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.
kush, watch it with the F-word >:) the F-B word. not the other ones.
ABD wannabes? Reader needs clue.
Lint said:
if by camaro you meant bel gardi and by whisky you meant rabadi and by Lousiana you meant rural Udaipur, then my cousins, coincidentally, do the exact same thing.
Very interesting thread and great post DesiDancer and Siddhartha.
Looking at my own life, I guess you could say I’ve had a growing interest in all things brown. But it had to come on my own terms, from my true interest, and not by being force fed by the ‘rents (which I resisted voraciously).
Seeing the stunning similarities between all creeds brown in Jackson Heights and Gerrard Street may have helped fuel my interest. It was like that line from the Gandhi movie, when the Mahatma talks about his father reading from multiple holy books. Hindu, Sikh, Muslim, Christian – it also doesn’t seem to matter when the aunties are shopping .
Film was definitely influential. We watched alot of late 70s/early 80’s Bollywood, my sister and I. Those early memories of Naseem, Qurbani, Chalte Chalte, etc are seared in my brain. Speaking of which, I don’t know if any of you recall the “Hahtjo Sheila” scene from Qurbani but my sister and I gleefully pushed each other around the house for months with a sneering “Hahtjo Sheila.” What fun!
But now that I think about it, my interest may have actually been fueled by Indian Jones and the Temple of Doom. I was nine years old when Amrish Puri asked Kali Ma for Shakti and then tore out that dude’s heart. I was totally hooked!
Later of course, I discovered yoga and became the curious posterchild of inflexibility in my classes. One guy even once said to me, “You know, don’t take this personally, but it’s kinda funny to see an indian guy taking yoga from a white chick.” Yeah, real funny yaaar!
Anyway, while I’m rambling. Anyone interested in a Denver/Boulder meetup?
ABD wannabes? Reader needs clue.
Some examples:
a) Lives in Delhi, but thinks is in the wrong country, wrong continent – like the dialogue from Quigley Down Under.
b) Came to US of A at say age 8 (or something like that), and is obsessed in whitewashing (precisely de-South Asianification of) themselves.
They are hazaar (thousand) examples. Technically, ABD = American Born Desi or 1.9 genner (came as an infant).
aharona ABD wannabes? Reader needs clue. IMO, ABD wannabes are those fresheis you specifically make it a point to hate everything that a “typical fob” is expected to do. They don’t watch desi movies…never cook desi food at home, never talk in hindi (or their mother tongue), always mention that “India will never be able to catch up with US”, proclaim that they’ll never go back to India…and never miss an opportunity to label their friends as “fobs”.
Aha – much obliged, Kush Tandon!
And to you too Brown FOB. Dang, y’all type faster than I can read!
Thomas, thanks for sharing your experiences meeting ABDs.
I may have once been in the category that made you feel shunned. I used to think that just because a person I see on the street is brown and I am brown, doesn’t mean I should suddenly strike up a conversation with a stranger. Other than our brownness, what’s in common? Afterall, there are an enormous number of brownies in the world. If you smoosh together the subcontinent back into one country (which it should really be, but I won’t go there), there are more brownies than any other group of people.
Anyway, I’ve reformed. I now try to strike up conversations with random brownies, using my piss poor hindi/urdu/punjabi (I can’t tell the difference). They usually look confused and run away though. Any subway tips for a successful meeting of ABD and IBD?
You guys are using aliases? 😉
as an abd I wonder if I’d know a lot less about India /Indian culture if it weren’t for the Internet?
Love the idea and format of this post.
A brief comment for now, regarding shortened, westernized nicknames vs. the full, all-out desi given names:
My closest friends, desi or not, call me by my full given name, when we are within the privacy of only ourselves. They have since we were teenagers…and that to me has always been precious. They were curious, and cared enough to patiently learn how to say my name properly, with all the inflections in the right places, and vowel sounds appropriately elongated or truncated.
That’s love…
Siddhartha and DesiDancer, A fantastic, informative, and original post; I enjoyed it very much. Nice one, you two.
Margin Fades: I totally hear you on the saying the full name, with a name like Meenakshi, people are always trying to cheat a nickname for me. (Thats what I loved about living in India)
Dominos (yes in Mumbai, pure veg!): Thank you for calling dominos, this is Kevin speaking, can I help you? Me: Yes I would like a Veggie Crunch Personal Pizza D: Sure ma’am, your name please? Me: Meenakshi, M-E-E— D: I got it ma’am.
