a young age, I was 6 the first time I went, and she was 1 or 2 the first time she did. On the other hand, we didnÂ’t have any kind of Indian community around us outside of India. We just had what came through my parents, which was my dadÂ’s Hindustani classical music collection, my momÂ’s immersion in learning to cook Indian food, my dadÂ’s general politics and, dare I say, patriotism (he still has just his Indian passport to this day), and the trips back. So there are tons of things I had no exposure to whatsoever. To this day I donÂ’t know a damn thing about Bollywood, or bhangra for that matter.
DesiDancer: For me, all of the brownness was a relatively recent discovery, in my mid-20s or so. I mean, we were aware that we were brown, but growing up in the Midwest, in the 70s and 80s… there wasnÂ’t any Indian community for us to interact with. We had a few 78 records that my Dad had brought over (kidsÂ’ songs and stuff), but for the most part I think the climate when my dad came to the US was more to assimilate than to hold onto their native cultures. Once in a while heÂ’d hit up the Indian grocery and go on a cooking spree, so we knew what dosa and pakoras and stuff were, but we didnÂ’t learn Hindi or grow up watching desi movies, or even celebrating the holidays. I knew what Diwali and Holi were… but we didnÂ’t do anything about it. For years my buas sent rakhi to my dad, airmail. My sister and I would swipe them because they were such pretty bracelets, but we never bought rakhi for our brother.
Siddhartha: So, if you didn’t grow up self-consciously Indian, how would you describe the cultural atmosphere in your home growing up? And how did the notion of brownness—or non-whiteness—come into play?
DesiDancer: Ooh, good question. Because there was more of my momÂ’s family around than dadÂ’s, we celebrated all the usual—Xmas, Easter, Thanksgiving. We were around my maternal grandparents and aunts/uncles a lot more, so we just sort of did what they did. I think my dadÂ’s family was maybe out-of-sight-out-of-mind? We had picture books on India, some Indian art around the house, and my mom even tried to get us childrenÂ’s books with Indian protagonists… But generally speaking we were raised in an Americanized household, for the most part. While thereÂ’s no denying that the 3 of us are brown (one of these things is not like the other) it wasnÂ’t really a factor for us in shaping our childhood identities. Sure you get some idiot in school who wants to know your story, and then either asks if your dad wears a towel on his head, or your mom wears a dot… or they pat their hand over their mouth and do the idiotic rain dance (not that kind of Indian, yo!)… But we didnÂ’t really dwell on it much.
Siddhartha: How about the name thing. You and I both have Indian names. My sister does as well and I imagine your siblings too? Did that get you questions about your origins, and how did you relate to your name as a marker of your identity?
DesiDancer: We all have Indian first names and Angrezi middle names. Which seems to suggest that at the time, my parents were very much about the biculturalism. The name was both a badge and a curse. Obviously I look sort of Indian, so it seemed to “match” that I had an Indian name. But oh my god the teachers in school just could not seem to get the hang of my name! I got called everything, all sorts of mutations and mispronunciations. I think around 7th grade, when kids start to get really vicious, and we all just really want to fit in and conceal our awkwardness I started asking people to call me an Americanized nickname version of my name (Re)… it just seemed easier because at that age I really didnÂ’t want to get into a diction lesson every time they called roll in school. It seemed to stick well because I was a tomboy. But my family always called me by my given name. How about for you? Your name was probably much more of a challenge than mine.
Siddhartha: True dat. I actually don’t have a middle name. I guess my name was a challenge but growing up in France, it didn’t seem to bother my friends and my teachers. They used my full name, just pronounced it as if it were a French name with no effort to learn the “authentic” pronunciation. When I came back to the U.S. for college, that’s when two things happened: 1) Some people became interested in the “authentic” pronunciation, but also 2) Everyone else started calling me Sid.
DesiDancer: Blame “Dil Chahta Hai.” Do you not like “Sid”?
Siddhartha: IÂ’ve written on Sepia before about my struggles with “Sid” or “Sidd” — how I eventually gave into it, used it myself, and it took me years to realize that I could do something about it. I reclaimed it first in my professional life, and then eventually I got everyone in my world to revert to my full name. I sent an email to all my friends, and I got lots of support, as well as other people testifying about their own name issues. Interestingly, after I wrote my post, on that thread everyone called me by my full name, and since then all these people have been using Sid! But itÂ’s one of those things, once youÂ’ve made the effort to reclaim your name, it no longer matters that much what people call you. ItÂ’s no longer that big a deal.
