Beginnings

I travel to India, my mother (and father)-land, as a strange in-between traveler. On the one hand, I look like I belong in India. My coloring finally seems legitimate in the subcontinent; I actually blend in the crowd. When walking around with my family, vendors, taxi-drivers, and other locals easily strike up conversations with me in Hindi. Shouldn’t the brown girl know her language? But the second I open my mouth, they know. As I convey my ideas in broken Hindi, they suddenly realize I’m not truly “Indian.” I wonder whether white Americans feel this same sense of displacement when they travel to their respective motherlands in Europe. Somehow, I feel that this sensation of displaced belongingness is not so striking for these travelers. Europeans dispersed themselves around the globe so wholly in the colonial period that they can grow up essentially anywhere in the Global North, and foreigners will not think it strange. Asian Americans, Asian Australians, and Asians born and raised anywhere outside their “motherlands” are inevitably posed the question: “So, where are you from…originally?” So I travel to India with this very mixed sense of identity.

               Coming to Mumbai, my head just about explodes from the commotion all around me. First of all, the constant hustle and bustle of Indian apartment family life. The bustle starts at 5:30 AM, when my grandmother rises, heads over to the television set, and watches a religious talk program for an hour before migrating over to the kitchen to begin the morning cooking, always a task. Because my grandmother is loathe to leave food as leftovers, every day’s food is made afresh.

               By 7, the household’s wide awake and readying for the day. My cousin leaves for her college at 7:30 AM! That’s not it, though. All day, the doorbell constantly sounds, and the phone constantly rings as people unabashedly intrude on each other’s lives. The coconut-vendor sells coconut water to us at the door, a car-washer comes to collect our keys to clean the inside of the car, neighbors drop by to chat, men come by with official papers to deliver to my uncle…the stream never seems to end!

               There really isn’t any sense of privacy in the apartment—flat, that is—as there isn’t enough space to allow one to deem a portion exclusively one’s own. Everybody shares bedrooms, drawers, closets, secrets. Everything is laid out in the open, take-it-or-leave-it style.

               Outside, the commotion is magnified by a factor of four. Vendors set up bundles of stalls on the street, selling everything from juice to balloons to pav bhajji (delicious Bombay street food). Shoe cobblers sit outside on tarps, hammering cheap shoes together or fixing damaged, store-bought shoes. They work with a swift concentration, moving from project to project efficiently and without fuss. Schoolchildren decked out in various uniforms hustle through the crowds, the younger ones clutching the hands of their “bai” or nanny.

               The streets of Mumbai are dusty, crowded, and overwhelming, but I prefer them to the cloistered protectionism of middle-class Indian family apartment complexes. These complexes are always gated communities, with watchmen standing guard at every entrance to make sure no riffraff wander into the colonies. Car activity is strictly monitored, and life is very contained. There seems to be a sense of forced middle-class privilege enjoyed by the residents with their big apartment TVs and their well-furnished homes. Yet there is still a sense of something missing. My cousin sometimes complains to me about the monotony of her life here, the lack of excitement or “masala.” I think to myself, but what of the excitement that surrounds you every day in this city? Yet they are too far removed and sheltered from this environment, and what’s more, they prefer it that way. They would like to live in the sort of environment I live in, where everyday life in America is structured and safe, with its fun activities for residents (ice-skating, amusement parks and the like). I would prefer to be in the heart of the excitement in Mumbai, but I feel that for the most parts, my accounts will be that of a privileged Indian traveling “respectably” through the country. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

My sister, cousin, and I outside the Vasant Oscar apartment complex. Note the guard in the back.