Skip to main content

Dual Identities

A picture of my parents and cousin from Diwali.
In my house we celebrate Diwali and have a small Christmas.
I don't know many Finnish people, even after being here for five months. But I feel that I've done pretty well, considering I'm in an international program and can say I have four Finnish friends (one isn't quite a friend, but he has helped me out quite a bit) and I can say I have nascent Finnish language skills. I've grown comfortable here, though I still feel like a foreigner.

One man who has been living in Finland for almost a decade came here from an African country for his masters. He married a Finn but cannot speak any Finnish himself.

And yet, I have the sense that he still does not feel like he belongs here. In one of our classes, he told us how he still gets called racial slurs walking down the street. He commented offhandedly one day “I don’t know what I am.”

I understand this feeling, to an extent. I have never been called a racial slur but I know what it feels like to be straddling two countries, never quite belonging in either one.

People have said that coming to another country makes you more aware of your own nationality and cultural identity. This has been true for me as well. I’m starting to see how I am a mixture of Americanness and Indianness. And I realize how much I don’t neatly fit into either category. So when people ask me where I’m from and I am forced to answer the US, I feel like I am hiding a huge part of me. Most people do not ask any more questions and I, being shy and reserved, do not elaborate.

Even if I were to elaborate though, how would I explain that I am Indian in my respect for elders, in my care and attention to others and in my tastes in cooking, music and clothing but American in my need for independence, order and discipline? How do I explain that I simultaneously fall under both categories and fit in neither category? Indians born and raised in India consider me American and Americans consider me Indian. With both groups I am the “other.”
This question of identity has cropped up at various moments in my life and for various reasons. I feel it strongest though when I am outside of the US. When we were in South Korea on a ten day vacation, I felt it because my family and I so obviously did not fit in with the rest of the crowd. I felt it in India because I took great effort to blend in as much as possible. There, my Hindi was good enough that a student’s father asked me if I was from south India. He knew I Hindi wasn’t my mother tongue but He couldn’t tell that I was not, in fact, Indian.

And now I think about it mostly because I have been forced to. As part of the Fulbright program I was required to give a presentation on an aspect of American culture. To me, this question was daunting because I didn’t feel I had reasonable knowledge about any aspect of American culture to give a presentation to a room full of very intelligent, thoughtful group of people. So I chose to make my whole talk about why I didn’t feel feel like an expert on American culture in the first place. A friend asked me to give the same presentation for an organization she is part of. Here is a video of the presentation. I started the talk off by showing this video and then explained why "Where are you from?" is such a difficult question to answer.

In case the hyperlinks aren't working here are the direct links to both videos. Hopefully these work!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crAv5ttax2I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwyjLeH8Q2I&feature=youtu.be








Comments

  1. PRJanuary 17, 2017 at 11:38 PM

    As usual a profound observation that reflects all that we have felt as immigrants, Avanti. The video link does not work for me. None is second line is nine?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Policy, Privilege and Pudding

Temptation incarnate I have now told myself that I really need to cut down on my sugar habit at least five times since coming to Berkeley. To be clear, this only counts the times I have said this with the serious will power to try changing my eating habits. There are numerous other times when I have thought I ought to change my eating whilst eating a cookie or buying the fourth ice cream in the past five days. My poor fellow has had to deal with listening to me say on every one of these occasions that this time will be different or listen to me dwell excessively on how the day went in terms of eating sugar for the entire time. He’s been a good sport about it and doesn’t judge me for my inability to stay away. I am about to start on my sixth endeavor. This time, I have set a time frame and I am planning on sticking to it. Even though it makes the hours seem so much longer as I continuously talk myself out of eating the chocolate pudding temptingly sitting in the fridge....
Post a Comment
Read more

The Simple Joys

Central Park My answer to people when they ask me how I like New York is to say something diplomatic like “I’m glad it’s only for five years” or “I’ll get used to it” or “It’s the complete opposite of Turku.” This last answer is my favorite to think about. Turku was quiet, peaceful, homogeneous, clean, easy-going. New York is loud, aggressive, diverse, dirty and rushed. I felt at home in Turku, I do not feel at home here. (Though diversity is one thing that New York has going for it over Turku) But there are small pleasures I have discovered and so I will devote this post to those small moments of joy in my new, temporary home. My version of coffee 1.      Coffee. This is not unique to New York— in fact, I actually make it at home so I could make it anywhere—but I have found that nothing compares to making a cup of Indian style cappuccino (hand whipped instant coffee with lots of sugar and only milk) while I read articles...
Post a Comment
Read more

Small Acts of Love

A game of hockey going on on the river My boyfriend plays on a hockey team from September to May. It isn’t an official team—they don’t play games throughout the season and aren’t in any leagues—but they meet diligently every week for practice (he actually plays with two teams but it still isn’t clear to me what the difference is between them except that one team is better than the other). This requires some dedication because practices for both teams are either very late in the evening or very early in the morning. At the end of their season, before they take a break for the summer, the players come together and have a full-length game. I wanted to go last year and this year but wasn’t able to make it either time. Instead I asked him to send me a picture of himself in all of his gear. Last year he sent me a selfie of himself before the game, but without his gear on so I hoped this year he would manage to get a picture with both. He did not. I was willing to drop it, figur...
4 comments
Read more