DesiDancer: True. I reverted back to my full name, when I moved to NYC. I figured with a city as diverse as NYC, I wasnÂ’t going to have the freakiest name, so it wasnÂ’t unreasonable to expect people to pronounce it correctly. I still have some girlfriends who call me Re. But itÂ’s contextual — itÂ’s how we know each other — so it doesnÂ’t bother me, but even they try to switch it up. But when I meet new people, I use my full name. I have a friend who was nicknamed “Rick” for years upon years, and heÂ’s tried reclaiming “Rakesh” for at least the last 2 years. It wonÂ’t stick, because all his boyz always call him Rick and refuse to switch. ItÂ’s probably a bit frustrating…
Siddhartha: I bet. If he really wants to switch and his boys wonÂ’t let him, theyÂ’re jerks. So, letÂ’s talk a bit about the process of getting down with the brown. Can you identify the key moments/stages for you?
DesiDancer: Well, I always kind of had the “pull” from India. I donÂ’t know if itÂ’s because IÂ’m the oldest, because IÂ’m a girl, or because I went there when I was young enough to have retained impressions of the trip. And I can see photos of myself in India… I remember people or things… so I always asked about India as a kid, and wanted to go back. But after junior high school (and the great name change) I didnÂ’t really actively pursue the topic much. It was in the back of my mind, but I was probably more concerned with fitting in than pushing the issue…
Siddhartha: So, did things start to happen in college?
DesiDancer: After. My big a-ha moment, as Oprah likes to call them, was around 2001. I went to visit my DadÂ’s uncle & aunt and we were watching a home movie of uncleÂ’s last trip to India. He had gone to a wedding and had run into one of my DadÂ’s younger brothers. So we were watching this tape and my chacha came on screen… My DadÂ’s aunt asked me, “When was the last time you went to India?” and I told her, when I was 2… She immediately stomped her foot and directed her husband to take me to India that fall — he was planning on going back anyway. It was kind of the green light I needed to jump into the discovery of brownness. It wasnÂ’t that it was off-limits or a no-no topic in our house, but we were told 100 times over that we werenÂ’t going to visit India, ever. So I forgot about it as a possibility until that conversation with my dadÂ’s aunt & uncle. I spent the next 8 months trying to contact family in India.
We hadnÂ’t really kept in touch with people there, but my DadÂ’s uncle found the address for our family house in Dehradun, so we sent an aerogram over and waited to see if anybody wrote back. My Chacha still lives in my DadajiÂ’s house, and so he emailed us both back, and also sent me the email addresses for my cousins. When I went to India at 2, I only had one cousin who is 4 months younger than I am. Since then, I have 10 cousins, all slightly younger than me (20-29) and I had no idea! I started emailing with a few of them, and it was really the coolest, most welcoming experience. My cousins have a lot to do with why IÂ’m so fond of my family and of India. They were so enthusiastic and awesome — we emailed all the time, back and forth, and right around then IÂ’d started trying to watch Bollywood movies (I think Lagaan and Monsoon Wedding had just come out, and I was SO thrilled to see an entire movie with brown people in it) and learn some Hindi. So even before I went to India, IÂ’d started bonding with my cousins over email. WeÂ’d send pictures to each other, my one cousin is an artist so she scanned in some of her work and emailed it to me, weÂ’d argue over SRK and Hrithik, and because they were so open with me, it was really easy to ask my most ridiculous questions and not feel stupid for it.
And when I did go to India that fall, it was the most amazing thing — despite having never met my cousins, I truly felt like we werenÂ’t meeting as strangers because weÂ’d bonded so much before I got there. IÂ’d tried to learn some Hindi, and they were great about teaching me the slang or not making fun of my crappy grammar, and we just had the best month together! It was almost as if weÂ’d grown up together… and because of that weÂ’ve been able to keep in touch for the last four years, despite some of us getting married, and the fact that I havenÂ’t been back yet… The two girls, are really special to me, because theyÂ’re only a couple years younger than I am. For a girl to have an older sister is amazing, and so I take my role as such VERY seriously. I would do anything for those girls — I was a mess during the Mumbai explosions because I couldnÂ’t reach one of them, in Mumbai. Despite the distance and weird circumstances, IÂ’m closer to them than I am to my brother and sister. So I think a lot of my affection for the desh has to do with the wonderful openhearted love I got from my own cousins. Conversely, I had a chachaji call me a half-blooded witch, so I guess it runs the entire spectrumÂ…
So that was that major turning point in my life. Despite the fact that my dad lost touch with his family and didnÂ’t have any interest in rekindling it, he was very supportive of my trip to India. One of my buas came over for my shaadi, and to see her and my Dad face to face for the first time in over 25 years was just emotionally overpowering. It was the best wedding present ever. Ironically, the Bollywood movies that I studied in preparation for my trip got me hooked. Like crack. I canÂ’t stop watching them, even the really crappy ones… and the dances really got me! ItÂ’s been a really satisfying and strange journey that my life has come full circle in a way. I always danced, since I was 3 or so; I rediscovered my family, which sort of led me to Bollywood, and now it seems the puzzle has come together with all the pieces—as I teach and perform my Bollywood dance. I gained a career, besides a family!
