As an ABCD, I want things both ways. In the USA I want to be recognized as fully American; hyphenated American to be sure, but still just as American as any pink-skinned Mayflower descendent. This is especially true when I need consular support or when I am re-entering the country.
I once had an INS agent look at my face and tell me that the line for foreign nationals was elsewhere. When I showed her my passport, she proceeded to treat it as fraudulent and grilled me (improperly) until she was satisfied. Ironically, she was a Filipina with a thick accent herself.
But in India, I usually want to pass. I was really proud when a Delhite came up to me on the street and asked me for directions in Hindi. The only time I’ve been amused to hear “You speak English really well” was when it came from an Eastern European tourist at Fatehpur Sikri. [I ruined the illusion by responding “Thanks. I watch a lot of American television” whereupon he recognized the American sense of humor.]
Heck, last time I was in India, I passed too well. I was wearing a khaddar kurta and had my beard open and some guard at the Delhi domestic airport decided I was too pendu to belong and demanded that I produce my ticket. I responded in very American English that my ticket was with my “Daaaaad” (it was) and walked off, having asserted myself as an NRI.
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I mean, we don’t even have a word for the opposite of coconut. What would we call somebody who is white on the outside, but brown (and hairy) on the inside? A pickled egg? A rotten egg? What’s the correct term for somebody like Jamie Alter?
A day in the life of Jamie Alter is not easy. He takes the bus to office … and is stared at all the way. Teenagers snigger and point… But Jamie, son of actor Tom Alter, isn’t a tourist or long-term expat. He’s Indian and it says as much on his passport. Having grown up in Mumbai and Mussoorie, Jamie understands references to Chitrahaar, not American sitcoms. When he went to the US for his undergraduate degree, he thought he’d blend in. And he did — as far as appearances go. Until he realised his heart was in India. “I missed the chaos of Mumbai. I love cricket, not American culture. I came back because I’m happier here,” says the 25-year-old. [Link]
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p>To me, the correct term for Jamie Alter is Indian.
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p>I know we want to believe so strongly that we can inherit cultural ownership by virtue of our skin and our domestic experiences that sometimes we see people like Alter as a challenge. If they’re Indian, what does that make us? I don’t know but I’m not that troubled by it. There can be both jus sanguinis and jus solis.
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p>India is a multicultural country. I remember once asking a Tibetan friend where the best Tibetan restaurant in Boston was, and she replied that she didn’t know since she only ate Indian. She had been born, raised and went to college in India before she came to the US, and was far more Indian than I. Her Hindi was not just better than mine, but probably better than both her Tibetan and her English.
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p>Similarly, my friend S. got annoyed by the failure of other people, especially ABDs, to recognize him as Indian. S. had blue eyes and fair skin. I thought he was Latino when I met him. But he was a hadesi pukka Bombayite, a real Indian.
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p>So I’m happy to recognize non-browns as being more Indian than I am, just like I’m not afraid of Elvis in the USA. I have no problem with white and black (and yes, non-Punjabi) contestants on Bhangra teams, just like I have no problem with non-desis learning Bollywood in Yorkshire or Colorado. I’ve gotten over my annoyance at people who can’t dance the right traditional way to Bhangra at clubs, in part because the worst offenders there are usually Gujaratis, not white folks. [I’m even more hopeless at Garba, so I can’t point fingers.] I don’t own Bhangra within India (heck, it’s not even part of my family’s tradition), and I don’t own it here either.
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p>I’m just not that fussed about asserting cultural ownership I guess, unlike some:
Cultural Ownership: I have no problems admitting that I sometimes feel like this. It’s like, “Dudes, I can’t even understand my own culture! It’s not fair that you can!” That just makes me jealous. What can I say? [Link]
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p>To me, it’s only fair I guess that things should go both ways. I’m an American. Kenyandesi is a third generation Kenyan. And Jamie Alter? He’s an Indian.
Related Posts: I’m not afraid of Elvis, On Hybrid Vigor, Acceptance and Grace
BUUUT…..can he sing Chaiyya Chaiyya???
