The Little Blue Booklet

This is a personal essay I wrote for my expository writing class at the Young India Fellowship

I have never voted. Not because I am apathetic towards politics, or because I don’t feel like my vote will make a difference. Not even because I am unfamiliar with the voting process, or find it too difficult to understand and pursue. I have never voted because I am not sure which country to vote in.

I remember my friends walking up to me during the first year of college, with one finger raised high in the air, accompanied by triumphant grins. While at first I thought they were not-so-subtly indicating that they didn’t want to be my friends any longer, I realized they were merely excited about the little blue mark on their fingernails showing that they had cast their votes. An animated discussion followed, and the question of the day – “Whom did you vote for?” – was repeated every time a new person joined in. The conspicuous absence of indelible ink from my fingernails was soon noticed, and I faced a brand new question: “Why didn’t you vote?”

With a sheepish grin, I explained that as a citizen of the United States of America, I wasn’t eligible to vote in India even though I was eighteen. “Oh right, you’re a firang! (foreigner)” came the reply, accompanied by laughter and followed by a momentary awkward silence.

I didn’t really mind the jibe. The fact is that nobody really realizes that I’m technically not Indian until it is made painfully obvious. I look Indian, I sound Indian, and I speak four different Indian languages. If asked to sing my national anthem, I would burst into a passionate rendition of Jana-Gana-Mana. In fact, I can’t even recall most of the lyrics of The Star-Spangled Banner. The only thing American about me is my passport.

They say home is where the heart is, and my heart is firmly planted in Pune, Maharashtra. In the last sixteen years I have lived there, however, I have received periodic reminders that I am, in principle, an outsider. These reminders range from the ‘Nationality’ box in school and college admission forms to trips to the U.S. Consulate in Mumbai, where I renew my passport in a posh air-conditioned office. Meanwhile, my friends and relatives moan about the long lines and multiple visits to the Indian Passport Office, and about how hard it is to get a visa.

However, these are minor, unimportant reminders. What rankles the most is the reactions I get when Indians find out for the first time that I am an American citizen. No matter how hard they try to hide it, there is always an envious undertone that I detest. Sometimes, this undertone seems a little accusatory as well, as if I had a say in where I wanted to be born. America is still perceived in India as the Promised Land, a sort of elite club, membership of which is a privilege granted to the most illustrious human beings. “You’re an Indian pretending to be an American,” is what those undertones seem to be saying.

I wonder whether these people expect me to renounce my American citizenship. Most of them probably feel that I don’t deserve the perks that come with that little blue booklet with the eagle on the cover. While I certainly am not complaining about the perks (who would?), they are not the reason I have persisted with the blue booklet. I keep it because it is the only concrete link I have to the country of my birth. It is like an umbilical cord that I am not ready to cut just as yet, and I don’t know if I ever will be.

One person who understands exactly where I’m coming from is my best friend Karan. Whether it is coincidence or fate I will probably never know, but the first friend I made in India was someone exactly like me.

It was during my first week at Sapling Playschool, Pune that I met Karan for the first time. I had just moved there from New York, because of my parents’ desire to raise me not only within Indian culture, but also in the city where they spent the first 25 years of their lives. I had a strong American accent, and was playing alone in a corner with one of my toy cars. I was playing alone because I sounded different, and four-year-olds can be extremely narrow-minded. Karan’s family had just moved to Pune from Houston, Texas, and he evidently harbored a similar interest in cars. The version of this story that he tells features his mother nudging him towards me, saying, “Look, that boy is playing with a Hot Wheels car. Go introduce yourself!” So he did, and the rest, as they say in that worn-out cliché, is history. We have been brothers-in-arms for sixteen years now, and though we may not always keep in touch, I would trust him with my life.

Karan and I connected instantly, and it wasn’t just over toy cars. We connected because of a shared identity, a shared feeling of being outsiders in a place where we looked like everyone else. Our tacit acknowledgment of a shared past, however brief that past was, is similar to what Amitav Ghosh describes in his essay “Tibetan Dinner”, when he experienced a connection to a Tibetan monk during a gala benefit at a posh Manhattan restaurant. Ghosh and the monk felt connected to each other not just because they were the only outsiders at the party, but because of the past they shared, just as Karan and I did. 

I often think about what my life would have been like had my parents decided to stay in the U.S. While I could go into specifics and bore you for another page or two, one thing that I do know is this: I would have been treated as an outsider there as well. And the reasons for this treatment, ironically, are completely opposite to the reasons that I received similar treatment in the country of my origin. I am not accusing anyone of being a racist, but the undertones I spoke about earlier would still have been present. These undertones would be just as accusatory as the Indian ones, but the accusation in this case would perhaps be of stealing their jobs or looking different from them. However, both sets of undertones merge at the end, like two sides of the same coin, into the same statement: “You’re an Indian pretending to be an American.”

If I am treated as an outsider no matter where I am, then where do I belong? This question has bothered me for as long as I can remember. If I add my mother’s Bengali origin and my father’s South Indian one, then I begin to feel like I might as well be from another planet (although even Martians have the luxury of calling themselves ‘just Martians’). Over time, however, I have realized that my identity is my own, and I can make it whatever I want it to be. If that identity turns out to be an American-Bengali-South Indian-Maharashtrian, then so be it.