Siddhartha: This is a great story youÂ’ve shared with me.
DesiDancer: I get long-winded sometimes because I think itÂ’s such a cool story. I debate writing a book, but I think my dad would strangle me
Siddhartha: It really is a cool story. IÂ’m interested in a couple things you alluded to — the way your dad burned bridges, or perhaps I should say allowed bridges to fritter away, with India, and along the same lines what you said about being told over and over, growing up, that you wouldnÂ’t go to India. But it makes for a great story. You really got inspired and acted on it and followed through.
For me it was different because we went to India every 2-3 years. And we would go for long stays — three weeks to three months. We usually went to Calcutta, but later my dad, who is a scientist, began to work with colleagues in Bombay and so there were several trips there. In fact, my freshman year of college, my parents and sister spent the year in India and thatÂ’s where I visited them that Christmas. So by the time I was in college IÂ’d been to Calcutta and various places in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, as well as Delhi and Bombay. At the same time, it was all in function of my family and my parentsÂ’ choices. In college, though, I took a number of classes that were directly about South Asia, or that were relevant (like development economics). I took a class about Hinduism, and one on Indo-Muslim culture.
DesiDancer: So did you grow up speaking Bengali? And, it seems that in your case the brownness was always in the background, but was it in college that you really began to explore that as part of your identity?
Siddhartha: ItÂ’s funny, I was just going to mention language. I grew up, I would say, knowing some Bengali, rather than actually speaking it. During time spent in Calcutta I would be able to say quite a lot, especially the phrases used to make requests of servants.
DesiDancer: Hahahahaha. Chai lao and all that?
Siddhartha: Yeah, all that. My command of kitchen words, foods and so forth, is OK. I probably have 200-300 words of Bangla… and maybe 50 of Hindi.
DesiDancer: We didnÂ’t learn Hindi at all. The only words I learned were the ones my dad peppered his speech with: junglee, bandar, memsahib, suar, courpi (with regard to our need to clip our fingernails)… strangely they were all sarcasticÂ…
Siddhartha: What is Mr. DDÂ’s ethnicity?
DesiDancer: Mr. DD is desi. He came over when he was 3, so he’s about as westernized as I am. A lot of that is why we are great together—he’s not stuck in the old-school mentality and he gets my unusual (bad Indian girl) personality, though he hates Bollywood movies and wants to reclaim control of our Netflix.
Siddhartha: You realize this is very interesting, right?
DesiDancer: He knows more about the culture and traditions, whereas IÂ’m more knowledgeable about the pop culture stuff and the current atmosphere in India.
Siddhartha: And you guys met after you began your re-encounter with India?
DesiDancer: Yeah 🙂
Siddhartha: IÂ’ve dated desi and non-desi of many types.
DesiDancer: It is an interesting twist that heÂ’s desi; I dated all non-desis prior to him.
Siddhartha: And my sisterÂ’s husband is non-desi but theyÂ’ve given their 1/4 desi daughter a desi name. Etc., etc. Lots of dimensions.
DesiDancer: Really? ThatÂ’s cool.
Siddhartha: Yeah. In a way this is where a lot of the SM readership may be interested because it raises issues so many of them are confronting, either as mixed people or as people likely to produce mixed kids. So I’d like to be able to tell people just enough about ourselves, but then really get into the psychological aspects, the tradeoffs, etc—so we can spark some conversation on it.
DesiDancer: Fer sure. So hereÂ’s a question: obviously for our parentsÂ’ generation, especially those in India and their elders, there seems to still be a lot of partition-era separatism with regards to Hindu/Muslim/Sikh/Jain etc., even straight/gay, or the ostracism of those in non-traditional pursuits career-wise or dating-wise. Do you think our generation is freed up from some of those prejudices? Does being mixed ingrain a sense of tolerance in us that maybe some others donÂ’t have? Like, I have Muslim friends, Christian-desi friends, Sikh friends, Jain friends, gay-desi friends, desis with crazy unusual careers, desis who married non-desis… And I know some auntie back home is clutching her chest over it, probably. 🙂 Or we can hit that one later.
Siddhartha: That’s a great question. I think we should hit that one later. Maybe we should finish up the whole “re-encounter with India” bit and pause for today; then on the next convo talk about living desiness as mixed people today.
Thanks for sharing!
I have never really known half desis before so your conversation was extremely interesting. I grew up in kenya and was bombarded with all things desi through out(Heck..I still put vatika oil in my hair!)so I take it all for granted.. The Dandiya parties, fasting and feasting desi style, the traditions and of course movies.
