on academic racism
Have you ever walked into the wrong lecture during week 1 of the semester? There’s something about the anxiety and the irreplaceable feeling of everyone’s eyes on
you that nothing else can quite replicate.
Being a Person of Colour at an overwhelmingly white academic institution has a knack for making you feel like a fish out of water. You fall into a routine of second-guessing everything, from your place in a scheduled lecture to your answers in a tutorial discussion.
The existence of PoC in academia was not an idea that existed during its conception. In fact, many early academics were the founder of schools of thought that outlined and provided a framework of justification for our very exclusion from the mainstream.
And if you look around at the grounds that this university was built on, the stolen lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation, you realise that our physical academic journey is, too, built on a foundation of genocide and eradication.
I’ve been in rooms where, when race is awkwardly brought up, all eyes subconsciously flick to me, as if to reinforce that I stick out.
I’ve conducted sit down meetings with faculty, spoken to the head of SHAPS, various fellows and professors, for all my concerns and experiences to be ignored, but for the invitation to do honours or speak at conferences to remain front and centre of any interactions.
I’m not sure what’s worse, being the only visible PoC in a history tutorial, where the discussion inevitably leads back to race, or, being the only one answering questions to do with race and positionality, whereby I suddenly become that one person who hogs the mic at group karaoke.
And so, from the offset, with the realisation that academic institutions at their founding core were never meant for us, were never created with the thought of our education and ‘advancement’ in mind, you can begin to see the trickle-down effects of that. Content is not created with cultural sensitivity in mind, classrooms often make us feel like the token chocolate chip in a vanilla cake batter. Professors would rather build on mainstream narratives that, in the history department especially, seek to erase indigenous experiences in favour of complacent, convenient ignorance.
Being a history major and having a somewhat unquenchable thirst for furthering my education in the discipline, honours seemed like the obvious choice. I still get asked today (sorry papa), about why I haven’t pursued it. I smile while remembering the meeting I conducted with problematic staff, including the head of SHAPS, and other academics with more degrees than I have letters in my name, where my voice shook, tears pricked my eyes and my hands trembled under the weight of confrontation.
The faculty seems unwilling to even adopt a facade of change, but still tries to benefit from some kind of pseudo-diversity, with repetitious invitations to do honours or to speak at conferences about our beloved “Melbourne model”.
Without the conscious effort of building support networks ourselves, uni is a very isolating and alienating space to navigate for any jaffy, let alone being a PoC. I have fought tooth and nail in building my own support network, and fought against many along the way (I’m looking at you student media). I’ve fought to have a PoC subeditor and graphie, asserted myself through many awkward sit-downs or Facebook messenger back and forths. The steps that I’ve taken to fight against complacency and convenience matches my own realisation of my worth and value, both as a contributor and a WoC.
Although my academic career at UniMelb has more or less come to an end, I know that my continuing academic journey, and racism, will always be linked, like the worst possible kind of toxic relationship goals. Do your bit to dismantle these racist ideas in your respective academic spheres, where or if possible. After all, fighting fire with fire is not the most peaceful tactic, but at least they’ll feel the heat.
indian independence day
This article originally appeared in the Indian Newslink Newspaper
Happy Independence Day, India! The pride I feel in my heart to call myself an Indian is truly unmatched. After spending so much of my adolescence wishing I was anything but, my personal journey of growth & learning about my family history, the history of the nation and its own birth in the midst of revolution has made me realise how much of a privilege it is to hail from such a rich country. The vibrancy of life, music, culture that courses through the many veins of the country is truly like no other.
I have forged my own identity as a person of Indian origin. Despite not knowing a language and only visiting a handful of times, everytime I am lucky enough to land on her shores, there is a particular calm that envelopes my soul, as if to say I am truly home. No matter how long it's been, no matter what emotional baggage I arrive with, mother India wraps me up in her unique embrace, and ensures I spend my precious time with her coming home to myself too.
And so it doesn't matter that I sound like a foreigner. It doesn't matter that I don't know a language or that I pronounce things wrong. I am as Indian as any NRI and I am no longer going to shy away and remain silent when rigid ideals and conceptions of identity are forced upon me. As you are, so am i.
Although we still have a way to go in achieving peace and equality for all Indians, regardless of caste, religion, sexual and gender identity, I am proud of the progress we have made in the past 73 years. After being desecrated by the British for 200 years, we have become the world's largest democracy, become a major player in the global stage and have outperformed our rivals wildest expectations. Amongst a current time of turmoil and angst, I recall something I wrote while onboard the Shatabdi train from Delhi to Bhopal...
"Amongst all the chaos crowding the platforms at the stations rolling past, there too exists so much beauty, so much life. To the untrained eye, it just appears to be disorganised chaos, dirty, unkempt and unrelenting. But, if you endeavour to see the beauty, mother India will make sure you see it. On one of my first trips to India, I would have been preoccupied with my comparison between railways in NZ, which now i know, is more like a redundant comparison between ripe Alfonso's in the July heat, and marmite. But now, after learning more about my history, my culture, my religion, I see the conspicuous beauty. I see old baujis sharing steaming chai in clay cups at the station, the small bookstores at the platform teeming with any kind of literature you could imagine. I breathe in the intoxicating scent of fresh flowers, cut in the early morning in time for prayers, mixing with the undescribable smell of Indian soil, with the cool morning air. I hear the sound of a lady's payals, the stain of mehendi still lingering at her feet. Beauty will always be there for those who want to see it. Mother India will hand you the glasses."
Happy 73rd birthday India. I love you.
on the future
If you explained the premise of the movie 127 Hours to any ‘third culture kid’, almost all of us would be able to substitute ourselves in for the protagonist. Being stuck between a rock and a hard place is a sentiment we know all too well.
Immigrant kids, especially those who have grown up in the diaspora, are often caught in this unexplainable impasse. On the one hand, we have family, traditions and our own ethnic perceptions of culture. On the other hand, we have Western traditions, culture and the prioritisation of the individual. It’s no easy feat being caught in the middle of these two worlds, and just as you think you have a handle on one, the other tends to pop up and remind you that you’ll never have the balancing act down-packed.
The familial expectations on third culture kids to set the right example for younger family members, or follow a predetermined path regarding education and employment is a very constricting space to be in. Doing anything that contradicts what your family ‘wants’ for you feels like an act of betrayal, but following ‘your dreams’ seems about as real a concept as ever being colour- matched correctly at Sephora; a fantasy.
So often, with the enormous pressure on us all to assimilate into mainly Western societies, it sometimes feels like we have to do so at the expense of our cultural origins. Names become anglicised (veeralakshmi=Veera), wardrobes become full of jeans and shirts, and home comfort food gets replaced by a Hungry Jacks meal deal. Culture becomes an afterthought, and it isn’t until you get tagged in a meme on Subtle Asian/Curry Traits, or overhear someone talking in your mother tongue that you realise how detached you’ve become from the very fabric of yourself.
And so, the process of reclamation becomes a journey in coming home to yourself. You no longer cringe when someone calls out your ‘real’, your full name. My wardrobe has been decolonised, too, with kurtas replacing shirts and shawls taking the place of Cotton:On scarves. And on the days when I need a quick portal back to home, back to comfort, my UberEats account bears the brunt of the feast sized order from the closest Indian restaurant near me. Although, truthfully, nothing beats the satisfaction of a trip to the local Asian grocer, to pick up specialised ingredients you just don’t find in the lovely token ‘Asian/Indian’ section in Woolies.
And in coming home to yourself, you realise that your home isn’t one with defined borders, or a clear demarcation of where one culture ends and another begins. You have become a beautiful amalgamation of the two.
