When this beganI had nothing to say
And I get lost in the nothingness inside of me
I was confused
And I let it all out to find
That I’m not the only person with these things in mind
Inside of me
But all the vacancy the words revealed
Is the only real thing that I’ve got left to feel
Nothing to lose
Just stuck/ hollow and alone
And the fault is my own, and the fault is my own
I wanna heal, I wanna feel
what I thought was never real
I wanna let go of the pain I’ve held so long
(Erase all the pain till it’s gone)
I wanna heal, I wanna feel
like I’m close to something real
I wanna find something I’ve wanted all along
Somewhere I belong
And I’ve got nothing to say
I can’t believe I didn’t fall right down on my face
I was confused
Looking everywhere only to find
That it’s not the way
I had imagined it all in my mind
So what am I
What do I have but negativity
’Cause I can’t justify the way, everyone is looking at me
Nothing to lose
Nothing to gain/ hollow and alone
And the fault is my own, and the fault is my own
I will never know myself until I do this on my own
And I will never feel anything else,
until my wounds are healed
I will never be anything till I break away from me
I will break away, I'll find myself today
Don’t be surprised, the above poem is not written by me. It’s a song and a very famous one at that by one of my favourite bands LP called somewhere I belong. Well the reason why this song finds a mention in this blog of mine is a special one. It reminds me of something that happened years ago and has been happening ever since.
In the winters of 1999 when I was still in school, my cousins living in US visited us. Their visit was surrounded by the regular brouhaha that normally surrounds such visits from “NRI” relatives.
As soon as they landed at the airport we rushed to meet them and hug them as for us it was a normal reaction because they usually come, say once in five years.
This time my five year old niece who was coming to India for the first time was also there. The moment she got out of the terminal she started jumping and pointing towards the other side and we couldn’t figure out what made this 5 yr old, who was here for the first time, so happy. After much investigation we found out that she was pointing towards a dog who was blissfully asleep right in front of the entrance of the terminal. That’s when her mum explained that you really don’t get to see stray dogs in US and if they want to see animals they have to go to the zoo. That’s why all the firangis who visit India after going back happily declare it to be an open Zoo, one of my cousins commented. I was a little taken aback and hurt at this statement. Welcome to India, I thought.
They stayed here for almost two months, touring many parts of the country including Goa, Kerala, Rajasthan, the usual tourist spots. That’s when I realized how distorted their version of India was or for that matter how distorted version of India, an Indian settled abroad carries.
For two months we laughed at, joked around or felt disgusted with whatever they said or did. I, with all my education and the supposed broad mindedness couldn’t take my cousins behavior when she openly discussed her boyfriends, sex, and other equally taboo things in front of the elders of the family or even the clothes that she wore. I hated their tantrums about not drinking the normal water and eating the regular food. They wanted mineral water at all times and ate Pizzas for breakfast lunch and dinner and I thought you should be ashamed to call yourself an Indian. But so much for my patriotism I forgot that they are not Indians, they are American Born confused Desis, a term very popular among the youngsters and the NRI community today. But back then we were just beginning to register ourselves on the world map as a force to reckon with or India a Super power by 2020 and so we were not that conscious about our own nationalistic pride and individuality as an Indian. And mind you I am talking about a time when we didn’t have Rang De Basanti or Chak De or even the candle lit protests at India Gate. We were still caught in our colonial time warp and everything remotely foreign was better than anything Indian .America was still a dream destination and a degree from any Mickey Mouse institute in US was so much better than even IIMs in India. We still considered the white skin as superior to us and were overjoyed to see Make up kits and cheap perfumes bought from the One Dollar shops in US and gifted to us by the same NRI relatives who pitied us for not being able to experience America and its grandeur.
So yeah I hated them for being so ignorant about Indian Values and Culture and being so insensitive towards our feelings. I mean imagine the ladies of the house spent hours in the kitchen dishing out their best delicacies for them and all they ate would be a bite or two and would want to go to Domino’s all the time and say things like “you don’t even have Subway here. That’s such a surprise”. So what you culturally ignorant American Indians, so what if we don’t have Subway we have our mothers who cook the best in the world, something you will never get to experience as you live in America, I would say to myself.