Loved it. I also feel nicknames are highly personal, only to be given due to certain circumstances or relations. My Dad’s name is Harsh, but changed it to Hersh because “My name is Harsh, but I am not a harsh person”. Gotta love the Pops. I remember the dread of the attendance call at the beginning of class, with the confused look of teachers, and I knew it was my name. Its not that hard– just like its spelled!
Really like the post, thanks for sharing Siddhartha and Desi Dancer, esp. guest comment by Anjali!
For me, coming to terms with my brown-ness was about having a desi life on weekends (dance class, poojas, hindi school) and non desi on week-days (going to school, to the prom and having puffy hair–it was the early 90’s!) The main thing that I found I appreciated about my brown friends was that they understood the rules set by our parents: Friend #1 has to be home at 10.00 pm or mother will scold, other friend is not allowed sleepovers, most of us were not allowed to have boyfriends (but did anyway). So, for me, as I got closer to my brown amigas, it was just a comfort level of not having to justify my parents, culture, desi-ness to the other non-desi friends (although I was close to them in different ways).
Oh no! I’m so sad I missed this. The way things are going with me, I’ll likely be a future parent of a black/desi child(ren) and this is a topic that definitely intrigues me. I haven’t read all the responses (just got out of classes a while ago) but I am excited to read them.
I think my issue is that with a lot of people in America, if you are any part black, you are just considered black. My views on the one drop rule vary, but regardless of how I feel about the “rule” it will still shape my future children’s lives. And its very likely that the connection between my SO and his family will be severed long before children come along. So I worry that my future kids won’t be able to have the full experience of that side of themselves. Among many many other things.
Oh my god. I know. I talk about this ALL the time. I am obsessed with this topic.
If anything, my experiences with the “culture bullshit” (which, hey, sometimes I pull on myself) are with my family (I’ve never had a non-relative say anything), particularly the family that lives in India. Meaning, not people who are part of the international diaspora. I don’t think recent immigrants (I find this 1st, 2nd business confusing. Is it the first that came over? or the first that were born abroad?) wouldn’t understand things like cab-lady, but I do think that their experiences will be different from mine. In which ways depends on the individuals.
Hey, a namesake. I have the same problem unfortunately and still bemoan my parent’s choice of name. Especially considering that here English is not the native language, and my name is spelled the English way. If you folks think your names have been mangled beyond belief in the USA…just make a visit here. Most common mispronounciations are related to the fact that in Dutch the letter combination ‘EE’ is pronounced as ‘AY’ and the ‘SH’ sound is written as ‘SCH’ or ‘SJ’; the ‘KSH’ doesn’t exist at all, so most people transpose the letters, appropriating to me a Russian ancestry that doesn’t exist. Our desi brothers ‘n sisters whose names contain the ‘R’ or ‘G’ sounds will have an even worse time – Dutch, unlike the other Germanic languages,is known for a very harsh & guttural G, and in much of the Netherlands the ‘R’ is rolled the same way in the throat. I know a desi (Bengali) couple who was so fearful of this that they gave their first daughter a Western nickname and their second and uber-Scandinavian name. So, I’ve issued a warning, now brace yerselves.
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that story is awesome. did the gf look desi?
Oneup, apologies if you already saw this, but I don’t know if you were hanging around these parts back in February: I did a post specifically about the desi-meets-Black mix and quite a long conversation about mixed-racedness ensued. Although it moved away pretty fast from the problematics of black/desi mix and toward white/desi material, which is an interesting observation in itself. Anyway, I wish both of you joy in your relationship!
Oneup: I would be very interested to hear your views re: one drop rule.
I also worry that my kids (not really a concern presently!) will not have a the full experience of that (or… this?) side of themselves, because I am not Indian-enough. But that’s for another time…
What do you call with someone who was born in the United States and here till 7 years of age, then raised in India (Gujarat) till 15/16, then made it back to the United States?
ABCDEFG.
American Born Confused Desi Exported From Gujarat.
Apart from the issues faced by desi peers growing up I had a lot of problems involving self-adjustment that had absolutely nothing to do with being brown. However even when I finally became somewhat comfortable in my own skin the vast majority of my friends was white, with only two or three brown friends(one who emigrated to the USA anyway). My parents were always quite liberal, never the patriotic types,and they weren’t the kind to impose religion on us either. So both my sister and I are stubborn atheists. They let us date as well, and my mother resigned to the fact that most probably we wouldn’t be able to find a desi man. That’s the hard part – finding a desi with the minimum requirement of being at least foreign bred. Let alone atheist, respectful of women and of my weird hobbies.
