When Afar editorial director Sarika Bansal moved to Mumbai after graduating from college, she felt like she looked like everyone else—but didn’t have the cultural competency to back it up. On the seventh episode of Travel Tales by Afar, season five, she shares her journey.
Transcript
It’s the summer of 2006 and I’ve been in Mumbai for all of two days. I’m staying with a very sweet woman, someone I refer to as auntie, both because she is a loosely connected family friend and because, in India, it’s how you show respect for an older person. It’s about 7 a.m. and I am still jet-lagged and asleep in the guest bedroom. I feel a goopy hand on my face and my eyes fly open. Turns out that auntie is putting milk fat, or malai, all over my face. She explains that she was watching me sleep and thought that my facial features are so lovely, but my skin is so dark, and the milk fat would cure that. I have no choice but to feign politeness—I’m staying in her house, after all—but all I want to do is scream.
The culture shock I’m experiencing is, in a word, staggering. And it’s especially bewildering because I look like everyone else. But I feel completely alien.
***
My parents were both born in India. My dad left at the tender age of 22 to pursue his PhD. A few years later, he traveled back to India, had an arranged marriage with my mom, and they moved to Buffalo, New York, together. I was born a few years later, followed by my sister.
We visited the motherland every two or three years when I was a kid. I’ve come to understand that these trips played out the same way they did for many first-generation Indian Americans. My sister and I would be shepherded around to meet what felt like a million relatives, be told we were too skinny, get fed an absurd amount of food, play cards with our cousins, and when we did leave the confines of a relative’s house, were usually told to keep quiet. After all, even though we spoke some Hindi, our American accents would give away our origins, and a shopkeeper would double the price for that sari our mom was eyeing.
The result was that, while I felt connected to Indian culture from a young age, I didn’t feel as closely acquainted with India as a country.
Which is why, when I graduated from college, I decided to move there. Specifically, I moved to Mumbai, hundreds of miles away from my well-meaning family who would try to protect me from seeing an unfiltered view of the country. And just like my dad, I was 22 years old when I made my big move.
Mumbai certainly makes an impression. New York City, where I was coming from, is by comparison a sleepy little village. Mumbai is always moving, from seemingly every angle. On Hill Road in the neighborhood of Bandra, you may simultaneously see taxis, buses, auto-rickshaws, bicycles, cows, pedestrians, a vendor selling women’s clothing that was meant to be exported but got rejected, another vendor selling rows of baby shoes, and a third vendor selling roadside snacks like pani puri and vada pao. On the balconies above, there may be lines of clothing out to dry. There will be honking, there will be haggling, and there will be people walking in close proximity to each other.
I was alternatively dazzled and overwhelmed by all of it.
My first few days in the city, I walked around with the widest possible eyes and the bushiest of tails. I had the “main character” energy that is typical of many young adults who are transplanting to a new place. Every shopkeeper, every auto-rickshaw driver, every person I encountered was part of my journey of growth and self-transformation.
Except. They certainly didn’t see me that way. It took me a few days to realize that, while I was looking at Mumbai with the wonder and awe of a first-time visitor, everyone was looking at me as, well, one of them. And thus began my out-of-body experience.
There is something so profoundly strange about traveling somewhere where everyone assumes you’re a local, but in reality, you don’t have the cultural competence to back it up. This meant that, over the next few months, I felt like I was always on the back foot, constantly playing catch-up.
My Hindi language skills rapidly improved, and while I patted myself on the back, everyone around me wondered why I spoke with a twang and kept getting the genders wrong. I’d watch Bollywood movies with new friends and be proud of myself for further immersing myself in Indian culture, while they’d ask why I had missed many classic films. I happily bought Indian clothes to wear to work, but then colleagues would ask why my scarf, or dupatta, didn’t match properly. While everyone around me thought I was sipping from a water fountain, I felt like I was drinking from a fire hose. Nothing I did was enough.
I worked at a management consulting firm, where I was the only foreigner on staff. I was one of 14 new business analysts, all recent university graduates. They were some of the smartest, hardest-working, and most analytical people I have ever met—which isn’t a surprise, considering most of them graduated at the top of their classes from one of the Indian Institutes of Technology, where the acceptance rates hover around 2 percent. I was the only one with an American liberal arts education. This meant that, in addition to feeling culturally isolated, I frequently doubted if I was smart enough for my job.