While the journey into adulthood should, ideally, be up to the individual and shaped by their own desires for the future, however wild or whimsical, immigrant kids often sacrifice their own dreams for the sake of pleasing our parents or maintaining familial harmony. We shrink ourselves down, become content with plagiarised ideas of our futures and spend a lifetime trying to squish ourselves into these rigid moulds of expectation.
The more I’ve surrounded myself with third culture kids, the more I’ve realised that this isn’t something, like my questionable outfit choices, that will improve with age. It’s a space that I’ll realistically occupy for the rest of my life. But, it reiterates the extreme importance of support networks, of diaspora communities coming together and sharing in our experiences.
As I’m beginning to fend off the dreaded “what’s next” question as I approach the end of my degree, I am caught between following the path that my family has subconsciously pushed me towards, and my own gut feelings about what I should do and where I should go next. It’s nothing less than being on the world’s worst seesaw, and every time I feel like I’ve adjusted to familial suggestions of what the future holds, I’m hit with the rude awakening that, perhaps, it isn’t what I want. We are often the first to navigate these spaces, or highlight their existence to our families and so the conversations we have, the dialogue and discourses we open will help chart the rocky seas for those of us yet to come.
Although, sometimes, it would be handy having a GPS.
on language
Imagine being one-quarter Sindhi, one-quarter Bengali, one-quarter Tamil and one-quarter Telegu and not being able to speak any of the languages from these areas. Imagine being the colour of a perfectly blended hot chocolate from Standing Room, but sounding like a cup of tea with almost a whole bottle of milk poured in.
I cannot speak any Indian language. I’ve tried to skirt around this fact, relying on my broken knowledge of Hindi to get me through introductions with fellow desis around uni. But, there comes a time in every conversation where my limited knowledge cannot keep up and I shrink back into myself.
I come from a large family that resembles a patchwork quilt of different regions of India all sewn together. Each part of my family has its own set of traditions, unique to the region that they come from. Language is no stranger to this, with four or five different languages being spoken throughout my family.
Hindi sounds like summer. Sweet, romantic, hazy naps. It sounds like my Nani asking Dadu if he wants chai, or what he would like for dinner. It sounds like home.
Bengali sounds like colour. Its an injection of life and bubbly energy. It’s like a constant stream of happiness and love, carried on a cloud of smiles.
Tamil sounds like Singapore. It sounds like my dad singing old songs late into the evening, my athai’s plethora of recipes for south Indian food and like my maternal grandmother crocheting in her wooden chair facing the garden.
Sindhi sounds like a sister. A secret language between my Nani and her sister, the way they slip into it no matter how long it been since they’ve spoken, reminds me of how the ties of this patchwork family are never going to break. It’s an outsider, foreign and mysterious, but beautiful nonetheless.
I sometimes silently try to practice Hindi to myself. I listen to my carefully curated Indian playlist and emulate the lyrics to the best of my limited ability. I break down the words in my head, but the minute I try and speak out loud, even if its just to myself in the mirror, these beautiful words suddenly feel so heavy in my mouth. Out of place.
These languages are too foreign for this white tongue. I feel like a stranger in my own culture, my skin. What is culture if not held together by the language? And what is my plethora of cultural ties if not held together by any language?
Instead, I resort to asserting myself, and my brownness through other means. I’ve tried to define my identity without language, but it’s proven futile. I still feel in between, too white for the East and way too brown for the West. I feel as though without a language to ground me, I’ll never truly belong in my ‘motherland’.
My knowledge of Hindi has gotten remarkably better the longer I’ve spent with my grandparents. They can no longer communicate in ‘secret’, as I am able to glean what’s being said despite my knowledge of just a few key words and phrases. I listen desperately, reaching out my childish hands trying to greedily grip at any possibility for understanding. I let the few words I do know act as support, as I shakily try to stand my ground during conversations. Ultimately, I let imagination fill in the blanks and hope that context is enough of an ally, allowing for me to smile and nod in the background.
Language has robbed me of the ability to communicate. My paternal grandmother only spoke Tamil and Malay fluently, and I was so young when she was alive. Our conversations were silent, instead of talking, we made faces and sang to each other. We were separated by the glass barrier of language. In saying that, laughter was the rock that eventually smashed the barrier. When we were laughing, the fact that we couldn’t hold conversation meant nothing. She would scoop me up into her lap and I would breathe in her coconut oil and clove scent whilst I slept on her and she called me “ammadey”. The need for a common language didn’t seem so important then, but I wish seven-year-old me had more of a handle on communication, so not all her stories were lost when we lost her too.
When people ask me what I’m doing once I graduate, the only thing I know for certain is that learning one of those four languages is at the top of my to-do list. I’ve spent too long without being tethered to my mother tongue, and now she’s calling me home.
on eurocentric beauty standards
I’m known in most circles as the loud, extroverted one. I know how to make an entrance, and, like fireworks, you can almost always hear me before you see me. I am often asked about where I get my confidence from, and how I have the ability to seemingly be so “intense” all the time. I usually smile and wave it off, citing some variation on the saying, “I get it from my Mama,” (which is completely true by the way, my mama is most definitely my absolute inspiration) and move the conversation along.
The truth, however, is much darker. I’m aware that this sounds very ominous, but the outer layer of confidence and ever-present toothy grin are only relatively new additions to my everyday routine, after years of undiagnosed self-hatred. I spent the majority of my teenage years thinking I was ugly just because white boys were not attracted to me.
Some of you may be quick to blame those boys for having bad taste (to which I wholeheartedly concur), or a teenage need for validation based on physical appearance (you would also not be wrong). The real culprit is only one that I managed to really pin the blame on years later, after my journey into activism.
Eurocentric beauty standards, or the current mainstream standard of beauty, are standards that promote Western ideals of beauty to the entire world. Whiteness has become the default by which we judge everything, and when you are anything but what the world considers beautiful by these standards, it’s easy to see how self-hatred, doubt and internalised racism can wedge its way into your psyche.
To ‘quantify’ this, Eurocentric ideals of beauty place the following characteristics as the most beautiful; a slim nose, light skin, long lashes, straight hair, light coloured eyes. These characteristics are associated with European features and provide impossible standards for Women of Colour/People of Colour more broadly to measure themselves up against, which only paves the way for a hatred for natural, ‘ethnic’ features to be built.
Eurocentric beauty standards have and continue to make me feel as though I do not belong. That who I am, as I am, is not enough. That unless I have golden hair or light eyes that I’ll never be the beautiful girl that’s sung about in any pop song, the protagonist in any Young Adult novel, or the lead in any romantic comedy.
And it’s not hard to see the clear progression in thought. If your standard of self-worth is, like many other impressionable teenagers or young adults, based on how many people find you attractive, as a woman/person of colour, you will ALWAYS fall short. Not only will you always fall short of the unattainable criteria, but you will also inevitably attract the wrong kind of attention; the attention of those who are a sickly kind of sweet, and hungry only on the basis of your melanin content and nothing beyond that.
The internalised racism that Eurocentric beauty standards have promoted and even perpetuated is realistically going to take me a lifetime to unlearn. This doesn’t mean that I don’t love myself as I am now, but even now, as I have grown to be comfortable and appreciative of this brown girl body, I still find myself consuming media and longing for long blonde hair, a slimmer face and lighter eyes.
To snap myself out of this endless glorification of ‘white’ is a conscious process and one that goes down as comfortably as a vodka shot (if you can do a vodka shot without flinching, you have an amazing poker face). I started unfollowing mainstream white models, and instead found a whole community of brown girls and boys on Instagram to redirect my feed to. I’ve found a newfound appreciation for my melanin, my unruly eyebrows and all brown everything because of this. This self-curated selection of media has allowed me to mentally and physically decolonise my thought processes and media simultaneously.
People of Colour communities on social media are trailblazing the way for the normalisation of non-Eurocentric beauty through representation. With mainstream media recognising the effectiveness of including People of Colour in their content as well, in the future our screens will start becoming better pictures of the diverse landscape around us. Although this inclusion is not without its own set of problems. Corporations have discovered that diversity is the new “sex”, in that it sells.
