Saturday, May 30, 2015

Sunday reflection 16 - The Smug Non Resident Indian



Recently, I had an epiphany about my life as a first generation Indian in North America. This has been further reinforced in gatherings I have attended. We believe we have the best of all worlds. We imitate the superficial elements of life as lived in India. With food, temples and Indian finery ubiquitous in cities like Toronto and even in smaller locales, we don’t feel the need for India any more. We have all the trappings of an upper class life right here – the supermarkets with every possible Indian food item, restaurants, grand banquets and shaadis, cable and online access to Indian TV, the local bangra events, Bollywood/Kollywood extravaganzas, classical music, ghazal and dance concerts, bharatmatrimony, street food fairs, chaat experiences, langar at gurudwara, puliyodarai at temples and movie theatres which participate in global releases of Bollywood blockbusters. And then to assuage our guilt we raise money for causes in India. We also make that occasional trip to experience Jaipur, Agra, Kerala or to take in a yoga retreat and come back with more of the latest stuff, which we may have missed out with the shops here not having caught up.

Our children have attended ivy league schools or have stellar careers, are scaling the corporate ladder and breaking glass ceilings, are in blended marriages and every wedding has white, Chinese and black women in sarees and all these men in kurtas. Mainstream organisations celebrate diversity with all things South Asian – samosas, bindis, Indian clothing and music. We wear our Indian-ness with pride and speak with confidence about our cultural practices, where in the past we tried desperately to blend in. Our kids look like us but are nothing like us. Their values and lifestyle micmic the average North American’s and yet they give Indian-ness a good name just by how they look. Our confidence thus buoyed, we live out visually more Indian than ever before. And yet? Are we really Indian with all these superficial feel good experiences? We have not really experienced India in years. Haven’t drunk its water, withered from its heat, suffered its politics, the congestion and pollution or witnessed large scale injustice and the suffering of those who have nothing. In short we do not experience any of the pain of being Indian and just cherry pick all that provides us entertainment and a nexus to mobilise around an answer to that call to our womb. We are shallow at best and hypocrites at worst. We are smug from having found the perfect formula to maintaining our identity as Indians in a foreign land. However, we are not that. We have spent years re-making our identities, acquiring our accent, compromising to redefine our Indian-ness and have mutated into beings that could not survive in India. We know none of its subtlety, relying only on sound bytes from popular media and stereotypes from our short trips. We have not had to adapt and negotiate conflicts or to fight for basic amenities and rights. Our kids make no bones about their lack of Indian-ness. We, caught in between, fit in nowhere except in artificial cocoons created by us to comfort, insulate and ease us. Do we have much to be smug about?!


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