I can’t pinpoint the moment when things started to change for me. But I remember opting for the local train to get to work one morning instead of a taxi and being completely unfazed by the crowds. This was maybe four or five months in. The trains transport more than 7 million commuters a day, and traveling on them can be an intense experience even for domestic tourists. On this day, I purchased my ticket, walked straight to the designated ladies’ car, and steadied myself near the doorway on the ride from Bandra to Churchgate. I held my arms up a little and enjoyed the cross-ventilation under my salwar kameez. I remember that the ride felt entirely unremarkable, and for that, I was grateful. After a few months of feeling disoriented, I finally had a shred of control and confidence.
Once I had my sea legs, I became a voracious explorer of Mumbai. The city never sleeps. It’s the financial capital of the country, as well as the home of the Bollywood film industry. It’s one of the world’s largest cities, with about 21 million residents. It’s also a city of extreme contrasts: Mumbai is home to Asia’s largest slum while simultaneously being home to the most millionaires and billionaires in India.
Somehow, though, daily life is relaxed. Most large cities have the reputation of being too fast for their own good. Mumbai is certainly manic, but it’s also deeply human. One day, I stopped at a vegetable seller and shyly asked what I should purchase to make aloo gobi. It was like a bat signal went out; almost immediately, two sweet aunties gave me their recipes and handed me the cauliflower, potatoes, onions, and tomatoes I’d need. They didn’t look down on me or judge me, but rather took me under their wings as a young kid who obviously had just left the dorms—sorry, the hostel—and was learning to cook. To some people, this may have seemed overbearing; for me, it was exactly the decisive maternal energy I needed in the moment.
I also discovered that being an outsider, but not looking like one, came with benefits. It allowed me access to spaces in the city that may have otherwise been more difficult to find. Mumbai has an incredible arts scene, great nightlife, fantastic food, and an overall joie de vivre. I started taking salsa lessons at a nearby bar and began building a social network, bit by bit. I watched live music performances and plays at the National Centre for the Performing Arts and Prithvi Theatre. I went on a bicycle tour of south Mumbai, where I learned about the colonial history of the rail network and ate Parsi food at the restaurant Britannia. I threw water balloons and colored powder during the festival Holi and showed up at work the next day hungover and literally the color purple.
Living in Mumbai awakened my innate curiosity that helped me eventually find my way into journalism. I used my hidden outsider status to ask questions of people that they may not have themselves considered. I walked boldly into the city’s largest garbage dump, into construction sites to talk to women, and onto city buses. I found stories everywhere, and it became my lifelong dream to tell, and now edit, stories that humanize people and places that at first glance seem completely foreign.
Mumbai changed me in more subtle ways, too. The kindness I encountered on the daily in Mumbai made me a softer and more generous person. Even when you meet someone for a few minutes, they tend to regard you with a gracious curiosity. I reconsidered my time with auntie when I first arrived. Cast in another light, the milk-fat facial, while completely over the top, was her way of showing affection.
And I realized that most of the questions I was asked when I first moved to Mumbai, which felt so overwhelming and hurtful at the time, were not intended to be exclusionary. People in India tend to tell it like it is, I realized, and there is beauty in that honesty. And truly, on balance, I’d prefer to know whether I have spinach in my teeth or if my scarf doesn’t match properly. Compared to the United States, I felt seen in Mumbai. I wanted to return the favor and see others as they had seen me.
Almost two years into living in Mumbai, a friend and I went to Joggers Park at 6 a.m. to try out the city’s famous laughter yoga. The principle is simple: Laughter is a type of breathing that can reduce stress and offer many other health benefits. It also sounded really fun.
We joined a circle, where we were the youngest people by a good 40 years. After a basic calisthenics routine, the instructor had us put our arms in the air and say, “Ho! Ho! Ho!” We then had to clap like seals while saying, “Ha ha ha ha ha!” The laughter started off as fake and stilted, but as you might imagine, within five minutes, we were genuinely belly-laughing. One auntie asked if she could set me up with her son, causing my friend and me to double over again with laughter. Aunties are going to auntie, right? To date, it’s the best yoga class I have ever attended.
All these years later, I think about this class often. It held so many nuances of my experience of Mumbai: the joy pervasive in the city, the humanity, the simplicity, the endless hidden pockets. I also remember feeling so truly relaxed and in the moment, which was so different from my initial experiences of being a wide-eyed and overwhelmed outsider who kept making mistakes.
Mumbai is not a city for the faint of heart. But if you’re willing to put in a bit of effort, it’s a place that will pay you back in spades. As for my efforts, I got what I dreamed of: a real connection with India, a country that feels like home, on my own terms.
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This has been Travel Tales, a production of AFAR Media. The podcast is produced by Aislyn Greene and Nikki Galteland. Music composed and produced by Strike Audio.
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