“The Same but Different” : Life as an Indian American in India
By Shilpa Roy
Photo courtesy of the author.
“Look, she snagged herself a foreigner,” a man snarled disparagingly in Hindi as I hurriedly strode past him and countless others across a densely crowded train station one afternoon during rush hour in Mumbai several years ago while hand-in-hand with my (now ex) boyfriend at the time: a wiry, white New Zealand native with whom I truly felt at home in a country in which I felt out of place but was presumed to be a denizen, and who struggled to match my pace as I decisively hurtled toward the exit of the station in a determined haste to escape any possibility of prolonged confinement within the chaotic crowd and the equally oppressive heat of the afternoon to the shade and solace of our final destination (I don’t remember what our destination happened to be at the time, but it no doubt featured air conditioning and shelter – shelter from sunlight, and shelter from the gaze of strange, presumptuous men). My pace hastened as acute but familiar jolts of indignation coursed through my veins. This was not the first or last time that I—an American who was born in Texas to Indian immigrants and never regarded the fact that I was Indian American as much more than merely an objective fact—had encountered the assumption that I was a denizen of a country and participant of a culture in which I had always felt out of place when I lived in Mumbai as an international medical student.
Among the most memorable occasions in which a cultural misunderstanding occurred was when I left my textbook open during my biochemistry class one day and was stunned when the professor abruptly interrupted her lecture to yell “Who has their book open?” with a punitive tone I found inappropriate for addressing fellow adults. Silence enveloped the classroom as I looked up from my text to be met with stares from my fellow classmates and a contemptuous glare from my professor. I immediately closed my text, hoping this gesture was sufficient to rectify the offense I had inadvertently committed only to be met with repeated demands to leave the classroom as she pointed to the door. Speechless, I quietly complied with what seemed to be straightforward demands. When I returned for the physiology lecture that followed, my fellow classmates bombarded me with the following exclamations:
“Why did you leave the class?”
“She hates you now and will fail you during exams! You shouldn’t have left! What were you thinking?”
“You should have kept asking her to allow you to remain for the lecture!”
When I approached the professor during our lab to apologize and explain the misunderstanding, I was instantly dismissed with a scoff and roll of narrowed eyes as she walked away before I had a chance to finish my sentence. The anxiety that steeply escalated with my discovery of each faux pas I made that day progressed to a blinding, heart-racing panic after this rejection, disorienting me as I continued my experiment, and culminating in tears when the dreaded moment in which she had to approve my calculations before I left the lab had finally come: “This girl is terrible. She never listens”, her tongue clicked with disapproval as she nodded in my direction while addressing the assistant professors standing beside her.
I resented being told where I do belong as much as being told where I don't belong. In India, I was almost consistently presumed an Indian citizen until my neutral American accent gave me away. I would be subjected to similar presumptions from non-Indians, who would assume I was an Indian citizen before I revealed myself to be American. My occupation of a complex identity that subverts expectations across Indian and non-Indian populations internationally has resulted in a similarly complex relationship with the concepts of “foreignness” and belonging. I often found myself burdened by additional expectations of Indian cultural fluency from mainland Indians despite awareness of the fact that I’m American and frustrated by the universal implicit associations made between whiteness and citizenship in a western country. I'm grateful for the richness and gift of observation my unique position confers.
Shilpa Roy is a Houston native born to Bengali parents. Her father is from Mumbai, and her mother is from Indore. Her decision to study medicine in Mumbai specifically was one made under duress, and she has since left the program for a number of reasons that will not be mentioned here. She is currently a post-baccalaureate student at the University of Houston with plans to pursue doctoral work.