Meena:
I hear ya sista, once someone asked me if I was Polish.
Reason: They thought my name was Verna Meenaski.
I like Meena as a nickname though, and you seem like a May-na. 🙂 Not bad to be called a precious stone, as opposed to one who’s describes the shape of a fish eye. 😉 SO hard to explain to folks, so I just say that my name is the name of an Indian Goddess, eyebrows effectively raised, they show respect. 🙂
True in a way – finding a desi man was not enough, in terms of my grandmother’s requirements for me. He needed to be Hindu, from the same “community” (which in my family is the nice word for caste), speak the same languages, be vegetarian (uh which is weird, because I’m not!), not too many siblings, but just enough etc. Oh, and a doctor, obviously. 😉
P.S. All the desi dudes I know are respectful of women!
I still hold my Indian passport, and this is my 22nd year in Amreeka. I lived here more than any place else.
and I am going to continue to harangue you till you become a US citizen 😉
What’s a May-na though? blushes
Tamasha: Unfortunately, the only desi men I’ve ever known NOT of my father’s generation were either a. a few younger boys whom I had been accustomed to see around get-togethers for a long time and b. horribly FOBbish IT workers who didn’t wear deoderant and supported Narendra Modi. The funny thing is that my family has no specifications at all regarding men except a good character – but even that is hard to find in a desi man over here.
Gujudude,
ABCDEFG
Most of my nephews and nieces are in the same category. Not the G part. I guess ABCDED, D for Delhi and around.
Isn’t GGK in the same category. He is isn’t around these days.
and I am going to continue to harangue you till you become a US citizen 😉
ALM,
I know. Thank you.
I haven’t been permanent resident for 5 years yet. I will apply for naturalization as soon I am elgible. A US passport has lot of protection and privileges, here and everwhere. Just a few months ago, eventually (4 days before the meeting) I did not go to Pakistan. My Indian passport was a big issue there (Abhi knows about it too).
The other day someone on SM joked that US passport carries more currency even in India. Maybe, Manish (SM alum) can chime in.
Actually, I did see this. I was still reluctant to come out and comment though. I’m sure its quite obvious already, but since I know so little about the different cultures of India, A LOT of what is talked about goes over my head. So, I just don’t comment a whole lot.
Interesting, but not at all surprising. I know there are a variety of reasons why almost all non-white groups in America do this, but it’d be nice if the convo wasn’t always so one-sided. Thinking back, that’s probably why I started commenting in the fist place.
🙂 Thanks, we’re gonna need it.
I think it had a time and a place, and now both have come to an end. I think there is too much pressure from the black community for people who are multiracial to indentify solely/mainly as black. And while I understand the underlying desire for unity, I think it places too much emphasis on an “us vs. them(white/asian/latino)” mentality. OTOH, I have a great great grandmother who was half white. Her physical features were VERY anglo… but I think it would be ridiculous for me to claim I am white and black whenever someone commented on my race, considering my features, which I consider to be very typically negroid.
I feel sort of the same way about my boyfriend… well, not that he’s not indian enough, but I fear a rejection from his family might push him away from his culture. Maybe it will be temporary.
Oh and regarding the name thing – the worst part was when well-meaning people asked what it meant. These days I just avoid the REAL answer by saying that it means “beautiful eyes” – which in effect it does. No Vesterner will anyway understand the concept of “eyes in the shape of a fish”(seriously wtf?). These days, I shorten my name as you can see in my handle – in fact, it was my mum’s suggestion when I joined Uni. Most folks in Uni now only call me by my shortened name.
By the way, this site is the first one where I’ve encountered Desis who actually, y’know, listen to Western music, don’t watch Bollywood…in our Indian community Bolly is really seen as the litmus test of being Indian. Reading is also something that none of the desis do save my family. Another reason I find it hard to fit in with the desis I meet is that we don’t share the same interests. I take an active interest in indie music, I play the piano and I listen to classical stuff as well. Plus art is my other great passion, I want to join Art College someday. I also love to read, I watch only specific kinds of films and tv show(almost all of them being British comedies). I love eco-tourism, conservation and birding as well. All of these things will register one as ‘weird’ on the desi radar here. Also taking such in interest in anything ‘British'(and thus apparently ‘colonial’) is regarded as suspicious as well – be it Blur, Monty Python or Douglas Adams. Anyone else have this problem as well?
