Colliding Worlds, a case of mistaken identity

The big problem with being a rebellious brown kid

A friend on mine at university lived two lives. When in London, she was a party animal — drugs, alcohol, mini skirts, you know the deal. But at the end of term, you’d see her fully covered, all signs of her other personality hidden from her socially conservative parents.

I remember finding this bizarre; my family was also socially conservative, but why did she put up a facade? Why couldn’t she just say to her parents that that was who she was? It wasn’t a subject she wanted to talk about much. We weren’t particularly close, and lost contact after university finished.

Years later, as I sit in here in India finding myself in a similar position, I wonder if she ever managed to reconcile those two lives. Did she feel that one was more true to her personality than the other? How did she straddle the divide without mixing the two up — accidentally letting something slip in either of those worlds?

My life has always been a series of identity crises.

When you’ve grown up around the world, gone to mostly (International) British or Australian schools, have strong Jain cultural roots, and ended up finding comfort in a more loose anarchist culture, it’s hard to know who you really are.

There’s an argument that who you are is who you choose to be, but I don’t buy it. So much of identity lies in what you learned as a child which you then learned to copy as an adult. Bourdieu called this habitus, where the individual learns how to maintain society by reproducing what was normal. It’s a bit like a toddler holding a newspaper as if it they could read it, even though they can’t understand written language.

It is through this process we learn our social codes of behaviour: we learn how to behave with others, and what is acceptable and what is not. Many of these codes are embedded in norms. For example: when you can’t just hold hands with someone of the other sex without it being perceived as romantic, that is because of norms of heteronormativity in a culture where physical intimacy is mostly found within sexual relationships. These norms are often subconscious, and we only really learn that they exist when they are challenged.

When I was growing up, the norms I learned were of that of a straight Gujarati Jain middle-class female, with influences of Anglican, Anglo-Australian, and Kenyan norms. I was brought up to assume heteronormativity. I was taught how to behave like a girl. I learned Jain values. I was encouraged to accept structural racism and capitalism as unchangeable norms. The list continues.

But halfway through university, that construction of a person collapsed. I had already spent years challenging my female gender roles, and already accepted that socialism was probably the right path based on my Jain values (ie non-violence was only possible through equality). But more than that, I found that my entire identity was built on norms I did not agree with.

Observing my then partner’s lifestyle — that of a Guardian-reading white English middle-class family — I discovered that the norms I had assumed to be universal were in fact only one way of being. After being indoctrinated with, and building a narrative around being Jain, I found its foundations lacking. I realised that I wanted to try different things. I wasn’t a pacifist. I hated capitalism. I enjoyed sex. I was queer and genderqueer. My body wasn’t shameful. I didn’t need to stop myself from enjoying life in order to be a “good” person.

But when you have spent your whole life building an identity of being a particular thing in order to protect yourself from being bullied for being different, such a revelation can pull the rug from under your feet. And for me that pushed me straight into the deep-end of depression, anxiety and BPD.

The rollercoaster journey between then and now need not be explained; it’s a long story with not much relevance to this specific topic. But in the end, I found myself with two distinct personalities, each one not quite complete.

My everyday personality in York is one which embraces these later values. I am openly radically political. I enjoy a drink now and then. I practise non-monogamy. I have come out as agendered. While I criticise its ethnocentricity, I feel more comfortable in anarchist circles than in religious ones. I am ok with my body. I never bow down to white supremacy.

But within all that, I miss something. I miss the intimacy and reliability of family support systems. I sometimes find myself craving to get married just because the prospect of living life with relationship uncertainty and individualism is terrifying. I miss the jokey culture of family, the way which you can make fun of anyone without them getting overly offended by it. I miss the silliness of Gujarati culture. I miss the informality of friendships, and how your friends basically become part of your family.

But family can be restrictive.

While I am overjoyed to spend these few weeks with my grandfather in the ashram he calls his home, I am increasingly triggered by the role I need to play within it to fit in. Here I am expected to find a female role within the gender binary as even the dining hall is divided into male and female. I am forced to respect the guru who makes jokes like:

“We waste so much time talking about samsaric things. Women who talk about how to cook the perfect dish and what is in fashion, and men when they worry about how the stock market is doing. Imagine how much time we waste!”

I continually get asked about what I have studied and what I could work as within those disciplines. I am also asked if I plan to get married soon — actually it’s a suggestion or a statement rather than a question. My grandmother tells me off for wearing leggings because they are too tight and they look “shameless”. Modi is revered here for his job-creation and charity work; when I ask questions about the caste/class issues, I am told that he provides jobs. I observe that workers with 12-hour long days not be given food as part of their daily pay because they asked for a raise.

But in many ways, I also feel comfortable. I like that I can rely on my grandparents, and how they can rely on other Gujarati people to support them now that they are older and unable to go out to get basics such as water. I like how my grandfather is respected and loved because of his work in empowering and enabling children with disabilities in impoverished areas. I like the sense of community. I like how I get teased by people who barely know me.

These are my two worlds that I cannot straddle.

Both leave me feeling incomplete. And they are not translatable. While I have tried to express the differences in this piece, I do not feel they do the warring binary in my head justice. I find myself feeling like a hypocrite, observing how the sentiments I project so strongly in one is lost within the other. I cannot reconcile these worlds. I cannot tell which one is more “me”.

Maybe the truth is they both are. Maybe like my friend at university, I have to be both in order to find a place in the societies I live in. But it’s not easy being at odds with yourself.

I wonder if there will ever be a way both will meet.