“So where are you sending Kumud for college?” My uncle asked my parents.
“She will be going to California to study,” My dad replied with pride.
“But it’s a whole new place filled with different kinds of people, isn’t she a bit too young to go on her own?”. Isn’t undergraduate education way too expensive abroad?”
“The culture is different, she’ll probably lose her identity and go out of control."
“Are you sure you are making the right decision?"
In today’s digital age, technology spreads its wings and connects people across the globe, enabling not only a widespread but instantaneous cultural exchange all over. Many people are inspired to step out of the small world that they have known their entire lives, go and see the world and experience the abundance it has to offer.
Compared to a decade or two ago, a lot more students from developing nations are moving away from their home countries to developed nations like the United States or the United Kingdom to explore their futures here. In order to find my passion, I decided to move 10,000 miles away from home and from my loved ones. As much as people want to start afresh, it is hard trying to cope with a new life in a new place.
In the beginning of my time here in Davis, I was so constantly attached to my life back home that I was always engrossed in my phone, never really went anywhere or did anything new. Because of my deep accent, a lot of people found it hard to understand what I was saying.
It hit me hard when it was “Qumub” on my coffee cup instead of Kumud. Being a vegetarian, there weren’t many choices for me to choose from in terms of food. I missed my friends and my food back home. I used to be a very shy person, afraid of taking risks. I wasn’t very independent. But things started changing once I made friends.
My best friend Suraj, went through some of the things that I was going through. He showed me that “fitting in” didn’t mean that people must lose their identity. I developed a slightly different accent which helped me communicate better with people here.
However, when I called someone back home, I made sure that I stuck to my original accent. Back in India, at least at home and in high school, people often considered that if someone went abroad and returned with an accent, they were showing off.
This perception prevails in our society because many people just visit the United States for short vacation and just to sound “cool” in front of their colleagues and peers, they put on this fake drag. So I kept my developing accent on the down-low back whenever I communicated with people from back home. Retaining my original accent made me happy that I wasn’t an outsider in my own home country.
Switching between accents is just one small step in making that transition into a bicultural life. Adopting the way people dress and act according to the place you are in is equally as important. Many international students often come from very conservative backgrounds.
Due to social norms, or unsafe backgrounds, many students, especially girls, feel the need to break free from the “chains of confinement”. Wear the kinds of clothes they want without being judged, or just do things without having the evergreen “log kya kahenge” (which means what will people say”) riding upon their heads.
Parents send their kids abroad, with the hope that they gain global exposure but at the same time expect them to remain the same kid they were back home. Due to the fact that their parents can see what they are doing, people do often make sure that appropriate pictures are posted online, as many parents follow them on social media.
Or they change the way they talk or act in front of them, in fear of losing them. But I feel that happens due to a communication gap that existed between parents and their kids prior to them moving away. My parents and I have always been pretty open about things, so when I started experiencing my first taste of independence, though there were some misunderstandings, they knew about my transformation.
I was more of a tom-boy, who never really cared about the way I looked. However, after coming here, one could say I bloomed from a bud to a lotus. This is an ironic because my name means pink lotus.
These transitions are easier for international students when they have a support system encouraging them from back home. I was very lucky because my parents were very supportive of my changes. My parents have wanted me to see the world from a very young age. I can definitely say that the experiences from my travel have enriched my outlook to life, and have made this transition incredibly worthwhile.
Coming here to Davis, meeting people of different ethnicities and nationalities has reinforced my values of something called “Vasudeva kutumbakam”.
“Vasudeva kutumbakam” means that the whole world is one family, thereby there lies the need to respect differences in worldly views. These interactions have helped me to consciously not place people into categories, but to accept them for who they are and take the best they have to offer.
This made me understand the need to maintain a bicultural personality and become a global citizen.