After so many years of constantly falling short in terms of Eurocentric beauty criteria, of attempting to mould myself to fit a definition of beauty that was predicated on my exclusion, I’ve for lack of a better phrase, said “screw it”. I’ve made a conscious effort to create my own definition of beauty, one that is centered around People of Colour and finally, I’m not falling short. I’m measuring up against my own ruler.
on history
It is the year 1600 and India is dressed in the colours of the Mughal Empire. One of the world’s richest countries, it has a 23% share of the world economy. India opens her arms to the East India Company and over 200 years, royal colours of maroon and gold are forcibly replaced by white, blue and red. By the time the Company leaves in 1947, India has been turned into a poster child for third world poverty.
It is the year 1919 and Sikhs in the city of Amritsar celebrate Vaisakhi at Jallianwala Bagh, a walled garden. Without so much as a single warning shot, Colonel Reginald Dyer orders troops to open fire on a crowd of innocent, unarmed Indians. He later boasts that not one piece of their 1600 rounds of ammunition was “wasted”. Rudyard Kipling calls Dyer “the man who saved India”. 1200 people die in the April sun.
It is the year 1943 and India is starving. Sir Winston Churchill deliberately redirects grain needed in the midst of a famine for the reserves of troops on the frontlines in WW2. During a cabinet meeting he tells Amery, the Secretary State for India, “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion. The famine is their own fault for breeding like rabbits.” Churchill is confronted by his own men stationed in India, with concern over the rising death tolls. He writes in the margin of the memorandum, “if the famine is such an issue then why hasn’t Gandhi died yet?” 10 million die.
It is now the year 1947. On August 11th, cries of “Pakistan Zindabad” are carried on clouds of green and white. On August 15th, shouts of “Jai Hind” are carried on clouds of green, white and orange. In the months that follow, trains of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs are carried on tracks marred with green, white, orange and deep scarlet. 2 million will perish.
If reading the above unsettled you slightly, its just mere proof of the existence; and comfort of complacency. Reading the narratives of indigenous peoples from all around the world is nothing short of eye opening, but affects all the senses, leaving a bitter taste in the mouth.
It’s funny what happens when you remove the thick layer of sugar that coats our histories.
In this age, everything seems to be under scrutiny — the media, authenticity and verification of reporting — it seems puzzling that there are still some of us who ignore the fact that our history is one-sided. Our textbooks reduce what is a sphere of vast knowledge and experiences to a rudimentary circle, drawn with as much care as the Radcliffe line.
Historical amnesia is a serious issue and is one that tends to be overlooked in the pursuit of comfort. We have been operating in a colander; one that allows authentic experiences and indigenous history to fall through the sieve, yet places a clear emphasis on the ability to preserve, revere and martyrise apologists, romanticists and leaders on the definitive wrong side of history.
A huge issue exists in the reality that so many People of Colour learn the authentic history of our countries of origin through an isolating and uncomfortable journey into revisionist history. It’s a journey we often embark on our own, in contradiction to academic narratives we have been presented for most of our lives. To have consumed material that has glamourised and presented a false view of our history for so long, and then to suddenly unlearn so much of what we professed to know about our histories is a big mouthful to swallow, and one that doesn’t go down smoothly.
It often puts us in the awkward position of having to correct mainstream historical narratives in a classroom situation, leaving an invisible label of an ‘angry brown person’ floating above our heads. Historical amnesia places us in direct opposition with almost the entire faculty of History, especially as it currently stands.
The current social climate seems to project the ideas of “PC Culture” having infiltrated too many facets of society and that it is a scourge that needs to be limited. This has resulted in the “burden of proof” to fall solely on the shoulders of People of Colour, to argue for and make a case for reading against the grain.
While I am not here (unfortunately) to convince you of the horrors of the Empire, I do believe that all of us should have the ability to decide for ourselves what side of history we align with. Making a choice without having all the information available is not only impossible, but forces a generation of ‘independent’ young adults to be shepherded into a particular narrative.
I’m not sure about you, but being a sheep isn’t something I want added to my resume.
on loss
The evening we found out that my grand-uncle had been brutally taken from us, my childhood home no longer felt like home. The air hung heavy and the humidity that served as a reminder of the inevitability of summer, clung to my skin, making it hard to breathe.
The loss of a loved one is a pain that always seems to hit an exposed wire deep inside your soul. No matter what spiritual or religious principles of impermanence guide you, nothing can quite prepare you.
I’m lucky, or unlucky depending on how you look at it, that I haven’t had to experience many instances of loss during my life. This, amongst a deep-rooted love for Disney films, has resulted in me having a slightly naive worldview, and the inherent belief that everything will always be as it has been. Although, when I realise the reality of morality, I am weighed with a feeling that time on some unseen clock is soon running out.
My family spans the globe like someone picked us all up, held us above the earth and shook us out at random. Scatterings of cousins, once, twice, thrice removed seem to exist everywhere, and like most immigrants can tell you, family group chats tend to involve people that you didn’t even know about.
Most immigrants share my experience of living in a country that is different from that of the majority of their extended family. Instead of being connected by a vast expanse of highways or train networks, we rely instead on delicate strings hung carefully between satellites. The result? Sending and receiving WhatsApp chain messages, and/or a plethora of ill-timed phone calls due to the enemy of different time zones.
When you throw loss into the spiderweb, oftentimes we silently reel, miles away from ‘ground zero’, and have to be creators of our own closure. We find our own ways to say goodbye. In our case, we gathered silently around our altar, thousands of kilometres away, whilst the rest of our family were gathering at the temple for the funeral processions.
And due to the blessing (or curse) of being geographically distant, we begin to move on, in our own ways. Geography spares us the agony of being present and experiencing the aftermath of any passing, especially when it is sudden. In the case of my grand-uncle, on reflection, it often feels like someone picked up the book of his life and tore out the rest of the chapters so roughly that even the spine collapsed.
Routine falls back into place, albeit a little haphazardly, and we rely on yet more updates in family chats or calls. In all the distance it creates, the physical ache of not being able to be there and provide menial comfort to your loved ones is a hard, stiff and bitter pill to swallow, yet most immigrants will tell you that it is merely a spoonful of a medicine we have been taking our entire lives, with rarely a spoonful of sugar to chase it.
The artisan craft of creating our own closure is one that our communities know well. It’s something that gets unknowingly passed on through generations, and it’s there at almost every waking step when we are fortunate enough to reunite with family overseas. Among family dinners and reunions, everyone always saves a small amount of room for unsaid realisations of the theoretical possibility of it being ‘the last time’ that everyone around the table, is sharing a meal together.
In today’s fast-paced world where even taking a moment to catch your breath seems impossible, loss is a brutal and ugly speed bump that forces you to put things into perspective. In the midst of pain, we are forced to take a step back, stop and reconsider our priorities and the equivalent weightage we attach to things in our lives.
For whatever loss takes away, it also has a funny magnetic ability to bring people together. Drifting, potentially estranged relations tether themselves to each other in the hopes of better survival odds against the seas of grief.
It has now been 3 months since my grand-uncle passed away, and some of us have clung to bits of driftwood; work, family commitments or spirituality in order to remedy the incomprehensible nature of his departure. The few stories of my grand-uncle that have come trickling out leave us all with a warm feeling of fondness. Although our family ecosystem will never quite be the same, I take a small amount of comfort in knowing that the stories we tell will keep his memory alive.
And I’d like to think he’s looking down at us with fondness too.
undergraduate thesis
The Invisible Satchel:
An exploration into the experience of Sindhi-Hindus during the Partition of India
and the significance of these testimonies in the Indian diaspora
Pain is like an invisible satchel; we often don’t realise how heavy it becomes and for how long we have been wearing it. It hides under the weight of everyday life, of priorities and perspective until the burden of the satchel, growing heavier each day, becomes an intrinsic part of who we are.
