I have been asked the question ‘Where are you from?’ on so many occasions that I’ve learnt to expect the uttering of the phrase within the first five minutes of talking with someone new. On the rare occasion my ethnicity isn’t brought up in that grace period, I subconsciously encourage people to question my identity. I’ve deemed it a fun game of ‘guess my ethnicity’, much to the chagrin of new, especially white, people that I meet. I’ve played this mischievous trick so often on poor white individuals that a friend once warned me I may have ‘scared’ his white friend when we were first introduced. 

It is funny, yes, but I know this tongue and cheek question runs far deeper. 

I recently watched Mira Nair’s ‘The Namesake’, a charming early 2000s film that explores immigration and cultural identity, specifically how one tries to integrate oneself into Western culture yet also aches for the native homeland. I expected it to hit home, of course, but not so deeply that I would be crying by the end. The film dredged up longings for a home and culture I had left when I was very small, so long ago that India feels more like a distant dream than a real place. 

I ramble on about this for a few reasons. I am half Indian, raised by my Eastern European mother in Edinburgh. I pass for ethnically ambiguous and often am mistaken for Spanish or some other Mediterranean ethnicity. My identity feels like a mess. But growing up I felt proud of this ambiguity, my ability to weave through the international spaces my mother raised me in. Yet, as soon as I entered university, I was suddenly made hyper-aware of just how white-washed my upbringing was. I may be an ‘interesting mix’, as some have called it, but I feel no right to that heritage. Though I found myself surrounded by cultural diversity, I went to Indian society events and could speak no Hindi, met Romanians (my other half) and could only utter a few broken Romanian phrases, and noticed my friend group mainly comprised of white women. 

This is, to be fair, a given itself when we consider that around only 10% of students are of an ethnic minority. Yet, I felt a lingering guilt whenever I saw groups of Indian girls, with the jingle of their bangles background to their collective laughter as their jhumkas shone in the dying September light. When I saw pictures of girls graduating in saris in July, the burning ache to go through my mother’s wardrobe to find her old saris was immediate and intense. I felt the same shame when I went to a BAME event in second year and knew only one of the Bollywood films in the charade game we were playing. My Hindi had not improved. I was as much on the fringe of my ‘native’ culture than ever before.

Is this my fault for not exploring my own ancestry, or something I never had control over?

I have little insight into societies like Indian, Pakistani Society, etc. This is definitely my own fault for not exploring them, yet I felt discouraged early on. My lack of language skills already barred me, and with it came a culture setback. I remember meeting some Pakistani girls who happily engaged with me as freshers – we all bonded over food and our immigrant identities. Later in the week, we met at a bonfire and got Janetta’s on the way back to our accommodation whilst discussing henna and hair. I expressed my difficult relationship with my hair whilst growing up in a white-dominated environment, and remember hearing the word ‘Mashallah’ leave the girls’ lips as they complimented my hair in return. The word sounded so warm in that moment. We all made a group chat before going back to our respective flats. I remember that feeling of warmth; the feeling that I had finally found ‘my people’.

I never heard from those girls again after that night. Later, I found out on social media they had organised a potluck with others from Pakistani Society. I was never told anything about it.

Perhaps it was because I was Indian. Perhaps it was because we were all a bit uncommunicative. Perhaps it was because I did not join Pakistani society. Perhaps it had nothing to do with me at all.

That was the first time I had experienced cultural guilt. My lack of connection to such a rich community left me feeling empty and directionless. It did not stop me from making friends, but it did hinder my ability to engage with parts of my identity I felt important to me.

In December 2023, I took a trip to India for the first time in ten years. It was both terrifying and exciting. I thought, by the end of that trip, I would have reconnected with my heritage, with this rich part of me that had been abandoned for so long. But it did the opposite. Never have I felt so white, so British, in my life. I remember being in a shop with a childhood friend and getting bombarded by employers trying to sell shoes. My friend was completely ignored, and I was uncomfortably aware of the why: I am light-skinned, he is not. In one country, I am invisible. In the caste system of India, I am revered.

It is ironic, considering how I view my own identity. Being an International Relations and Anthropology student, I’ve been taught a thing or two about colonialism and white identity, which is no more evident than in place like St Andrews. It is understandable why the few ethnic societies and friendship groups of colour tend to band together quickly and tightly for their time here – it is a respite amongst the elitism that flourishes amongst their Western counterparts. I find myself internalising this divisive rhetoric in my own thinking. For instance, I saw a white girl wearing chandbalis with a wool sweater in my seminar, and then another white girl wearing tiny jhumkas to go out clubbing that same night. A simmering anger bubbled under the surface when these two images confronted me. I kept thinking, ‘What right do they have to wear these? Do they not understand, no, do they not know the shame I felt for associating with my own culture growing up?’.

These feelings, however valid, do clash with something else also very common in St Andrews – it is near impossible to really assume where anyone grew up. With such international diversity – I  know an American girl whose family moved to Thailand and now she attends university in Scotland – no one is from one singular place.

This distance from my heritage is not confined to a singular feeling. I was talking to a friend who lives in Delhi, and when I mentioned my disconnection to my heritage, she responded, “I don’t really feel Indian myself sometimes, and I’ve lived there my whole life”. I was only half surprised. I’ve lived in Scotland my whole life, but I feel no more Scottish than Romanian or Indian. I have not been able to connect with many Indians or Romanians in St Andrews – and definitely met no one of my unique mix – though I do have other mixed friends. Both Asian and white, they’ve too expressed feelings in the past about this disconnect between their non-Western heritage, the lack of that feeling of ‘home’, especially when you don’t speak your family’s native tongue. Those conversations have brought us to tears many times. We don’t know where home is, and our attempts to find it have left us yearning for something we feel we have no right to.

This semester, as teaching week began, I decided to meet up with some friends to go to the Night Market pop-up at the Union. We sat outside after shopping, eating pizza and talking about food. A mutual friend and I got to talking about dishes from different areas of India (I did my classic spiel of ‘guess my race’, of course), when I confessed shyly that I barely cooked any Indian food at university. The other girl instantly invited me to hers for food and offered to even teach me some recipes. She too confessed that she did not speak any Hindi and had little knowledge of her own Indian heritage and culture, but that she was learning both to cook native dishes and speak her native tongue.

She probably doesn’t realize the significance of her offer, a door I had been waiting to open for so long. An offering to learn about my culture, my heritage, my birthright, in my own, very awkward way. One I had denied myself for so long. Finally, I do not feel as if I am blindly stumbling my way through society events I feel out of place in or silently watching everyone else happily chattering in Hindi without me. Finally, I have been offered a safe space to rediscover a piece of me I had ached for so quietly, for so long.

The shame started to dissolve, and something much warmer took its place. 

I’m just hoping I will be invited this time round.