Personal Narrative: Personal Experience

When I was six years old my parents decided to send my younger brother and I to India for our education. Although we only stayed there for a year and half, that experience has encapsulated a very important part of my childhood memory. As a child who was born and raised in Canada this transition to a whole new country and culture shaped the rest of my life and made me who I am today. That experience of living in India helped me get closer to my roots and learn more about where my parents come from and there lives before they decided to immigrate to Canada to start a new life. However when I returned home from my year and half of being in a completely different environment, it was a challenging couple of years for me. Coming back home to Victoria, British Columbia I had to find my way back to the Canadian culture. I had a tough time balancing aspects of my Indian culture along with trying to fit in at school. On many unfortunate occasions I was bullied for who I was and my struggle to find a balance between my Indian heritage and Canadian life. I was feeling obligated to choose one part of me over the other. It was then my parents decided to enroll me in an Indo-Canadian cultural dance school where I was able to develop my own identity and keep in touch with both Indian and Canadian cultures. During that time period of my life I regained back my confidence and got a sense of who I was and what I wanted to be. I particularly highlight this portion of my life because that is the

I am Indian. My entire family is Indian. I am the very first child to have been born outside of India. My parents’ generation were the first to marry into non-Indian families. So America is pretty new for us. However, there isn’t really anything special about us coming to this country. My aunt came for school. My father came for school. My mother came because of my father. They all came by plane comfortably, and never experienced an adventure while coming into the US. It was the most boring travel story EVER.

It is not uncommon to hear one recount their latest family reunion or trip with their cousins, but being a first generation immigrant, I sacrificed the luxury of taking my relatives for granted for the security of building a life in America. My parents, my brother, and I are the only ones in my family who live in the United States, thus a trip to India to visit my extended family after 4 years was an exciting yet overwhelming experience. Throughout the trip, I felt like a stranger in the country where I was born as so many things were unfamiliar, but there were a few places that reminded me of my childhood.

Lastly, in “Two Ways to Belong in America” a cultural story by Bharati Mukherjee. Two sisters that moved to America from India, the older sister wants to move back to India while the other sister is accepting American culture. “I’ll become an American citizen for now, then change back into an Indian when I’m ready to go home. I feel some kind of irrational attachment to India that I don’t to America” (Mukherjee 90).

Turning back the clock, after completing my preschool in the US, my family moved to India primarily so my brother and I could be raised in an environment learning our Indian traditions and culture. They wanted us to embrace our culture and most importantly, value our family relationships. I experienced my primary education in India and returned to this country for high school.

It's a Friday afternoon, I plan to go to Great Wolf Lodge in an hour with my church. I see one of my friends so he says to his mom “ Hey, that's my friend” I said “Crap” So I go inside to sign in to go and see my friends just sitting in a corner on a big sofa. We are listening to music and just talking then a green bus comes.

In the personal essay “Two Ways to Belong in America” by Bharati Mukherjee, two Indian women living in America have opposing views on culture. Bharati, the writer, wants to immerse herself in American culture, while Mira, her close friend, keeps herself tied to India. Mira has not yet become a US citizen, and does not wish to do so. She wants to work in America and go back to her home. “She clings passionately to her Indian citizenship and hopes to go home to India when she retires.”

It is true in life that everything happens for a reason. It is also true to say that sometimes it is all about being in the right place, at the right time. There was never a more prominent example of this than a traumatic summers evening, only a few years ago.

At times, I would feel isolated, like I didn’t belong in either Western or Indian culture. I credit my family and friends for helping me recognize that my cultural ambiguity in no way diminishes my value as a person.

In sixteen years of life, I have received an opportunity to experience different cultures, learning styles, and languages. To start of, I am an American since I was born here, but the reality is that I was raised in India. My parents’ main motivation for moving back to India was because they wanted us to embrace our traditions, and most importantly, value our family relationships. We relocated back to the US at the start of 9th grade. This transition was a huge factor for transforming me as a person. I am cognizant of the two systems, cherish both, and realize that these multicultural experiences have encouraged me to grow and mature beyond my years. Relocating from a place is not as easy as one can imagine. When compared to the US, India

I’ve lived in Mumbai, India for fourteen years, after which I moved to Northampton, Massachusetts to finish my last two years of high school. I’m currently studying at a college New York, and visit my family in India during breaks at college. My relationship with India has been strained for a while now, as I used to see it as a place that inflicted me with so much pain; but what I’ve realized now is that it was also where I learned the most valuable life lessons.

In the short story collection, Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri, immigrants and memories have a very particular relationship because their memories surrounding a large part of their identities are derivative of diaspora. Somehow they are able to have this double consciousnesses, the memories and thoughts as immigrants, and the memories and thoughts as Americans. The time spent in their native country or in their host country cannot be replaced, even if the experiences immigrants encounter are negative. Even if the immigrant misses what they have lost migrating to another country, what is lost cannot come back. There is a constant battle between how much and how little memories do the Indian-American characters in the book have of being either Indian or American to be “Indian-American.”

In late September of 2010, was the year I learned a new word “Depression”! I was in 1st grade and everything was fun because I had no responsibilities or worries. I didn’t know how to feel grief for a long time because I was always happy. I didn’t know that a family member could own a child.

Moving to a different country brought many changes in my life. Living in my native country, India, I never discerned my

As my two-week camping trip in Cherokee, North Carolina, came to an end, I had mixed emotions about summer vacation ending. My party of six, made up of my parents, two younger brothers and a close friend, packed up the cars; and I was still somehow excited to go home. I missed the little comforts and convenience of a real home, and my dog who I left in the care of my grandmother. But I would miss so much about the campsite I called home for some time.