Enter the Kitchen

Indians who decided to immigrate to California and the US, in general, have the shared experience of having to familiarize themselves with an unfamiliar landscape and make it their own, but this experience is shared by most immigrants across the world and over time. What then is uniquely Indian about being a vegetarian and moving to California. Looking at the questions that people ask themselves is a good place to start: Am I going to start eating breakfast foods like dosa and Idli for dinner instead because of the rush of getting ready for work in the morning? Am I going to buy Idli batter from the Indian grocery store instead of grinding and fermenting my own? Am I going to swap out desi curd with greek yogurt because it has more protein? Am I going to stop making white rice because it is high on the glycemic index? These questions are rooted in Indian ways of consuming food and feeding the body. In other words, they reflect how people decide what aspects of life growing up in India make sense to continue as an adult with new geographically motivated priorities. 

While "Indianness" has not been coined by a specific South Asian scholar, it can be understood to encompass the lived experience of participating in Indian culture regardless of location and time (Ray 2004; Ray and Srinivas 2012), whether it be eating rice with your hands or taking off your shoes at the door. Taking the concept further, Mannur and Mankekar question the blind acceptance of a universal such as “Indianness” when the country of India is incredibly culturally diverse, and someone from Himachal Pradesh might share very few culinary similarities with someone from Kerala (Mankekar 2015; Mannur 2007). Furthermore, Indian immigrants may associate Indianness with a range of emotions: Kumar doesn’t relate to the Silicon Valley Californian culture and finds comfort in the thought of returning to India. To him, Indianness, as related to social culture, has a more positive and nostalgic effect. Pooja, on the other hand, finds a certain discomfort in the religious and vegetarian conditioning process that many children in religious families find themselves in. For her, Indianness draws more on negative associations with fear of deviating. These contrasting examples show that transnationalism is a process of reacting to experiences of Indianness and, subsequently, picking and choosing what to retain and what to do away with. After all, I would argue that it is one’s experience of first being Indian in India, then Indian in California, that gives rise to differentiated responses to Indianness. 

Children born to Indian immigrant parents also have a shared experience of existing in a liminal space where the boundaries change and shift over time. Divya, born in California to Tamilian parents shared this about her experience trying to understand her Indian identity:

That was hard, like obviously, as an Indian who grew up in America, I was like I'm somewhere between the two, I'm both, and I'm neither. It's always been kind of weird…I don't feel American enough for the Americans, and I don't feel like I'm Indian enough for the Indian Indians. I almost feel like I'm in my own category of people who are like me. I definitely feel a connection to both, but sometimes an impostor in both.

Divya’s confusion is mirrored by many, including myself. The idea of being a new category is worth considering, where cultural elements of both India and the US create a hybrid identity that morphs and changes over time, often expressing itself through food.