Lately, I have been thinking extensively about what it means to be bicultural, both within the current sociopolitical climate, as well as at Smith in particular. I have always been of two worlds, but I feel more palpably the implications of my biculturalism this semester, partly because of what I experienced in Kashmir during the summer, and partly because I feel extremely disillusioned with both India and America. The concept of ‘home’ for me has always been permeable, perhaps because I have spent nearly nineteen summers of my life in India, ensconced in world views and narratives which are entirely disparate from the ones that I was exposed to growing up in New York City.
Although I’d become familiar with adapting to new cultural atmospheres, my first year at Smith was incredibly jarring, given the novelty of the surrounding environment, and the fact that it was so far removed from the city in which I had spent so much of my life. When I returned to the United States from India this summer, I anticipated the usual feelings of disorientation that come with arriving someplace and having to acclimate to the newness which surrounds you, but I did not expect to feel so acutely displaced. When I was younger, it was much easier to reconcile the different facets of my cultural identity, because going to India and speaking many languages was simply an integral part of me. While this is still true, I think my perception of India has been radically transformed in the past few years. I also feel increasingly disconnected from the U.S. It is exhausting and suffocating to exist in this strange half-place.
As I look to the future, I try to envisage myself in India, but there are so many barriers, both political and cultural, precluding me from ever living there. So much of who I am is derived from India, but in many ways, I remain a sojourner in a country which is not wholly my own. I cannot imagine myself staying in the United States, because I feel so disenchanted with what this country has become. For much of this semester, I have felt out of place on this campus. It was incredibly strange to focus my attention on studying when I had just been in a veritable war zone. Everything seemed suddenly inconsequential, and I realized that I did not necessarily want to be in India, but rather, I was yearning for some faraway home which has been forever altered. It is so difficult to witness these seismic changes in places to which I feel so strongly and viscerally attached. I wonder whether this feeling of displacement will persist, and I wonder if this is just a requisite of knowing two worlds.