DD and Siddhartha, you both mention how the traditions etc pulled you towards your desi side etc but did either of you have issues with some of the ‘not so cool desi’ things that come your way? For instance, were you surprised with superstitions, religious ideas, cultural boundaries, food taboos etc? Did you experience those when you went to india and mingled with the rest of your family? If so, how did you tackle those?
Thanks to both of you for posting your “personal” discussions and bringing up this topic. I’ve only come to investigate my brownside only in the past year or so (I’m full brown, though) since there were very few desis around when I was growing up. I have only met mixed desi youngsters (grade school or younger), never any adults or even teens.
Wow, I really liked this, felt like I was listening in to a meaningful and intimate conversation. Much love and thanks.
Great post Siddhartha! For those of us who will have biracial children, your dialogue was extremely informative.
My half sister is of half Irish and half Indian descent. She knows hindi, having grown up with our family, but was never really treated as a desi. Unfortunately, maybe complexion had something to do with it (my dad, her desi side, has fair skin and light eyes, thus, there is no visible brown in her – she has light brown hair/green eyes) – when we went to the mundher (sp.) or other Indian events, she would be stared at and talked about. Some people were blatantly rude when asking us questions about her. Not surprisingly, it was very uncomfortable for my sister. It’s good to hear about your great experiences, though – I might forward this to my sis.
That’s why I am so “fair.” My aunties in Calcutta always liked my skin color, the fact that it was achieved through miscegenation didn’t appear to concern them.
You couldnt have said it better! When I was getting some shit for marrying a goree, I retorted with the potential of having ‘fair’ kids.
Wow! WOW! I loved this post. Can’t say that I’ve thought about the “browness” as intentionally as this – instead, my identity as a Canadian is something that I’ve given much thought to.
Growing up in Asia, “Indianess” as a political identity, was far more important for me than “browness”. After moving to N America, the reverse it true – I regard Pakistanis, Sri Lankans, Bangladeshis to be as much “me” as I formerly regarded Tamilians, Gujaratis and Punjabis to be “me”. So I guess that I’d say that my identity has evolved/transitioned from that of an Indian to that of someone who regards himself to be brown.
… oh and for a couple of years there in Univ, what with all the bhangra parties, I thought that I was part-Punjabi. 😉
Siddhartha – you mention your Mom is Jewish. How did that play in the mix? Did you have Jewish relatives pushing you to learn Hebrew? Did you have a bar mitzvah? Or did you feel your desi side was more “ethnic” and your Jewish side was pretty much wholly assimilated by that point?
good post.
U.S.-Born or 1.5 Generation:
Husbands Asian Indians 69.2 Other Asians 3.7 Whites 20.5 Blacks 1.7 Hispanics/Latinos 4.3
Wives Asian Indians 69.9 Other Asians 4.1 Whites 21.1 Blacks 2.5 Hispanics/Latinos 1.6
cite. original source census 2000.
Echoing everyone’s sentiments: thank you for sharing your personal stories, they are fascinating.
This made me feel warm and fuzzy.
I’m also really amazed at the similarities I noticed, in particular with DD and myself – meaning, not really identifying with one’s brown-ness – and both of my parents are Indian! I grew up in such a non-brown, but diverse-enough that it wasn’t a huge deal kind of place. Meaning, I wasn’t an outcast because I was Indian, but no one really asked me about it because they thought it was un-PC to acknolwedge my difference (I think that’s why). Also, this was a major problem for me:
I’m curious, and this was mentioned by DD in reference to her great new relationship with her cousins, about how your families (in particular in India) accepted you, as mixed. I find my family in India to be a it standoffish, or they expect me to not know anything about India. I expect you would experience something similar?
Also, a note:
If you’re even a little bit desi, this makes sense. 😉
This is a really wonderful discussion to have. Thank you.
Awesome post! One of my cousins is “mixed”, and I bond with her far better than with my two desi (Brit) cousins. For some reason I believe she doesn’t share the same prejudices about Indians in India as the others. So I totally identify with DD’s story. Thanks for sharing.
Nicely posted post. I once met a hooters waitress, shobana nair, whose grandfather was Indian, everyone else in her family was anglo, but somehow the Indian name trickled through. We were able to have a discussion amidst the breasts and thighs served, oh and the food was good too.
Thanks for sharing your stories with us, Siddhartha and DesiDancer. They were a great thing to read in the morning.
I want to point out that children of cross-cultural marriages in India (across languages/religions) go through very similar experiences (down to the smallest details you mention). From the American/European perspective, though, both parents are simply desis (though one parent could be a Hindu Rajasthani another a Christian Mallu) and this is often not counted as a cross cultural marriage at all.
