The Silent Language of Indian Foreigners in an Adopted Country

To meet the eyes of a stranger

This is a personal account of what went through my mind one winter evening as I was walking along Castro Street in Mountain View earlier this year.

But first, here’s a quick rundown of where I was in life: This was less than six months after I moved to the Bay Area.

The wind was blowing hard that day. The cold gust caused a sea of ​​goosebumps to form on my forearms. Despite the layers of clothing I wore—a jacket, a sweater, and two T-shirts—my body hair overreacted to the wind and stood up against the layer closest to my skin, my favorite brown T-shirt. So it would be a few years before my tropical skin got used to the onslaught of winter in the northern hemisphere.

Anyway, as I was crossing the street, I inadvertently caught the eye of an Indian woman who was crossing the street on the other side. We walked toward each other and time slowed down for a second, no more. I didn’t notice the brand on the takeaway coffee cup the woman was holding, nor did I have time to note the exact color of her hat. All I saw was a person with the same roots as me. And somehow, I could tell that she did too.

Shared Stories

As our gaze lingered a little longer than usual or necessary, our shared history, our common ancestry, and a porous sense of belonging flashed between us like a movie on a private screen hanging between us, a curtain that only we could see.

We both knew the ghosts of 1947 and had complicated feelings about our shared colonial past; an Indian who has never met a Briton or a Pakistani unknowingly consults transgenerational models when he does, because of his immediate or inherited experience of the Raj and partition.

We knew that both of our brains were equipped with mysterious neural circuits created by years of ingesting monosodium glutamate, or “aginomoto,” abundant in Chinese cuisine in India, also known as “Chindi cuisine”; we knew intimately the wild joy that a steaming pile of Schezwan-Manchurian fried rice, saturated with spices, salt, oil, and food coloring, could bring. We also knew what the heady mix of vacuum-packed preservatives, fat, comfort, and nostalgia found in a yellow packet of Maggi noodles could bring, especially on a bad day.

Common cultures

We also knew why it was completely understandable that a guest would happily devour a non-vegetarian meal at our place on a Monday, and then aggressively refuse the same dish on a Tuesday, saying, “aaj mera mangalvaar hai” (in honour of Tuesday).

We both had experienced the spooky magic of Shah Rukh Khan and felt like we owned a piece of Engelberg through Yash Raj Films.

We were both equally embarrassed by the ugly nuances of contemporary Hinduism – Hindutva, Hinduphobia, contemporary caste politics – and by the long shadow of socio-religious divisions that followed us Indians to foreign shores.

At some point, we both grew annoyed by the hyperbolic and ill-informed versions of India peddled at dinner tables and social gatherings, and said, “Not all Indian food is curry,” through gritted teeth and polite smiles.

A kind of kinship

We were aware of the inexplicable and irrational kinship we felt with a complete stranger for no other reason than the fact that he was dressed in six yards of fabric or had a dot on his forehead.

We both knew the feeling of helplessness that came when provocateurs sang a Hindi film song in a low voice on an Indian street, albeit at a distance, and, conversely, we understood the complete absence of sexual tension when the little neighbourhood darzi (somehow they were always stunted, weren’t they?) wrapped a tape around our hips to measure our girth for a kameez at home.

We had seen barber shops, hair salons, third-rate movie theaters and restaurants bearing the name New York-something in second- and third-tier Indian cities, all collectively aspiring to a stylized Western ideal.

Accented language

Decades after living abroad, our tongues would roll in the same way as we speak our respective mother tongues, one of the more than a hundred spoken in India, with an accent that is neither here nor there but belongs to a nebulous nation, located between the amygdala and the hippocampus, inhabited by many non-resident Indians.

Whether we are first or second generation Indians settled in an adopted country is irrelevant: we are bound by pigmentation. And this bond is manifested in a brief eye contact, sometimes accompanied by an imperceptible tug at the end of chapped lips, a tilt of the head, a tenth of a nod, a slight softening of the eyes… a silent and fleeting tribute to the commonalities shared by strangers in a strange land, united by a distant motherland.

All this in a flash before it ends. But it’s enough.

Photo by Kunal Goswami on Unsplash

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