IDENTITY CRISIS & THE WALL

Have you ever done on of those ancestry tests? First time an ad popped up in my Facebook feed asking me to check my ancestry, I skipped it completely tagging it as a con. Who the fuck wants to know where one comes from anyway? Identity issues were never an issue for me, till I went overseas in 2007 from Sydney.

In a nut shell, I'm "Indian" and I moved to Australia when I was 27. I've lived in Australia for 14 years. I've lived with my parents in their home for 19 years. Ever since I left the place where I was born, I haven't lived in any other spot for more than two years. Melbourne's been the longest place I've ever stayed in after I left Calicut, where I was born and raised. So spiritually and emotionally I belong to Melbourne. Although I hate the smashed avo identity of the inner cities.

Nitya and Nikhil

When I travel to the US/UK and Europe, for some reason I can't get to call myself an Australian. Oh well, I can say I'm an Aussie but I'll have to punctuate and explain where I "originally" came from. Last time I travelled to the US, I boarded all the weird bus tours and it was a frequent question from the bus operator - where's everyone from. That's when I first started asking myself. What do I tell everyone?

It's obvious to the tour operator that I'm "Indian". He's not even going to worry about asking me but for courtesy sake, he has to. I don't want to footnote anything. I make it easy for anyone who wants to know my identity -- simply play into their guess and say "I'm Indian". Although I'd be lying technically.

I'm born in India, I'm brown. When I was growing up, when i was really little, my grand mum had friends who hung out with her and spoke Portuguese. Now they are dead and gone and there's none of that left behind. When the Portuguese did business with Calicut, they intermarried a lot and it is said that some of their offsprings continued to call Calicut home. There were many families with mixed heritage then. But once the British drove out the Portuguese from Calicut, most of them left to Goa.

Most of my friends in School were Muslims and they looked Arab. When the Portuguese landed in Calicut in 1498, there were 17 Arab ships docked in Calicut. During then, many Arab traders intermarried and kept Indian wives. This explains a large Arab looking population in North of Kerala.

So many identities have cross pollinated before our time that it's point less to hold on to the idea of an identity for anyone. Here's a result from one of those weird and funny Facebook tests. I don't know if I have African heritage, but it's true that Africans had travelled to India to do trade many centuries ago. So who knows? I could actually be 71 % South African, related to Nelson Mandela with Native American connections.

So fuck you Donald Trump. Screw the Wall!