An Indian Princess

Although I have not yet kissed one of the four frogs who find safety in my room for the two or three days between my showering, I somehow still ended up a princess. For someone who enjoys complete anonymity, who likes being one of a hundred to cross an overcrowded crosswalk in down town DC all with people I will never see again, being an Indian princess bodes quite a drastic lifestyle change when it comes to my five-year plan.

In all seriousness though, I have never been treated in quite this manner, and even if I have been spoiled by a grandmother or aunt from time to time, it was never a lasting environment. I don’t want to spend too much time discussing the fact, but I am most definitely getting a different perspective on Indian life this time around. From blessing lorries in the morning to people bowing down to me on the street at night, there are several different contributors to this royalty treatment I am experiencing. First and foremost, I am a guest and Indian culture treats guests in a manner much more hospitable than one could ever find in the U.S. (probably considered insistent or rude in many other places around the world). Although I am my grandma’s adopted granddaughter and on some level considered family, I am still speaking a foreign language and coming from a far away nation which makes me a guest in LAFTI’s book. Secondly, I am American citizen and that alone brings about some amount of attention greater than any to be found when I am living in the states. Not only am I an American, but I am daughter to two of the most loved and respected Americans my grandmother and the LAFTI community has ever known….according to them, of course. To quote her exact words, “Ellen and David are great souls…I have never encountered anyone as loving and patient as these two”. Lastly, I am a native northern Indian originally born in Mumbai (Bombay), and with a skin tone lighter than all the rest, it is not something to be easily hidden. I am a “wealthy” northern Indian who has come to live and work in a village of poor Dalit men and women, a village where the population spends most of its time, thanks to my grandmother and the establishment of LAFTI, making bricks and building houses, something they were not even thought to do only 20 years before now. Lastly, and most importantly, I am considered a girl not a woman in India (not yet married, still a student, etc.) and the grandmother I have come to stay with is the founder and director of a revolutionary land reform organization that has changed the lives of thousands from the land up, literally. If I am related to her, whether it is through my American mother and father who Amma adopted and then they adopted me, I am her granddaughter and apparently that counts for a lot.

On a drastically different side of the equation, I am just like any other Indian when I’m not an American, a guest, or a granddaughter. When I go to get on a bus, although my skin color is still lighter than most because I am in the siren heat of south eastern India and I spend most of my time in the states locked inside a classroom missing out on the sun that would give me my “natural Indian tone”, I really don’t stand out. I am wearing Indian clothes, one of the four women places a stick-on bindi on my forehead every morning before braiding my hair like all other Indians, and I sound Indian enough in my pronunciation of the town I want a ticket to get to that no one seems to sense my being a foreigner. When I step out of the bus station, I am crammed in between most everyone else fighting to get on and off at that time, something that most Americans, guests, or member of some royal family couldn’t get away with.

The reason I mention all of the above circumstances is to share with you the truly unique lens through which I am viewing India and Indian people, and I thought it necessary to explain that specific lens before I go on to make any observations or analysis. While I am slightly uncomfortable with the idea of being an Indian Princess, it seems only to be a part-time job. Look like I can have my Indian cake and eat it too!