Blog Post #18: Food Memoir Rough Draft

I enter the doors of my home in India and, immediately, I am engulfed in embraces. My family members converse to each other rapidly in Hindi, pausing only briefly to wrap an arm around me and welcome my return to our home after four years. In Bhojpuri, our family’s dialect of Hindi, conversation is quick, fast, and abrupt. There is little time for pleasantries – instead, gentle sarcasm underlies almost every line of dialogue. The pace of conversation is invigorating – it’s difficult to not be caught up in the atmosphere.

Still, almost immediately, the gap between myself and the rest of my family is made evident to me. They smoothly entangle their words, softening phrases and sounds together -- Bhojpuri style -- while I stutter, my lips unaccustomed to manipulating the sounds of my mouther tongue. Hindi, the letter d is used in five variations – d, dhu, da, dha, and udu – but I can barely pronounce half of them, my articulations dissolving into a cacophonous blur that is antithetical to the sweet harmony that escapes their mouths so effortlessly. My words – despite my efforts to disguise them – are tainted with a growing American accent and expose me as a non-Indian, drawing attention to the ever-widening gap between myself and my culture.

This is not a story about a touching realization of the importance of culture – no, this story is about the adventure that follows, the wild goose chase to reclaim the Indian stake in my identity that, years ago, I harshly rejected.

As a child, I used every excuse to announce to my Bhojpuri-speaking grandmother that I was not Indian. According to culturedecanted.com, “We symbolically consume identity through our food and drink costumes – more specifically, by what we don’t eat or drink.” And I did just this, obstinately refusing every dish served at meals to the point where I would fall gravely ill.

Nani was equally adamant, but in a gentler form. Each time I alienated her by choosing to speak in English to the rest of my bilingual family, she would patiently reminded me to speak in Hindi. And I, impatiently, would defiantly refuse in a raised voice, “Na-ni! Humko Hindi mein NAHIN baat karna hain!”