hybrid
i have been thinking about jhumpa lahiri's article in newsweek. my stomach dropped when I read this.
She writes:
"I feel Indian not because of the time I've spent in India or because of my genetic composition but rather because of my parents' steadfast presence in my life. They live three hours from my home; I speak to them daily and see them about once a month. Everything will change once they die. They will take certain things with them—conversations in another tongue, and perceptions about the difficulties of being foreign. Without them, the back-and-forth life my family leads, both literally and figuratively, will at last approach stillness. An anchor will drop, and a line of connection will be severed.
I have always believed that I lack the authority my parents bring to being Indian. But as long as they live they protect me from feeling like an impostor. Their passing will mark not only the loss of the people who created me but the loss of a singular way of life, a singular struggle."
I have never connected being indian strongly with my parents. I haven't contextualized indianess with a relationship . A relationship that legitimizes and defines you. But there it is. And it rings so true. And there is an insecurity in the construction of identity hinged on parents. Maybe that is why so many of us tangle ourselves with work in India, bind ourselves in other ways to the subcontinent. And an emphasis on a indian partner starts to make so much sense.
Sri
She writes:
"I feel Indian not because of the time I've spent in India or because of my genetic composition but rather because of my parents' steadfast presence in my life. They live three hours from my home; I speak to them daily and see them about once a month. Everything will change once they die. They will take certain things with them—conversations in another tongue, and perceptions about the difficulties of being foreign. Without them, the back-and-forth life my family leads, both literally and figuratively, will at last approach stillness. An anchor will drop, and a line of connection will be severed.
I have always believed that I lack the authority my parents bring to being Indian. But as long as they live they protect me from feeling like an impostor. Their passing will mark not only the loss of the people who created me but the loss of a singular way of life, a singular struggle."
I have never connected being indian strongly with my parents. I haven't contextualized indianess with a relationship . A relationship that legitimizes and defines you. But there it is. And it rings so true. And there is an insecurity in the construction of identity hinged on parents. Maybe that is why so many of us tangle ourselves with work in India, bind ourselves in other ways to the subcontinent. And an emphasis on a indian partner starts to make so much sense.
Sri
posted by srijeeva at 12:14 AM
1 Comments:
quite interesting, and reminds me of something heng sure (http://www.ijourney.org/people/hs/ once said about a basis for what he calls filial respect or filial piety: one's connection to one's parents is the root out of which stems connection to all of humanity, and really to all of life.
so in that sense, it's no surprise that our relationship with the world is so relative to the connection with our parents ...
as for the insecurity with hinging your identity on that relationship, as you insightfully put it, perhaps that can even be extended to hinging your identity to anything ...
there has to be a balance though --non-hinging, but at the same time, having the humility that comes from the cognizance of interdependence and interconnection ...
anyway, thanks for your thoughts!
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