With all this hating and loathing two months passed away and my American cousins went back to their “homeland” and I was so relieved that I would not have to watch my family showering their dedicated attention to them and taking care of their every little thing. I grumbled a lot, so much that today nine years later I find it so funny. I asked my mum do we throw such tantrums when we go to our grandma’s place in Jaipur. We don’t crib about the food and water even though we think it tastes bad and we don’t crib about food even though in Jaipur they use Cows milk which tastes like water most of the time. My mum simply said why are you acting so foolishly, you know in US they slog so hard, they work and they go to school and have to do all their stuff by themselves instead of acting stupid thank your god you were born in India.
Sometime later another of my cousin visited India. This time she had come with her husband who was a gora as my grandmother referred to him. He was a Canadian native in love with India. He had his dinner not on the dinning table but sitting cross legged on the floor, ate Daal chawal and the extremely spicy Besan Gatte which made his face go red and eyes water but he didn’t complain. He would ask me to apply the red tilak every day on his forehead. Once I told him that we don’t really apply it everyday but only on festivals and auspicious occasions and he replied everyday in India is a festival. His response left me amused, emotional and confused not necessarily in the same order.
As I grew up and became more open to other cultures and different ways of life, I realized how lost a second generation Indian born in US feels. They were born in a country of enormous wealth and freedom but they belonged to a community which was culturally rich but every bit conservative by American standards. They went to school and grew up among the Americans kids who probably laughed at the color of their skin and the funny accents their parents spoke with. With time they adopted everything American. Disliked Indian food, lived on coke, and couldn’t take it when their parents nagged about the kind of clothes they wore. They just didn’t understand why their Indian cousins always discussed about boyfriends, puberty and sex in such hushed tones. Their parents gave them a list of Dos and Donts every time they visited India.
So protective were the parents of these children that they taught their kids the Indian way of life which included everything they themselves learnt while growing up even if it meant that now that Indian way of life was old fashioned even for children living in India. So obviously they adopted the Indian way as well and became what we called Confused Desis.
I cant begin to imagine the their feeling of being totally lost in a foreign land which is now their adopted mother land. Their frustration on being ridiculed by their peers for being different, funny and Indian and on being reprimanded by parents for acting like spoilt American brats. That’s when they started questioning about who they actually are and where do they actually belong.
I was content to believe that this happens only with the NRIs till I found out the opposite till last year. In June 2007 I joined an IT company as a management trainee after finishing my MBA and had to go to Chennai for a month long induction programme. Now I have already said a lot about my experiences there and its not really about me but a friend of mine with whom I was sharing the room in the guest house. A Tamilian by origin who was brought up in Delhi for most part of her life. She was much like me, wanted to eat the same stuff that I liked and dressed up how a girl raised in Delhi would. Away from her southern roots pretty happy being who she was. (for anonymity’s sake lets call her Angel). It never occurred to her that her being a South Indian would ever be a source of any emotional trauma to her that too in Chennai. We were actually staying in a dorm where apart from us other girls were also staying. Most of us were from the North so, often the food, the way the people dressed and a lot of other things about the Chennai city were the topic of our discussions. More often than not our discussions always bordered on criticism not because we hated Chennai but because most of us where there for the first time. So the experience of being in a Southern state where everything was very different from what we are used to was a little unnerving. During one such conversation someone passed a derogatory comment about South Indian people in general. It was politically incorrect as we had a couple of friends in the room who were as also from South including my friend Angel who was a taken aback at the comment. This kind of thing never happened in Delhi and it never occurred to her that there was such a huge gap between the North and the South. That night she couldn’t sleep and kept wondering. Next day being a Sunday she went to meet her childhood friends. Since morning she was very happy that she would be meeting her friends after almost 18 years. So I was glad that the last night’s conversation was out of her mind but when she came back in the evening she was almost on the verge of tears and went straight to bed. Next morning I asked her how did her meeting go and she said Garima I have been away for too long my friends, my cousins even my family here don’t seem to connect with me anymore. They think I m a spoilt North Indian now and her comment shook me to the core.