Of course, race brings in a whole new angle since race is not the same as culture. Especially, race as seen through the eyes of the majority (non-desis). It’s possible this post is limited to discussion of the interracial experience. In that case, I’ll just butt out 🙂
Three of my moms cousins are married to white women and have mixed children. They are fun, educated and affectionate people and we try to include them in as many family events as possible.
The part of India where we are from has several female centric hindu ceremonies that require a lot of planning and expense. This caused some problems because the girls maternal uncles usually foot the bill for this. While I had Indian-born uncles and aunts who did this for me, my mixed race second cousins didn’t. In order for them not to feel left out, my mom used to fit them into my ceremonies. She usually wouldn’t interfere but two of the white moms always wanted their children to have what we did and asked for help. It really pissed my mom off that the kids’ white(christian) relatives never offered any help or rarely bothered to show up for these. And she thought the Indian dads were avoiding planning separate ceremonies (which the girls deserved) to spare themselves the expense. I remember her arguing with them once about doing their part for the kids such as buying the proper jewelry and clothes. And the dads did step up in the end of a massive guilt trip. Now when we go to weddings, etc. the girls have their own sarees and real jewelry to wear.
I wonder if other mixed children had similar problems of fitting in with cousins or feeling left out at family events.
HMF, that has to be the best anecdote posted so far. Re: the two questions that were directed to me:
Msichana, I didn’t have to deal with much of the “not so cool” stuff, so probably other people can speak on this more than myself. My Calcutta family come from a long line of cosmopolitan, Western-educated, etc., types who were very prominent in the early 20th century before entering a long slow decline. On the religion front, sure, folks were religious to some extent, my grandmother had puja twice a day without exception, and went to temple (Dakshineswar was the preferred site) from time to time, but more to the point, she was down with the Ramakrishna Mission and often took me to Belur Math, the mission’s headquarters (and a very beautiful place). There’s this whole Bengali tradition of super-reformed Hinduism (tied in with colonialism of course) and we were part of that. Again, I’m sure other people will have much different experiences to share on this.
Nina, on the Jewish side it’s sort of the same answer, only even more so. Nobody in my close family is religious, straight up. Kids raised in the US have bar- or bat-mitzvahs (Reform temples), usually. I didn’t, because my parents are basically non-religious social-democrats, and we didn’t hang with any kind of explicitly Jewish community in France even though many of my parents’ French friends were artists or scientists who were (similarly secular) Jews. I haven’t explored the Jewish side as much as I have the Hindu side, that is definitely true, especially when it comes to reading philosophy or the history of religion and such. Like, I’ve read the Gita but not the Torah, know’m sayin? Your point about the Jewish side not being all that “other” in American society anymore probably gets to some of the reasons. What I do cherish is the memory and idea of my Jewish ancestors as immigrants with a specific cultural tradition they brought with them, and morphed and mutated as they became American. I know they were poor, and Russian or Lithuanian or Ukrainian, and probably escaped pogroms; that some came through Ellis Island; that they came up in the early 20th century hardscrabble in East Coast cities. I love that history and respect it, but as a cultural total, you know, not so much as Jewish per se.
ROFLOL!
Put that in a short story or something. Forget Jhumpa Lahiri and people having headaches over the memory of their mothers sari on tedious winter days in Boston. F*@k that shit! This is the real damn thing, real life, a girl in a Hooters bar called Shobana Nair.
Thanks for making me smile HMF.
Me too, and I don’t even have a desi side. Thanks for your answer.
Awsome post.
Loved the post! I have first cousins here who are the products of mixed marriages and it makes me want to seek them out and talk. When I was growing up India they’d make regular visits until we were all in the 8-10 yrs range. I have not seen them since, partly my fault, because I moved here and maybe it was for me to make the move. I do not know in what states they reside in. Interestingly, after retirement and his American wife’s passing, my uncle moved back to India last year.
My daughter is half TamBrahm (me) and half West Virginan, growing up in San Francisco. She’s going to be one hell of a little macaca.
I knew .5 Guju, .25 cajun, .25 swede in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. That was one crazy macaca brother. He liked to drive around the back country in south Louisiana in a camaro drinking cheap whisky.
Siddhartha and DesiDancer:
Thanks to two people (amongst others) I admire and respect so much on this forum, for sharing these intimate details. I look forward to reading future installments from you guys. I also have some questions for you but they’ll have to wait until I finish some work first. But just wanted to say.
That was really an interesting discussion. Now I don’t dare to say anything ’cause I ain’t as old as y’all. 🙂
don’t be silly! on the contrary, that only makes your perspective more interesting to add to the mix.
offtopic
Siddhartha- Are you ..by any chance related to Prof. Sanjoy Mitter ? just wondering.