A couple of years ago I acquired a PIO card. PIO stands for ‘Person of Indian Origin’, which I guess is as appropriate a label as I am ever going to get. It is also valid for 25 years, which means that I do not have to keep applying for a visa to stay in my own country anymore. I have also decided to pursue my higher education in New York City, so I do get to enjoy some of those perks that come with being a citizen of the ‘land of the free and the home of the brave’. Who knows, I might even vote for Obama to be re-elected if I get the chance.

Made in Japan

 The people of Japan have managed to achieve a near-perfect balance between tradition and modernity, a fact that is clearly visible in its capital city of Tokyo

Every public dustbin ensures the segregation of waste, diligently enforced by the citizens themselves.

Can you imagine this kind of discipline on the Mumbai locals?

Traditional Japanese wedding procession at a local Shinto shrine

The first impression that Tokyo creates is similar to the one created by any big metropolis in the world, and there is hardly any distinction between the Japanese capital and Dallas or Manhattan. However, upon closer scrutiny and prolonged exposure, there are several mind-boggling differences that jump out at any visitor to the city.

The first of these differences that caught our attention was the incredible cleanliness. The streets were spotless, and no matter how hard one tries it is impossible to find a single item of litter anywhere. This fact is even more commendable considering our next observation, which is that there are far less garbage cans than expected, and it speaks volumes of the Japanese people’s inclination to keep their surroundings clean.

Along with this unparalleled sense of hygiene comes an immense responsibility towards the environment. Every single one of the aforementioned garbage cans, though few and far-between, was divided into separate compartments for wet, dry, combustible and non-combustible waste. Moreover, in the midst of the concrete jungle that is Tokyo, there exists abundant greenery in the form of expansive parks, gardens, and even clusters of trees. Nestled in the midst of a plethora of humongous skyscrapers, the beautiful surroundings of the Imperial Palace, which span an incredible 3.41 square kilometres, serve as the lungs of the city, with a variety of trees and vast stretches of lush grass, which are visited by huge crowds on a daily basis. The Hama-Rikyu gardens, built by a Japanese feudal lord in the 17th century and the Ueno Park are the other two major contributors to Tokyo’s foliage.

At Akihabara, also known as the “electronics district”, Tokyo lives up to its reputation as a techie’s paradise, with over 40 humongous buildings packed to the brim with anything that flashes, beeps or runs on batteries, or as the famous James Bond character, Q, would put it, “All the bells and whistles.”

When it comes to technology, the Japanese do not follow any worldwide trends, but prefer to use devices that are suited to their own cultural norms, which are poles apart from what the rest of the planet relies on. As their Kanji script is read from top to bottom instead of left to right, the most popular phones are the elongated flip-phones manufactured by the leading service provider in Japan, NTT Docomo. From what we saw in Tokyo, about nine in every ten people make use of these phones (or a similarly customized variation of them), and this is probably why I did not spot a single Blackberry in the week I was there, and could count on one hand the number of iPhones I saw people using.

The citizens of Tokyo also have an impeccable sense of discipline and public responsibility that borders on the obsessive (albeit in a good way). For example, whenever there is an escalator, everyone stands in a perfectly straight line on the left side, so that the right side is left free for people in a hurry to walk past. Such lines are also a common occurrence on the subway system, where the commuters are seen standing in equidistant lines in front of each carriage (yes, really!). They wait patiently for the people inside the train to alight, and slowly filter in one-by-one without any pushing, shoving or shouting. What amazed us even more is that these rules of public decorum, which are so stringently followed, are not displayed anywhere, nor could we see a single person of authority enforcing them! Try as we might, we could not even begin to imagine the same scene in an Indian metropolitan setting.

For tourists, the language can certainly pose a challenge, but even with the limited amount of English they know, all Japanese people are very friendly and extremely helpful. The desire to create a good impression on visitors is so strong that they will go out of their way to make sure you manage to find your way around. We were greeted with loud cries of “ Ohayo Gozaimas!” and “Kon Nichi Wa!” whenever we entered a shop, and we heard the phrase “Arigato” so many times that we were saying it ourselves by the end of the trip.

The most significant revelation about Japan was that its citizens have achieved a near-perfect balance between tradition and modernity, marching on the path of progress without compromising on their cultural values and ideals. This realization struck me after I visited the ultramodern Tokyo Tower, a modern structure that is modeled after the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and then visited ancient places of worship like the Meiji Shrine and the Asakusa temple, all on the same day. Visiting the famous historical landmark Mt. Fuji and returning by the sleek, progressive N700 Bullet Train (or Shinkasen as the natives call it), created a similar vibe.

The Japanese people have retained every last bit of their rich cultural heritage, and in spite of industrialization and modernization that has made them a force to reckon with in the global community, they have never showed the slightest inclination of mindlessly aping the West, which is something our own country can certainly learn from. Their customs and traditions have not only been preserved, but also continue to thrive today admirably.