Made It

As I frequently say, life is a journey and I doubt I will ever arrive at a destination in my process of learning and questioning and growing. I'm not interested in locking down answers, I am interested in always being open to new ways of understanding.

However, in terms of the cultural confusion that this blog started over, there are ways in which I feel that I have achieved something. My experiences now are different than they were when it comes to interacting with the world at large.

A year ago when I wore a sari to an event, someone would hustle me into the bathroom and redo my pleats. This year I got asked to dress other women in saris, both for the Bollywood party and my own mom for going to an ashram.

A year ago I felt self-conscious about my wearing Indian clothes. This year an Indian girl told me that I had such ease with them that she could tell I wore them frequently.

Last week I went to FedEx for work and I was wearing my professional looking gray salwar kameez. The blonde woman behind the desk asked if I was wearing Indian clothes and we started chatting. It turned out her husband is Indian and she showed me a picture of her beautiful teenage daughter.

All these examples are about clothes! Sometimes I can be such a girl. But there are other ways in which my life has changed, they just aren't as easy to pin point.

I'm truly living my life from the mindset of being a white Hindu and it's working for me. I feel confident that I belong in the life that I built for myself. I don't apologize and I don't offer explanation for the many Indian aspects of my life (like my white board at work where I track my projects in Hindi!)