Unlike either of you I’m not of mixed-race stock – both my parents fully-fledged Indian. As with all people though,there is a lot of variance between individuals and my parents were and are still be no means patriotic types who’ll hammer on the greatness of India and its superiority to Western culture.I used to be obsessed with my Indian background at one time though – I was around 11 or 12 I think. I was also very vocal then in my opposition to my dad, who wanted us to get the Dutch nationality. Then at one point my desi peers suddenly decided I wasn’t ‘Indian’ enough for them, because I never watched Bolly films and according to one girl I ‘always drew white people’.(Hey, you can only draw what you know, right?) from then onwards I didn’t belong to the group anymore, and in a reactionary sort of way I became even more ‘whitewashed’, to the point now that I have little or no feelings of connections towards India and Indians. It has pretty much come to the point that I don’t identify with anyone at all, whether brown or white. Pretty ironic since actually I was born in India, lived subsequently for 2 years in the United States and then returned to India and followed schooling there for another two years, until I was whisked away here. There’s more to say, but I’ll leave it open for now if someone has something to comment upon…
Ditto ^^ I’d love to hear your thoughts, Meena. Besides, we never said how old we are (or aren’t) 😉
Msichana- to answer your question about the “not so fun” aspects of desi culture, I’ve certainly run into some. Being raised in a liberal-hippie town with lots of feminists around, I have a hard time stomaching a lot of the gender inequalities in desi culture or in Hinduism. It’s not so much that I overtly have a problem with it, as it is something I just don’t understand or subscribe to… so I go about my business and pay it no mind. I figure there are yucky components to every culture; I don’t have to surrender to them. Another weirdness I’ve found actually ties into Meena’s comment: While I respect my elders and all, I don’t believe that simply because someone has logged more days on the planet than I have that I should bow to that or allow them to treat me in whatever way they choose. I’ve learned as much from people younger than I, as I have from elders or peers. I think it’s more disrespectful to discount someone’s opinion because they havent’ been around the sun as many times, because you never know what someone has done with their life, or the experiences they’ve had.
Tamasha- As far as how my family (desi side) received my mixedness, it was interesting. The kids in my own generation hardly seem to notice or comment on it and I can honestly say I didn’t feel they judged me for a second. But we talked a lot more intimately than I did with aunties/uncles, so I suspect because we related on deeper levels, they knew more about me than surface-level stuff and didn’t rely on something superficial like race to evaluate how they feel about me. Some of the elders, on the other hand, were stand-offish, as you mentioned. But I wonder if that’s because I’m mixed or because I came from America. I think NRIs and ABCDs may get a bad rap already, and being parented by a non-desi just compounds the (incorrect) notion that we’re bankrupt of tradition and values. Initially a couple of relatives were a bit condescending about “the way it is in India”, but I’d done my homework and I wasn’t completely ignorant to our culture, so within a few days they piped down. Actually, toward the end of my visit I went with my Bua to visit a friend of hers. The friend remarked about how all the desi kids in America have no mind for tradition and they’re raised without our culture and customs, blah blah blah. My Bua turned to her and proudly said “well in that regard, she (me) is probably more ‘Indian’ than most kids here!” [I don’t know about that, but she did me proud.]
Thanks for all the comment lowe and questions, everybody!
-meant to ditto Siddartha’s #24
That was most awesome of your mom, rasudha.
Always enjoy your posts, siddartha. Thanks for sharing all that, DesiDancer. Loved it.
Desidancer,
If it were a guy who grew up in India until the age of 20, and then came to the US, would he be “stuck in the old-school mentality”? Also, an Indian woman who grew up until 20 in India and then came to the US – would she be a “good Indian girl”?
I know the lines above come across as challenging, but that’s not my intention. And I know that DD, you are referring only to your own unique case so general conclusions are not to be drawn. I would very much like to know what the the general line of thinking is among people born/raised here. So, the questions are open to anyone who is reading. I also promise to not take offense if the truthful answer to either question above is “Yes”. This has relevance to something in my head that I’d like to spill…
fair question, Navratan Kurma. You’re right, I’m only speaking of my own experience. There are plenty of India-born Bad Indian Girls 😉
Btw – is that you in the pic DD? Cho chweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!!! 🙂
Ah well, Siddhartha is almost like my mum anyway with respect to age 😛 and you’re married!
I don’t know who these “good Indian girls” are – but my Indian-born and raised cousin sure ain’t one! She talks back to her father, spends money left and right and dated the same guy off and on for three years(while her father disapproved)!
Okay, y’all gotta stop putting up adorable pictures of lil macacas up. I keep going into violent, teeth-clenching, cuteness-overload paroxysms and my orthodontist ain’t likin’ it damn it.
