Immigrants, We Get the Job Done?
I was thinking earlier today: it’s fundamentally messed up that I’m expected to care about India and respect Indian culture when I’m not Indian at all apart in appearance and even that’s debatable given how I dress. I’m an American citizen (and American voter) without an POI (person of Indian origin) card because I have zero desire to visit the subcontinent since there’s nothing for me there. I don’t speak any Indian languages, I don’t know how to cook Indian food, and I was raised and educated in the United States to the point I’ve spent a total of two months in India over the last 20 years. My parents grew up in India, I was born there, but we all got the hell out of dodge when I was a very small child because it metaphorically spit us out due to my parents’ marriage, and we never went back. For one thing, I can wear tank tops and shorts at home when it’s 90 degrees outside without getting yelled at, which is nice!
However, even in the United States, Indian-American communities are a cesspool of social conservatism and extreme conformity like there’s a reason that my parents actively disavow them and it’s not solely because they’re misanthropes (although that’s an element). Why should we adhere to the traditionalism and cultural elements that we intentionally and actively disavowed by moving 10,000 miles away from the ~old country~? Saris are really uncomfortable and I trip over my feet constantly when wearing them, Indian sweets are gross 95% of the time (although I love Indian savory food), and my parents and I are hardcore atheists who are extremely anti-Narendra Modi, and think of social rules as optional guidelines to be followed only when they’re not irrational, which of course, we determine for ourselves because we think of ourselves as very smart.
Like, we make intense and extensive political spreadsheets for fun, we teach ourselves quantum physics and differential equations and the Russian language (to read Anna Karenina in the original Russian obviously), we name our golden retriever after Thomas Hardy’s 1894 novel Jude the Obscure (see below).
When I was younger, I’d joke that my dad’s anxiety is about survival while my mom’s anxiety is about existence and I got lucky enough to inherit them both, and I wasn’t off base. I also think that one of my family’s collective flaws is that we all have an arrogance about our own intelligence and subsequently an instinctual disrespect for other people that I’ve at least attempted to unlearn but my parents have not. And I don’t know how I feel about it when it comes down to it.
For as long as I can remember, during any social event we had to attend, including like parents’ night at my school or work parties as well as family events during the few times we went to India, my dad would scope out a corner to stand in and mess around on his phone and I always joined him until we could leave. Even before we had Internet on our phones, my dad would play Snake or Minesweeper and I’d badger him to let me play, or I’d read the novel I always kept with me. I mean, these pictures were taken in Chennai in 2016, when I was in college, since my parents and I were not fans of whatever 100-person function was happening around us hence why we found corners to sit in and ignore slash judge everybody else.
Actually, now that I think about it, this may not be Indian or Indian-American and may just be my parents and I being extremely exclusionary and not letting anybody else into our trio. Like, there’s a reason I’ve always kept boyfriends, including the ones I really liked, away from my parents, and it’s because I don’t want to bother letting anybody into our circle unless it’s forever, and my parents tacitly understand that too even if they might grumble here and there.
But yeah, unlike the 72% of Indian-Americans who voted for Joe Biden in 2020, I’ve always believed that my parents don’t vote Democrat because the Republicans are racist/anti-immigrant, which impact all Indian-Americans, they vote Democrat first and foremost because Republicans are anti-choice and anti-LGBTQ, and my parents are very pro-abortion and supportive of the LGBTQ community, which most Indian-Americans decidedly are not. Like, when we lived in Texas circa 9/11, our good friends were a gay couple who weren’t even publicly out since it was 2001 in suburban Dallas but my parents, who were fresh off the boat from India which literally criminalized being gay back then, just didn’t care one way or another then or now. And honestly, I low key don’t know how much of this is my parents being accepting to marginalized groups because it’s the right thing to do, and how much of all this is my parents transferring the “dumb social rules are actually optional guidelines” mentality onto everybody else in the world and raising a metaphorical middle finger to rules they don’t agree with.
Anyways, yesterday, my college friends and I visited our old, dear friend who just had a baby and I love them all and our friend’s tiny, little baby (aka The Unit) so much. Look how beautiful she is!! It was just really lovely to see people who loved me when I was a girl, half savage and hardy, and free, back when I resided in the weeds, long before I learned civility, when I used to scream ferociously, anytime I wanted. Or something like that.