ABCD’s need a serious image makeover. The Beavus and Butthead routine aint cutting it.
His father is Tom Alter, Bollywood star and he lives in Bombay. I should hope he can.
I think they meant ‘Indo-Anglican’, but even that is not really right since he wrote in Bengali
95 iFOB,
Yes Romulus Whitaker among others have made India their home.
From: At home in Chennai
Also see. Romulus Whitaker the herpetologist
Call of the wild
Charmed!
Romancing crocs and cobras
Tom Alter is very well known not just in the film world but also in theatre, he does Hindi/Urdu plays and his urdu is about a zillion times better than that of anyone else I know. He’s also a very fine actor. There are lots of folks like him whose families came to India as missionaries originally and then stayed on (“went native” might have been the term many years ago). There are also descendants of Anglo-Indians, many of whom would have, a few generations ago, spoken of England as “Home” and aligned with white society because of the privileges and biases that encouraged them to do so (on both sides, mind), but they are absolutely Indian and speak Hindi and are pillars of many convent and English schools (remember the film 36 Chowringhee Lane? Or was that way before the time of the young ‘uns?)
More interestingly to me, there are lots of Chinese kids in Calcutta and Simla who are second or third gen and who speak perfect Hindi, though some of them will still identify as Chinese (I suppose the same way many of y’all who are ABDs will in certain situations feel “Indian”). I remember producing my passport as ID at some Chinese restaurant in the US where I wanted a drink and being stunned when the very Chinese waiter responded in chaste Hindi and chatted with me about living in Calcutta, turns out he had grown up there. Desh is a land of migrants in many ways too…
Preach it brother 🙂
You know what you call someone who’s white on the outside but is desi on the inside…. The leader of the Congress party of India.
I propose we call people who fall into this category Sonias.
Here’s a musical Band of a group of American white guys who grew up in India,singing hindi and nepali songs…
http://www.myspace.com/aradhnamusic http://www.aradhnamusic.com/
WGIIA, this is weird, but after reading Jamie Alter a few times on Cricinfo, I had a hunch that he may be Tom Alter’s son. Something about the way he writes suggested an Indianness – I’m sure you’re familiar with many of the Indian columnists on cricinfo.
DJDP, have you enjoyed listening to Year Zero? Fragile is still my favourite album, but this one does have cool stuff.
I’ve met Jamie and yes I was quite startled the first time when he spoke 🙂 but he just brings another dimension to the diversity that is India. We need more like him.
nanda, even when i sometimes saw the bangalore byline i didn’t associate him with the other alter. i just assumed he was british and therefore more familiar with india and cricket. the one thing that did shock me was seeing dileep premachandran’s photo. he looks like a kid! his writing led me to assume that he was much older than he looks.
Heh. You all might be more surprised to see somebody of Euro-American origin writing well about cricket than speaking Hindi fluently 😉
Sorry for the long post, but this topic has hit a nerve. I’m 35, got to the US with my parents at 10 months, raised in NJ, and thought I was done with the whole coconut/kaju roll thing after middle school. The self-pity that goes along with one’s general framework at that time fit nicely with the self-pity of being a hybrid.
I thought I had moved on. Now, especially, when a certain kind of multiculturalism allows being desi to be cool. (“Wow! You’re an exotic hybrid!”)
But it’s all coming back (with the self-pity, as you can see in this post), especially with kids. I’m going through it all over again. I’m just decided that I’m sick and tired of being a racial/ethnic minority. I’ll be part of anti-racist struggle, asserting our place, and all that. But I wish I didn’t have to do it. There’s times when I wish that my parents had just stayed in their own damn country, where they actually had networks and knew people and didn’t have to build this whole immigrant wall for self-preservation.
Here’s the twist. I feel like I would never leave my friends and family in “my country.” But what is this but, in part, the reflection of immigrant experience? They come here, leaving everyone, but then hold onto the family so tightly that you’re instilled with a deep loyalty that they, obviously, did not have enough of (nostalgia doesn’t count). Actually, I think “The Namesake” (the movie) captures this dynamic very well.
I like “white tiger”. I plan to use it!
