I don’t appreciate it when people ask me “Where are you from?” and I say “America” and they say, “No, but where are you from?” And I repeat myself: “I am from America. I was born in America. I grew up in America. I went to American schools. I am attending an American university. I have lived, studied, and worked in America my whole life.” And they still look confused and ask me: “Where in India are you from?” And I say “I’m not.” And they become further confused. Because they see my brown skin. They see my love of Jagapathi. They hear me speak fluent Telugu and text them on WhatsApp in T’English. They know I love pani puri more than I love pizza. They know I like wearing sarees whenever I get a chance, that I buy two every year, one for my birthday and one for Diwali. They can hear how my voice is a melodious mix of an Indian and American accent. What they don’t know is it came from living in a predominantly South Asian community and watching a lot of Indian movies in my formative years. I will keep repeating “I am American, I am from America” until they finally get it and ask “Where are your parents/ancestors from?” and I’ll say “India.” That’s as far back as we’ve traced our lineage. I’ll tell them how all four of my grandparents came from different villages but somehow they all ended up in Hyderabad which is where my parents met and got married. But they moved here and I was born here. “So you are Indian,” they’ll tell me. “No. I’m American. I have Indian parents and grandparents and ancestors but I am American.”
When I was a kid, I called myself “Indian-American” because that’s what I was taught to do, at home and at school. You always tack on whatever your parents’ nationality / your ancestral ethnicity is before your own. And then I grew up and I didn’t like it.
Mind you, the people that ask me that dumb question of “Where are you from?” are both from here, from there, and from everywhere.
How am I Indian? I’m not. I wasn’t born there. I went there three times, six years apart and decided I was not going back when I turned eighteen. I don’t particularly have any plans of going back unless it’s to (A) see a family member or friend’s wedding or (B) play tourist in Kerala or Kashmir or Coutrallam. Sure, I love Indian food and Indian music and movies. But I love macarons and je parle un peu de français (as much as I can after learning it for six academic years and one semester). That doesn’t make me French. I love Olive Garden and Roman mythology and Italian gondolas. That doesn’t make me Italian. So I’m not Indian. I love Indian culture just as much as I love parts of many countries’ cultures. But America is the only country I identify with.
I do say I’m Telugu-American. Not Telugu as in from Andhra Pradesh or Telangana. That doesn’t make you Telugu. That makes you from Andhra Pradesh or Telangana. Again, I’m not. My parents are. My grandparents and aunts and uncles are. I’m not. I say I’m Telugu because Telugu is a language. It’s the only language I know how to speak as well as I know how to speak English. As much as I love all languages and am constantly learning pieces of any I can grab a hold of, I’m never going to know any language as much as I know English and Telugu.
When I was young, Nanna (which is what I call my dad because “nanna” is “dad” in Telugu) showed me that prism experiment during which when you hold the prism up to sunlight, it splits the sunlight into the colors of the rainbow. That’s what culture feels like to me.
A couple of months ago, on my Artstagram, you would’ve seen my painting titled “Culture”. You can view it by clicking here.
Well, here’s the MML post analyzing my painting and answering the question “What does culture mean to me?”
In my painting, on the outside, all these individual colors try to mesh together. As they blend, they seem to make a very dark and messy color. Beautiful, but messy. But as they approach the center, you get light and bright. And as seen, ME is written in the center. Because that center is where we all are.
It’s said that culture is community. It is. But which community? Culture isn’t one’s country, religion, or ethnicity or that of their families alone. Instead, it’s all of these and that which they learn at school, at work, in the media, in the world, and decide to be a part of and decide to make a part of them. Essentially, cultures are parts of a whole. They are all the pieces that come together to define each of our identities. An individual’s identity is what they bring to themselves and embrace from all those various communities and facets of life.
And it can change. As we grow, as we move, as we learn, it changes.
When I was eight, I was a Disney-and-Barbie-and-Nickelodeon-loving Indian-American Hindu-by-birth vegetarian-by-birth boy-crazy girl whose biggest goals were to marry rich and adopt four kids and become an MIT mathematician (in that order). Today, I am a Telugu-American student, writer, creator, and future professor, a panromantic 21st Cent. woman, a Maladaptive Daydreamer with a mild case of ADHD and a not-so-mild case of Time Blindness who detests smoking, drinking, and drugs and adores romance and sex and has a love/hate relationship with most relationships and who believes in agnostic deism which in reality all the Vedic scripture and the Gita will attest to following and is vegetarian because the thought of eating animals makes her cry and/or throw up depending on the animal and eating them is as bad as cannibalism.
Our identities are ever changing. Because our exposure to, interest in, knowledge of, and attitude toward various cultures is ever changing.
We grow up and we see the world in a different light. We see ourselves in a different light. But it’s all light.
I never struggled with trying to reconcile the different cultures I identified with. I don’t try. It comes naturally. Because all those cultures are only parts of me. I am who I am and I always will be who I am independent of how those parts of me change.
But there’s also this, if you combine all my colors, you’ll get sunlight. If you combine all of yours, you’ll get sunlight. If you combine all of anyone’s, you’ll get sunlight. Because at the end of the day, there’s one thing that we all undeniably have in common: We’re all human. Even if our identities and cultures vary, that remains true. To be honest, if anyone asks me to pick one culture to identify with, that’ll be my ultimate answer: Human.
Update ten-ish hours later: I wanted to clarify that my point is NOT that you must only identify with the country you were born in but rather that personally I identify with the country I had the most exposure to growing up. There are many people who identify with multiple countries for various reasons and that’s their valid choice just as much as this is mine.
