My Struggles with Identity: Accepting Being Mixed Race in My Twenties

When I was younger, my identity was something I never thought twice about. I knew
my dad was English and my mum was Indian. I knew my grandma lived with us while
my Dida was in Kolkata. I knew I would spend time in Gloucester and go away at
Easter or in the summer to Kolkata. I knew that Christmas and Diwali were equally
important.

But as I got older, that certainty began to shift. Instead of mentioning my Indian mum
as a simple fact, I found myself second-guessing whether to admit it to my white
friends, while feeling I had to defend my ‘Indianness’ to my Indian friends.
I always thought the phrase “too brown to be English but too white to be Indian” was
a stereotype, something I would never relate to.

But then I started to experience it.

I was too culturally Indian to fully understand my white friends’ home lives, yet the
name “Alexandra Ellard” led many to assume I was “white-washed.” My white father,
my white name, and my lighter skin all seemed, to them, proof that I knew nothing of
my Indian heritage. They had no idea about the “Rishosree Lahiri” that completes my
full name.

Looking at my cousins, who share the same heritage but are naturally darker and
more visibly Indian, created another layer of internal conflict. I was the one who knew
Bengali. I was the one who regularly went to Kolkata. Yet if you picked us out of a
lineup, they would be chosen first as “Indian,” while I might come fifth on a sunny
day.

My mum couldn’t understand why I so desperately wanted to look more Indian. She
loved my pale skin and lighter brown eyes, even calling me “Pharsha,” meaning fair,
a nickname she adored. She never understood why I wanted to tan. My dad,
meanwhile, had always simply seen me as both, fully English and fully Indian, and
had never realised the extent of my internal struggles with race.
It was something neither of my parents could fully understand. Their attempts to do
so never quite reached the heart of it.

My first experience with racism only deepened the confusion. Suddenly, how I was
seen by others became impossible to ignore. It was a strange feeling, realising I
wasn’t as “white” as I had perhaps felt. The incident itself was almost absurd. Three
older men joked that my cello was a bomb and insinuated I was going to attack
Gloucester Quays. But once the shock wore off, it left behind a new insecurity.
What unsettled me most was that all the racism I experienced came from being
mistaken for something else. People assumed I was Middle Eastern, South
American, or Muslim, but never Indian. I realised I was visibly “ethnic,” but not

recognisably so. I looked like neither side of my heritage in a way that others could
easily identify.

As I grew older, I tried to shed the constant insecurity surrounding my ethnicity. I
surrounded myself with people from a wide range of backgrounds and began to
understand something important. No one feels completely secure in their identity.
The confidence I had once assumed other brown girls possessed often was not
there. Many were navigating their own struggles, being children of immigrants,
balancing multiple cultures, existing between identities.
It wasn’t until my most recent trip to Kolkata after six years that something finally
shifted.

I had expected to stand out immediately, to be met with stares or whispers. But when
I arrived, nothing happened. I waited a day. Still nothing. I went out, walked around,
shopped and still nothing.

Then, eventually, the moment came. A woman asked if I was Indian. I replied, “Yes,
well, half. I’m also half white.” She simply nodded and said she could tell.
That was it. No suspicion, no interrogation, no need to prove anything.

She was right. I am half Indian and half English, completely and equally both. I don’t
need to choose between them or perform one side to satisfy the other. I don’t need
approval.

I am both, fully. And that is enough.

• Experiences
• identity
• life
• mixed-race
• race