I guess to clarify, my mention of “old school mentality” was more directed at my parents’ generation. Since there weren’t really any desi kids around, when we were young, I didn’t have any idea of what our generation’s desi identity was going to shape up to be. Most of my experience was with people of my parents’ age, and I found the values and limitations incompatible with my personality. So perhaps if your hypothetical guy, who grew up in India to the age of 20 then came to the US, were of our generation he would have no “old school” hang ups or preconceived notions. I think our generation (X) is the first to have a truly global perspective and change in mentality from our parents, due to internet, mass-media conglomerates, worldwide distribution channels, etc. We live in a realm larger than our own zip codes, whether in US, or India.
Every generation says this about their parents’ generation.
A little bit off-topic, but I don’t think this is actually true. I think it depends where you live. The realities of being Jewish in, say, NYC, are different from, say, Omaha (mere speculation, of course, as I am not Jewish myself). My boyfriend in high school was Jewish, and my mom’s non-Indian, non-Jewish best friend asked her if she was ok with her daughter dating a Jew, and wouldn’t she rather I “at least” date a non-Jew if I was not going to date an Indian guy. I understand wanting your children to be with someone like them (misguided though it might be), but once they’re not [insert ethnicity or race of choice here], isn’t it all the same? I guess there’s a hierarchy within the label of “other.”
This:
especially makes me mad. Some of us had it drilled in to our heads by our parents and other have chosen to learn and embrace on our own. I once had a cousin ask me if I knew what Diwali was. I mean, really.
.
While this is true, the diffence in magnitude between the parent’s generation saying the same thing about their parents, and Gen (X,Y) is greater. The internet and information age has opened doors to communities and reduced the time said communication occurs over.
Just because every generation has said it, it does not mean they are qualitatively similar. Maybe the advent of telegraph, when scaled down to the particular era had as great of an impact.
I’m sure the last generation of desi immigrants from the 60’s thought that of them selves. We are global. not oldschool like parents. We went abroad. We are the 60’s. open minded. yadadad…
DesiDancer, according to her webpage picture, doesn’t look a day over 43 to me! 😉 j/k.
Good points, Tamasha. Some Jews in the US are totally assimilated, and some are not (yikes!). Some Jews accuse individualists like me of “cultural genocide” and consider out-marrying a form of genocide as well (and with friends like that, who needs enemies?). I bring this up because of the many uncanny parallels between Jews in the US and desis.
I enjoyed reading this conversation. Thank you both very much.
As Meena mentioned, I’m not of mixed stock either, but I can identify with some of her statements…
I spent the first few years of my schooling in England, moved back to India when I was 8, stayed there for the next 15 years, then moved to the States for Grad School. Each time I moved, it was like starting over.
As an eight year old I could understand Hindi quite well, but only spoke English. Once in Delhi I learnt how to speak Hindi fluently. It actually became the only language I spoke for a couple of years since my grandma didn’t understand English. I had lost the only identity I knew, with the only language I’d known but I still didn’t fit in. It got a little better over the years, through school.
I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that I couldn’t take anything at face value and always had too many questions. And I also ‘always drew white people’ and asked for certain books at the school library. (I was once slapped by my Hindi Grade 4 teacher for not completing my homework. When I told her that I couldn’t do it, she replied with, “You think you’re too smart because you just came from England.”)
I think that’s when I gave up wanting to be from anywhere. 🙂
However, I’ve been in Chicago for over four years now. And the identity question has been raising its head. Every trip home takes me further away. I’m stuck at the point of the ‘Trishanku’, neither here nor there.
Somehow, I don’t see the question being resolved at anytime in the near future either. I’m currently editing a film for an Iranian filmmaker who’s raising the same questions after being here for over 20 years. Reality check.
I don’t know if other people who’ve recently moved out of India feel the same way, or anything similar.
And I apologise for the tangential comment.
At college in Delhi, I was branded a ‘feminist’ (a euphymism for a woman who knows what she wants, says it like it is and can say No). I guess it’s also their way of saying ‘Bad Indian Girl.’
Don’t mean to turn an otherwise erudite comments section into nonsense, but I just wanted to point out that DD was preciously cute as a child. 😉
yet you can already see the shades of mischief… 😉
I hope to resolve the question somewhat by moving somewhere where I don’t have any attachments at all – my preference goes to Scandinavia to settle in for doing Masters and/or a postgrad and South-East Asia for a permanent residence. :/
I once mentioned this to an ex-boyfriend, he freaked and didn’t understand why I would want this. (I didn’t expect him to honestly.) Whatever.
my preference goes to Scandinavia to settle in for doing Masters and/or a postgrad and South-East Asia for a permanent residence.
fire & ice.
