….I am humming Sting’s “Englishman in New York” since the feeling is very much the same…
…on the phone, people presume they are speaking to an American and are shocked to see me enter their boardrooms…
..in a country where even today, parents will not allow their adult children, especially the women to stay out too late or after dark, I return home after a night of dancing and eating with my friends, sometimes at 1am…
…where dating is considered of the devil and there is such opposition to it in this culture and the parents feel they are losing control of their children’s lives if they are allowed to choose their life partners, I encourage dating and somehow, they say, you are different..it’s okay for you to do that, but not our children…
…where adult children are not allowed to leave the house and live on their own until they are married and sometimes, not even after they are married, I live in a 2 bedroom apartment in the city all by myself…
…where holding hands in public would be considered sacrilegious, I hug all my male and female friends alike…( I once had an audience when I hugged a guy friend in an auto rickshaw when he was getting ready to leave..)
…in a city where people eat idlis and sambar for breakfast and I crave a bowl of high-fiber cereal…
…where people blast the latest movie soundtracks and I listen to Classical Music…
…where people own not more than 10 pairs of shoes in their lifetime, and Emelda Marcos would be nothing but a funny-sounding name to them, my collection is close to 100 pairs that I have to design storage for it…
…where a family of six will live in a two bedroom house that is not more than 690sq ft, I live alone in a large 2 bedroom apartment, measuring about 1200 sq ft and use one of the two rooms as a closet since there is no room in my bedroom for all my things…
…where the mosquitoes and bugs are friendly neighbors to the Indian people, I flip out if I forget my repellent spray…
…where most women use one handbag until it falls apart and then buy another one, I have one to match each outfit I wear…
…where group activities never involved only young single adults, I encourage it and usually end up being the only girl with all the boys who are allowed to attend…
…where fathers and brothers and husbands are the mouthpieces for even the most educated women, I am not afraid to voice my opinion whenever I feel some thing needs to be said…(altho’ the no-filter-between-my-brain-and-my-mouth often gets me in a jam)…
…where married men cannot be friends with unmarried females, I carry on very jovial and serious conversations with other American married men whose wives I am also good friends with…
…where females in India have more female friends, I only have my childhood friends and the rest are all male, who drop me home late at night after a night out on the town… (frowned upon by my watchman)…
…where it is apparently considered rude for a female to walk out of the house chomping on an apple or something similar and the food should be consumed before one leaves the house, I walk out and get in autos with a fruit in my hand as I had no time to eat it earlier…(although men crowd the roadside joints and eat on the road at any time and any place..)…
…where not showing any skin, i mean even too much of your arms or your neckline is slightly below your collar bone, my very conservative for the US standards of dressing have people questioning my moral standing, simply because you can see my calves and I wear stilettos…
…the differences are so apparent and I am given a wide berth of outward acknowledgment, in that people will not tell me up to my face but the disapproving look on their faces is sufficient to remind me that..
I am an Alien in my country of birth…and yet, I keep on keeping on….
