Identity would be an easy word to spell and pronounce but it is definitely not easy to put a particular meaning to. Identityless is however, not a word no matter how much I would like it to be. That's what I consider myself sometimes. I would try not going into the specifics because giving out vital details of your life on the internet is not a very clever idea given the increase in number of perverts and idiots in the last ummm , well they have been inhabiting our planet for a long time, I am afraid. So I belong to a certain little village in a far away place, much much farther than where I was brought up.I, for the reasons of solidarity between all the states in my country, wanted to call myself a true Indian ,when I was growing up so that none of my mother-places feel bad. I am, by the way, awesome at using non-existing-hyphenated words, if you have not already noticed it .
Taking a break from the previous stanza because I noticed my thoughts were feeling quite stuffy up there, I start with a new paragraph but the same story, yeah so growing up in a place which consists of a lot (loooooooooooot, this is called exaggeration, please do not count the o's) of people who do not understand my mother tongue and I did not understand theirs so it was like making sambhar ( some dal, only tangier ) with garam masala ( hot spices?? ). Ah, there goes the first hint of my whereabouts to the 'perverts and idiots'! The only language I could use to communicate was unknown to me and which is still quite out of my grasp : English ( I am kidding, I have a verbal score of 700 in GRE and I also take pride in my modesty). Instead, I started using hand and face gestures in Kindergarten to communicate and now have become one of the best classical dancers.( hah!) I managed to reach first grade with a little knowledge of English, a PhD in sign language and buckets of confidence; well how I acquired that confidence is known to only a star named Mars ( yeah my little 5 year old brain full of irony named that star). Mars and I talked a lot, he would twinkle and I would understand and vice verse.
First grade in this unknown place made me realize that our planet is filled with touch-me-nots and I was born to touch all of them ( I meant the grass, you perverts). And that the next year I would be accompanied by a creature called my brother, to school. He is brighter than me though, because he believed in walking on the walls on the way to school while I carried his schoolbag and looked like a coolie ( porter with that red dress?). Okay now I think I have substantially digressed from being identityless. I like digressing. Second grade made me familiar with the music of this place which would be played in a near by temple and would wake all mortal things up. Surprisingly I did not hate it and loved to waking up to its beautiful renditions. That was the first sign for me that may be I like this place more than I thought.
To love a place is to love its people and I have lived by that quote word to word and also because the quote is by me. I like inventing random quotes to suite my mood for example : where there is a will, there is a bed to sleep. I loved and cherished my friends who were mostly from this new place. OK let me call this new place, my second home; A and its natives, Apeeps. My parents' place is to be named B and people from there are called Blog.( log is people in Hindi, did you notice what I did there? no? ) My friends from A taught me their music,fed me with their food, laughed at my B-accented speaking of language A and most importantly opened their arms to include me in. I loved everything about A, its local trains, crowded stores, scorching heat and most importantly the beaches. As soon as I got intimate with all of the above, bang! my father had to move to a whole another place. Did I fit in there? NO. But Mars and I made new friends even there and as soon as my little heart started loving this whole new awesome bhangra-crazy place ( yeah yeah its Punjab, I am tired of naming places now), I had to move back to A!
I came back to my beloved A with Punjabi music, little English and no friends.Did I fit it? NO. It took time and slowly I made a new set of awesome Apeeps friends all over again. All of them largehearted and crazy enough to give me their lunch and smile at my B-as well as-Punjabi-accented A. I learnt more about their music, culture and more importantly the place. I was in love with it and I never ever wanted to leave it again. God ( I am guessing its him and he IS crazy ) listened to me and put me in A land for 4 more years. More to learn and more to love!
Did I fit in? Hell NO. I remained a B girl with a weird set of A friends. A peeps did not understand how I could be friends with A ones so easily and B ones just plain did not consider me one of them for the same reason. In all this I forgot to mention my yearly visits to B land which are one of the happiest memories of my life so far, consisting of my brother, my adorable cousins, my precious grandparents and my little village :). In my heart I belonged to A as much as to B. One by birth and one by growth. ( Kinda like Krishna and his mothers Devaki and Yashoda, so does that mean I am God? yeah most probably I am ). I did not understand this eye brow-raising behavior of people, some did not accept me, some rejected me solely based on the nature of my eccentric 'citizenship'. Some laughed at my horrible knowledge of A lingo and some called me bloody B-lander. I did not understand why they would segregate me when I love A land so much, when I vouch by their food, music, traditions etc etc. B-log on the other hand did not speak to me much because I was not hanging out with them and not speaking B language enough. Well to add to this, I am a total recluse and mingle with only fellow weirdos. So my abilities to make new friends are similar to me eating a bitter gourd ( highly implausible, marginal, lilliputian and indigestible). This did not help with bridging gaps between A and B as I did not possess equal number of friends from both lands.( However, I was looked upon with kind and accepting eyes by the opposite sex from both the regions and needless to mention ,by no fault of my eternal beauty ,grace and total hotness. They just liked me!)
Fighting all the allegations of not knowing 'anything' about A land just because I was from B and not knowing their language and not having their 'ethics', I still made myself constantly believe that they just don't understand. I AM one of them. How could I not be?! I love the people and the place sometimes more than my own birth place. How could they keep putting me in the same group of some B-log who hate the place A just because it is hot and a tad bit conservative. I loved its heat and I loved all things conservative about this place! At the same time, when ever rarely, I could be made to feel as one of the Apeeps, I would be asked by them,how can Blog be so morally 'loose' and why is their English accent funny? How would I know?? I did not possess anything 'loose' and I for sure did not have any 'funny' accent! It was and it has been thus far, a constant fight of belonging-ness.
I officially do not belong to either A or B or any other alphabet in my nation because I realized that the boundaries set by people for others are sometimes so rigid that they are bounded forever in them, themselves. ( Its a boundary value problem, yes! my fellow mathematician geeks can be proud of me now ). I do not adhere to any set ideology of any particular place and I do not venture into issues that involve throwing stones at other cultures and making their own look like set in heaven.I do not believe in belonging to anywhere, to any language,to any culture anymore and I could not be happier with the truce inside of me.I guess, it is the right thing to do.
I remain stateless and identityless.
To sum it up even more and drive the point home, here's something that helps:
And underneath it all, there remained an ever-present anger and hurt, the feeling of belonging nowhere that comes to people who belong everywhere.
- White Teeth by Zadie Smith
PS : I will write a part 2 when I feel like it.
