So who am I?

For the last six years, some grey matter in my brain has been continuously dedicated to answering this question. I came to the US six years ago to study a subject that is not popularly pursued in India, and wanted to become a college professor after my studies--a profession that is neither lucrative nor coveted in India. At least that was the assurance I used to give myself and others whenever the common platitude "Oh you aren't coming back, you'll see!" was callously thrown at me.

A recent rediff article got me thinking on a related question--who am I? As a soon-to-be father I find myself revisiting this question repeatedly, mainly because I am horrified at the prospect of my own kids not identifying with their parents or their country of indirect origin. On the one hand I would want them to see India and Indian culture as I see them while not appearing to impose it upon them, while on the other hand encouraging them to adopt some western habits that I retrospectively wish I had been exposed to as a child.

I realize that part of the problem is that I myself have been confused over the years about what I should and should not be adopting. I smile at complete strangers and initiate discussions about the weather, but am as untrusting as ever. I like more and more English movies and realize why the world is so gaga about them, but am also the most vociferous supporter of Hindi films I know. I spent the first two years of graduate school firmly believing in my desire to settle into family life in India, the next two contemplating how that was actually going to happen and whether it should, and the last two concluding that its not a decision that I can make at a split second and act on it. I can't help wondering whether these evolutions are a result of my own identity changing over the years. It cannot be because I have somehow drastically westernized myself, because I have not. I still remain the mind-numbingly "un-westernized" guy I always was, so much so that every trip to India finds me wondering if I indeed flew east.

So what WAS my identity before? I was a Maharashtrian born to Maharashtrian parents, until I was ridiculed for my poor Marathi when I moved to Mumbai. I was a Nagpurian and had good enough command over Hindi to ridicule Mumbaiyya-hindi, until I found myself adapting to the local Hindi dialect in the four years that I spent in Mumbai. As an exchange student at 15, I was the Indian guy who apparently exceeded everybody's expectations by speaking fluent English and playing scrabble. Eventually I found myself inviting comments like "Your english is so good, your sense of humour is so British" in one continent, and "you haven't changed at all! I can't believe you were in the US for six years!" in another. Indeed its interesting how it took a long stay in the US to convince myself and others how unchangingly Indian I am.

Maybe its the chasm of 5000 miles separating me and my home that is magnifying the apparent change in my identity. I am a person with conservative ideas and principles, shockingly opinionated in some areas and shockingly liberal in others, personally averse to most forms of luxury but constantly working to provide them to my loved ones, with two homes of differing permanence on two continents and absolutely fluent in two languages (which two depends on where I am). And oh yeah, I am and continue to be an Indian at heart, with my definition of "Indian" as diverse, simultaneously concrete and vague and hence exciting as the sub-continent itself! Too bad that will form a ridiculously large acronym...