Is it the “me” who learnt every word of the French national anthem before the Indian? Or maybe the one who would choose a good "tair saadam" (curd rice) or “rasam” and rice as my comfort food?
Confused as yet? So am I. But I’ll try to explain.
Sometimes I feel like I'm just there: an annoying pebble in the boot kind of there. It's a feeling that's hard to shake off, like bruises on my skin. Not a wound that cuts through skin and bleeds and makes itself felt, but the tiny throbbing bruise that is only felt when pressed. The purplish ochre stains take weeks to fade, and so does this feeling. It's like you're on the edge, your toes caressing the line that you can't make yourself cross. And so you stand there, outside looking in at life. Like you came too late and couldn't buy a ticket and so you're an observer from all the way at the gates.
Except how do you miss a ticket to life when you're a:
living (ha),
breathing (smog),
human (we like to think so don't we?)
being.
That’s what I feel like. I’ve missed some crucial information about life, on how to figure out who I am. It’s like a game of catch up all the time. My country today is a place where only being of a certain religion and caste is properly accepted. Diversity has taken a backseat. It’s a strange space for someone like me. But what’s funny is that it was never a comfortable space to begin with.
I guess it all starts with my family, and while Freud smiles on, no one can deny that that is where it all begins always.
The history of my family is like a blanket,
made of a
thin,
fine
material.
Completely see through.
The blanket covers me,
creates a lens through which
the world sees me
and I see the world.
But what it is exactly, I think I’ll never know.
All my life I have had this feeling of in-betweenness, the sense of not belonging in any one space. It’s like being invited to every group but never really being a part of or accepted in any. I think the only thing I’ve known are grey areas, or these places I don’t feel like I quite belong.
Piecing these parts together my whole life was impossible. How do you mix oil and water? Catch a wave upon the sand? I don’t feel as dramatic as the Sound of Music song, but as a seven year old I could actually relate to the trouble the nuns had understanding who Maria was supposed to be. Can I be a moonbeam that can be caught in the hand? Because “it takes a lot to wrest identity out of nothing” and I don’t have much to go off on, or perhaps it’s such a confused space it doesn’t feel clear.
Krishnamurti said, “You might think you're thinking you're own thoughts. You're not. You're thinking your cultures thoughts.” But if my own culture’s thoughts aren’t clear or in any way binary, what are they? And are they enough for me to be creating my own identity?