Thanks, Siddhartha, for starting this thread. It was neat to read about our shared history (yes, I’m Siddhartha’s sister) like this. I never really gave much thought to what I am, who I am, what it means, etc. I still don’t, in a sense. I’m me, a composite of many things, but so what? I don’t mean that dismissively, just matter-of-factly. Now I wish I had a bit more time to write. I am, however, frantically packing to leave tomorrow morning with my Jewish mother, my Bangla father, my pizza-bagel husband (New York Italian Jew) and my completely mixed up daugther with golden locks named Kalyani for two weeks on Cape Cod. So time is precious. But I did want to chime in, especially on the Jewish thing. I saw that someone asked Siddhartha about his Jewish background. I know pathetically little about Judaism, although I make liberal use of Yiddish words. But as it so happens, the closest daycare to my home is in the basement of a synagogue, and the place has a really wam and caring vibe, so now Kalyani is there part time, and I suspect I’ll be learning a whole lot more about that part of my heritage! She’s only two, but she came home on Friday, put her hand on her head, and announced “Shabbat challah chapeau!” (She speaks French with me. Another part of the mix.) So perhaps she’ll be able to illuminate me about the meaning of Purim and what we should be eating on Rosh Hashana. (Down the street is a Muslim daycare called AlBustan Preschool. Jason and I had a good laugh when we considered how we could upset ALL of our relatives equally by placing Kalyani there. In fact, I’d be quite happy if she learned Arabic at some point, but one thing at a time!)
As for discovering my brownness (which in my phenotype is very vague, as I have light eyes and brown hair, which apparently give me that exotic but unplaceable look), it really happened just in the past 5 years or so, in particular when I started studying kathak dance (a switch from martial arts), running a related non-profit organization (Chhandika) and writing a historical novel based in Rajasthan. By the time Kalyani rolled around, as it were, I was determined to give her a desi name. In fact, I’d picked out Kalyani many years ago, and I threw it in the mix of names my husband and I were considering in the hopes that he’d “discover” it and feel like he made the choice himself. Which he did;-) So far, people have reacted to it the same way they usually do with my name: initial confusion, requests to have it repeated, and then gushing praise for how beautiful it is. People have asked if it is Italian, or French, or Hawaiian, and that’s cool, because those are beautiful places and I figure she’s a citizen of the planet, not just one place. Ok, that was mushy, but you know what I mean.
And now to hunt for my beach towels…
Most awesome photograph!
Thanks for the responses, DesiDancer. Much appreciated.
Here’s what I was talking about. I came to the US 8 years ago for studying, (age then > 20 :-)) and am very comfortable here, happier with society than I ever was in India and want to make this country my home. I usually have no difficulty talking/interacting/being friends with people of any race of nationality. The sole exception to this is the American born Desi. It is not for want of trying on my part or any assumptions I make, and my attitude to them is the same as to anyone else. It seems to me that before we are two sentences into the conversation, if they know that I’m from India, the tendency is to associate me with their parents/uncles/aunties and whatever values/ways they have. Being an engineer (supposedly the standard profession of India, and therefore impossible as an individial choice) is almost a sure conversation-ender.
One one crazy occasion, one ABD woman I shared a cab with, in less than thirty seconds of meeting and immediately on finding out I was from India, pointed to her girlfriend and said “That’s my girlfriend standing on the curb. You didn’t know Indians could be lesbians, did you?” with such spite, she seemed to think I’d have a heart attack or something on knowing this. Talk about prejudice from someone who’s sure to have faced prejudice herself. I’m assuming this had something to do with her situation with her parents.
I understand that ABD’s might also have had bad experiences with 1st gen people trying to pull some “culture” bullshit on them.
Anyway, I might have mentioned earlier that this is the single biggest reason I love SM – the easy conversation between 1st, 2nd and 1.5 genners and the chance to “hear” so many cool ABD’s and DBD’s. Of course, it is so stupid to overlook all that is common among all of us.
Heh, I just realized that this is the first time I’m mentioning my sex or real name on Sepia ever.
I thought you were female. :O
Meena, you have an american accent. totally.
r u sure she wasn’t offering u a sandwich?
patriotism (he still has just his Indian passport to this day), and the trips back
I know quite a few who have not given up Indian passport even they have been US 40+ years, sometimes patriotism, sometimes wealth inheritance issues, etc. Sometimes, one of the spouse will have US citizenship and another their original country. But now, with PIO (Personal of Indian Origin) status, it is a new ball game. On Delhi airport, at immigration, PIO line was really huge.
Amartya Sen has never given up Indian passport – He talked about in Nobel Prze acceptance speech.
I still hold my Indian passport, and this is my 22nd year in Amreeka. I lived here more than any place else.
There has been a mega change in perception of India – it all trickles down to ABDs, ABD wannabes, FOBS, and Indian in India. I guess one might not to pretend/ fake that they are Greeks.
PS: Great conversation, DD and Siddhartha.