By viralid
I’ve been joking with my friends lately about how I’ve been in the middle of an identity crisis. Coming to India has helped me not only to find a new balance between Indian and American, but also to better conceptualize what it means to be so, what it means to be me.
Before college, I didn’t have the best relationship with the parts that made up my identity. There were so many times I was ashamed to be Indian, so many times I wished I was just normal. And it wasn’t until I came to GW and became part of an incredibly open and welcoming community of friends that I began to realize that I was normal. And then I began to question what had made me feel excluded and marginalized to begin with. And I don’t think I would’ve chosen to study abroad in India had it not been for the people who intentionally and unintentionally taught me to be okay with me.
When I first got here, I realized quickly that I was the only Indian-American in a group of kids all from the U.S. I couldn’t help but be stuck by the irony of traveling over 8,000 miles only to wind up the only brown girl in a big group of kids. But my brownness here isn’t a source of discomfort the way it was before college. Here, it’s almost an advantage. I know the language, I understand the cultural differences, and sometimes I become a sort of bridge between the two worlds, between my friends in my abroad program and the people we meet on our travels or even in our day-to-day lives.
In that sense, my community here — meaning my friends and family, with whom I’m currently living — has allowed me to further embrace my identity. What was once a source of shame and discomfort has become a source of pride, an advantage, something I’ve come to embrace and value like never before.
And it makes me think of how much of my life has been shaped by setting. How much of my life has been shaped by how the Western lens has viewed India. How much I’ve been taught to view my own Indianness. I think coming here has given me a bit more agency, has allowed me to decide a little more for myself how I view being Indian and how I view being American.
In some of my classes, I’ve noticed a mild anti-American sentiment, a shift away from the fact that much of Indian culture has been affected — infiltrated, if you will — by Hollywood and Western media in general. I’ve been used to defending India when I’m in the U.S., but having to defend the U.S. here in India has reminded me that being American is just as much a part of who I am and who I want to be.
It’s weird going through an identity crisis at this age. Is this something everyone does, I asked myself. Is this something that every “in-betweener,” every person that’s a part of two cultures goes through at some point? Is it an ongoing process, will it ever end?
Either way, I’m so grateful for the people I’ve met here. I’m so grateful to have such supportive friends and family who will engage in dialogue, who will give me the space to be myself openly and unabashedly. And I’m grateful for the times in my life where I didn’t have this safety and openness, the times where I was less comfortable with my identity. Because these are the times that teach you, that allow you to grow.
I don’t feel like I’m making the Indian-or-American choices I felt I had to make earlier on in my time here. And I think a lot of that has to do with how I’ve come to conceptualize my identity. Just like sexuality, national identity is non-binary. I’ve come to realize that Indian and American aren’t two separate spheres, but rather a Venn-Diagram. They’re not two separate lines, they’re part of a spectrum. And the spaces in between are what make me me.