Probably proof that I’ve been spending too much time on this site 😛 No but seriously, I’m surprised since I tend to pick up phrases from Brits.
Meena:
Looks like your connections aren’t that great.
As aside – Most of the so called IT guys are neither Punjabi..nor Gujju (the two biggest groups of ABDs). Infact their knowledge of Gujarat is pretty close to “nil”. Most of the incoming grads are either from the North Indian states..Delhi, UP, Bihar, R’sthan…or from the S. Indian states..TN, AP, K’taka. This might be another reason why they don’t gel well with predominantly gujju and punjabi abds.
Too many stereotypes in this line.
Meena:
I guess you haven’t met desis from the small town of Meerut, India. 🙂 Seriously.
I’m not Gujju, and neither was he – he was a Tamilian, but he still supported Modi.
Wodehouse, what if I indeed have encoutered such types?
🙂 That is just awesome. The furthest out question I ever got was whether I was Greek.
And I can’t believe it’s so hard to find a brown man under 35 who doesn’t tYp3 l13k tH1$.
So many dilemmas!
I think there is too much pressure from the black community for people who are multiracial to indentify solely/mainly as black. And while I understand the underlying desire for unity, I think it places too much emphasis on an “us vs. them(white/asian/latino)” mentality.
well, i had a friend who was an asian american activist, and he was offended when black americans seemed to be offended that tiger woods refused to accept hypodescent. his reasoning was that it wasn’t like there are many sports heroes that asian americans can look up to and so tiger woods, who is half asian (his mother is 3/4, his was father 1/4) and a believing buddhist should be allowed to be defined more than by his black amerian ancestry.
also, the one drop rules mostly applies to black americans, no one thinks of keanu reeves as an asian amerian actor.
Meena,
You are a young person and have lot to learn. We all were at this junction (that is why we all once pretended to be Greeks) a your age. However,
1) Reading culture is very deeply ingrained in middle class Indian since they are natural born athletes. Hint: Atta culture of Bengal, coffee houses in kolkatta, please read Argumentative Indian by Amartya Sen.
2) Vestern Music. Just visit any blog from Delhi or Bangalore, they are on the mark on agrezi music. Any coffee house in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore will have latest western music playing. I was fiddling with a juke box in Hyderabad in 2004. They have rock bands in India. Hint: Beatles in early 70s hung around in India in Rishikesh, Haridwarr. Hint again: Ravi Shankar and George Harrison, John Maclaughin and others from Shakti.
3) Art. They always been great art culture from thousands of years comparable to Dutch. There are art schools in India – JJ school of Arts in Mumbai. Hint: Mughal Paintings, Ellora Painings, MF Hussian (once a street painter) sells paintings for millions of dollars in NYC and other places.
4) Most of the IT workers are from South India since Karnataka & AP took some of the smartest decisions in India circa 1999-2000. IT revolution is ushered from Southern India. Hint: Bangalore
Regarding deodarants, that is a cultural things, and it takes 2 minutes to get educated about it. I would not fixate on it. It is inane.
PS: Neocons are foreign policy wonks and most of them once were liberal democracts. Party on
Correction to comment above: since they are not natural born athletes
I would say ABCABCD – American Born Confused About Being Confused Desi.
Wicked Innit?
Kush, I know that is true for Indians in India, but what about outside? It seems that once they are abroad very different rules apply. By the way. Almost all desis I know hail from (upper-) middle class families, so I don’t know if your contention really applies.
