Growing up in a small southern town and being ethnically diverse was hard, to say the least. My mother is from India and my father is American.
In the small South Carolinian town I grew up in there was no Indian community that my family was aware of. There was only one Indian restaurant and there were no Asian markets to buy spices or ingredients for our favorite food dishes. Before we would have to stock up on ingredients and spices whenever we visited my grandmother in Atlanta which is a hub for many different cultures.
Thankfully that has changed and there now are three Indian restaurants and there is an Asian mart where we can buy spices along with an Indian section in our new Publix grocery store where I'm from.
Growing up I was the only brown kid in my preschool class. I never really saw any Indians represented on tv shows that I watched or any dolls that looked like me in the store. I grew up going to both temple and church, eating both American and Indian food, wearing Indian clothing and jewelry and American attire.
Unfortunately, this meant being looked down upon by a lot of my classmates in school whenever I was asked about my culture. I was asked if I was Hindu or Christian and if by chance I was Hindu if I knew that I "was going to hell."
The first time someone told me that was when I was in the 3rd grade. I would be asked if I would be having an arranged marriage, if I wore that "weird dot" on my forehead, or if I spoke "Hindu" when they really meant to ask if I spoke Hindi. This leads me to reject my culture for most of my childhood and that is something I regret to this day and am deeply unproud of.
Being ridiculed and judged by my own culture was hard but today I am able to realize that they said those things and thought their culture was normal and that mine was weird because of a few factors.
One, they didn't understand my culture.
Two, they hadn't been exposed to my culture before.
Three, there was little cultural diversity in my small town so therefore they thought theirs was really the only one.
Not only was I being misunderstood by the community of people around me that didn't understand my ethnicity but I have faced a sort of judgment from the Indian community as well. When visiting my grandmother in Atlanta we would go to temple, go to Indian events, ceremonies, and be engulfed in the Indian community because there was an enormous one there.
I felt outcasted for not being fully Indian and not fully knowing the language. My grandmother's friends who had children that had children my age would tell stories I couldn't relate too. They'd ask me when the last time I went to India was and would reply condescendingly when I told them I've never been. Whenever I met people who were also Indian I wanted to talk to them right away so I could have someone to relate too. Someone who understood me. But unfortunately, it leads to some trying to one-up me because they perceived it as a competition.
Being of mixed races was hard growing up. I have definitely been treated like a watered down version of my ethnicity. Like I wasn't "Indian enough."
But over the past few years, I have really learned to embrace it. I am very proud of my race, my identity, my culture, and my history. I used to hate my first name because it was Hindi and I already went by a nickname. When I was little I got angry when the teacher called roll and my class found out what my first name was. I vowed to have it legally removed when I got older. Now that I'm in college I prefer to go by my first name. I've completely embraced it and who I am and I regret every second that I didn't.
I learned to never let people tell me who I am. To never let people's own beliefs and narrow-mindedness influence how I saw myself.
My name is Shyla and it means goddess in Hindi. I will take any chance I get to wear a sari and the most sparkly bindi. My favorite food is raita and it always will be. Masala chai gets me through the day. I haven't been to India yet but when I do...
I'll feel complete.
