When I first meet a person they always ask, “Who are you and where are you from?” I say, “My name is Aamir and although my family is Pakistani I was born and raised here in Queens my whole life.” The first thing they always say is, “Pakistani? Really? You don’t look it.”
I can’t really consider myself to be Pakistani for a number of reasons. First of all, I was born here and not there. Secondly, I have never gone there. My mom and dad’s family were able to immigrate because both of my grandfathers worked for the U.S. embassy in Pakistan and no one has gone back since! My parents like to joke and push the blame on me by saying that “It costs a lot of money and we can’t afford it because we need to put you and your brother through school.” Thirdly, I can’t fluently speak Urdu which is Pakistan’s official language. I can understand it nearly perfectly and can communicate well with my grandparents but if I try speaking in Urdu it just doesn’t sound right. Fortunately there’s an acronym for a group that kids like me belong to. It’s called ABCD and it stands for American Born Confused Desi.
I used a strange word “Desi” that has developed into a word that defines people who originate in the Indian subcontinent. These Desi people are people from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. There is a general Desi culture which brings people from all of these neighboring countries together. This culture can be stereotypically be defined by one song t
hat has seeped into the mind of any Desi person in the world. The name of the song is Kuch Kuch Hota Hai http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOa5t_es0s8. It’s not very surprising that this song is from a Bollywood movie (Indian cinema) of the same name that has defined the industry for a generation. To understand the scale and importance of this song to Desi culture the actor in the song Sharukh Khan is now known as King Khan, the superstar of Bollywood. Everyone knows this guy as an icon of Indian cinema. His movies have a big role in defining this Desi culture that many people, including myself, have grown up with.
A very important point, which is the most confusing part of this culture, is the difference between Desi culture and Desi reality. Going back to the song a bunch of contradictions arise. First of all it’s a love song. My parents’ marriage was arranged! It’s not just my parents, almost all of the Desi parents I know have had arranged marriages. This really confuses me considering that every Bollywood movie is primarily a love story. People think of these movies as fantasies and in real life do the exact opposite of what happens in the movie. The second thing that’s confusing about this song is that there are two girls and one guy and they are all out on the field singing about this love triangle that they are in. In real life it’s considered shameless to have pre-marital affairs and someone would kill that guy for making two girls fall in love with him. It’s these things that I really don’t understand.
I am confused. I strongly hope that there are actually other kids like me who grew up with all this culture in their face that resulted in their confusion. I find it very difficult to come up with a straight definition but American Born Confused Desi sounds pretty good to me.
