What I Learned in India: Week 5

The past few weeks here been pretty great for the most part. We celebrated my aunt's birthday over the course of a few days—the only way a birthday should be celebrated—and I started my classes. After the chaotic mess that is registering for classes as a SIP student here—a mess that makes the Hunger Games of registering for classes at GW look like an episode of Teletubbies—I've finally got a schedule I'm happy with. I'm taking Globalization and Communication, Communication and Social Change, Hindi, an independent study called Modern Indian Thought (which explores everything from Vivekananda to the contemporary Indian diaspora and is basically the greatest class concept I could've ever imagined), Yoga, and Kathak. And I have Fridays off!

And as the time has gone by, I've also gotten comfortable with commuting alone. I take rickshaws by myself nearly every day and although I'm admittedly horrible at bargaining, I know how much to pay for my ride to campus and back. And after having a little too much fun at the mall with some friends, I have plenty of kurtas and outfits for class.

I'm also loving many of the people I've met here. My program is run by amazing individuals who are more like wise friends than authoritative administrators. I'm loving being around my family and spending hours talking to my aunt or vegging out with my uncle. And I've met some amazing people from my CIEE group and have made local friends from my classes, too.

{the inside of a Dunkin' Donuts in the mall}

Beyond this though, the aftermath of Rohith Vemula's death has been very hard on our community. I can't imagine the loss that several students and professors feel, and for many of us in the Study in India Program, things are confusing and frustrating. Classes have been cancelled for a week and half and we don't know when they will resume. We can't travel, so we've just been trying to pass the time by exploring the city but there's only so much to do. I'm trying to remind myself that only the boring are ever bored, that I can find ways to have fun if I put in a little more effort, but it's hard to do so when this isn't a vacation—it's a time of loss and political unrest and chaos.

I'm still happy to be here, even though it seems like I'm already in a slump. It's just weird feeling this way, because it reminds me of the slump I felt halfway through my time in Spain and I really hated that feeling. What's different this time is that I'm not alone, that many of my friends feel the same way, and talking about it with them makes me feel less isolated and bored. Also, because I recognize the symptoms, I'm making more of an effort to be proactive and counteract what I've been feeling. I've been focusing on applying to internships, planning travel, working out, and writing. Hopefully this feeling will pass, and I'm hoping that returning to a routine will help that happen. Until then, here are a few more photos of my time so far:

~ V

What I learned in India: Weeks 1 & 2

{parrots outside my aunt's window, Mumbai}

I've been in India for two weeks but have been busy nearly constantly. In between spending time with family, sightseeing, and participating in orientation activities for my abroad program, it seems like I hardly have enough time to sit by myself and just decompress, never mind write. But writing has always helped me to process what I experience and so here we are, at the beginning of a new year and a new experience abroad.

Rather than always doing a numbered list for things I've learned in India like I did in Spain, I think it's best for me to write in paragraph form. In Spain, it was easy to understand what I had learned by finding what was new, what taught me through novelty. My experience in India differs—at least thus far—in that I've already been here, in that the culture is my own. Noticing patterns in the vernacular, picking up on behaviors and customs, and acclimating yourself to a new way of life is a bit different when these adjustments are familiar, when you've grown up knowing and then compartmentalizing them into a particular sector of your life. 

But even when things are familiar, they allow you to learn from them, to gain and to grow. And even though I've been to India multiple times, even though I was born here, even though the culture lends itself to my own hyphenated identity, I find myself learning new things and experiencing the growing pains that come with doing so. 

{Shilpramam}

Adjusting to India was hard for the first few days. But seeing family and focusing on my abroad program kept me focused and soon enough, I acclimated myself to life here. My university is definitely different from GW, and although I haven't started classes yet, I'm really excited about my tentative course load and some extracurriculars I've already found. I love having Indian food every day and I love riding my bike around my ginormous campus—3,000 acres and two lakes! Beyond this, I've met some amazing people. The staff running our program is just incredible and is going above and beyond to make this experience the best it can be for us. We're well-fed and taken care of and we've had some really interesting lectures and guest speakers.