I grew up with two “immigrant” Indians–one was Chinese but was born in India. She spoke fluent Hindi (better than a lot of the other kids in my class including me), and often brought sambar and rice in her tiffin box (even though her family owned a Chinese restaurant). Her family spoke their native language at home. The other was Iranian, and his family immigrated when he was a little kid, I think, and was also very “Indian”.
Also, Diya Mirza, the Bollywood actress, is the child of a German expat (Mirza is her stepfather’s last name) who lived in Hyderabad.
The true test of being Indian:
Will he nag his children the moment they hit age 24/25 to get married, relentlessly pimping them out on the market? If the answer to this is anything but a resounding “YES”.. then don’t waste my time.
“You all might be more surprised to see somebody of Euro-American origin writing well about cricket than speaking Hindi fluently ;)”
if they haven’t grown up in india (like jamie alter)/britain/west indies etc, definitely!
Re: Mayflower sub-discussion, just to mess things up a bit.
There were actually free Africans living in the Virginia colony before the Mayflower ever arrived in “New” England.
As for the main discussion, it’s an interesting topic. Is your “identity” your heritage, appearance or experience? (I think of it as an intersection of the three.) Most folks make assumptions based solely upon appearance, which is understandable because it is the first of the three you observe, yet in many ways the least useful in of itself.
I’ve always been amused by my own example. I self-identify as white and the US government currently designates me white and I think of myself that way and for all practically purposes I am. I look white, I have a WASP name (although it is not related by blood but by adoption.) But by the old US Jim Crow laws, I wouldn’t have been considered “white” since I’m 1/8 Native American.
Had I been an active adult back then (and known to be “one drop” not white) – the Jim Crow laws would have applied to me in many Southern states. And in fact my parents weren’t able to marry when I was a child. Because I was born in 1963 and the US Supreme Court case overturning the Virginia ban on interracial marriage didn’t happen until 1968.
Yet I was aware of none of this when I was younger. I only found out as an adult. By current US law I am white, but if I had the same ancestry but Black then I would be considered Black.
So essentially in terms of “heritage” for roughly first five years of life (give or take) I could have been officially considered “not white” but for the rest I could have been officially considered “white.” But in terms of experience and appearance I have all been in the “white” category.
Which is a reminder that sometimes the lines of identity can be quite arbitrary.
Reminds me of a story years ago in the Patna edition of Times of India about an entire village of white farmers somewhere in Bihar. They were of British origin, obviously, and had just stayed on. (There is a movie called STAYING ON with Trevor Howard and Saeed Jaffrey on a similar subject, but not about these people.)
India is multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and all those other multi’s. But we Indians have to first categorize the people we meet before we can proceed further. The rich, multi-layered profiling we can do would be the envy of any highly paid market researcher doing complex demographic analysis. Race and religion are the easy stuff. We Indians like to know which state of India you come from, what caste, what your father did for a living, whether you are married, whether you have any “issues” (translate, children), and, if not, when you intend to have children.
Are we really strange? Not really. Europeans are quite siimilar, Latin Americans even more so, the Chinese almost the same as Indians.Old cultures tend to be that way.
“entire village of white farmers somewhere in Bihar.”
The place is called Mccluskie-ganj
There has been historically huge amounts of immigration into South America. Its slowed over the past 30 years as a result of economic stagnation, but it it is in the constitution of Argentina (and Chile, if I recall) to encourage emigration from U.S. countries.
The thing about white tigers is that they are born through incest, well they call it inbreeding, so I’d be wary of using ‘white tiger’ when some kind of ‘mixed’ ancestry is involved:
We all want to use “categories” for people (it’s convenient), but we mostly don’t want to be “categorized” ourselves (‘cos we’re Individuals).
To keep a sense of reality, we need to remind ourselves that the categories are abstractions. (Quick: If birds are categorized as Have Feathers, Can Fly, are penguins also birds?)
Comment 104 – What is an Indo-Anglican? If they exist, are they not an endangered species? If not, have they engendered some Indo-Pentecostals, Indo-Mormons, Indo-Evangelicals, and Jehovah’s Indo-Witnesses in order to have people to split theological hairs with?
