Anisha Nandi

I sat underneath the weight of those three-letter acronyms with their power to determine my future and I felt unknown. For all the countless hours spent to mold and mend and cage my brain into standardized testing, I watched as a shell of my former self sat in that chair. It’s crooked legs and shadows of previous test takers- some stressed, some overconfident- still oozed from the cracked wood. Those multiple choice bubbles ebbed and flowed and burst in the sea of questions neatly packaged in the pristine packet that lay before me. Its curved words on starch white twisted time around hidden answers that called teasingly to me. Yet for all those bubbles and boxes brimming at the surface, there was no right answer floating beneath the very first question. I see the physical boxes on the paper in front of me and it’s sharp edges cut sharp corners in my round mind. They simply do not fit.

 

 "Where are you from?"

 

Effortlessly pulling out the pre-rehearsed words, I remember

 

“I’m half Trinidadian, half Indian; I was born in England but I grew up in New York.”

 

Minds grapple and clutch to their previous notions. They recognize England and New York: that’s unique, but understandable. They register half-Indian due to the caramel skin tone and dark hair. Yet the breaks screech and I can almost always hear the conceivable mental-stumble as they arrive at Trinidadian. There is no box to check off there, no bubble teems to the surface. At the very best I am “other”. My identity, with its colorful exuberance and undiscovered parts, with its proud history and its fierce defiance are crammed and shoved and jammed into that impersonally small box.

 

Those boxes become most dangerous when we find the need to fit into them. Before I lived in Scarsdale, I moved around half a dozen times within the Tristate area. I counted rosary beads in a Catholic school but silent Hindu prayers ran through my mind as each rough, red bead slipped through small fingers. I ate rose-colored candies and homemade soda bread with our fair, Irish neighbors and their beloved beagle, Mickey, with his watery, all-knowing eyes and ears that swept the floors. My big brown eyes lit up my small face when my mother agreed to ‘plait’ my hair in two long braids just like my Jamaican friend did her wild locks. I climbed on countertops with knocked knees and a wicked smile to find “that thing”, my favorite Indian spice, before my grandmother pulled me down and sat me on her lap- the folds of her saari taking me to visit all the rich smells of her country, my country.  

 

But once six candles were placed upon the almond frosted cake I could count on every birthday, Scarsdale became my permanent home. The utopian bubble boasted affluence and education. The manicured lawns seemed to grow aesthetic estates. It was a privileged upbringing but one largely devoid of the clashing and festering of a melting pot. While my home declared a sense of permanence, my roots became buried beneath those manicured lawns.

 

In the sea of multiple-choice questions, I delved and somehow swam ashore in the Midwest- a place I realistically associated with cornfields and windmills, yet one that has brought me more cultural clarity than I ever could have thought. In a single day, I cross paths with hundreds of students, their story is traced across campus as they run to class or schlep begrudgingly through the snow across the diag. I learn from and about them whether it’s laughing through my tears with my best friend in her room at 2 am or making brief eye contact with a student in the first floor of the UGLI. Each person has their own story, their own expectations to fulfill. Each day as I brush elbows, my cultural index grows.

 

The home I arrive to now is no longer just Scarsdale, but the eclectic, bursting realm of New York City.  The promise of New York City with its jagged buildings across the eternally lit backdrop stirs awake all the cultural magnificence there is to see. Every person you stop on the streets of this City has a story more colorful, more heart wrenching than the last. My heart fills with such a sense of belonging yet mystery when I look upon the faces of this city. Traveling between the multi-cultural dichotomies of The University of Michigan and New York City provides me with endless opportunities to open my mind to the backgrounds of others. I always compare them to two different “worlds” intersections that I hardly believe exist outside of myself.

 

With these geographical places weaved into my cultural landscape, I now trace my way through my heritage. My mother is fair skinned with light eyes and naturally wavy black hair made for the summer heat of an eternally-sunny island. It puffs and swells in the humidity, catching the salty sea air. Her high cheekbones sit beneath the shadows of long eyelashes, catching the low light as she laughs, one of the most reserved of her boisterous family. My father is frozen at a permanent state of 40, at very most, in my mind. His eyes glint full of a perpetual glee, one never subdued by the weight of the world. His trademark salt and pepper moustache sits atop an eternally light smile refusing to bow to the bulky world.

 

My mother grew up, the second youngest of seven, in a well-established and well-respected family in Chaguanas. Despite their Trinidadian identities, they were Hindu and had strong ties to their roots in India. And so when my mother decided to go to medical school, her father persuaded her to do so in India. My mother is from a ferociously proud breed of polouri-loving, cricket-watching Trinidadians. Trini’s underline their lives with the emboldened red of and black of their flag, never failing to showcase their pride in their country. A nation with less than the population of Manhattan that still manages to boast Nobel Prize laureates, multiple Miss World Titles, World Cup qualifiers and Olympic gold medalists.

 

My father, halfway across the world, had grown up in New Delhi. At six years old he saw a blind man in a rural suburb of India and, in the endearing hopeful charm of a young child, he swore to himself he would become a doctor to help him. He sewed his own repairs on his primary school uniform, hemming to the hums of the crickets in the high grass and beehives in the trees. He read voraciously to quench an undying thirst for knowledge of all kinds, tucking away information like gem-stones in a colorful box of jewels. His hands helped his mother around the house, feeding cows dalpuri and creating jars of pickled spices, while his mind wandered over fields, across seas, through amazons, to the depths of oceans and heights of fighter planes. 

 

In Pondicherry, India that Trindadian challenged that New Delhi native with her quiet strength and something about that meeting spurred 27 years of marriage. They moved to England for their residencies and eventually to New York. My mother retains her strong sense of pride in Trinidad and often chance takes us to warm beaches or to the smell of doubles and polouri in Queens. Nothing quite compares to the lackadaisical days wafting over the hammocks drifting between tall coconut trees. Today my father has more qualifications than he can fit on a business card. From plastic surgery to cardiology to published research to wound healing, my father invested that six year old’s promise in his passion for medicine. His upbringing in India, surrounded by immense medical resources in contrast to some of the most earth-shattering illnesses, was a major factor in his success today. He often dreams aloud of his desire to reground his roots upon the rocky hills of Rishikesh or the busy, rickshaw-filled streets of New Delhi with all the color and culture that flutters beneath his eyelids. He tells me time and again that all that man needed was a few pills of vitamin D and he would be able to see those same colors.

 

If I were to sit there with my pencil now on that ACT exam, I would not want to fill out ‘other’. Multicultural backgrounds are to be embraced, to be celebrated. Not just the complex ones or the misunderstood ones, but each individual’s heritage. The conclusions and boxes we jump into, we often create for ourselves. To take a moment and consider that somebody may have an interesting story is essential in fostering this sense of global unity. My individual identity keeps me constantly engaged and relating to each soul and spirit around me. Standardized tests are just that- standard. It is critical to set no limits, no standards, no regulations on the vibrancy of our cultured, colorful world.  

 

 

I based this piece off of The Michgian Daily's 'Michigan in Color' pieces. One of my favorite pieces is Carlina Duan's "Our sacrifice, our shame." You can find it at here.