{Chowmahalla Palace}

I definitely wasn't as excited when I first got here though. For one, being in India and around family brings out another side of me. For a few days, I found that I behave a certain way when I am here, or at least I am expected to. And when I was around the other CIEE students, all of whom are American, I reverted back to who I was in DC, the "American" version of myself. It's weird, flip-flopping especially in this setting. Indian-American kids learn quickly and early on to compartmentalize aspects of their lives and personalities. Doing so in India is so unfamiliar to me because for once, the Indian aspect of my identity is the dominant culture. For once, I take pride in speaking Hindi and knowing who Shah Rukh Khan is and not being fazed when I see cows on the street. 

Growing up, I was definitely made fun of for being Indian. I wasn't bullied or anything, at least not in the traditional sense, but I learned quickly to not discuss Indian music or bring Indian food for lunch or speak in Gujarati with my friends. I didn't want to be the weird Indian kid, I wanted to be "normal," to fit in. It's weird having those same things I suppressed now carry cultural capital, to now be things worth mentioning or at least having pride in.

{sunset from Hussain Sagar}

I told a new friend about how ironic it was to travel 8,000 miles and still end up the only brown girl in a big group of kids. I felt like I was the only one with a dual identity, the only one navigating through which parts of myself to hide and which to share, the only one deciding how Indian to be or how American. 

But now after a short-lived transition period, I'm so incredibly happy to be here. For a few days, I found myself reconsidering it all. Who the hell goes to India when they can go to Amsterdam? I asked myself. I looked at the streets and the university buildings and the heat and the inability to travel or even wander by myself and freaked out. Why did I come here? Was coming here truly necessary to learn what I wanted to learn? Could I have just come here for winter break in between semesters or before studying in Amsterdam or Cape Town? And then I sat down in my classroom of the first day of orientation and calmed down. I was going to be fine, I told myself. Everything was organized and planned and orderly and I could handle whatever was new or uncomfortable or uneasy. 

{vendors, Mumbai}

So an hour into that first day, I got really, really excited. I bounced in my seat a little and grinned and told myself to calm the hell down—I was in public for god's sakes. Had I had too much coffee that morning? For once, no—I'd had none. I was just excited for my amazing classes and to meet all the cool students and spend more time with my family and really, really experience living in and acclimating to India. 

And now, two weeks in, I feel like I've adjusted. While I'm still a bit overwhelmed at times, I don't find myself scrambling to adjust. I feel like I've regained a balance, that I've found some great friends, and that I have some cool classes and extracurriculars to look forward to. I'm already thinking about how leaving will feel like, but I'm excited to be here for whatever time I have. Until then, here are some photos from the past two weeks:

{the sweetest welcoming from my Mami}

{the hospital in which I was born}

{excuse the nails but look at these chikoos!}

{friendly stray cat, Mumbai}

{home circa 1995-97; ours was the window on the top left}

  

Believe it or not, these are only 38 out of 675 pictures I've taken so far. I can't wait to bring my camera with me as I explore the city. Stay tuned from more from Hyd!

~ V

Goodbye D.C., hello Hyderabad!

{me and my mom in Bombay circa 1999}

It's official—I'M GOING TO INDIA!!!! This spring semester, you can plan on visiting me, my falooda, and my improved Hindi at the University of Hyderabad. I am so excited for this journey and all it means to me and can't wait to blog about it the whole way through.

As some of you may know, I was born in Bombay and moved to Lagos, Nigeria and Houston, Texas before growing up in my small town in New Jersey. And even though I used to visit India every other summer, it has now been six and a half years since my last trip to my other home. Even still, I can vividly remember how each trip changed me, made me rethink views I had, made me compare the two sides of my identity and grow beyond being simply Indian or American. 

India always makes me think, grow, and feel in ways I have forgotten, and sometimes even in ways I never imagined I could be. It might be in part that I had changed so much in between trips that going to India served as a marker, a reminder of who I was. I got to see my growth and change through the eyes of family that only saw me every two years. But I think visits to India went even beyond that. 