Hey Chachaji (in 122)
You are spot on about the actual techniques to get white tigers. I am of the opinion that although it’s a tiger and not close to being domesticated to the point of being tame, the white tiger is getting to the point of being a “breed” rather than a color mutation. It’s a lot like dog and cat breeders who line breed (inbreed) to produce certain characteristics. Very annoying I feel, because tigers all over the world are endangered and I think the focus of zoo breeding programs should stick to their original purpose of preserving the diversity of the captive gene pool so that we can eventually attempt to “re-wild” tigers (they are already trying that in a China/South Africa joint effort, I read,) and bolster the wild populations. Technically I guess I could say I’m a tiglon or tigluma since my mom could be considered a mountain lion. 😛
Culturally, I look at white tiger as a reference to the fact that one who does not look like what people consider a “typical” tiger: orange with black stripes, so people should not assume that it is a lion. I tend to see it as a metaphor to the myriad comments I hear about how Indians are supposed to look a certain way and if you don’t fit the mold or are mixed and don’t fit the “mixed mold” then you must be lying or have to prove yourself. As a half-Indian I have endured a ridiculous amount of skepticism based on the fact that I don’t look the way someone has decided I should look. Many people don’t believe me, test me for knowledge of my culture or India, go on and on about “features” and how I don’t fit the mold or otherwise imply that I’m lying. Often I am told I look exactly like my mother, by people who have never seen her, but assume that I must not have gotten any characteristics from my father. When I tell them that it’s very interesting that when they look at me, a brown haired, brown eyed, (very very) light brown skinned person, they see a light blond haired, blue eyed, pink skinned person rather than the product of that mixture of caucasian with the “typical” brown skinned black eyed black haired person. When I call them on the fact that they are categorizing me by skin color they become offended. Most of these people have not seen enough Indians and hardly any, if any, Indian/Caucasian mixes that they have no idea what we normally look like and just assume. I’ve found the most useful metaphor to be “if you see a white tiger are you going to insist that it is not a tiger because it is not orange?” which tends to at least stop them from shoving their foot so far into their mouths that they digest it. Interestingly, some North Indian family members have asked my husband if I’m half Indian specifically based on the fact that my features are Indian but my skin is too light. The funniest thing that happened to me regarding this involves a class I took in Baja CA for 6 weeks where we camped on the beach, or in the desert during the summer and spent a lot of time in the ocean. At the beginning of the trip I had the features vs. skin color discussion with everyone (I guess it’s inevitable) and one person in particular disagreed because she didn’t want to seem like she noticed color. At the end of the trip after living outside continuously for 6 weeks in the sun, they all said I looked a lot more “Indian,” so my point was proved, at least there!
As for Jamie, he was born in India, raised in India, lives in India, is a citizen of India, is part of Indian culture, speaks Indian languages… shall I go on? he’s Indian.
?? There was a ton of immigration. There are few indigenous people left in many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, although some countries have a large mixed-race (mestizo) population. Consider Argentina, they’re all of European decent there.
Immigrants came not just from Europe and Africa (as slaves), but also from the Middle East and Asia. Remember President Fujimori of Peru? He was Japanese-Peruvian. Or President Menem of Argentina? He was Arab-Argentine. Heck, even think about “Shakira”, she’s a mixed race Arab Colombian, hence the name.
“There were actually free Africans living in the Virginia colony before the Mayflower ever arrived in “New” England.” The English had been in North America, paticularly the Virginia area, since the late 1500s; the French and Spanish for much longer. With them came Africans, both slave and free. The earliest “mulattos” in North America were the offspring of European female indentured servants who completed their sentences, and free (or sometimes slave) male blacks who had bought their freedom or been freed. Children of such unions were automatically and legally free, as they took the mother’s status. Claiming descent from Mayflower arrivals is no gauge of race, and using it in that way is just a dramatic device.
also a little off topic, but I have to ask: you probably know best since it’s your history, but I wonder about whether “Jim Crow” laws would have caused a person 1/8 Indian (native American type) to be considered non-white, since in the pre-reconstruction days, even a person 1/8 black could be considered white. Less than 1/8–legally white. Indians (native Americans) demand that a person have a least one full-blood grandparent to claim Indian ancestry. Generally speaking, if one was less than the 1/2 percentage, Americans never worried too much about “Indian” ancestry, except as an exciting, conversation piece. Many white southerners were never shy about claiming rather distant Indian ancestry. Up in New York, btw, Winston Churchill’s mother was 1/8 American Indian.
