Yamini Singh on the American Indian existence

Words by Yamini Singh

I recently watched “Never Have I Ever,” Mindy Kaling’s Netflix production. As an American of Indian descent, I was eager to see a Desi leading lady in a popular coming-of-age show. While watching, I messaged my mother and told her to check it out. She replied a few hours later, having clearly binge-watched the entire series, with a one-line comment only my mother is capable of—

“It’s cute, but it’s signature Mindy Kaling, the longing to be with the white guy.” This made me chuckle, and then wince a bit at my own history, of which she is keenly aware of, of longing to be with the white guy.

My mother’s dry observation (and likely quarantine) made me reflect upon my Indian-ness. I am to an extent, Devi Vishwakumar. I’m an American of mixed Indian and German origin. My father, himself half German and half Indian, grew up in the United States, and because of his somewhat absent Indian father, leaned almost entirely towards his German side.

During a rare visit to India in the late 80’s, my very Westernized father decided to agree to an arranged marriage, for whatever reason (likely at the urging of busybody aunties, but who knows). My mother was a good Hindu girl from Northern India, beautiful yet always told she was “too dark to be beautiful,” growing up in the shadow of her dictator-like father. The journalism degree she had worked so hard for was irrelevant in his eyes compared to the prospect of marriage.

After a few minutes of sitting in a room together surrounded by nosy family and friends, my mother agreed to the marriage. It was my father’s smile that did it, she said. So a short time later, at age 21, my mother flew on a plane with me in her belly, to reunite with her husband and meet her new German-American family in Virginia.

A young Indian girl, raised and conditioned to be a housewife and caretaker and these things only, was suddenly thrust into American life. She was urged to go to college, become independent, find a job, and then do whatever it was she wanted. She went on to become a public high school teacher, which she’s still doing decades later.

And yet, while doing those things, she found herself in a community with no cultural connections to her home. Trips back to India every few summers helped, but those expensive flights were few and far between. She began wearing more sweatshirts than saris. Furthermore, her interactions with American teenagers at work made her increasingly empathetic to the American psyche, which was important because after-all, she was raising an utterly American daughter.

India, as a kid, was something of a confusing, annoying blip on my radar. The impending departure always made me anxious. My German grandmother recalls me crying and begging her at age five to let me stay home that summer with her instead.

The motherland was a bright and colorful slap in the face, terrifying and beautiful. It was beggar children my age in the streets, and not being able to understand the Hindi they shouted at me. It was flowers and incense, my maternal grandmother’s prostrations in the mandir. It was being chased by wild dogs, sneaking away and taking harrowing rickshaw rides. Hugs from rude aunties, cups of chai, screaming family matches, tearful dramatic make-ups. It was kulfi and mangoes for weeks on end because I refused to eat any other food, (how I longed for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups). It was catching lice after playing with village children, staring in awe at naked babies crawling in the dirt. It was Buddhist monks, the call to prayer five times a day, garlanded cows roaming the streets.

It was, in short, not America. I felt that America was my home, not India. It was starting to become more and more so for my mother as well. A few attempts to associate with the Indian community in northern Virginia were total failures. Mom ended up resenting their petty, new money flashiness, while my father sat, bored to tears, quietly sipping tea. I would meanwhile play with the bratty spoiled kids who, despite being raised in America just like me, still had cringe-worthy Hindi tinges to their accents.

The other kids, the real American kids were my friends. Most of the time they innocently dismissed my Indian-ness. “No, you’re American,” they would insist. A few incidents did occur, like my “best friend" in third grade telling me my house smelled bad, or that I would never find a husband because I was too dark (had she been talking to my grandfather?). Their tune always changed however when it was time to play dress-up with bindis and bangles at my house.

There were meaner, more hurtful encounters of course, but usually a school-yard showdown would sort that out. Don’t even ask about 9/11. I quickly learned how to deflect it all, they were laughing with me, not at me. I was American, through and through. Forget India.

As my mom navigated her new American life, that included, more than anything, a steady stream of Bollywood films, which she had to force me to watch with her. Those silly films, with their obscene colors, a fashion sense at least a decade behind, and unbearably long songs, drove me up the wall. Half the time they were cinema-recorded pirated copies, without subtitles, and watching them in their entirety felt like torture. My father and I delighted in relentlessly teasing my mother, and her culture, as she watched.

What I didn’t understand at the time, was that these moments were small heartfelt attempts by my mother to feel connected to her home and her daughter in any way she could. She too was fighting her own cultural battle. I had the luxury of choosing to be an American. She needed to be both.

I had been conditioned to view American popular culture as the standard for all others. Somewhere in me was the idea that whatever I was, was wrong, something to be corrected, epilated, bleached, and hidden, and that America was right. It is now, as an adult that I realize that what those movies were really doing was planting seeds that only later would sprout and grow.

For every girl that thought I was too dark, too curvy, or that my eyebrows looked like “angry caterpillars,” I had a Madhubala, a Madhuri Dixit, a Kajol, a Sri Devi. Even more importantly, I had some small way to connect with the woman who was sometimes made to feel as not only a stranger in a strange land, but a stranger in her own house.

Despite my complaints, the time spent watching those movies with my mom were peaceful moments of sipping her perfect ginger chai, of laughing and crying. To have that time was important as our relationship during my adolescence was strained to say the least. Our house was a cultural battle zone, the wild American teenager, the baffled brown mother trying her best to understand but often failing. My father moving away after my parent’s divorce only served to exacerbate those problems. But those moments taught me to navigate my culturally confused world. I could be a swirl of Indian color, a streak of American independence, and still be rooted in my German grandmother’s kitchen. I could be all of these things, all of the time. It didn’t have to be a choice.

I wish that my mother and I could have watched “Never Have I Ever,” together. I can only imagine binge-watching and laughing with her on the couch, with a hot cup of chai and some spicy Kurkure. As tears streamed down my face watching Devi Vishwakumar come to terms with herself and her wounded, but resilient, immigrant family in the final scenes of the show, I wanted more than anything to be with my mom. The woman who showed me how to navigate different worlds, with strength and a smile, with one hand outstretched to share, and the other balled in a tight fist to protect. In any case, I’m just thankful there were no songs in the show. My mom would likely say the opposite, and that maybe next time Devi could find a nice Indian boy.

Yamini Singh on navigating the American and Indian existence