When you're an Indian-American kid, you're always working on a balancing act, and when you're younger, you let Western culture dictate a lot of your feelings about yourself, your relationship with your racial identity and culture, the decisions you make, the borders you draw between the two parts of yourself. But coming to GW has changed a lot of that for me. Partly because I got out of my small, nearly homogenous town (which I still love), but also because I made friends who were figuring things out for themselves, too.


Going to India as a kid forces you to acknowledge that, though. You're forced to look at the decisions you've made to be this much Indian or this much American. I'm always teased by family in India about how "American" I am, or how much of my "culture" I've lost or retained. But at the same time, here, today, in America, a similar thing happens. My friends and I joke around with each other all the time about how "Indian" we are for loving Bollywood or certain foods or whatever. The term "fob," for those who don't know it stands for Fresh Off the Boat, and it becomes a sort of way to police immigrants and second-generation kids about how they've defined their culture, what parts they've chosen to keep or let go off or whatever. So either way, you're policed—whether it be by yourself or by others—about the decisions you've made.


For me, I've come to value the parts that make me who I am more than I'm capable of describing. I love that I know four languages, that I have multiple cultural and linguistic lenses through which I can look at things and make sense of the world around me. Take something as trivial as skin color for example. Traditional Indian culture favors fairer skin, while here in America it's not uncommon for people to hop into tanning beds or lay out on the beach for hours. I'm not trying to say that one is right while another is wrong; I don't know that a right and wrong necessarily exist. It's just that understanding both sides has allowed me to love the skin I'm in, quite literally. I don't mind that I turn "pale" in the winter or that I tan ridiculously quickly in the summer. Having the two lenses enables me to decide for myself who I am, what I want.


But cultural duality goes beyond that in a way that I'm still learning about and still trying to understand. In that sense, I look forward to letting Hyderabad push me; I welcome the moments that will teach me through tough love as much as I await those that will remind me what raw, unforced, unadulterated happiness feels like. And lucky for me, the University of Hyderabad offers courses in my fields—English, Creative Writing, and Film—but I know that the majority of the learning I'm going to be doing will be outside the formal academic environment. 

I've been planning my study abroad experience for months, but every time someone asks where I am going, I am almost reluctant or embarrassed to answer. A professor asked me the same question this week and I froze before answering quietly, trying to stop myself from offering some sort of bullshit explanation or justification as if it's at all necessary. But I can't ignore the fact that I feel like people look at me and assume that I chose India because I am Indian. Needless to say, being Indian-American certainly has to do with my love for and connection with India. I can't say what my relationship with India would've been if I wasn't Indian; I don't know who I would be if I wasn't Indian. But regardless of that fact, the assumption that I chose India is diluting and reductive, making my decision to be there less than what it is. Even my Indian-American friends are sometimes confused, asking why I would go to India when there are so many other places to choose from. And the thing is, I can't blame them. Because for the longest time, that was me. I was uncomfortable with parts of my identity, back before my culture became "cool" and bindis were an in thing to sport at music festivals, rather than another reminder of me being Other, another way for people to awkwardly ask me about who I was and what I was. I used to feel weird for being Indian, and sometimes I definitely still do feel like that weird little Indian girl sitting in class. But luckily, I've come quite far since that. Luckily, that's changed a lot.

And the thing is, with my relationship with India being what it is right now, I've really wanted to go back and live in India for an extended period of time, to let it shape and form and mold and change me beyond what six weeks of living in my grandparents’ flat in Bombay can do. I want to live and learn about the life I could have led and almost did lead, but even beyond that, I simply miss India, miss it with every fiber of my being to the point that it hurts and I fear being unable to recognize the country, the world, I consider my own and consider my home. I worry that it has changed too much in one direction and I too much in the other and that when we meet the connection we had will be lost, that it will no longer be mine, that I will not belong, that I will belong even less than I already did.

I feel as though I've lost a big part of me and sometimes I'm even afraid that it's too late to get it back. But you know what? I’ll be damned if I don’t try.

~ V