True, Neale pinned it at #92. Now it’s a kind of furniture. I think there’s always been some confusion about what Anglo-Indian means. Am reading William Dalrymple’s new book about the Uprising, as he calls it, which explores various conundrums of identity in Desh, and must link to this post when I review it.
Thanks, Hema! I was up pretty late…
Westcoaster– LOL
“also a little off topic, but I have to ask: you probably know best since it’s your history, but I wonder about whether “Jim Crow” laws would have caused a person 1/8 Indian (native American type) to be considered non-white, since in the pre-reconstruction days, even a person 1/8 black could be considered white. Less than 1/8–legally white. Indians (native Americans) demand that a person have a least one full-blood grandparent to claim Indian ancestry. Generally speaking, if one was less than the 1/2 percentage, Americans never worried too much about “Indian” ancestry, except as an exciting, conversation piece. Many white southerners were never shy about claiming rather distant Indian ancestry. Up in New York, btw, Winston Churchill’s mother was 1/8 American Indian.”
Yes they would. The Jim Crow laws were enacted in the post reconstruction South starting in 1876 through 1965 and were often and deliberately much harsher and stricter in their definitions than in earlier days. They were meant to separate and oppress the races.
Many of the Jim Crow (keep in mind that there wasn’t a unified national “Jim Crow” laws but a state my state separately covering race) laws applied to both Blacks and Native American to the third descent generation (1/8.) The laws banning interracial marriage at the time in states like Virginia applied down to 1/8 Native American. Some states like Arizona also specified bans for “Negro, Mongolian, Malay, or Hindu.” The laws covered a whole lot more ground that you’d think.
And keep in mind when you talk about folks claiming such ancestry back then (like New York) – the Jim Crow laws were primarily a Southern (and Western) United States thing and things were quite different (on paper at least) in Northern states like New York. The Civil Rights Act declaring them illegal was only in 1964 but the Supreme Court only struck them down as unconstitutional in the late 60s. The battle to actual stop enforcing them continued into the 1970s though.
Additional the primary focus was blacks but Native American (and others) were included in the wording of the laws.
Hi SemiDesi! I agree completely. So he is a desi, he’s just a gora desi. Gora is a word used by Indians (mostly north Indians) to refer to anyone desi and light skinned, and you would definitely be a gori in India.
And I’m really surprized to hear the extent to which people quiz you on your ancestry. In my own case, I’m several shades of brown darker than both my parents, and both my siblings. So the only way I get ‘to be sure’ is that my features match my father’s so closely, at corresponding ages, and the sheer quantity and density of hair he had as a teenager (in his pics from back then), just like I did, and so on. That, and my sense that I inherited some of his phenomenal intellectual capacity. But only a very small part.
ennis,
is there really such a huge backlash against calling people like alter “indian”? i mean, sonia gandhi is indian, mother teresa was indian, and thousands of others non-ethnic desis are, well, “indian” or “pakistani” or whatever. i don’t think we can discount sonia gandhi being elected PM as a sign of that acceptance. (although i will admit that it’s funny how several indian newscasters still call her ‘italian-born sonia gandhi’ just like american newscasters tend to bring up an individual’s ethnicity when it’s not really relevant.)
but i disagree with you about one thing: that desis are “hypocrites” if we feel affronted/confused when non-desis adopt or “perform” aspects of desi culture, be it bhangra, yoga, language, etc. i think you mentioned that in your “i’m not afriad of elvis” article. i understand where you are coming from, and i personally do think it’s ignorant to limit who and who cannot play in our collective sandboxes, but you also have to understand how a lot of desis grew up. most of my life my peers made me feel as if indian culture – almost everything about it – was weird/primitive/ugly/backwards. garba is a weird dance, why are the bhangra dancers humping each other, your food stinks, etc.
