Holding Back

Reading Time: 6 minutes

Conceptualized November 30, 2018

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I hate being the target of assumptions.

I hate walking into a room feeling stuck in a mold that was imposed upon me by others. 

Growing up, I would vow before each trip to Chennai that things would finally be different. I would speak up. I would face my grandmother and say, “Pati, nee eppadi irruken?”, and not the safe and comfortable “How are you?”  

But as soon as our plane hit the tarmac in Chennai, the humidity would blast me and a frog would nestle in my throat. I would subconsciously tuck behind my Dad as if his presence would help me disappear for the next three weeks… 

We would walk out into the open, luggage in tow, with a million eyeballs facing us as we tried to find our familiar faces. Uncles and aunts would be there, but my tongue would stay still. I felt embarrassed to speak in English, so I would just smile and hesitantly laugh at every word my relatives spoke to me. 

Every time they turned to my Dad, they spoke in Tamil. My ears would tune in, just in case one of my uncles threw in a joke along with a head shake, a hand wave, and loud clap. I would try to laugh as hard as I could just so they would know I understood. But when their eyes landed on me—-in the rare moments after the meet and greet—it would be a simple question, and it was always in English. 

Those trips to India left me exhausted, ashamed, and embarrassed. Meeting extended relatives brought on anxiety more than anything, and the pressure to be Indian, when I was obviously not (at least in their eyes) made things more confusing than I could handle. 

The last time I went to India, it was four years ago, a few months before embarking on my PhD journey. It was one of those trips I went in saying things would be different. This time, I would try.

But the three weeks I spent in a homeland that felt foreign took an opposite turn. I was battling an eating disorder, and on top of trying to cover up my shame of not being able to speak Tamil fluently and confidently, I felt overwhelmed with the food I was trying so hard to avoid. Instead of drinking chai and indulging in sweets, I locked myself in the bathroom and cried. 

4 years later, and I am still at a crossroads with my mother tongue. 

At least my dad had a choice. He grew up in a large family, interactions abound. He may have fallen in love with the American radio shows and Western movies his eyes laid upon as a boy, but despite making the move to America and actively choosing to live a new life, assimilate into a new culture, and allowing his accent to fade away, he still managed to have no problem with coming back. 

But I was born into a world I had no decision in wanting to be a part of. No one asked me if I wanted to be an ABCD—an American-Born Confused Desi .  

When it came time for me to formally learn a second language, I was in high school. Though when I walked in on the first day of class, I was already put into a stereotype: in the eye of my German teacher of Chinese-origin, I was the studious, quiet Indian girl who probably spoke Hindi at home and was going to ace his class and add German to my language repertoire because I study all the time. 

He got the quiet part right, and to a certain extent, I picked up German—-the passive way of course. In my four years of high school, I was “Inge” every minute I was in his classroom (we had to pick German names for us to use on our first day), and while the first 3 years were fun, I still could not build up the courage to speak the language and build oral fluency. I did what was mandatory in class, but I had no desire to build upon the language outside of class. Especially when I developed depression in my senior year—-speaking fluent German was far from my priorities when I was face down on the kitchen floor sobbing every night, facing an existential crisis at only 17. 

I’ve made attempts after each trip—with recent memories of time spent with family still fresh in my mind. This would be enough to motivate me to dust off the number of Tamil learning books I accumulated over the years. I’d bring up my desire to start practicing to my Dad, and we’d hold a few short conversations here and there over the phone, but I found myself losing patience and steering back to English.

Because it was comfortable, and provided me with the words necessary to express myself.

If I was too exhausted after a long work day, depressed by an emotionally traumatic event or angered by someone and needed to vent, my basic vocabulary in Tamil was not enough for me to get my emotions out. It would be a battle of frustration just to find the words…and that would only add to the negative feelings I harbored at the moment.

As a student in the last stages of her PhD, change is hitting me from all angles. As with all transitional points that have occurred in my life so far, I have a deep, intrinsic feeling that my next chapter waits for me beyond the abnormally sunny skies of LA. As people get older, nature usually kicks in—people want to settle, find comfort, and engross themselves into a routine that they can rely on for years.

But I am a person who can’t be static. I want to explore the world, live in different countries, and be a “global citizen“.

I just feel guilty for not being fluent in the language of my heritage 😞.

This will continue to be my internal battle until I am able to truly decide if this is what I need to feel like I “belong”, and if so, I will need to fiercely prioritize my time with the language. I oftentimes feel frustrated because looking to the past, my parents could have made it their duty to make sure my sister and I spoke Tamil fluently. I could have been more adamant to learn when I was younger. I could have tried this, done that, used this, read that…

One thing I try to emphasize to myself is that my lack of fluency doesn’t make me any less “desi”. Most of the time, it certainly feels like it does, but in all other aspects of my culture—my Hindu faith, my awareness of basic customs, my observance of societal “rules” when visiting Chennai—I’m as desi as can be.

One of these days, my daydreams to communicate effortlessly with extended relatives will become a reality.

Hopefully as I grow older and wiser, my confidence with Tamil will grow with me.

Hopefully the frog in my throat will find a new place to haunt, and I’ll be comfortable enough to express myself in the words of my ancestors.