So This Is How It Feels To Be A Proper Indian

(This article was originally published in the Huffington Post)

indian cowboy

As if hailing from the Indian sub-continent wasn’t exotic enough.

My hate-affair with jazzing up one’s ancestry began when I came to the UK in the mid-80s. My family fronts the unexpected migrant tale of leaving behind a perfectly privileged life of tea estates and maids in Bangladesh to start anew for the sake of our education (my brother was finishing college and the universities there were as much a hotbed of extremism then as they are now). Much of my family were heavily involved in the war of independence just before I was born, so I was raised to love my country and was, as patriots are wont to do, proud to be a Boy of Bengal. Continue reading “So This Is How It Feels To Be A Proper Indian”

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