I’ve already made one rambling, maudlin, bourbon-fueled post on this topic… it’s at around post 170 of that “Am I American” trainwreck thread…
To keep this (relatively) short:
I am half desi… well 3/8 actually. I’m also a third-generation Indian-American… something which was pretty rare for most of my life and is still uncommon for somebody my age(37). My paternal grandfather was a Tamil Catholic. As a young man he followed an oil boom and ended up working as a petroleum engineer in Venezuela and other locations around the Caribbean. He did go home long enough to find a wife (half Tamil and half Irish, of all things, which accounts for my missing 1/8). He also went to the US to complete his graduate engineering degrees. My father and my uncle were born then. He settled in America for good shortly after World War II…
My father met and married my mother, a Cajun girl from a small town in southwest Louisiana, while attending law school in New Orleans. I was born in New Orleans and spent most of my childhood there. My dad tried to be super assimilated… he never made any effort to teach his kids Tamil or much of anything else about India and Indian culture. (It took his second marriage to make him a born-again desi) My parents finally divorced when I was 4. For what it’s worth, their marriage was wrecked by true incompatabilty, not any obvious racial or cultural issues. I did get to go on one extended visit to India when I was seven. This was more confusing and scary than exciting… especially because it served as the introduction to my new and rather unenthusiastic (Tamil) stepmother. I tried off and on to learn more about India later on in my childhood, but aside from the odd twenty years out of date library book, resources were not abundant. As I mentioned in an ealier thread, I can still remember having nightmares after reading the Edgar Allen Poe-worthy Partition chapters from Freedom At Midnight… It wasn’t until high school that I really became fascinated/obsessed with India and things Indian. If there was any one event that set me off, it was seeing the movie Gandhi during my freshman year… as utterly silly as that seems in retrospect. I devoured every bit of desi lore I could find, over time acquiring a substantial (academic and theoretical at least) knowledge of Indian history and culture. That interest has persisted until the presrnt day… I am currently pursuing a graduate degree in a field related to South Asia…
Does any of this make me a desi? I don’t know. It’s supposed to be possible for total outsiders to enter America and become Americans. Is it really possible for someone who started out as pretty much a total outsider to join desi culture and become a desi? Many of you are citizens of the US, Canada, Britain or some other Western country. You pride yourselves on your mastery of Western art, culture and popular culture. Yet white people who immerse themselves in all things desi to a similar extent… or worse yet settle in South Asia or convert to a “brown” religion like Islam, Sikhism or Hinduism… are often condemned as exoticizers, carpetbaggers and outright freaks. I started out from pretty much the same baseline as any of those folks. Does some tenuous genetic connection give me any more credibility?
There are two clear challenges to any claim I make to “desiness”… color and culture.
Colorwise, I am very light. Easily light enough to pass. I have light olive skin, brown hair, hazel eyes and, perhaps most importantly, my mother’s European features. Most strangers assume I am white. I have had the occaisonal run-in with dedicated racists… but most acquaintances still treat me as white even after learning otherwise. By contrast, most of the mixed race people I’ve known whose nonwhite ancestry is readily apparent also clearly identify themselves as nonwhite. For the most part they are treated as such. Few of the white folks who care about such things actually give them any bonus points for their other half. It has been argued, here and in other forums, that dealing with racism and otherness is central to brown identity… that it is impossible to live as a desi without the challenges of living in a dark skin. That is one test that I clearly fail.
The cultural problems are just as obvious. I was not raised as an Indian. There was no Indian family to speak of… My grandparents stayed on in New Orleans after my father left… but, as wonderful people as they were, they were little help in this respect. Both of them were Anglicized to the bone… I can remember my grandfather maybe speaking three words of Tamil to me, ever… My uncle also married a gori. He speaks with a clear Texas drawl. He never gave up on the whole assimilation thing… I’ve never had any truly close Indian friends. Aside from relatives, I saw very few desis growing up. The first place I encountered Indians was in college. Aside from the random classmate and co-worker, most of my desi acquaintances have been made in various South Asian themed clubs and organizations. From the first time I joined the Indian Students’ Association in college I saw just how apart I was. I was excited at the opportunity to immerse myself in all things Indian… but aside from potluck dinners and talent shows on various holidays… very little of this went on. They really didn’t have much to teach me in that regard. One Republic Day they held a huge trivia contest on Indian history and current events. I destroyed everyone… FOB’s included. The club was really a place where desis coud enjoy all the typical American diversions… and talk about typical American stuff like sports, cars and music… but away from the white folks, only in the presence of other browns. Having someone like me around was… awkward. There was also a lot of time spent comiserating with each other on the unique burdens of a double life… desi at home, American in public. This was something I knew little about.
While the differences between me and a native-born Indian are obvious… there’s also been a big cultural gap even between me and the most assimilated of ABCD’s. They grew up in upper-middle class, professional households. I spent most of my childhood in one of those neighborhoods everyone likes to make fun of, complete with cars up on blocks, lots of big dogs and pickups with Confederate flag bumper stickers. They were super high achievers… the guys who played three sports, played an instrument, got straight A’s and still had just enough spare time to get all the chicks. There were a handful of superstars like this at my junior high and high school… and everybody freaking hated them… especially the screwups like me who spent more time on essential like smoking pot and playing Dungeons & Dragons. It was rather intimidating trying to enter a subculture where people like that were the norm, not the exception. No disrespect intended… but I gather that most of the folks who hang out here… most of the second-gen desi scene in general… are pretty much the grown-up, more mature versions of those uber-kids.
