Growing up as an Indian American has been quite an experience for me. I sometimes feel as if I don’t belong to either culture. From the outside if anyone looks at me, there is no difference between a student who recently moved from India versus me who was born in the United States to Indian parents. This has caused me to feel annoyed when people misinterpret my cultural identity. One place this has really caused a problem was in college. Since there are a great number of international students in universities, people often look at me and assume I’m from India. They don’t know I’m American until they hear my American accent or listen to me speak about my background.
At other times, for example when I grew up in Colorado, I was the only Indian, or even Asian person in the class. Luckily this wasn’t too much of an issue for me except for when I was used by the teacher as an example for when we talked about African American discrimination. The teacher would say something like it would be unfair if she was treated differently to facilitate the students’ understanding.
Another major issue is my name which is mispronounced the first time someone sees it. My parents chose to give me a Bengali name, Niharika which means nebula. Even worse, when calling attendance and there’s a long pause, I’m almost sure the teacher is stuck on my name, Niharika. What’s even more frustrating is that my name is spelt the way it sounds for the most part, Nee – ha – ree – ca. And I would be fine if certain vowels weren’t pronounced properly. But many people end up jumbling the letters which I suppose is understandable with a long name.
Also in school, American history was a prime subject. Teachers would often speak about how our great grandfathers fought in American wars. However, this wasn’t the case for me as my parents are 1st generation immigrants to the United States. I felt out of place in schools. Except for a part of second grade, I never learnt Asian history in school and often felt distant from my heritage.
Growing up as a second-generation American has also affected how I find friends. All of my parents’ friends for the most part come from Bengali communities. These communities were made up of people who were from the same part of India that my parents were from, West Bengal in northeast India. Sometimes these communities would also include people from Bangladesh since we speak the same language and are geographical neighbors. Bengali is one of the many languages spoken in India. I grew up always going to get togethers with Bengali society members. The only times we would have get togethers with non-Indian people were when my brother and I hosted birthday/graduation parties. But even then, my parents didn’t make too much effort to become close friends with our friends’ parents, except for a couple meaningful connections which developed over the years.
Recently my mom asked my where I’m thinking of making friends after graduation. She suggested that I could join the Bengali community in the city I end up moving to after graduation. But this got me thinking. I grew up not relying on the Bengali communities too much since I also made friends in school and was exposed to even more cultures in college. This made me feel uncertain about post-grad life in general since I will no longer have a community of school students to befriend. I suggested that I could become friends with my coworkers but what about more friends outside of school. So maybe a Bengali community would be a good place to start.
Even though I don’t focus on exclusively befriending other Indians and Indian-Americans like myself, I do find that having some Indian friends is nice. We can bond over our favorite childhood snacks such as Parle-G biscuits our parents would get us from the Indian store since we were young. We can also talk about Hindi movies. We even go to Indian Student Association (ISA) events together such as Garba and Holi where we also introduce our non-Indian friends to our culture and have a great time together.
While I had a somewhat confusing experience growing up, I have grown and developed as an individual with an appreciation for my roots as well as the country I grew up in. If I didn’t have these experiences, my perspective on life wouldn’t be quite the same.