No, I Don’t Love Curry: What Being A Brown Girl In A First World Country Feels Like.
I was a brown girl in a white country. Life was stereotyped, but I was a rebel anyway!
I had moved to Canada with a dream: I wanted to have F.R.I.E.N.D.S. I knew that I was almost mixing two different countries together, but it did not matter to me then. I had watched numerous shows and had a fair amount of knowledge about the culture and people of the country. Both countries were first world countries, after all. Of course, I was originally there for my post-graduation, but well that could have been managed. I had always been studious.
I had rented an apartment with three other people. I was the only brown one but we had somehow found each other and were getting along well until it was my turn to cook. We had divided our chores and Linda and I were supposed to cook in the second month of us sharing the apartment together. We had been eating cereals, mashed potatoes, salad, omelets, and tofu up until now and I wanted to change the menu. When I entered the dining table with my apron on, announcing that I had cooked something special, the other three literally dropped their knives and forks scared that I had cooked them a spicy, Indian curry. (I had cooked Mac and cheese with garlic bread).
Hardly did I know then that I will have to face so many stereotypes in this foreign country. I remember the time when I shifted apartments and was almost into tears when I had to clean up my room and was dying of the work that I had just done. “But you are a girl. Don’t Indian women do the entire set of household chores single-handed while singing folk songs?”; they were shocked to know that we divide chores at our homes too as they do in the Western part of the world and my father cooks the Sunday meal when our cook is on a leave. This was the first time I had done them all alone.
The first time we had all partied together was a shock for them too. They thought that Indian women were not supposed to wear short skirts and have alcohol and that it is a punishable offense in their culture. From food to my hair, everything had been stereotyped in the first two months that I was here. My hair is brown and I have blue eyes; I was not ‘supposed’ to be born an Indian. How did I not have black hair?
One of the most flattering stereotypes that I have personally come across is that Indians are smart. I am a student of Literature but everyone had assumed that I must be in IT. I had taken a cab to the supermarket in my initial days here and the cab driver started asking me about the company I was working with. He had assumed that an Indian girl wearing a pair of spectacles must be somehow related to science and technology. Where on the one hand people assumed that all Indians are smart and intelligent, some people were sure about the fact that they cannot eat with a knife and a fork. They also thought that Indians do not wash hands! Well, finding a bunch of hand wipes and a bottle of sanitizer must have been a happy surprise for them.
Another interesting incident happened when we were reading and discussing The Hairy Ape by Eugene O’Neil. When we were done, a friend asked me casually about the number of times I shave a week. Yes, they thought that all Indians are hairy and shaving is a daily exercise for us.
In spite of all these stereotypes that I had to go through, my stay in Canada was a happy one. I used to ‘break’ these stereotypes often and was nicknamed as ‘The Rebel’. So what if I had not rebelled actually, I liked the attention. And yes, no matter what they think, I am not in love with Shah Rukh Khan, and no, Baahubali is not the best Indian movie ever made!
Originally published at https://www.fuzia.com.