then you have your non-desi “india men and women” who are really entrenched in the culture, often know a hell of a lot more than your average desi about a particular aspect, but who have these extremely smug attitudes. they are the type of essentialize indian culture and talk down to desis as if they are not desi enough, and as if they are the foremost expert on what it means to be indian (and who the hell are they to define it for me?).
add on top of that a dollop of racism/fear against brownz (not just since 9/11).
and then one day i go to college and see a white guy doing bhangra. or a white girl speaking urdu. or a brazilian guy singing a bollywood song. i’m not going to blindly offended by their skin tone, but i am going to feel a bit weird. i’m going to raise an eyebrow. because you can’t expect anyone who grew up with such baggage – and boy do desis have baggage – to forget about all that and feel nothing but objective pleasure. it’s a pretty confusing feeling and difficult to articulate…kind of what tamasha was talking about, and kind of not. i mean, i’m not so much jealous as i am initially suspicious, for the reasons i state above. (and yeah yeah yeah i already hear the “but how would you feel if whites were suspiciuos of whatever you do!” argument coming, to which i resopnd: a..i didn’t really go around calling your turkey dinner “shitty” and well, white people WERE suspicious of shit i was doing growing up and sometimes even now, so…)
i guess my point is, people have feelings of cultural ownership for a reason. when you reclaim what people growing up around you considered fugly or weird, and then you see people who look like those assshats now acting out your culture, it just creates cognivie dissonance. tis all i’m saying.
The fact of the matter is that America is an immigrant society, where no one except the indigenous people can claim to be truly “American”. For that reason, I do not see myself as different than any white person whose forefathers immigrated here; we were all born here and are therefore on equal footing.
America is not an “immigrant society” per se, it is a society of descendents of mostly European immigrants who assimilated to a primarily British model of living.
It is getting more multiethnic, but it is not getting more multicultural. The melting pot, though out of favor at the moment, churns mightily.
If you don’t believe me ask your grandparents or, better yet, your grandchildren Steve and Jessica.
Hey, Nanda Kishore. How’d you know I was a NIN fan? Oh, it must’ve been this that tipped you off @=).
Not to go too off topic, but I’ve honestly been avoiding Year Zero; I didn’t get into “With Teeth” and I’m afraid it’s promotion, as interesting as it is, might be the highlight of another mediocre album. I’ll have to give YZ a listen sooner or later and I’ll get back to you then. For now, The Fragile (and the Downward Spiral) will remain as the apex of Reznor’s career, IMO.
The thing about white tigers is that they are born through incest, well they call it inbreeding, so I’d be wary of using ‘white tiger’ when some kind of ‘mixed’ ancestry is involved:
Fair ’nuff. From now on, I’ll only use it to refer to Indo-phile goras living south of Mason-Dixon line.
I know HMF got that one.
Whoops, a few formatting errors in my previous comment. It should look like this:
True only to a limited extent. You can’t dispose of everything. For that you have to leave the country.
You have to become a member of those and some only permit Indian citizens and have other restrictions as well. Temple-wise — Still no entrance for non-Indian Hindus in Jaganatha and other such mandirs.
You mean to say, “non-Indians”? I don’t think those same hotels, etc would deny black and other non-white tourists/non-nationals, would they now?
Great Article. Linking it on http://www.bestofindya.com to share with others.
Vote for this article on BestOfIndya.
Here’s a video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8QuZfT5yIE
Music knows no boundaries. Thank God for the possibility of expression without using text.
Clickable
A few years ago my hubby and I travelled around Mysore and Bangalore with other friends. While fun was had by all, my gora hubby paid more to enter pretty much any historical monument. Where I could get in with Rs. 5 he had to shell out $5.oo. Not sure how much of a privelege that is 😉
Finally got it.
Alter’s a t-shirt from Wal-Mart.
Looks “American” on the outside, but peel back the label and it’s made in India.
