Some observations I’ve made as a eurasian male who went to catholic school my entire life:
- People have this odd sort of expectation that I should be the spokesperson for all Indian people which
1.) should terrify all Indian people and
2.) gets really old after a while
Because being prompted for a statement about whether or not my social textbook’s depiction of India is accurate or how I felt about Slumdog Millionaire’s success don’t come easily because those aren’t the sorts of things I spend a lot of time thinking about- Also everyone expects me to be into Bollywood films but the truth is something closer to them being one of if not the most spectacularly annoying aspects of my heritage
- There’s a certain way people talk about travelling to India that comes across as really alarming on the occasions that it isn’t insufferable (“Oh my god, it’s so exotic. Are you a spiritual person at all? It’s so spiritual there”) because I don’t think people really know a whole lot about that place other than what they see in films and travel brochures because the thing is for the most part although some people would argue against referring to India as a third world nation, there is a massive gap between the lower and upper class within the same neighbourhoods and there’s this really weird omnipresent smell of poop and bacon and combined it’s going to ruin the spirituality for you rather quickly because you can’t spend the entire time at the Taj Mahal
- There’s this one look that whoever’s running the music at a large get together hosted by East Indian families gets when Punjabi MC comes on like “That’s right it’s about to get buck in here”
- There are a lot of people who are weirdly not okay with interracial relationships and in my experience, although a few times some pretty bad shit has been said to or about me by the families of white girls I’ve dated, the worst offenders have been Indian people - like, if we were out walking in the neighbourhood and we passed an Indian family she’d get glared at like she’d gotten away with murdering one of their children
- People seem to think that they’re being progressive when they observe that in my appearance, fashion sense (or arguable lack thereof), beliefs, accent, career aspirations or even music taste that I am not a “typical” Indian which… thanks…? You jackasses
- I don’t want to be presumptuous by trying to draw a conclusion about why this is but whenever I meet an Indian girl roughly around my age, within the first 10 minutes I will be asked about my religious beliefs
- If you tell me I look like Aziz Ansari, Raj from The Big Bang Theory, Matt from Scott Pilgrim or Sav from Degrassi it really just comes across as “I don’t know a lot of Indian people and can’t distinguish any of your physical characteristics beyond your skin colour but that’s enough anyway”
- If you’re not the one eating or cooking it, curry always smells like death and I wont fault you for thinking that
Josh… you are perfect