The kind of pain kept inside the satchel is one that has been suppressed for many years. It has been kept tightly locked by the naivety of youth, and any attempts to pick the lock start unravelling the myriad of coping mechanisms that have woven together to form the very fabric of who we are.
Emotional trauma of any scale is not generally talked about in Asian communities around the world. Ours is not a culture of oversharing. Feminists may say its because of the deeply patriarchal aspects of our cultures, others because of a minimalist culture of expression. From my understandings over the last 21 years, its not because we’re oppressed by heavy-tongued men, or because we lack the vocabulary to voice our pain. It is because of the focus that diaspora culture places on the mundane; of living day-to-day and making sure families have the bare necessities.
The Indian diaspora is made up of immigrants from all backgrounds and it stretches like a brown patchwork quilt to all corners of the globe. Despite the diversity, there are trends in our stories. Arriving to new countries where the official language does not flow as easily as it used to, having to build up support systems manually, from the ground up, all contribute to the culture of compartmentalisation. It is how excessive emotions are bottled up and slotted into the satchel that is almost sewn in to the base of our spines.
Slowly, as stability grabs the family unit as if to say, “Don’t worry, you can be with ease instead of anxiety,” the strands of the satchel begin to loosen, but only slightly. With systematic pulling and prodding, slowly it begins to disintegrate. The uncorking of emotional bottles is like a salve to some, the first honest deep breath that they’ve enjoyed in years.
For others, recounting tales, allowing oneself to think about their journey thus far is a painful process. It’s a reminder of the foreign land of the past, that contain voices of people no longer able to tell their own stories. It is only through gentle discussion that un-bottling the vials in the satchel becomes a form of catharsis.
When I talk in metaphors about un-bottling and recognising trauma, I speak directly to the reality of so many of the elder generations in the Indian diaspora. Partition survivors, as they have come to be known in scholarship, are relics of the past, unwritten books telling the unwhitewashed reality of living through the dissemination of the British Raj and the creation of Pakistan.
They say museums are a historian’s best friend. They’re synonymous with history and walking through the hallowed halls, no matter the geography, is often like walking through the halls of time itself. Each object is a direct window into a time long since passed, flies on the wall of some of the most infamous historical events. Its no wonder then, that my grandparents are both my best friends.
My Nani and Dadu, or Dr Pushpa and Professor Kamal Bose are my maternal grandparents. They both lived through one of the most violent transitions from colonialism to independence; Partition. We are fortunate to see each other once or twice a year, and each time, I look at them with awe. They are pillars of strength that decorate building façades of adversity; the kinds of which that Hollywood can only dream of.
My Nani and Dadu have always been opposites in most senses of the word, a potential contributing factor to their 54 year marriage. The dichotomy in their Partition stories could not be more apparent. Compared to Nani, my Dadu was not a refugee, instead experienced Partition from the inside. Like many other Sindhi-Hindus, Nani and her family were painted refugees by the Partition conflict and had to leave everything and flee into the fragmented geography created by the Radcliffe line.
Not only did the Sindhi community face tumult like all other Indians, they also fought the enemy of erasure. Since 1947, there has been no internally allocated territory for the community, especially the population of Sindhi-Hindus, like Nani, who were forced to leave the area of Sindh that became Karachi after Partition. Hindus living in Muslim majority provinces, and vice versa became verified horror stories, hardly any minority made it out alive. Partition allowed the seeds of hate and distrust that had been sowed by the British to blossom. Fires of hate that had been carefully stoked during the Raj engulfed even the most rational people.
The whole country was burning
70 years later, the Sindhi community still battles erasure. The plight of the Sindhi people is rarely mentioned in already whitewashed history books, or in discourse about Partition and its effects. In 2011, there was an attempt to remove ‘Sindh’ from the Indian national anthem.3 Although unsuccessful, it merely represents a larger issue that India has. The trauma of Partition and the end of the Raj is hardly addressed.
Domestic issues that are rooted in the British occupation are swept under the proverbial rug, or slotted into the satchel and tidied away. A culture of self-hatred has formed in its place. We are soon to blame our own people and make mass generalisations about the current state of the country, without realising that we perpetuate the culture of psychological colonisation and self-hatred put in place by the British.
As the generations who experienced Partition first hand reaches the ‘winter of their lives’, as Nani likes to say, younger generations in our community have become the custodians of this precious collective memory. The sacrifices made by my grandparent’s generation, their parents and so many others before them in the Raj must not be forgotten. They endured circumstances created by the upper echelons of the British government, that sought to rape and pillage India for the direct benefit of the Crown.
It is only because of their sacrifices that the United Kingdom is still able to wear its crown of moral superiority.
I will attempt to discuss some of the experiences of the Sindhi-Hindu community that were cultivated by the adoption of Sindh into Pakistan. I will also try and place their survivor testimonies in the wider context of the Indian diaspora, and discuss the historical significance of such.
My interviews with Sindhi-Hindu survivors have reinforced the underlying fact that history that is not the mainstream and oftentimes contradicts our own knowledge and existing literature, is not wrong. It is just as valid, and these stories and the people telling them have just as much of a place on the historical bookshelf as any other experiences.
Slowly we unravel. Slowly we unpick. Slowly, we learn the truth that so many never had the chance to tell themselves.
Although not the only conflict in a former British colony that occurred after independence, Partition is an example of the most violent chaos that the process of rapid decolonisation caused.
“Partition is to the psyche of Indians and Pakistanis what the Holocaust is to the Jews.”- Adil Najam
In direct comparison to work done by historians in order to facilitate reconciliation processes surrounding the Holocaust, to date, there has been no such reconciliation attempts around Partition. Existing history around colonised India is coated in a thick layer of whitewash, however the recent trend in revisionist history has sought to remedy this. But, in the global conscious, Partition is, at least to the survivors I interviewed, is severely overlooked.
India as a country hasn’t necessarily helped things. The narrative of moving forward and building a stable nation after what can only be described as a tumultuous handover has placed an emphasis on forgetting rather than remembering. After all the trauma she endured, one cannot blame Bharat Mata (Mother India) for choosing to adopt this strategy as she finally stood on her own two feet again. However, as historians recognise that generations of Indians who survived Partition are slowly becoming few, not-for-profit crowdsourced projects such as the 1947 Partition Archives have grown.
The question of the historical significance of this topic is slightly tricky. Significance, after all, is a subjective concept. Historical significance has long been decided by the victor, in terms of Partition history, the British. The creation of ‘hero’ narratives by the UK in order to justify their behaviour in India, and the refutation of indigenous, un-whitewashed historical narratives have sent the message to survivors and Indians in the wider diaspora that our history is not comparatively significant.
Historical significance has said to be determined by whether or not the themes in the history discussed can be linked to larger trends. The experiences of Sindhi-Hindus is historically significant because not only is it intimate history for me, reflecting a personal, familial, cultural and ancestral topic, but it also fits more broadly into Partition narratives. It explains the symbolic significance of why Independence Day celebrations in India are important in reclaiming nationalism. The experiences of Sindhi-Hindus is also a great teacher of contemporary lessons, of why humanity must not let similar events occur in the future.
“I think it’s so important that they tell their stories because if anything like this happens again… we can’t let it happen again. It was the end of the world for so many people, it was the end of the world. We can’t let it happen again.”- Sameer Syed
The fundamental importance of oral history to the historical significance of the Sindhi-Hindu experience cannot be overlooked. As Portelli says, “Oral sources give us information about people or social groups whose written history is either missing or distorted.”