That night I was again reminded of my American cousins and their dilemma about who they actually were. How different was Angel from them. Not at all, I thought. She was caught in North South tangle. Back in Delhi it was much easier for her to roam around and be what she was or rather what she had grown up to be. But then if we look deeper she felt more accepted there probably because she acted and behaved like any of us but the same behavior or attitude alienated her from her own people.
This thought haunts me even today after a year later. Is it so difficult to accept people as they are? It is I guess. Even with all the modern education which takes us places we still want to remain connected to our roots. We want to belong to a place of our own and when we are not sure where that place is we feel lonely and hollow from the inside. I guess this feeling of connectedness is what brings people back to their birth place, like so many times I hear people saying, I don’t care where I live but I want die where I was born…that’s where I belong………………….
In the winters of 1999 when I was still in school, my cousins living in US visited us. Their visit was surrounded by the regular brouhaha that normally surrounds such visits from “NRI” relatives.
As soon as they landed at the airport we rushed to meet them and hug them as for us it was a normal reaction because they usually come, say once in five years.
This time my five year old niece who was coming to India for the first time was also there. The moment she got out of the terminal she started jumping and pointing towards the other side and we couldn’t figure out what made this 5 yr old, who was here for the first time, so happy. After much investigation we found out that she was pointing towards a dog who was blissfully asleep right in front of the entrance of the terminal. That’s when her mum explained that you really don’t get to see stray dogs in US and if they want to see animals they have to go to the zoo. That’s why all the firangis who visit India after going back happily declare it to be an open Zoo, one of my cousins commented. I was a little taken aback and hurt at this statement. Welcome to India, I thought.
They stayed here for almost two months, touring many parts of the country including Goa, Kerala, Rajasthan, the usual tourist spots. That’s when I realized how distorted their version of India was or for that matter how distorted version of India, an Indian settled abroad carries.
For two months we laughed at, joked around or felt disgusted with whatever they said or did. I, with all my education and the supposed broad mindedness couldn’t take my cousins behavior when she openly discussed her boyfriends, sex, and other equally taboo things in front of the elders of the family or even the clothes that she wore. I hated their tantrums about not drinking the normal water and eating the regular food. They wanted mineral water at all times and ate Pizzas for breakfast lunch and dinner and I thought you should be ashamed to call yourself an Indian. But so much for my patriotism I forgot that they are not Indians, they are American Born confused Desis, a term very popular among the youngsters and the NRI community today. But back then we were just beginning to register ourselves on the world map as a force to reckon with or India a Super power by 2020 and so we were not that conscious about our own nationalistic pride and individuality as an Indian. And mind you I am talking about a time when we didn’t have Rang De Basanti or Chak De or even the candle lit protests at India Gate. We were still caught in our colonial time warp and everything remotely foreign was better than anything Indian .America was still a dream destination and a degree from any Mickey Mouse institute in US was so much better than even IIMs in India. We still considered the white skin as superior to us and were overjoyed to see Make up kits and cheap perfumes bought from the One Dollar shops in US and gifted to us by the same NRI relatives who pitied us for not being able to experience America and its grandeur.
So yeah I hated them for being so ignorant about Indian Values and Culture and being so insensitive towards our feelings. I mean imagine the ladies of the house spent hours in the kitchen dishing out their best delicacies for them and all they ate would be a bite or two and would want to go to Domino’s all the time and say things like “you don’t even have Subway here. That’s such a surprise”. So what you culturally ignorant American Indians, so what if we don’t have Subway we have our mothers who cook the best in the world, something you will never get to experience as you live in America, I would say to myself.
With all this hating and loathing two months passed away and my American cousins went back to their “homeland” and I was so relieved that I would not have to watch my family showering their dedicated attention to them and taking care of their every little thing. I grumbled a lot, so much that today nine years later I find it so funny. I asked my mum do we throw such tantrums when we go to our grandma’s place in Jaipur. We don’t crib about the food and water even though we think it tastes bad and we don’t crib about food even though in Jaipur they use Cows milk which tastes like water most of the time. My mum simply said why are you acting so foolishly, you know in US they slog so hard, they work and they go to school and have to do all their stuff by themselves instead of acting stupid thank your god you were born in India.
