Rupa Gawle, NY
"You are going where?"
"To a club dad. I'll be home around 2:00. Don't wait up." My brother rushes out the door and slams it shut behind him. Thus slamming the door on a confused father who needed an explanation. I see the look of in my dad's eyes. It's filled with frustration and anger. He feels insulted. It wasn't meant to be this way though. I've been there, done that. I wish my brother had offered him an explanation. I wish I had once.
I was in the 9th grade when I moved to NY from Mumbai. I had just turned 14 and having never left Mumbai before for any reason it wasn't just the first trip outside of my comfort zone but my first time on a plane. It was 1986. The Big Apple. I remember it from the movies. Deep blue skies, skyscrapers that looked like glass towers touching it, long, long clean trains with doors, rows and rows of tree lined streets with perfect box houses and perfect picket fences, McDonald's where the uniformed nice man said, "Good morning. Can I help you?", cars all shiny and new lined up in queues on big highway roads. My dad had made my brother and I wear our best outfits. The ones we'd normally wear on Diwali or to a wedding. The clothes were uncomfortable for the entire ride but he had told us that we had to look our absolute best when we arrived in America and he had coached us for days on how to behave. We couldn't understand what the big deal was and he didn't explain. Thus started a decade of struggle to understand him and him never really understanding us.
Through high school it was an episode from the twilight zone in our house every day. I'd come home with a 96 on a test and it wasn't good enough because I didn't get a 100! I'd come home with a 100 and it wasn't good enough because I didn't work on the extra credit! I bagged the Catholic Teachers Association scholarship given to one kid in each high school but it wasn't good enough because it wasn't as much money as Mrs. Patel's son's scholarship! I missed salutatorian by .06% and so I had to go to graduation alone as a punishment for not doing well. #3 didn't count even if your class had 725 kids. Desires to go to the high school prom were met with a lecture of how it was a day for 'American kids' to spend money and get dressed up and do all kinds of hanky-panky!
But all the Indian kids in my class are going dad. "No" Can I get graduation pictures? "No, they are expensive. We don't need them!"
I couldn't get my Miss Congeniality award because I wasn't allowed to go to the dinner. It's for Americans.
I was constantly bombarded with conflicting messages and it's hard to decide which one is the correct one. At home we are taught that we must share everything and that I must always consider the welfare of the whole family and every decision that is made is made with the consent of everyone and involving everyone. Individuality isn't something taught in the Indian culture and everyone is encouraged to not be one but rather be part of the family unit. Individuality, I was taught, was selfishness. So I couldn't explain to my friend Marie why I couldn't get the graduation pictures even if I wanted to or why I had to wear the kind of clothes that my dad approved and I hated. It didn't matter that everyone made fun of the way I dressed at school. I couldn't explain to anyone why I wasn't allowed to wear lipstick at 16 even though the whole 11th grade was wearing it because I myself didn't understand why. So I learnt the art of being a chameleon. I wore lipstick at school but took it off when I came home. I bought some clothes on my own and hid them at the school locker so I could change into them when I got to school. I learned to lie. Something I hadn't done in 16 years of my life. My grandmother used to say that if you lie you will lose your tongue and you will never speak again. So each time I lied my tongue tingled a little and tasted rancid. But I became very good at it. It allowed me to go out with friends to movies and even Mike, the boy I had a crush on, started noticing me. And then I got caught. I got a spanking. I didn't make it to school for 3 days. I was a sinner now, doomed for hell.
It was 1989. The cold war had ended and the Berlin wall began to dissipate. Reagan was leaving and Bush was arriving. The Exxon Valdez ran aground and polluted much of Alaska. Rainman was the best picture. Wind beneath my wings by Bette Midler was the song of the year. The World Wrestling Federation declared that wrestling was fake. I'd been in the country for 3 years and I didn't know what the hell was happening in India. I had become American. I did the American thing. I moved out. Indians call it 'running away'. Whatever you call it, that is what I did. Thus leaving behind a big part of my identity, my father's daughter, behind. Only to come back to it 10 years later.
