Finding Home
After a family vacation to India over the holidays in 2011-2012, I wrote a Facebook post about the experience and how it profoundly changed my relationship with the “grandmotherland”. I adapted the post for an article in Dukool, a Bengali magazine, a couple of years later.
I just returned from another trip to India over the 2018-2019 holidays, and while there were no grand revelations this time for me, I was proud to share the experience and culture with my nearly-five-year-old son for the first time. This is how far we’ve come: India is now a place I want to share.
In the spirit of sharing, I’d like to re-post the piece I wrote after my last India trip. Upon reflection seven years later, it holds up as true as ever and is one of my favorite pieces I’ve ever written.
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Finding Home: as published in Dukool magazine in 2014
Indian or American?
A few years ago, someone asked me and my sister, "so as Indian Americans, what do you identify with more: being Indian or being American?" We answered at the same time; she said "Indian", I said "American". We then exchanged a glance that can only be described as the facial expression version of "wait, really?!" That's the second generation immigrant experience in a nutshell -- we're the children of two cultures, two identities, and even two homes.
Nearly three years ago, I visited India for the first time in a decade, and I have been thinking about my cultural identity ever since. This is my story.
Growing up different
When I started school in Colorado, I was the only non-white person in my class. I couldn't fully process what it was like to be different; I'm not even sure I consciously knew! But on some level, being different during my formative social engagements fueled my desire to live a life where I stand out from the crowd.
A few years later, in Ohio, I learned that being different could make me a target. In the middle of an argument with a classmate, he fired at me, "at least I didn't get stuck in the toaster!" That quip didn't “burn” me -- my friends backed me up and I never heard a malicious race joke ever again. But I wonder, looking back, if that comment caused me to hold back from the Indian community, for fear of being a target again.
And so this is how I dealt with being different growing up. Rather than using my ethnicity to forge connections with others, I used it to feel special. To me, it was a way to check a different box than everyone else, not a meaningful indicator of who I was. It allowed me to teach my friend snippets of Bengali, to designate people as "honorary Indians", to make Indian accent jokes, and that was it.
Robin Donut
Like most Indian Americans, I visited the “grandmotherland” periodically. We’d visit every few years during the hot summer months. I truly enjoyed connecting with my relatives for weeks and even months at a time, basking in the warmth of the familial, communal Bengali atmosphere. I most enjoyed spending time with my maternal grandfather, Mihir Nath Das.
He was a witty man who helped me pronounce Rabindranath Tagore's name by telling me to say "robin donut". He was a well-traveled scholar who spent a few years teaching chemistry in the United States in the 1950s. And he was someone with whom I shared a special bond – I was his only grandson, and he was my only living grandfather.
I vividly remember the last days I spent with him. I watched him laboriously walk from one room to another, oxygen tank in tow, as he suffered from the final stage of the emphysema that eventually took his life. I was a teenager when he passed away, and I missed him tremendously, angry that a preventable disease took him away from my family. While I enjoyed interacting with the rest of my family in India, it would never be the same again.
It looks just like the picture
After my grandfather’s passing, I began to really struggle with my trips to India. Traveling to India is not a comfortable experience for a westerner anyway, and especially not a teenager from the suburbs used to air conditioning. I found myself enjoying the warmth of the culture and my family, but I found myself even more strongly hating the oppressive heat, suboptimal environmental conditions, and general quirkiness of India.
I’ve heard India described as “ordered chaos” – where nothing ever goes as planned, but everything works out for the best – but I was simply not having it. I was a complete pain to my mother during my next trip to India, in August of 2001.
This led to perhaps my lowest point in my relationship with the “grandmotherland”. When I finally visited the Taj Mahal for the first time in my life, I turned to my mom and said, "What’s the big deal? It looks just like the picture."
The turning point
Ten years later, I visited India again in December 2011. And the first place we went to was, you guessed it, the Taj Mahal. I don't know if it was the much more hospitable winter weather in Agra, my experiences with discomfort from living in New York City for 6 years, or if I was simply more mature 10 years later, but I found myself stunned by the symmetry, intricacy, and sheer beauty of the building. It really truly was breathtaking, and it set the tone.
I was surprised -- blown away, actually -- at how all of the things about India that used to drive me crazy started to feel endearing. Sure, we didn't have to deal with 100-degree heat and monsoon rainstorms this time, but even crossing the road in Delhi -- "ordered chaos" -- had a certain charm to it. The noise, the smell, the dirt ... I ... liked it.
We toured all over the country. We stayed in Kaziranga with limited electricity, no TV, and no heat. We checked out Delhi, the city with arguably the worst air quality in the world. We even went to Udaipur, a desert region that I had no idea even existed.
We saw the country. Now I was ready to reconnect with my family.
Nostalgia and regret
We went to Kolkata, and a wave of nostalgia kicked in. The first place we saw was my mom's house in Lake Gardens where we stayed every time we went to India. I hadn't been there in 10 years, and no one had lived there for over half of them. There was a real sense of deterioration, in both the building and the neighborhood. The exterior was dirty, worn down from years of air pollution. The neighbors who'd talk to us from the balcony across the street were gone.
And yet ... it was exactly the same. I took a walk around and was amazed by the power of my emotional reaction. Sure, there was normal nostalgia, but I also sensed a hint of regret.
I felt an even stronger sense of regret upon seeing all of my relatives the next day, at an engagement party. If you want to talk about "ordered chaos", that day was it -- a fire near the original room for the party, corralling everyone into a much smaller area, no one in our group knowing where or when to go, and my mom's off-the-chart stress level. Add to that the pressure of seeing relatives for the first time in ten years. Neither my relatives nor my sister and I had the best sense of how we'd click with each other. Ten years!
It was just like old times. We met our long-lost cousins and their adorable daughters for the first time. We got to see an almost-teenager nephew and all of our female cousins married. Everyone was there ... except Baban.
Baban was my cousin who died tragically a few years ago of lymph node cancer as a teenager. I saw his father for the first time in 10 years, and his only son wasn't there. I didn't know what to say, what to do, how to react. My sister and I talked about it later: how we were both overwhelmed by a profound sense of sadness. We both wished it hadn't been so long since our last trip to India, and we vowed it wouldn't be so long before the next time.
Putting it all together
So, what does this all mean?
For as long as I can remember, I always bristled when someone asked "are you Indian?" I didn't know how to answer that question. Even now, I may be as confused as ever. But I'm getting closer.
Being different? I've come to include my heritage, my culture, my religion, and the way I identify with others as part of who I am. It's not just about being "Indian" to not be white, to make accent jokes, to designate people as "honorary Indians". When "ordered chaos" clicked, I knew I was onto something. When I felt a true sense of regret for not being closer to my family and my culture, I felt the drive for a warmer, communal culture. I think I finally "get" the Indian experience.
If someone asks me today, " what do you identify with more: being Indian or being American?" … I probably still say American. But I'd have to think about it. As a father to an eight-month-old son of three cultures (my wife is Chinese), that’s a huge step. I can’t wait to tell my son all about it.