Big words, for small feelings I know. It has been almost two years of living in America. For most of you reading this, it might look like America has so many South Asian and specifically Indian people - it's probably true for many big cities - but my experience has been different. I live in what is a small-ish town on the west coast in a state many of us have not really heard about before. I also don’t work in IT/software or the other assorted ‘engineering’ fields. I go to school, specifically, I am in the geography program where when I started, I was one of two international students. I am telling you all of this to get to my main point! I swear.
I grew up in Hyderabad, and sometime during highschool I found that I really enjoyed dancing (also relevant to my point, hold on). So throughout college I danced at various events and kind of became resident choreographer / drunk dancer in my social circles. I can go without dancing for a long time, but once every few months I have this intense craving to do thumkas outside of my shower or bedroom. Many people who like dancing like I do sympathize with this. You see, I am not a trained dancer, I am very much a baraati dancer that knows all the tollywood/bollywood hook steps and needs to be in a crowd that also knows those steps to fully enjoy myself. So once or twice every semester I end up at one of the Indian association(s) events.
After weeks and months of policing my own wardrobe to ‘not stand out’ and being ‘professional’ and put together, I dress up, put on make-up, lehengas, sarees, leggings and shoes…the whole thing, you know. Most of my friends (literally, except one) here are not Indian but they are culturally curious and love me enough that they go to these events with me. It is fun, for some time. There is familiar music playing, familiar-ish food being served, and after the first time, some familiar faces are visible. But eventually at these events, I start noticing things.
The fact that everyone talks to everyone in Hindi - and when someone does not speak Hindi, they get made fun of. I talk in Hindi too, because it is my “Indian night out” and there are literally only two other Telugu people that I know. The fact that there are three Telugu songs that they play in the middle of a night of Bollywood / Punjabi songs and many people step onto the dance floor to dance to that “Tamil song.” There are uncles drinking and aunties feeding little children. And all of it, unfortunately, looks and feels very familiar. But remember, it is my “Indian night out” so I ignore everything that looks and feels wrong and focus only on the things that are fun - my friends and other really cool people around me that also came to dance!
But these events always leave me with an almost empty feeling. I get the urge to dance out of my system, and simultaneously remember my lack of community and camaraderie in this alien space. I was lucky enough to find people here that I cherish and love and hope to hold on to for the rest of my life. But there is still a feeling of scarcity of community - the kind of friendship that makes chai for you whenever you visit, knows what mutton keema is, understands what UAPA is and can get excited for Sharukh interviews. I went looking for these friendships many times in the last two years. Through social events, performances, parties, and cultural events only to have my heart broken everytime.
Because inevitably, in the process of getting comfortable with me, people share their opinions and ideologies. People share with me that “there is scientific proof that women are impure during their periods, that is why we should not go into temples” or “you are either a man or a woman, you are what you are born as, what is this ‘transgender’ and all” or “thum Telugu log na sab aise hi hai” or “you will eventually want children, you just don't know what you want now.” And everytime my heart is broken, that my search for community has failed, again.
When I moved here, I was glad for the anonymity - no one knows me, no one knows who my father or mother is, so I could be whoever, whatever I wanted. But I never thought I was going to have to be a part of a community that does not even know my state, my language, or what my politics is. I keep going back to these people though, for my “Indian night outs.” and I feel like I have failed my actual community, my queer community, my Dravidian community, my left community. Because this immigrant nostalgia is a weird feeling - this search for a community that looks like me is a weird feeling. This required balance of food, music, language, dress and politics to form a community is a harder task than I thought it would be. In my safe little comfortable bubble back home, I did not realize that expecting people to have the basic human decency to respect other people was such a far fetched thing to want.
I keep joking after coming back from these events that it reminds me of why I left India in the first place. It is only partly a joke. Because these are not my people! How can they be? They don’t even know who Umar is, or what the feminist movement has done for them - they don’t even know where Telangana is! They only look like my people - and once or twice a semester - that is all I need, a pseudo feeling of a cultural community. So for the rest of the time, I can build an actual community. So I can remember and hold on to an actual community that I now live so far away from. I hate the term “guilty pleasure” because I do believe that there should be nothing guilty about pleasure - but this “Indian community” will forever be my guilty pleasure because this experience has everything to feel guilty and pleasure.