I Pronounce My Own Name Wrong
Unpalatable as ever
Last night I drank Sauvignon blanc with jalapeños in it. It shouldn’t have worked, but it did. It was brash and sharp and better than any classic vintage I’ve ever had. It tasted like the kind of life I was built for!
I’ve been circling around writing this for years, but every time I try to pick a side, the others tap me on the shoulder. The Indian in me sneers at the platinum blonde hair I wore for years. The Hong Konger in me cringes at how I forgot to order Siu Mai at my last dim sum. The Brit in me corrects my vowels when I get too comfortable. I don’t belong to any of them. And worse: none of them want me.
I was born to Indian parents, with Hong Kong citizenship, moved from the Orient to London at fifteen, and somewhere along the way, I lost my claim to all of it. I speak Cantonese, better than Hindi. Growing up in Hong Kong’s European international schools, I learned French to the point where, even today, it’s sometimes the only language I trust not to betray me.
My best friend, Sara, and I speak a private dialect:
Le français pour la tentation, 感到羞愧時使用國語、English for everything in between.
French for temptation, Chinese for shame, English for everything in between.
Growing up, my Indian friends laughed when they heard me speak Cantonese. Said I was not one of them, a curry gone cold. For the Chinese, they said: rice with any sauce would always be a curry. The only people who let me melt into their world were the Posh White Brits; their wellies, their double-barrelled surnames, their immaculate indifference because I spoke their accent better than they did.
The ground started to shift.
I cut off the bleach last summer, let my black hair grow in thick, wavy, black, and suddenly the face in the mirror was one I hadn’t met before, the first time I had seen my face without hair dye, 6 years gone. I sought out Indians, practising my Hindi, even as they laughed at my odd vocabulary and schoolboy accent.
As I delved into the linguistics of why they shunned my vocabulary, I realised the Hindi I learned wasn’t really Hindi. It was Urdu, inherited from my mother’s side, a mercantile family from Lahore who fled during Partition, raised their children in Catholic schools, and never admitted what language they were really speaking at home.
My 84-year-old Nani’s language of choice is English.
I got my mother’s name tattooed on my shoulder in Hindi. When I sent her a photo, drunk in Mallorca, she asked what it said. She too, raised outside of India, never learnt to read it.
When I need to think of simpler times, my lullaby is Alouette.
I’m craving prawn dumplings right now.
But I wouldn’t mind some Chilli Cheese Toast.
I watch Pakistani dramas with my Nani and understand them better than my Dadu’s Uttar Pradesh colloquialisms. I am made of fragments, of loaned phrases, of half-claimed gods.
And still, I don’t know if I’d trade it. I don’t know if I’d pick being a White Briton who never left Surrey, or a Chinese Hong Konger with a local school education, or an heir in Delhi with a land and a title. (My last name, Rai, literally comes from the Indian Earl.)
I don’t even know if I’d choose monoculture over this beautiful, unpalatable mess I’ve been given. Because despite how much it’s cost me, it’s mine.
I went back to Hong Kong this month. The city that raised me. The air felt thick, heavy in my lungs, the sun too oppressive. I couldn’t sleep. I knew every street, every back alley, the language and culture, and yet, when I landed back at Heathrow, I felt… home. Or the closest thing I have to it right now.
Sorry Berkshire & Devon.
I’m not the holy child of any lineage. I am, in biblical terms, a bird of the air. Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.
I won’t inherit a kingdom. But I am fed.
I pronounce my own name wrong.
I’m dɹˈuːv, not d̪ʱɾu.ʋɐ.
And I think I’m okay with that.
You are a one of a kind person