There exists few thorough recounts of Sindhi-Hindu written history among the limited Partition scholarship. Without the insistence of modern historians in documenting the oral histories in the remaining Partition survivors, it is only a matter of time before they are lost to us as a community forever.
“Now we say folks can steal your wealth, but not your knowledge.”- Anonymous Interviewee
Discussing the experiences of Sindhi-Hindus creates a niche for the community to tell their history where there wasn’t one before. It is significant because it helps place their experiences in the wider context of Partition scholarship as they are most often left out of mainstream narratives due to the territorial, cultural and linguistic erasure they faced as a result of their mass exodus.
In contemporary terms, the niche that is afforded to the Sindhi-Hindu community in which they can tell their history is especially important in a time where we have white nationalism in Britain rejoicing in Brexit, and a correlated rise in anti-immigrant sentiments across the globe. Documenting the Sindhi-Hindu experience and slotting it into the wider history of Partition, helps to bolster against right-wing cries of demanding that indigenous peoples as a whole,‘move on’ and ‘get over’ their painful histories.
The effects of the trauma created by Partition still silently lives on. Non-whitewashed, holistic histories create what our current narratives do not; acknowledgement. Without understanding the past, not just in terms of the historical ‘victor’, we cannot go on to build a stable future. Above all, teaching and promoting inclusive authentic history promotes a sense of equality. These stories, especially those in the Sindhi-Hindu community are no less important than the tales of those part of the ethnic majority, both inside and outside of the subcontinent.
“We have no culture anymore.” -Pushpa Bose
Transcribing this direct quote from the interview with Nani, and even more broadly unearthing the oral histories of elders in my family, it seems to make my very soul ache. I truly underestimated the profound effect that writing this article would have on me. Never before have I had to confront the harsh realities of the experiences of the elders around me, and never have I had to consider the invisible satchels they have worn for so many years. In examining oral histories from the survivors I interviewed, I have used “confrontation as a ‘search for unity’”, within my own partiality and positioning.
When I asked her to elaborate, Nani said that because Sindhis had been forced to leave Sindh, they had resultantly lost their “identity, culture and language.” Her two younger siblings never got the chance to learn the Sidhi language as their relocation to Delhi prioritised Hindi over other local dialects. Like many other immigrants, Nani and her family have had to redefine what it means to be a Sindhi-Hindu in their own terms, in the context of the diaspora.
‘Comparison has become the thief of joy to many Sindhi-Hindus’, she says as she compares her own experience to that of my Dadu. Compared to him, a proud Bengali man who has so much experience, identity and pride in his Kolkata state nationality, Sindhi-Hindus do not enjoy the same deep rooted nationalism, Nani elaborates.
The collation of information about the niche experiences of Sindhi-Hindus will perhaps allow for a modern identity to be built, that wraps a supportive, validating hand around the countless families who, “never dreamt that they would lose everything.” The above quote from an extended relative, Mr. Mohan Dadlani, is best reflective of the Partition experience. Partition was an unfathomable horror on both sides and it brought out the worst capabilities of humankind. Painted with the brush of hindsight, many documentaries that have interviewed Partition survivors, and even participants in my own interviews have expressed that Partition was unnecessary. There were some religious tensions but no one could have ever foretold the reaction to the decision to Partition India
Man: “This part of Punjab, and that part of Punjab they were once the same, so the cultures are very similar.”
Anthony Bourdain: “Well, it’s a popular metaphor for India/Pakistan, is twins separated at birth.”
Man: “They were never twins. I mean, it was one country. You could say ‘dismembered’. If you cut a body in two, it is not going to become twins…It’s sad you know. You—you can see them. They are doing the same work as you are doing. They dress the same. They look the same. But you can’t talk to them.”
-Transcript from Anthony Bourdain; Parts Unknown (S03,E01)
Even though most of my interview subjects were children at the time of Partition, there is hardly an air of youthful innocence that shrouds their recounts.
“Psychologically; they bear heavy scars. The scars have been permanent.” -Anonymous Interviewee
Trends in our stories, despite differences in circumstances became apparent during my research. Stories of Partition survival are often incomplete without the mention of the trains, and the Indian railway. It is said that almost 15 million people crossed borders that were created by the Radcliffe line, and the vast train network that the British had thrust across the nation facilitated this movement. The “geography of trauma” although physically limited to India and Pakistan, knows no emotional borders.
Almost hand in hand with the imagery in testimonies about train journeys are themes of ‘near misses’. The disparity of minutes, and sometimes, even seconds allowed for families to escape, for events to unfold that would have entirely rewritten the chapter in the book of the lives of so many. It is here that some derive their faith in God. Sometimes, the word coincidence falls painfully short when describing the plethora of ‘near misses’ during this time.
Nani tells a story of a missed train and the anguish that another night had to be spent sleeping on the platform. Tensions among the adults ran high and anxiety was in the air. After a restless sleep, they awoke the next morning to the news that the very train they had missed, that they had seen leave the station before their eyes, full of Hindu refugees had been slaughtered. The train had been hijacked by Muslim rebels halfway through the journey and none who had got on the train, ever disembarked.
Trains were the motorised saviour of so many people, they allowed for safe and efficient passage across miles of land to safety. But, they are also the site of so many endings. Famous massacres, such as ones in Amritsar and Calcutta have been recorded extensively. But what of the ones that fall through the cracks?
“Somebody threw the stone of 1947 in the middle of the pond. A thousand ripples erupted from the bottom of the pond. Every ripple has a story behind it …” -Gulzar
The stories carried by the ripples have often been justified through the lens of religion, not uncommon in dealing with traumatic events on any scale.16 India has and always will be a deeply religious place, the birthplace of Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism. India’s connection to religion and the importance placed upon it, is partially what led to Partition.
Many British historians have argued that irreconcilable religious differences were to blame for the decision to split the country. It is easy to step back and allow the need for justification to assign blame where there isn’t any. Coexistence engulfed India long before the entrance of any European colonial power. The patchwork quilt of difference was not always sewn with the thread of peace, however, to shove blame on religious tensions would be to steal the spotlight of responsibility from who it should be directly pointed at.
The scale and effects of the trauma of Partition is reflected in the crisis of faith so many experienced after witnessing untold horrors. One has to ask the question of the severity and permanence of the kind of trauma that forced a plethora of deeply religious people to lose faith in such an integral part of their culture and identity.
After Partition, life in the refugee camp was like hell and I lost faith in God…I started losing faith in God. I could not believe that a loving and Just God would allow kind hearted persons like my parents and other refugees to suffer so much without any fault on their part.” -M. Dadlani
Two years ago, on a trip to India with my grandparents, we caught the Rajdhani Express from Kolkata to Delhi. We stood at the platform and waited for our train. I didn’t think twice about stepping on and finding our cabin, letting the melody flowing through my white earphones distract me from the hubbub of the station. Soon, the Indian landscape flowed past, uninterrupted except for the occasional village.
70 years ago, there would have been no guarantee that my grandparents and I would have safely reached Delhi. Even base objects, such as the train carried such different meaning to not only my own family, but many of my fellow Indians. Without the efforts of archival projects, these connotations would never have been uncovered. I would never think twice about what it now means to be able to travel on the domestic Indian rail network, with both my Nani and Dadu seated safely beside me. Learning about our history has not only given me an appreciation for even the most mundane aspects of everyday life, but everything is dusted with a fine coating of the sweet taste of value.
Sitting on this train is not just sitting on a worn seat. It’s a privilege that so many before me never had the chance to do, or, one that was violently taken from them
The next morning, we arrive at Delhi station. After making sure that our belongings are with us, we alight at the platform. Amongst the chaos that is Delhi, there are only pockets of quiet refuge.
