There’s a story in my family, of my nanaji’s dadiji, or my grandfather on my mother’s side grandmother on his father’s side. She died, you see. There was mourning and grief, and then preparations for her to be cremated, but as she was being taken to be cremated, she woke up.
How does that work you ask, how does a dead woman come back to life, it obviously must be a myth, it must be a lie, it must it must it—
It wasn’t her time to die. Yama, the Hindu god of death, told her that he had picked the wrong person’s soul, and that it was another woman a few blocks down for whom it was time. And as recompense, he told her the exact date on which she would eventually die.
On that date she threw a party to celebrate her life, and after the party wound down, she died, exactly when she said she would.

Religion is weird for me. I believe in it, but I’ve also had ingrained into me a mindset that seeing is believing.
But I know that seeing isn’t believing all the time, that just because I can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s there, that reality isn’t always what we make of it, that…
That my angle is too American. That I’m not Hindu enough because a good Hindu child doesn’t need proof, is raised to believe. That my angle isn’t American enough because I can understand the politics, the language, the life, but I struggle with the culture, the attitude.
I’m not Indian enough and I’m not American enough. I know people rag on the whole stereotypical idea of Asian kids having to be a doctor, lawyer, or engineer, but it isn’t necessarily false. I’m the type of person who doesn’t want to be a doctor, doesn’t want to be an engineer, who isn’t sure what she wants to do. I’m the type of person whose dream is to be an author, but knows that it isn’t realistic and that she’ll still need a paying job. I’m the type of person whose family is rather conservative, and whose beliefs mean that I don’t always mesh with them.

Even though dozens of countries all thought of the same ideas, of deities controlling the skies and the waters and a king or queen to rule over them all, it’s not as common in America. Historically, even with different names it’s the same idea, the same concept.
Ra Surya Apollo Ameterasu Belenus Huitzilopochtli — Egyptian Hindu Greek Shinto Celtic Aztec

I like to think of this story when I start to doubt, when I start to wonder. Because I do believe in it. Because for me it’s proof and it’s enough. Or I think of Baba, who we visit whenever we go to India.

We call her Baba even though that’s traditionally a title for a male because she gets possessed by the monkey god Hanuman. It’s a very white way to phrase it but that’s how I can explain it. Hanuman speaks through her to give advice to people.
Most people would see this as a story. As something they would read about at bedtime, like Cinderella, or Snow White, or Aesop’s Fables, only I didn’t read that sort of stuff as a kid. I learned about Krishna and his adventures, of Ram, his wife Sita, and his brother Lakshman’s 14 year exile for Ayodhya by their father, the king.
I didn’t read bedtime stories about princes and princesses, about happily ever afters. I read about ancient wars and grudges, of gods coming down to Earth and their wrath unleashed upon the unworthy. I read about dharma, the righteous rules of war, and karma, which in the western world, is the idea that what goes around comes around again. 

How do I explain my childhood to people? How do I explain that without sounding nuts to the average person even though it’s totally normal to me? Other cultures have history in this country. Indigenous people, white people, black people, they all have a history in this country. I don’t.
I’m like a tree that’s been uprooted and replanted and I have to be the one to build my roots. It can be hard, and tiring. Not in blatant ways. In quiet, subtle ways, where I have to acknowledge that I’m a large minority in a lot of schools, that outside of my blatantly Asian middle school it can be hard to find people who understand my experiences as an Indian. It makes me treasure the Indian friends I do have all the more.
It can be weird when I identify with my own religion. I say things like “oh my gods” instead of “oh my god” and in the monotheistic culture that America is that’s seen as odd. I’ve spent years tamping down my automatic urge to say “oh my gods” because I know people will look at me weirdly.

For example, a few weeks ago, my mom went to India. My nanaji (grandfather) died a year ago and she had to return to finish the funeral proceedings. It was her and her two brothers, and one sister, and her niece, and my naniji (grandmother), and they all went together to Vrindavan. In Hindu culture, Vrindavan is a holy town. It is the town where Krishna, an incarnation of Vishnu, spent his childhood after being spirited away in secret from the dungeon of an evil king who was attempting to kill him. 

It’s always hard for me to explain this to people, to explain that we cremate, we don’t bury. To explain that Vrindavan isn’t just a myth to us, that Krishna was raised here thousands of years ago.

Even the language doesn’t make sense. For me, English is weird when it comes to names. Everyone is “grandmother” or “grandfather” or “aunt” or “uncle” and you can never actually tell who is who because everyone is called the same thing and if you have three uncles that’s okay because you don’t actually know whose side of the family they are from and

I get confused by it every once in a while because I’m used to denotations, to “nanaji” being my grandfather on my mother’s side and “dadaji” being my grandfather on my fathers side, and to “chachuji” being my dad’s brother and “mamaji” being my mom’s brother. I’m used to knowing exactly where on the family tree I am and in comparison English is just so…
Unwieldy. Messy.
But I can’t think or say it because that makes me un-american and I was born and raised here, I’m not supposed to be anything less than American. I’m supposed to identify with this country and be comfortable in it even when the little pieces of me stick out where they aren’t supposed to and poke holes in the perfect american archetype.

But I’ve also grown up in America. These moments, while pervasive at times, are also minimal. I have Indian family friends. I have Indian school friends. I’m on group chats, for when I need people to relate and talk to. They’re all out there, if I just reach out.
With them, I can tell them about India, and I don’t have to deal with the general view that people have of India—that it’s a poor country, that it’s overcrowded, that hundreds of girls disappear from the streets every year. They do. It’s not a lie.
But it’s also the place where I’ve spent most of my summers growing up. It’s the apartment building that my nanaji and naniji lived in for as long as I can remember, with the park inside the complex that my cousin and I once rescued a dying bird from. It’s the pink bathroom in that apartment in the ugliest shade of pink, and the obnoxious doorbell I secretly loved that started singing a Hindi bhajan whenever someone rang it. It’s the City Center Mall that we used to go shopping in with the best mango gelato I’ve ever tasted. It’s the terrifyingly loud traffic that would terrify any sane human that I’m used to and the ever-present hot, humid climate. It’s stuffing thirteen people into one riksha cart meant for five because no one really cares about things like seatbelts or how many people go in a car in Kolkata. It’s stumbling home in the pouring monsoon rain after a day out and taking pictures even while we’re soaked because we’re smiling too hard to stop.

I can’t explain that to people here as easily, just like I can’t explain America to my cousins who have grown up in India as easily. How do I tell my cousin about the train ride to school every morning on the clean Caltrain when he goes to boarding school? How do I tell him about going out with my friends to the theater, and writing essays for english instead of taking tests when his school has an entire week of strenuous final exams? How do I tell him about the volleyball team and skiing when his school has sports like fencing and cricket?

It’s all about separations, in a way. I’m a different person at school compared to when I’m at home. It doesn’t mean that they both aren’t me, it just means that there are some parts of me I can’t express as easily in certain settings. Even with people I trust and love, it isn’t easy when they can’t understand the little things, and my struggle to understand what being American is when I’ve grown up in an Indian household. Even the small things, like when I call salt “namak” because I’m used to talking in Hindi in the kitchen garner odd looks, questions, a need for me to translate myself. Just a small, little piece of me that doesn’t fit in one hundred percent.