Am I a desi? The stock answer to that question is “I am whatever I want to be.” But what if Olaf Gunderson the blonde-haired, blue-eyed, 100% Scandinavian American from St. Paul, Minnesota decides that a desi is what he most wants to be? I’m guessing that it would not end well. And just how much more of a claim to the title do I have than that guy? Do I want to be a desi? Most days… yes. Yet the biggest question is not what I want or how much I have learned. The crucial question, sentiment aside, is whether or not desis will accept me as desi. The answers I have gotten from all of the brown people I have encountered during my life have been decidely mixed. Even at this late date the jury is still out…
Isn’t it strange that those who as children were out of touch with their desi ancestry become ultimately the most interested in all things Indian?
Yes. But I’m curious as to why you ask.
Osman,
This is a very good point. There really is no need to talk to a stranger just because he/she is brown for all the good reasons you gave. OTOH, there’s no reason to avoid them either. This avoidance is quite common among among IBD’s as well who run away from other desis. It took me some time upon arrival here to realize that other desis (citizens and immigrants) also form part of the American experience. I know people who for years said “American” to solely mean whites.
:-). If they are new IBD’s, English should work just fine. As for very old people who wouldn’t know English, the situation would be the same whether you are an ABD or IBD (unless you happen to be from the same state as that other person).
Same story here! Never gave a damn about yoga in India and kinda bounced about between yoga teachers treating it as just plain exercise until a “white chick” showed me what it’s all about!
:-). Shit! I missed it.
you’re not really competing for the affections of the 21st century mind, are you? us “vesterners” are too busy playing Sudoku and quibbling with our spouses
i love HBOover whati love HBOshows to erasei love HBOon our DVR boxes to make room for eveni love HBOmore low-grade filth we’ll probably never end up watching until thei love HBOcycle repeats itself. i’m sorry, was that a chalupa or gordita that you wanted? i wasn’t paying attentiontake that name of yours, which i’m sure is just lovely, and wear it like you own it. seriously. you literally have NO time to waste pining over lost interpretations of your name.
oh, and …
PROBLEM SOLVED
Oneup: Indeed, not surprising at all. But those of us interested in that conversation are going to keep on hammering at it. Glad you are in the mix.
:+:
Confidential to brown_fob: Yes. My uncle.
:+:
Everyone: Interesting how this has moved in the direction of discussing fully-brown people and their relationship to the brown, and the internal dynamics of that, including the many flavors of “FOB”/”AB[C]D” communication, etc. I take from all this that some of the choices that mixed folk like DD and myself found ourselves making as a result of being mixed, are ones that many of y’all non-mixed folk also found yourself confronting. Very instructive and thought-provoking.
A question: What about those of you who are raising mixed kids already, or who are in relationships that are highly likely to produce mixed kids? Would love to hear either how you “teach mixedness” or envision yourself doing so for your child, or how you see your kids becoming aware (or not) of their mixedness.
Finally: Where the hell is Bong Breaker?
Meena,
I have a Brit Asian friend (now a Professor in UK) who spent two years in China, and I met him in USA immediately after his visit. One of his first sentence was, “Man, In China, you will really meet a lot of cool Chinese. Why don’t they show up in UK? I guess they are not nerdy enough to go to graduate school in West“.
Exactly. Sampling and forming opinions about India/ South Asia through expats – bad, bad idea.
BTW, one of the greatest Westen music conductor alive today – is tada – Zubin Mehta, originally from Mumbai.
Thanks, but no thanks – my cousin convinced me to join this site called “Orkut” and it’s really a cesspool.
I am sincerely hoping you really didnt think that I hadn’t figured that out by the age of 13 🙂 😉
Is it just me or does any other desi feel “vacuumy” when filling in Ethnicity :Asian beacause there is no other choice?
A question: What about those of you who are raising mixed kids already, or who are in relationships that are highly likely to produce mixed kids? Would love to hear either how you “teach mixedness” or envision yourself doing so for your child, or how you see your kids becoming aware (or not) of their mixedness.
I am in the latter category. I am just trying to learn from people like Sid, DD and others so I would have some idea about raising multiracial kids. I do wonder about how ‘Indian’ will my kids feel and how will they juggle their Indian, Muslim and White ancestry.