Chris doesn’t dare hold my hand in front of my family, though. He may not act any differently around Indian strangers, but family is another story.
Time with Chris’s family is not at all like time with my own. When I visit him or go on vacation with his family, he and I sleep in the same room. This would be completely unheard of in my mom’s or dad’s households. The way we interact with our families is also different. He acts like an independent adult, and I act like a kid, and my parents treat me like one. They worry if I drive late at night, make me endless cups of ginger chai when I’m sick, and nag me to eat more at dinner. Some of it is probably due to individual family differences, but I’d imagine much of it is cultural as well.
Despite the seemingly characteristic cultural experiences, I don’t think of myself as a typical Indian-American. Since my parents are divorced, I never felt fully integrated with the Indian community. My first name is Natalie, so other Indians often wonder whether I’m Christian. My mom is traditional in a lot of ways, but although she was born in India, she grew up in Washington D.C. and Montreal. Because of this, her first language was English and she and my dad never bothered to teach me Hindi or Punjabi.
Growing up, I had some Indian friends but never felt fully connected to Indian social networks. Strangely enough, in college I met most of my Indian friends through Chris. He met a lot of people through his Indian roommate and because he lived in the “Commerce and Industry” dorm, which was unsurprisingly an Indian hotbed. By osmosis he became aware of typical first generation Desi slang like ABCD (American-Born Confused Desi), IST (Indian Standard Time) and FOB (Fresh Off the Boat). He witnessed some friends who were in multi-year-long relationships keep their girlfriends or boyfriends a secret from their parents and watched as they danced bhangra and garba at South Asian Student Association events.