If anyone listened, they would have been able to hear the sound of the invisible satchels hitting our backs lightly with every step we took.
the a word
For Halloween this year, I know, whether on Instagram as I am scrolling in bed the next morning, or in real life at a Halloween party, I will see a white person guilty of cultural appropriation. This isn’t a statement that can be debated; at this point, I’m just stating fact.
I know this for a fact because it is the world we live in, one in which it is acceptable to look at a culture and instantly brainstorm a costume idea, with thoughts of what colour schemes would best compliment a social media feed.
Many people will be guilty of cultural appropriation this year. But, like always, they will not face trial. They will return to their lives the next day, once the costume has been stepped out of on their bedroom floor, albeit a bit haphazardly after a couple of drinks. There will be no trial, the only jury the faces of People of Colour as we look on, in oftentimes silent judgement for fear of retribution, the ribbon of silence so repetitively binding our tongues in order to remind us of our own place, our own niche we occupy in almost every setting.
I used to love Halloween. Like many other kids growing up watching American movies, October conversely to the Southern Hemisphere brought autumn, autumn colours and of course, Halloween. I loved getting dressed up, sometimes with my younger brothers and going trick-or-treating in our neighbourhood.
Nowadays, Halloween is a time of unease. It’s become what I like to call, “racist Christmas”. No other time of year is more inundated by the appearance of problematic “costumes”. Suddenly, a culture that is otherwise referred to as “oppressive”, a country that is otherwise referred to in conjunction with another crime statistic becomes “exotic”, and I can bet you good money— not rupees of course — that there will be someone in my DMs asking to borrow a salwaar or a lehenga for the night.
So, lets talk cultural appropriation. Cultural appropriation only entered the public lexicon in 2017, with the Oxford dictionary defining it as, “the unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas etc. of one people or society by members of another, typically more dominant people or society.” Since the word’s widespread use began however, any discussion on this topic often quickly becomes smothered in a handful of white guilt and fragility, with echos of “am I not allowed to do anything anymore?” (or variations of such) lingering in the air.
Let me pre-empt the obvious rebuttal. It seems that white guilt is like the chivalrous knight— its defence mechanisms are what keep it legendary. The most common response to telling white people that they’re guilty of cultural appropriation: “Well, why do you appropriate our culture then? You wear our clothes and we don’t say anything?!”
There is a stark difference between appropriation and assimilation. When People of Colour have to conform to behaviour — whether that be dress codes, cultural practices, or language belonging to the dominant group — it is a means of survival. If we adhered strictly to wearing our own cultural clothing, speaking our native languages and practicing the same cultural rituals that are often viewed as “barbaric” in the West, we would soon find ourselves ostracised and made examples of why we should be “sent back to where we came from”.
When People of Colour express our. cultures in whatever way we deem fit, it is, on the most part, viewed negatively., We are told that we are not doing a good enough job of assimilating. That “this is New Zealand, not India”. That we should “make more of an effort to fit in here”. But, let any Instagram influencer arbitrarily sling a sari across her shoulder and slap on a bindhi for the ‘gram, and suddenly they’re beacons of culture and exotic beauty.
The issue, much like other forms of racism, is institutional. High fashion and big name brands have an appalling track record with profiting from appropriated culturally-significant items. From Gucci using white models wearing Sikh turbans on the runway, to Victoria’s Secret using an Indigenous American headdress during the annual fashion show, to Chanel releasing a $200 boomerang. Cultural appropriation is pervasive and peverse and its everywhere nowadays. Your favourite brunch spot advertising a new “tumeric latte” is unknowingly capitalising on years of Ayurvedic knowledge. It’s the theft of cultural practices innate to ancient traditions for consumption by the mass market. And, to make matters worse, the financial benefits that come with promoting these appropriated products to a largely white market base are rarely ever enjoyed by people whose culture it was originally from.
It’s even in entertainment; the show Married at First Sight, for one, is a fitting example. The premise of the show is basically an arranged marriage; family and friends are consulted about the traits and qualities their loved one would like in a partner, and someone is picked and matched up to how they best fit these descriptions, with the couple only meeting for the first time at the altar. On TV, its an entertainment goldmine, but one mention about how my grandparents were brought together by an arranged marriage warrants pitied glances, the word feminism being thrown around and an overall air of disdain for such an “antiquated” practice.
I was once asked if the bindhi I so proudly wore to school was a “skin infection”. I, like most other South Asians growing up in the diaspora have been called “dot head”and received some sort of negative commentary about our decision to wear a bindhi in public. It’s almost as if the public sphere heralds the ‘abuse’; that it’s fine to be visibly different from the majority outright with skin colour, but the minute you brand yourself even further, by wearing a bindhi or dressing in traditional clothing, suddenly you’re a pesky spot that just needs one more scrub with a bleach-laced stare.
Forget that bindhis are an intrinsic part of Hinduism and Indian culture, forget that they represent chakra, or are a sign of marriage, what matters in the eyes of the West is that ASOS places them under the Halloween accessory tab. For a humble $2.99, you too can be guilty of cultural appropriation!
The bindhi is a cultural icon, and one that is full of religious and social significance. For many years, so many of our cultural practices and rituals were banned under the British rule of India. Wearing bindhis or our traditional clothing, even eating our traditional food are forms of protest. They are acts of defiant reclamation, of finally being able to express ourselves without fear of colonial persecution. There are many blonde haired, blue-eyed Instagram influencers who don traditional clothes and jewellery on my feed; perhaps its Instagram’s way of perpetually raising my blood pressure. But, everytime I scroll past these pictures, it humours me to see just how carefully their photo has been taken, how well crafted their photographers must be to capture a sliver of indifference in a sea of poverty and destitution. Ignorance is a hell of a drug.
Not every Person of Colour will take issue with appropriating elements of our cultures. However, cherry picking when and where to use said cultural objects based on your social calendar is problematic in itself, when you take into account the glaring fact that we don’t get the lavish luxury of choosing when to be brown.
The lifetime of prejudice, abuse and mistreatment because of our ethnicity isn’t something that can be stepped into as easily as a borrowed lehenga. When we wear our traditional clothes, we don’t get to stop the negatives that come with expressing and being proud of our culture and heritage. For white people, the consumption of our cultures is not unlike getting a burger from McDonalds; extra ‘clout’ and a frenzy of heart reacts on the side, but hold the discrimination.
During every discussion I’ve been a part of on cultural appropriation, at some point, someone raises the point about the difference between cultural appropriation and appreciation. Appreciation is always welcome in the brown community, its part of acknowledging our diversity. Respect and understanding are cornerstones of appreciation, something that is painfully lacking when it comes to appropriation. Cultures are not costumes, period. You shouldn’t look at a group of people, take their culturally (and often, religiously) significant clothing and symbols and immediately think of costume and theme ideas. If you are in a space where you have been invited by a person of colour to engage and participate in their culture, by all means, join in. What sets this scenario apart from your “regular cultural appropriation horror story” is that it happens on our terms, not yours.
Your invitation to continue the pillage of cultures that were never yours in the first place has been revoked; until next Halloween, of course.
hello, my name is . . .
Shakespeare once said, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet.”
Although, he was probably referring to white names because we all know that Rose rolls off the tongue a lot easier than Mishti does.
At the risk of sounding like a cheesy, ethnic Spy Kids extra who only goes by a code-name, Veera isn’t actually my real name. It’s half of a longer, very Indian name that only a handful of people outside my big, brown family know. But, as someone who has more recently started to pride themselves on authenticity and committing to being apologetically herself, I feel it may be a tad hypocritical for me to have kept it a secret for almost 21 years. So, to apply some artistic license to an old saying: you don’t know my name, so here’s my story.
I don’t know why I’ve never felt comfortable sharing my ‘real’ name with anyone outside my family. Maybe it’s seeing the destruction of anything remotely ethic by white tongues who couldn’t care less about correct pronunciation, as long as the desired attention-grabbing effect is produced. If your name is anything darker than the shade of milk, suddenly it becomes something that sits heavy in the mouth.
