The Target parking lot is the most unlikely of places to have a life-questioning moment. Yet that's what happened last week.
I was happily walking towards the store, ready to get some cold medicine and chicken soup for my ailing daughter, when I caught the eye of a woman. An Indian woman. She smiled and stared at me.
"Hi! Are you Indian?"
"Yes," I replied.
"Where are you from?" she asked. Immediately, I knew she didn't mean, which neighborhood do you live in, here in Tuscaloosa.
"My parents are from Madras. I mean, Chennai." My usual standard response. The underlying meaning is, I'm not really from India, my parents are.
"Really? I'm Usha."
"Hi, I'm Prathima."
"How long have you lived here?" She was genuinely nice, though inquisitive. Not a surprise.
"Twenty years," I replied.
"Twenty years? I have never seen you at an Indian function." She was taken aback. I had never been to a function. That is what Indians call the parties. FUNCTIONS. Oh no, here we go. I started getting flustered. Should I tell her I went to a cultural event at the University about five years ago and watched some Indians dance? Nope, too far-reaching.
"Well, I'm a little anti-social." Did I really just say that? What words are coming out of my mouth?
"What do you do?" She didn't get that there was a real live woman of Indian descent that lived here in town without going to an Indian function.
"I'm a software developer. For a company downtown." Again, my usual standard non-answer.
"Are you Tamil?" She asked. Another form of categorizing the billion plus Indian people that are currently alive. Dialect.
"Yes." Oops. Wrong answer. I was a little out of my head. "I mean no, I'm Telegu."
"There are lots of Telegu people in town! And you don't go to the functions?" She asked, pleasantly.
I gave up. "I don't really speak the language. I can barely understand my parents when I go visit them." Again, what am I saying? "It was nice to meet you! I will try to find a function!" Empty promises.
Literally, I was confused for about an hour after I talked to her. Why don't I go to functions? I feel mostly comfortable at functions with my sisters and my parents. When I hear Telegu, I listen in closely and feel like it's home. I smile and nod, like I understand all of the specific terms. It's amazing how much you can infer from context. I do struggle with some social mores, because as a divorced woman, I don't know how that might be received. I feel like I should wear a scarlet letter "D" sometimes when I'm talking to Indians.
So here's the truth. My culture is a part of me. Even if I can't make a proper Indian meal easily, even though I need a translator to tell my grandmother what I'm saying, even though I don't wear saris every day, I am Indian. I have the blood, I have the clothes, and I get the culture. I know Indian parents are overbearing, I know that there are places in India that have latrines in the ground, I know that cows roam the streets and everyone's fine with it, I even remember what it's like to ride in a rickshaw.
But...I'm also full-blooded Southern American. I get the accent, I know that the south tends to be slower, heavier, but there are some really healthy people and also some fast-paced businesses here. We love football. We love meat-and-threes. We love the heritage, we love tailgating, we love hunting, we love down-home country people, we are also really smart, and we appreciate great music. I can go on.
I think that I represent what's great about this country. I'm part of the great American melting pot. Sort of part of this country, yet part of another. And it makes me who I am. And it led me, oddly enough, to be adopted into the best family I could ever be a part of: Jesus' family. Sometimes I feel like a woman without a country, but the truth is that I'm part of several countries and that makes me magnificently blessed.
Even if I haven't been to an Indian function in Tuscaloosa.
No comments:
Post a Comment