Sometime later another of my cousin visited India. This time she had come with her husband who was a gora as my grandmother referred to him. He was a Canadian native in love with India. He had his dinner not on the dinning table but sitting cross legged on the floor, ate Daal chawal and the extremely spicy Besan Gatte which made his face go red and eyes water but he didn’t complain. He would ask me to apply the red tilak every day on his forehead. Once I told him that we don’t really apply it everyday but only on festivals and auspicious occasions and he replied everyday in India is a festival. His response left me amused, emotional and confused not necessarily in the same order.
As I grew up and became more open to other cultures and different ways of life, I realized how lost a second generation Indian born in US feels. They were born in a country of enormous wealth and freedom but they belonged to a community which was culturally rich but every bit conservative by American standards. They went to school and grew up among the Americans kids who probably laughed at the color of their skin and the funny accents their parents spoke with. With time they adopted everything American. Disliked Indian food, lived on coke, and couldn’t take it when their parents nagged about the kind of clothes they wore. They just didn’t understand why their Indian cousins always discussed about boyfriends, puberty and sex in such hushed tones. Their parents gave them a list of Dos and Donts every time they visited India.
So protective were the parents of these children that they taught their kids the Indian way of life which included everything they themselves learnt while growing up even if it meant that now that Indian way of life was old fashioned even for children living in India. So obviously they adopted the Indian way as well and became what we called Confused Desis.
I cant begin to imagine the their feeling of being totally lost in a foreign land which is now their adopted mother land. Their frustration on being ridiculed by their peers for being different, funny and Indian and on being reprimanded by parents for acting like spoilt American brats. That’s when they started questioning about who they actually are and where do they actually belong.
I was content to believe that this happens only with the NRIs till I found out the opposite till last year. In June 2007 I joined an IT company as a management trainee after finishing my MBA and had to go to Chennai for a month long induction programme. Now I have already said a lot about my experiences there and its not really about me but a friend of mine with whom I was sharing the room in the guest house. A Tamilian by origin who was brought up in Delhi for most part of her life. She was much like me, wanted to eat the same stuff that I liked and dressed up how a girl raised in Delhi would. Away from her southern roots pretty happy being who she was. (for anonymity’s sake lets call her Angel). It never occurred to her that her being a South Indian would ever be a source of any emotional trauma to her that too in Chennai. We were actually staying in a dorm where apart from us other girls were also staying. Most of us were from the North so, often the food, the way the people dressed and a lot of other things about the Chennai city were the topic of our discussions. More often than not our discussions always bordered on criticism not because we hated Chennai but because most of us where there for the first time. So the experience of being in a Southern state where everything was very different from what we are used to was a little unnerving. During one such conversation someone passed a derogatory comment about South Indian people in general. It was politically incorrect as we had a couple of friends in the room who were as also from South including my friend Angel who was a taken aback at the comment. This kind of thing never happened in Delhi and it never occurred to her that there was such a huge gap between the North and the South. That night she couldn’t sleep and kept wondering. Next day being a Sunday she went to meet her childhood friends. Since morning she was very happy that she would be meeting her friends after almost 18 years. So I was glad that the last night’s conversation was out of her mind but when she came back in the evening she was almost on the verge of tears and went straight to bed. Next morning I asked her how did her meeting go and she said Garima I have been away for too long my friends, my cousins even my family here don’t seem to connect with me anymore. They think I m a spoilt North Indian now and her comment shook me to the core.
That night I was again reminded of my American cousins and their dilemma about who they actually were. How different was Angel from them. Not at all, I thought. She was caught in North South tangle. Back in Delhi it was much easier for her to roam around and be what she was or rather what she had grown up to be. But then if we look deeper she felt more accepted there probably because she acted and behaved like any of us but the same behavior or attitude alienated her from her own people.
This thought haunts me even today after a year later. Is it so difficult to accept people as they are? It is I guess. Even with all the modern education which takes us places we still want to remain connected to our roots. We want to belong to a place of our own and when we are not sure where that place is we feel lonely and hollow from the inside. I guess this feeling of connectedness is what brings people back to their birth place, like so many times I hear people saying, I don’t care where I live but I want die where I was born…that’s where I belong………………….
