August 2003

'me in kuwait'

I am an Indian...or so my passport says. I was born in a large Indian
city. My mother who was married less than a year then wanted to raise me
there for sentimental reasons, but my father landed a job in Kuwait,
which as far as my mother was concerned, was many planets away.

I do not remember much of my first few years in Kuwait- only flashes
of color, and faces of random people that pulled my cheeks. But one
thing I do remember was that we were taught to fear Arab children. As
kids, all of us were unruly, always had hair that was combed once in
the morning and left to take many forms of untidy over the day, almost
always had a piece of candy we bought from the bakala (the grocery
store), and sticky faces from the dry heat that Kuwaiti evenings
offered. The Arab children looked just as unruly and brown as us with
the only difference being their footballs instead of our cricket bats.
But our parents viewed their unruliness as different from ours. As my
dad once put it, "They are MORE unruly!"

When parents are forced to pry their children from their natural
habitats into large foreign lands with strange people, they feel
forced to severely preserve their own culture in their children. As a
result, I was put in The Kuwait Indian School, had only Indian friends
(well, one Pakistani friend in my building - but she stole my Barbie's
shimmer evening gown and gave her a bikini instead. Her brother kept
flipping his eyelids inside out just to see me run terrified.), went
only to Indian cultural events, ate only Indian food, and was taught
to sing only Indian devotional songs. But what my parents did not
realize was that there existed a whole different culture, language,
and way of life on their daughter's way back home. Everyday she was
exposed to two recitals from the Quran from 6 different mosques
-played on loudspeakers, she was exposed to broken conversation with
the Arabic Bakala owner who had all the candy, and she was exposed to
women in tight black scarves or full head dresses. Most of all, she
was exposed to a plethora of questions that began with 'why?' .

We were growing and so was media. By the time we moved to Abudhabi,
the next Arabic city my father was transferred to, everyone had cable
television. Star TV revolutionized pre-teen life by replacing our few
evening cartoons with American shows featuring extremely pretty women
and temptingly delicious men. So now I was an Indian adapting to a new
Arabic country while desperately trying to emulate an American way of
life . My parents still insisted on regular cultural training- like I
was forced to wear a bindi ( a dot on the forehead) and my elaborate
gold earrings wherever I went. This seriously undermined my desire to
be a bindi-free American woman, and I consoled myself by watching the
Little Mermaid over and over again.

Cultural divides were so deep that when we passed a Pakistani or an
Arabic school bus on our way back home, a kid in their bus would spit
on our window, and a kid in ours would spit at their window. I don't
think any of us understood why. But my curiosity was slowly
overwhelming my desire to keep my head straight and ignore the white
gob of spit oozing outside my window. I remember examining the ooze
once. Maybe we didn't like them because they ate something gross.

My parents decided that it was time for their eldest daughter to be
shipped back to her homeland to finish her education. So I was flown
to India. The more time I spent there, the more I missed my weird Arab
neighbors. Atleast there I knew who to avoid. Here, everybody looked
the same, and my dad was wrong. I saw new levels of unruliness that he
obviously missed while growing up. I did not feel like an Indian. I
had been exposed to a very different culture despite my parents' many
efforts to protect me from it, and this was proving to be such a
lonely experience. Nobody understood my jokes, no one had watched
Beverly Hills 90210, everyone was jealous of my creamy kraft-cheese
and bread lunch, and they all thought I was rich and spoilt just
because I came from 'foreign'.
Eventually I learnt to leave my Kraft cheese at home, stop talking
about Luke Perry, and dress up to look poorer. I made a lot of friends
but was more confused than ever.

Two years ago I moved to the United States. I met Pakistanis, Arabs, and
Americans. And no one spat at each other. This was great! A lot of
freedom and a wide palette of friends made me slowly discover that I
belonged to an entirely different culture. I understood myself a
little better now. I wasn't very Indian, I wasn't very Arabic, and was
too much of both to be very American. I like boys, but do not
understand casual dating. I pray my prayers, but I do them in a
church. I grew up a vegetarian Hindu but find myself saying
"Medium-well" at a steak house. I date a Pakistani.

I might be confused, but am learning to accept that too. And I gave up
the bindi somewhere along the way, but still wear the earrings.

~ Aruna