Personal Rant of the Day: Don't act like you know me
*Directed towards a certain individual who decided to talk behind my back, as I was listening (!), and went on to make certain presumptions about me. *First of all, I hate it when I can't turn back and shoot an equally insulting comment back at someone during the moment when someone is trying to undermine me. I don't know why. I always wish I was one of those girls who could come up with a witty, burning comment right at those moments. BUT, of course, I am too overwhelmed, confused, or simply too nice to say something back. Something in me just always wants to wave it off, ignore it, and move on.
But really, how dumb/unaware/nice do you think I am? To be sitting there right behind me, making indirect comments (but yet so direct since you were looking at me and since there was NO other brown person there other than me) about who you think I am and what my personality is like. I've talked to you like 2 times, both times with a smile on my face and with considerable kindness. I've never been mean to you.
But just because you're brown and I'm brown, DOES NOT mean we have to talk to each other, become best buddies, hang out on weekends, or even eye-fuck at each other. Maybe I'm a little shy, a little introverted and maybe you're a little outgoing and extroverted, so you're having trouble understanding why a fellow brown person isn't automatically bffs with another person who also happens to be brown and all eager to hang out with just fellow browns. Well, "Mr. Are you brown enough": Let me break it down for you.
DON'T act like you know me. DON'T tell me how desi I am or am not. DON'T label me and tell me what a Desi should/would act like. Don't take mere observations and extractions of random conversations to presume that you know who I am, where I come from, what my upbringing is like, what my beliefs are, what my friends are like, what I think it means to be a brown person.
But most of all, don't EVER tell me how I should identify as a brown person and what I should act like. Because, the truth is, with your convoluted vision of who I am, you'll never figure it out and you'll always put me in your make-believe "this is how desis should act/feel/hang out with" box. And I'll just never fit in.
Seriously, who do you think you are to be telling me what it means to be a desi, to be assuming that just because I hang out with a diverse group of friends that has a lower number of desis which apparently doesn't fit your quota/standard of enough desi friends to have to be a true desi, that I am somehow less desi because of it? That I am somehow losing my culture, religion, beliefs by hanging out with people that I actually like, that are smart, funny, caring, and good people rather than a few extra browns to fill your supposed quota just so I can say/feel like I'm desi enough.
Because let me tell you. That is some messed up idea of what it means to be a desi. For you to say something so asanine like, "Well I guess brownies just ignore other brownies here, you know, that's just how some of the brownies I know roll here I guess..." In what planet did you think that I would just let that go by and how dare you think that just because not every brown person is friends with every other brown person, that somehow we are ignoring him/her or denying our identity in some way. Seriously, man. I want to know. Because you are apparently coming from somewhere I CANNOT relate with.
Maybe it's because you live in a town with a much smaller desi population and so everyone knows each other and therefore every brown person MUST be friends with each other. Well, I hate to break it to you. There's like this big city like 3 hours away from here where there's like 200,000+ desis. And not everyone knows each other (unless you play the six-degrees-Kevin Bacon game!) and not everyone feels the need to either. Nobody CARES!
You're just being an idiot. People like you upset me, anger me, because you try to pigeon-hold all of us in some sort of complex-standstill-narrow minded concept of desiness that people like me will never adhere to. Everyone has their own way of identifying with their brownness and don't need to follow your stupid standards or quotas.
I'm secure with who I am, what my identity is, how I define desi for myself, who my friends are, what my interests are, and how my brown self wants to "roll."
I guess I could drop to your level and question why you act so gangsta (when you're clearly suburban), why you feel need to act like such a pimp (as if that really attracts all the ladies), why you are so arrogant and judgmental when somone doesn't act in a way you don't agree with. But you know what, I'll NEVER equate your behavior, beliefs, actions, as being any more or any less Desi.
Because guess what, you jerk, being desi isn't about all that. That's all just you. There's no one definition for it. You are who you are and you live the way you want to. There is no one way that an individual desi must act in order to be an actual desi. There's no written script or rulebook for it. There's never confusion. You shouldn't be bound by some arbirtrary boundaries. And never according to just one defintion. We all have our own evolving identity.
Desis come in all forms yo! Live and Let live!
Peace,
From the "I-don't-need-to-define-myself-to-you" secure brown sista sitting infront of you.
posted by payal @ 3:10 PM
2 Comments:
Whoa, Payal! Way to speak your mind! :-) I can only guess to whom you may be addressing this post, but all I can say is way to be so confident in stating your views! I'm glad to be one of your friends; and apparently if you were to follow this guy's viewpoint of life, I wouldn't be a close friend since I'm not desi or brown. You're right-- his view definitely sounds limited and skewed. Way to stand up for being yourself, your desi identity, and enjoying having diverse friends all at the same time!
Awww...thanks Angela. That means a lot! :)
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