I would wonder why everyone had no trouble pronouncing the greats, like Tchaikovsky or Mozart, but somehow, when it came to brown names, no one bothered to extend the same care. Instead, we continue to see our names fractured and distorted into something we’ve had to learn to recognise. Listening to the blatant disregard around me when it came to its pronunciation made me clutch my name even tighter. My name is a beautiful thing. It embodies not only one of the strongest women in my family, and but also a prominent symbol of the Hindu faith. It’s not something I want to hear being strangled to death.
The name Veera itself is derived from the Sanskrit word meaning ‘brave’. Personally, I’d like to say that I live up to my name and that it’s one that wholly suits me.
But, I can’t say that that’s the case unless I go on.
Hello, my name is Veeralakshmi Ramayah.
Typing my full name out loud is something I usually reserve for admin forms or other ‘adult’ jobs, so typing it out knowing that it’ll be printed in something I won’t be able to hide before guests come over is somewhat daunting.
Veeralakshmi is an avatar of the goddess Lakshmi, who represents prosperity, light, courage and strength. It seems so odd that I would want to shy away from sharing it, but it’s almost become the ultimate weapon to use against me: something reserved especially for my Mum and Dad during one of their many heated lectures. It’s not something I’m keen to share with say, my entire Facebook friends list, for fear of misappropriation and weak excuses about how it’s “easier just to say Veera”.
Lakshmi also happens to be the name of one of my aunties. She is the embodiment of the values that Goddess Lakshmi represents and, through our lengthy discussions over the past few years, I have learnt so much about her remarkable life, her devotion to our family and her service work. It is both an honour and a privilege to be named after her and to aspire to carry on exhibiting her traits in my everyday life. Her selflessness is unmatched and I can only hope that along with the name, she’s passed that on too.
In today’s climate, stories from people of colour about anglicising their names to make them more palatable for wider (read: whiter) consumption are not uncommon. It’s a way to deal with inherent biases when it comes to CVs, or whenever you aren’t there to personally introduce yourself. When I reflect upon the circumstances that make people of colour feel as though erasure, in whatever form that may take, is easier and at times, safer, than being authentic, my heart physically hurts in a way that no other pain can ever quite replicate, tragic breakups and all, included.
In a world that sometimes feels as if it’s coated with a thick layer of glossy acrylic white paint, the fact that many of us don’t feel comfortable enough to retain and claim our names—which often have deep spiritual and cultural connotations—is the best example of how systemic and enduring the effects of internalised racism are.
It seems that as much as social movements are about progression (and I acknowledge, we truly have come such a long way), the reality is that many people of colour do not feel safe being themselves. Instead, we resort to a handful of alter-egos, assimilating with popular white culture in terms of the media, food and fashion we consume. Assimilation in itself isn’t the issue here. In fact, I think that it can be a great teacher of whatever new culture anyone finds themselves in. However, a whole myriad of issues tends to seep in when you engage in assimilation to the point of an identity crisis.
Earlier this year, one of my closest friends, a fellow Woman of Colour, called me in tears after a party. A white boy had walked up to her and, with the heady musk of VB practically oozing from his pores, had asked her what her “slave name” was. So, when one of your best friends calls you up and is crying because even using an anglicised name isn’t enough to avoid what is best described as “white people nonsense”, it makes you feel as though nothing we do to bolster ourselves against the harsh parameters of the world in which we live is ever enough.
So here I am.
After 21 years of hiding behind the shortened version of a name that represents so much about me and who I am, I’ve decided to remove the plastic sheets and face the fact that even if a bit of that impetuous white paint gets on me, it still won’t be enough to cover all this brown girl magic.
e.t, phone home
Alien. That’s the best way to describe it. Being an immigrant often feels like you’re between a rock and a hard place. But the rock is the place you are now, and the hard place is fitting in. Always in between, always not quite there, mentally or physically. Physically, missing out on schoolies for a family trip back to the home that is spoken of at least once every family meal. Mentally, always worlds away, wrapped up in stories from family about faraway lands, of sights, smells and people that exist on what seems like an entirely different planet.
When people ask me where I call home, I’m always stuck, and it leaves me looking like an idiot. After all, growing up in New Zealand for 18 years should logically tell me that it is my home. But I have no connection to the place. I have no one outside my immediate family there, apart from a scattering of high school friends. My hometown is filled with nostalgia, for days spent down at the beach, faces covered with 50c ice- cream cones. Perhaps I’m not a person who grows attached to places, or people. As any immigrant will tell you, our families often branch over miles, different postcodes, time zones and borders, forcing us to lose a sense of object permanence. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and if absence is the catalyst to heart growth, we immigrants have abnormal anatomy.
I was born in Singapore, but have never lived there. My connections there are through my extended family, and brief reprises from the harsh New Zealand winter. Singapore feels like an escape, surrounded in a cloud of tropical humidity, but not a home. It’s a place where I feel slightly more at home, among a predominantly Asian society, where running errands in a sari or a salwaar are met with less inquisitive stares. But it is still not where I fit in.
My ancestry is Indian. All my grandparents were born there, and their stories paint vivid pictures about a place filled to the brim with culture and history, life and colour. My imagination is filled with stories from the past, of how things used to be before corruption and colonialism snaked its way through the cracks. But trips back to my homeland have proven that I’m out of place here as well. Too awkward and too foreign to pass as a seasoned local, I stick out like a sore thumb in a pair of converse that are too white amongst the dusty roads.
Being an immigrant is being constantly restless. Cycling between the delicate see-saw of being too foreign for your new country, but too assimilated for your old. It’s getting pangs of guilt every-time you adopt a mannerism from your new, non-immigrant friends, as if somehow the more you feel fit in, the more you sever your ties with your heritage. It’s having to explain to your friends why your mum will be picking you up from the party at 10:30, even though you’re on school holidays. It’s not being able to explain exactly why telling your parents that “I’m 18 now I can do what I want” would trigger a cataclysmic breakdown.
Being an immigrant is being “too white” for the East, and “too brown” for the West. It’s being in between, the messy middle flavour in a tub of Neapolitan. It’s an exhausting experience, and quite often, a narrative that is left out. When everyone around you is busy figuring themselves out and their various levels of alcohol tolerance, and you’re still staring at a world map wondering where on earth you slot in, it doesn’t make for an easy journey into your 20s.
It’s only after talking to the handful of “third culture kids”, that commonalities in our journeys of fitting in become apparent. The struggles of fitting in that we experience are never something our parents could have anticipated, and something that, unless pulled out of our conscious through somewhat confronting conversations, isn’t something that ever gets talked about. It’s easy to see the relative benefits of being an immigrant, the food, the clothes and the culture, but very rarely do we, or our communities in general, unpack the different levels of emotional trauma we endure.
Among the social movements that we find ourselves in about decolonising fashion, history and food, we need to make more of an effort to create spaces in which we can have these conversations. Relocating our common ground and realising we have a lot more that ties us is maybe the only way we can navigate the xenophobic seas the last 10 years have brought in.
That’s not to say that every experience I’ve had in the last 21 years has been traumatic or has left me deeply troubled. But it’s easy to see immigrants of all backgrounds represented a certain way in the media, without any honesty about the actualities of our experiences. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t change anything about myself, but I’m still wondering how many more years I’ll be orbiting earth in my UFO, feeling like E.T. on a planet where nowhere feels quite like home.
the darker the berry
The feeling of the sun on your face is one of life’s simplest, most affordable pleasures.
But, not if you’re a brown girl.
I remember being told by family, after seeing them for the first time in months, that I’d “better be careful” because I’d gotten so dark in the New Zealand sun. But it’s not as if they were trying to hurt me. This warning came topped with the biggest scoop of love and a sprinkle of concern. But, it was as if, to them, becoming dark was something to be afraid of.