"What do you mean you don't live at home?"
"Where are your parents from? What do they do?"
"Bring your parents along next time you come please."
"Your parents are what? Divorced? Why?"
"I don't think I can come hang out today. Mom gets all upset when we go out. She's looking for guys for me and she told me it's better we didn't go out as much. She has some crazy idea you are bad influence."
By the end of 1991 I had run far away from the Indian community. Humiliated, angry and confused. It didn't want me and I didn't want it. I didn't want to have anything to do with Indians. I hated them...hated them...for alienating me, for making me feel like an outsider. Hated them for not accepting me as I am. I was nobody without a family.
I went on through college without looking the direction of anyone Indian. I didn't go to garbas. I didn't go to the temple. I didn't go to the Indian grocers. I didn't celebrate anything Indian. I didn't want to eat Indian food. I didn't want to make any Indian friends. I wanted to be as far away from India and anything Indian with all my might. I was American.
I met my high school friend Jigna again in 1994. She instantly grabbed me hugged me and proudly introduced me to all her family and friends. I felt a tingle in my heart. It was the first time I was subject to a group of Indian in several years. They were warm and kind and very sweet towards me. I suddenly felt uncomfortable and ashamed of the blond streaks in my hair, my navel ring showing and my torn, tight jeans. I suddenly felt Indian. Thus began my re-entry into my state of being Indian. She took me to family functions, weddings, shopping for Indian clothes, the temple, garba, Diwali celebrations and any possible Indian event going on. So I lost the streaks in my hair and even got my nose pierced. I started to love Indian food, watched Indian movies and all I listened to in the car was Indian music. Even Jigna got sick of me being "so damn Indian", she used to say!
Sometimes I think my brother has it easy. I had to pave the way for him. I had to be the rebellious kid and break my parents in so that now my father doesn't think twice about him having a cell phone or pager or getting his ears pierced or even dating. My brother gets away with murder, I think. But I'm happy to see that the struggle I went through with my father isn't the same struggle my brother is going through with him. Puberty is being openly accepted in his case in my father's house while when I was going through it, it wasn't even acknowledged. I also realize that a lot of his upbringing and raising up now has been left upto me. My father made me my brother's guardian and mentor by handing him over to me through some silent initiating ceremony.
I raise my brother differently, of course, than my father ever would. We had the safe sex talk when he went away to college. A topic my father wouldn't even fathom. My father was mortified, angry and embarrassed when he found condoms with my brother. I gave them to him. That was even worse. It was hard to explain to my father that I was trying to teach him right and not condoning sex. It was hard to explain to him that just because sex was never a topic or issue ever discussed at the dinner table didn't mean it didn't exist. It was hard to tell him that my brother who is entering adulthood needs to learn to be a responsible adult and his first responsibility is towards his health and safety. He has a girlfriend after all. I don't think my father completely understands but he does know that I love my brother and I will do what is best for him. So, he's left the topic alone. It's hard for him, I know. He never thought he'd see that day. We fought about it and argued and I tried to constructively explain it to him and in the end just left it. I've become a referee of sorts more than a mediator between my father and my brother. That's a good thing. That's progress.
The biggest factor I've learned over the years is communication. It's like drilling through iron. After doing it over and over again we end up making some kind of mark or dent and sometimes can even manage a hole. Often times our tools break down and we have to use new ones. It's the same in dealing with parents. You have to keep knocking when everything you do and say seems futile. You still keep trying to explain it to them. In time with enough precision bombing from our end and sometimes just out of sheer frustration, parents do given in. They may not always understand and I think that's fine. As long as they allow us the freedom to think and make our decisions individually. My moral to this story. Identity is something that isn't handed to you. You don't inherit values and morals from society as a whole or from your parents. You acquire your own, in time, through growing up. Identity is something that you find for yourself and it has nothing to do with the world around you. It has to do with how comfortable you are with yourself. So today I have no problem being the person that I am and I find that my comfort level with myself has everything to do with how the world perceives me. So if I'm confident regardless of which part of the world I am in, Indian or Western, I'm accepted.