Newer Horizons

A Little Backstory

It was hours after the sunset, too late for dinner, a little too early for bed my mother's month-long stay at the hospital derived a meaning. The clock struck nine. I, another fulled formed fetus claimed my spot on the 7 billion population count of India. Pretty uneventful for the rest of the population who sat under lighted lamps reading the Bhagavad Gita or the aunties clad in white sarees watching the latest episode of the trending soap opera where the defiant daughter-in-law plots to poison her Mother-in-law or the 10th standard students who lighted the midnight oil to uphold the prestige of the family with their staggering scores. I was born into a chaotic mixture of religion, skeptics and utter madness. It has taught me life's greatest lessons by only keen observance.

Within a few months of my birth, I was fortunate to fly to Thailand with my beloved parents to find myself in another land of exotics. Though my memory fails to remember the greatness of Thailand, the keen sense of smell and the love for litchis does me justice. A whiff of litchis sends me back to hazy memories of the triadic shaped houses and the sweet accent of my nanny. Hopefully one of these days it will trigger my memory of the language I had first learned. Thai.

As soon a school started, I along with my mother and my newly discovered brother moved to India. Being of an unusual height for my age and my freakishly long hair, every year of my LKG and UKG I was wrapped around in a red saree and given the Indian flag to hold. 'Bharat Matha' They told me I was representing the mother of India. I did not know the importance then, I wish I did.

Through first grade, till 5th I moved to the United States for the first time(note this point) I ought to say, this was truly my childhood. Days filled with pure joy. The innocence of being a kid is something that should be cherished. But I feel it all ended all too soon as I moved back to India in fifth grade. The huge textbooks and the impossible curvy letters of my native language frustrated me and took the childishness out of me. I soon became barren with the pressure to learn and score higher than everyone else in my class. My life became a war zone. There were enemies all around me. Taunting for the fact that I only spoke enough and nothing else. Scrutinizing me for the way I dressed avoiding traditional wear. Criticizing me for the love of western music. Telling me that I was an attention seeker for the way I winged my eyeliner against my fair skin. I could not, I did not learn to love the diversity in me as a young teenager in India. I felt that time would heal everything but it didn't rather it made me cover up the real 'me' inside of a cacoon and started forming an 'All Indian girl' inside of me. I grew my hair out, I learned to speak the native language. I stopped wining my eyeliner and I wore the colored churidhars my mother brought me which covered up my legs to the ankles and my hands to the elbows. I become another of the desi homely' girl to which the society and my noisy neighbors calmed down.

But even then I knew that something inside of me was missing and I had just created another human being whom the people around me wanted to see. I felt lonely, lost and simply not right. Because I had changed into someone I was not.