^__^
after reading this discussion, i have a feeling that many of you will love the “Identity and violence” book by A.Sen. Might be worth a summer read. Heard him talk about it and he was fabulous!
PG: I was watching a public access channel and an African-American guy said he couldn’t get a room, despite plenty of vacancies, in the area neighboring Auroville. It wasn’t clear to me if the hotel owners, who were Indian, were refusing him because he was black or because he was not white (i.e. they would refuse access to any non-white men in fear that they would harass the female guests). I will say that aside from hassles in temples where your Hinduness is questioned, that where it matters in the halls of power (e.g. the leftover Brit clubs where people network) that less accomplished white expats are favored over more wealthy or more intellectually accomplished Indians without aristocratic/old money connections. I can’t quantify this, but I do feel that it is the case based on the experiences of my friends. Once again the people implementing the prowhite policies are Indian who seem to feel that whites have inbuilt nobility. Once again let me state that I want the concept of “Indianess” to include “Euro-Indians” and I agree with the sentiment of this article.
Hey Chachaji (130)
I’m sure you inherited all your daddy’s intellect, and then some. How else would you know so much? 😉
I really feel for my husband. He can’t eat spicy food while I can sit there and eat Avakkaya out of the jar with a spoon, but people are always giving him extra spicy and then saying “What kind of Indian are you!” when the poor guy turns purple. Now we order for each other in restaurants because I guess they don’t want to fry the poor little white-lookin’ girl!
Blue: I love that. t-shirt from Wal Mart. So true.
Ennis, Thank you so much for your post. I have been reading SM for a while and really enjoy it. I am a “white American” (I have to use quotes or it just feels weird) girl who grew up in Taiwan (the third generation of my family to grow up in Asia.) In some ways it’s harder to be in America where I look like I belong but sooooo don’t, it can be hard to find friends who understand me or are interested in the same sorts of things. It’s quite a change from growing up being stared and pointed at all the time – something I don’t miss. 🙂 Like a lot of Third Culture Kids, I find I have more in common with others who are living “between” cultures – even if those cultures aren’t ones I’m from myself. Anyway, thanks for bringing up the subject. 🙂
The opposite of a coconut is clearly a hostess sno-ball.
You’re welcome.
If you like artists like Aradhna and are in the Bay Area, check out Anita Lerche when she plays with Jazzy B this weekend at the Flint Center. She’s a Dane currently touring to support her Punjabi-language bhangra album, “Heer From Denmark.”
I think the correct term for her isn’t modak, manju, sno ball, or even white tigress: she’s just plain awesome. Check out audio samples here.
wtf is a bhangra team?
Maybe they thought the black guys were Indian? Several African-Americans that I know have passed for Indians in India — a few of my black friends even managed to get into the famous Jaganath Mandir in Puri, Orissa, where even Indira Gandhi was refused entrance due to being married to a “Parsee”.
About Indian men being denied access to certain hotels/beaches in South India – I have mixed feelings about that…..
…./Of course it’s wack that a citizen would be denied that right and a tourist would be granted it. However, given the amount of sexual harrassement I have undergone at the hands of such citizens, I can say that going to a hotel/beach where these guys are not lurking, staring and groping, sounds like a place I would probably feel safe and relaxed at, as a woman. If such a beach does exist, and If I’m planning a beach vacation in India — I’d most likely head straight for that one. However, I’m wondering if those same hotels/beaches would deny local Indian women the same access as they deny local Indian men?
Does anyone here have experience of that?
If they deny local Indian women, then yeah, that’s really, really wack. But as a long-suffering woman, I can’t say I disagree with the denial of local men.
If I were the local men, rather than protest, I would examine why such a rule had to be put in place to begin with — and work on eliminating that behaviour.
“As an ABCD, I want things both ways.”
Oh man! Same old, insane old! Try putting one leg in one boat, with the other in another boat. Enjoy!
Sepoy = Anglicization of “sipahi,” which means soldier in Urdu! Not sepia!
Good lord!
Jamie may carry an Indian passport, but unlike most ABCd’s he doesn’t perform Halal on his vernacular!