Podcast: Ameya on feeling othered by her own country

Image made on Canva Pro by Ameya Nagarajan for Global Voices

“Where Are You REALLY From?” is a podcast series from Global Voices that emerged from a panel at the December 2024 Global Voices summit in Nepal, where members of the Global Voices community shared their experiences of dealing with other people's perceptions about their diverse and complex origin stories. In each episode, we invite our guests to reflect on the assumptions that lie behind the question, “But where are you really from?” and how they respond.

The podcast is hosted by Akwe Amosu, who works in the human rights sector after an earlier career in journalism and is also a coach and a poet. She is a co-chair of the Global Voices board.

The transcript of this episode has been edited for clarity.

Akwe Amosu (AA): Hello and welcome to “Where Are You Really From?” a podcast that explores identities. I'm Akwe Amosu, and today I'm speaking to Ameya Nagarajan. Hi, Ameya.

Ameya Nagarajan (AN): Hi, Akwe.

AA: So why do people ask you that question?

AN: It's a little complicated. I'm from India, and in India, internally, we have a very large number of identities, languages, contexts, and cultures. And so you generally ask this question to be like, “Hey, are you from my home state?” “Did we grow up in the same big city?” Because there are many big cities. “Did we have friends who went to college together?” So it's usually just a question of trying to get a sense of a way to connect with a new person.

But I get asked that question because I don't fit very well into what is expected of me, perhaps in Indian society, because I take up space quite literally, and people are not used to the idea of a fat woman who's not trying to be invisible. But also in general, I'm a bit weird for an Indian. I don't obviously exhibit any Indian-ness. So people often wonder if I am even Indian.

AA: So what does it feel like to be asked the question then?

AN: It's a bit mixed because, like I said, it's quite benign generally. So I'm used to hearing it. And I don't see it as a bad thing. Even I ask people that, you know, “Where are you from?” or “Where did you grow up?” So we can try and see if we are from the same background in that sense, you know, the same city or whatever. But I realize that on some level, when I get asked that a little more suspiciously, “Are you an Anglo-Indian?” which is code for, you know, not a normal Indian, which is crazy because Anglo-Indians are as Indian as everyone else. But it's that sort of hint of, “yeah, but you're a bit weird. You're a bit strange. You're a bit alien.”

And I would say that I never thought it really affected me until we started having these conversations. And that's when I started to realize that, actually, on some level, it made me feel quite terrible and quite alienated. And my own country kind of did not have a space for me, which was not fun.

AA: So, how do you usually answer?

AN: I say I'm Tamil and I grew up in Hyderabad, which indicates two aspects of my life. One is my sort of ethnic, linguistic identity, which is from the southern state of Tamil Nadu, where I did not grow up. I grew up in another state where the local languages are Dakhni and Telugu. And so it's a bit like telling people that, “Oh yeah, so this is my family context, but I am not in that context, I'm from a different context.” I used to say that because I didn't like the city I grew up in, and I didn't want people to think I was from there, which is a little mean, perhaps in hindsight.

A woman dressed in a cream sari and wearing glasses is laughing at a cat being held up to her face. There is a blue door in the background

Ameya laughing at her friend's cat. Photo by Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, used with permission.

AA: What would you like to be able to say in the answer to this question? I mean, when the conditions are right.

AN: I feel like it's hard to figure that out because, you know, again, inside the country, the context is just say where I'm from and have it taken like normally. But also when I'm outside the country, I often get mistaken for Latina, which is really not something that I think of as a bad thing, honestly, because I believe I have the soul of a Latina. And so I have to say that actually, I think I'm one of the people on this series who has a different experience of it in that I don't know that there's necessarily like a right answer or a better answer that I want to give because it's not so much that I feel, I don't, I think it's because I feel like it makes me feel alienated in my own space.

And when I'm not in my own space or my own country, then it's not a problem because people think I'm Latina when I say “haha no I'm Indian” they're like “oh you're Indian” and it's not something that gets questioned very much so it's perhaps less painful in some ways. As for when I'm in India, and people ask me about my belongingness, as it were, I don't actually know what I could say that would be simple. It would be nice to be able to have more nuanced conversations about what makes us who we are and so on and so forth, but that's not always possible.

AA: So that's what I was wondering was, it's one thing not to know what you would want to say, but what would you like them to ask that wouldn't make you feel as though you didn't have the right answer, or didn't have the answer that they would like to hear?

AN: Maybe something like, you know, “What was it like growing up speaking a different language outside the home than you do inside the home?” Or “Did you ever feel strange that you have such a different experience?” I'm a part of the very tiny minority of Indians for whom English is my first language. which a lot of people get very upset about in India when you say that, because they're like, “No, you must have a mother tongue.” And I'm like, sure, but it's not my first language, which is kind of an important point there.

So, yeah, I think it's always nice to be greeted with curiosity, as in “I want to get to know you better. I want to understand you better,” which I think is also something I try to do when I meet a new person. That's why I like to learn languages, because people get so excited when you can say the silliest thing in their own language, like I don't speak your language, and they get so excited.

AA: So, is there anything else that you think people should know about this challenge that you've encountered?

AN: I think that we need to collectively come up with diverse ways to ask about people and cultivate the ability to accept with grace whatever we're given. Instead of walking into a conversation with a sense of entitlement about the kind of answer you're supposed to get or what you want them to say, how it should look, if it doesn't fit with your picture, you know, to learn to take with grace the answer you get and explore the person fully.

Maybe if you want to find out more, you don't have to ask them, “Where are you really from?” But you could say, “Oh, what languages did you speak as a child?” Or “What's your first memory?” Or “What's the first movie you saw?” Or “Where did you go on holiday that you liked?” There are ways to get clues into a person's background that don't involve basically questioning the thing that they've told you. Because when you say, “Where are you really from?” it's kind of saying, “I don't believe you, you're lying to me,” which is a heavy thing to say to a person you just met, right?

AA: Thank you, Ameya.

AN: Thanks, Akwe.