Colourism is the post-colonial monster that hides in the light. It prides itself on its insatiable hunger for brown girl insecurity, something that’s rampant in today’s bleached world. It’s a concept founded on the fundamental notion that lighter skin and Eurocentric features are somehow better and more desirable than darker skin and natural beauty. If all you’ve heard around you growing up is that “only light skin with European features is considered beautiful”, there comes a time when that’s what you’ll find yourself believing.
I know what you’re thinking. Colourism, racism, quite a few “isms” floating around, right? Although they sound the same, colourism and racism are entirely different. Racism is inter-racial, it usually comes from someone who doesn’t belong to the race they are talking about. Whereas, colourism is intra-racial; it usually comes from a Person of Colour, or is a same-race person talking about members of their own race in a derogatory manner. What makes colourism racism’s “uglier” sister is the fact that it’s a form of internalised racism. People of Colour have internalised European standards of beauty to the point at which anything that is a shade darker than milk is as off- putting as having to pay one dollar extra for soy milk in your latte (disgusting, I know).
Although, looking back, it’s not hard to see how we got here. European standards of beauty became normalised and desirable from as early as the 15th century, when European powers colonised India and other Asian nations. Masters and lords decorated Indian society, each powdered with a fine coat of “white”—pale skin, blue eyes and golden hair. The psychological effect that these societal hierarchies had on Indian society is mirrored in colourism. This is why People of Colour simply can’t “get over” the history of our native countries.
“Bleaching syndrome” is a phenomenon where People of Colour invest in skin-lightening products. It’s a huge unspoken reality within our communities, and something that will continue to follow us for a long time. It’s something that isn’t helped by instances such as Vogue India choosing Kendall Jenner to be their cover girl for their tenth anniversary. Reinforcing yet again that it’s blonde, brunette and white that gets you on the cover, and the losing hand of all-brown everything gets you a tokenistic page-six feature.
I’m not immune from basking in my own privilege. By People of Colour standards, although I am dark, I am still “light”, comparatively, on this intangible scale of skin hues. I used to revel in the fact that my relatives would praise my lightness and look down on the visibly darker family members. This was my edge, I thought. It has taken so many years on the almost excruciating road of self-acceptance to unlearn this. My edge is not being brown, or relatively lighter. My edge is being me.
My brownness became like a mud I tried to scrub off every waking minute of every day. I wanted to be light. I resented the summer months when I would play outside with my friends and return home 50 shades darker. I wanted to be worth more with a golden mop atop my head, reminding people of delicate chains of precious metal that glinted in the sunlight.
I was able to dismiss my skin colour within my family because of my “light” privilege. But, outside the safety of home was a different story. The biggest lesson that any Person of Colour will learn throughout their lives is that this skin never gives you the opportunity to dismiss it. It isn’t something you can hide behind, a secret weapon that only gets unleashed when you’re backed into a corner. In this black-and-white world, it’s your only defence against stares laced with bleach.
But the moment I truly realised how far I’d have to carry the weight of this concept with me was when I attended a wedding and overheard some guests whispering, “She’s lucky she got married because she’s so dark.” And, I realised that not even on what everyone calls the “happiest day of your life” would I be able to escape from the clutches of colourism. To put it bluntly, I was pissed. Before I even opened my mouth, my skin colour had done all the talking and said volumes about my worth.
Recently, I reunited with my Bharatanatyam (Indian Classical Dance) Guru (teacher) after not seeing her for the better part of four years. I remember walking up to her front door, anticipation and excitement threatening to bubble over, filled with the same desperation to impress her as I had when I was her student. I wondered if to her, I still looked the same, with significantly shorter hair streaked with bronze and a nose ring to match. I heard her approach the door, and suddenly, it was open.
“Veera! What happened to you, you used to be so fair!” Her tone was shocked, almost sad. As if she was mourning the loss of the girl she used to know, the one who could dance in lighter salwaar’s because I passed the “brown paper bag test”.
I’m the type of person who smiles and laughs whenever they’re in pain. And so, the only thing I could do in that moment was to stretch my mouth from ear to ear, while her memory of middle-school Veera was slowly tainted by my darkened skin.
It was this exact moment that I stopped apologising and hiding away from what was literally right in front of me. I remembered a quote from one of my favourite spoken word pieces: “When they call you dark as night, tell them that without you, the stars would have nothing to shine for.”
And I’ve never stopped sitting in the sun.
a coat of white wash
…Partition was a defining moment in the lives of my grandparents and so many other Indian nationals. Everything in their stories is divided into two halves of existence: before and after Partition.
It’s a rainy afternoon in the tropics and I’m with my Nani, sharing a cup of steaming Sindhi chai, almost peppery from the ginger and multitude of spices thrown in. Teatime is my favourite time of the day in Singapore, where over a cup or two of chai and alongside a few snacks, my grandparents open the novel of their lives and start reading from any random chapter.
To my Nani especially, Sindhi chai tastes like nostalgia. To me, it’s a version of Tinkerbell’s fairy dust that brings their stories to life. It tastes like home—like a place I’m so deeply connected to, yet is still shrouded in so much mystery.
I ask questions about my great-grandmothers, about the romance between my own grandparents and how exactly they both ended up in Singapore. And suddenly we arrive at the topic of Partition.
Called one of the world’s most violent transitions from colonialism to independence, Partition was a defining moment in the lives of my grandparents and so many other Indian nationals. Everything in their stories is divided into two halves of existence: before and after Partition.
Of course, like any other person who had taken history in high school, I knew about the violence during this time. I had watched the movie Gandhi in my high school history class, and found that it gave me situational knowledge and insight into this historical period. But supporting the curriculum was material that boasted of Britain’s great gifts to India: civilised culture, a functioning civil service, medical and scientific advancements and—almost most importantly—the divine gift of cutlery to save the poor savages from eating with their hands.
So, when my Nani’s entire demeanour shifted into a more sombre mood, I was confused. How could she possibly tell me anything contrary to what I had grown up believing and learning about the glories of the empires of the past?
But when she told me about the famine in Bengal— systematically orchestrated by the upper echelons of the British Government, it rivalled the death and devastation left by the Irish Potato Famine—about trains full of massacred Indians caught up in the violence Partition created, about the kind of discrimination and degradation that my family and so many others faced in British India—it was as if someone had disrupted the surface of the pond of my existence.
And as I researched into how ‘Britishers’, as Nani calls them, cut off the hands and broke the looms of Bengali cloth-makers in order to reverse the demand for Indian-made textiles, or how great, benevolent kings were ousted and robbed of their birthright, I was conflicted. Her first- hand experiences and historically-backed research were so different from what I had grown up learning.
When I realised that for my entire schooling life, colonialism had been placed on the first-place platform on the world podium, my heart sank. All of what I had professed to know about my own country of origin was dripping in a coat of whitewash. It was as if no one had bothered to find out anything about the reality of Indian life during the British occupation. The only tales we ever heard about Partition were the ones that involved Gandhi. But what about the almost equally important 13-year-old girl who started fighting against the British, Jhansi ki Rani?
Tales of heroism, of valid experiences—not only of me and my ancestors but also of almost everyone who has the invisible string of heritage joining them to the subcontinent—have been lost. And in their space exists half-empty narratives, which completely discount the equally important experiences of a population who was defiled without consent. The adorned package of human experience throughout colonialism that had been presented to me had tied its ribbon tightly around the mouths of my ancestors. Colonialism had become as glossy as the ganache on a cake in the Brunetti’s window.
I’ve taken it upon myself to educate myself further, to read history books written by Indians and to balance out the uneven seesaw I rudely found myself on. Pick up your scissors this year and cut the ribbon that’s held your ancestors’ mouths shut for too damn long. It’s about time.