Understanding 'identity' through dealing with a crisis.

How living in different environments and parts of the world, led me to an identity crisis.

I am from Trichy, Tamil Nadu (திருச்சி, தமிழ்நாடு). It's a tier 2 city in the geographical center of TN, the fourth largest in the state. I grew up and went to school in Trichy until class 10. Around the age of ten, I was an active kid in studies and extracurriculars who stuck out a little bit, but I struggled to connect with boys in my class who liked and played cricket, the popular game. I liked the girls in my class more and I was better friends with more girls than boys. I eventually became the butt of venomous gossip and I felt extremely isolated among the boys. This was the first time I realized that I had a male identity and I was not fitting the norms of a 'typical boy'.

From Trichy to Chennai. Green lines indicate friendships and acquaintances

In 2013 at age 15, I went to boarding school in Chennai for classes 11 and 12, where I studied with friends from a few parts of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Here, I discovered my regional identity. It was my first direct experience with the diversity of dialects and cultures in just two states in South India. This remains my best schooling experience, partly due to the network of strong friendships I made, spread across this large region. Incidentally, this phase was also the first reminder of my upper caste identity. Until that point, I thought castes were merely divisions of communities and subcultures, but that was the first time I found out about its hierarchical nature and implications. In another post, I will discuss how I've gone from holding narrow-minded, unintelligent views on 'reservation' (affirmative action) at the age of 16-18 to the present, after a lot of mistakes, learning and unlearning.

In 2015, I decided to go to Mumbai for my undergraduate education and one of the reasons was that I wanted to expand the horizon of my cultural exposure. I wanted to meet people from all over the country.

I did not speak a word of Hindi then and blending in proved much harder than I thought because Hindi was the de facto language of casual conversations despite being a culturally diverse campus with a significant population of South Indians. This is when I became strongly aware of a broader South Indian identity. I did not speak any other South Indian language but I felt more connected to South Indians than I did with the rest. And it was my personal experience that 'friendship' was stronger and more intimate in the South. Due to some other incidents that made it harder for me to actively participate in college events, I felt a bit isolated in my first year, wishing I had stayed in Tamil Nadu. About six months in, some Malayali friends adopted me, made me feel at home, and I spent the first year learning both languages - Malayalam first and Hindi later.

As the years passed I ended up spending much more time with North Indians because I found love and friendship in the dance community on campus. Hindi is the language of some of my most precious friendships today, and it is the language through which I found deep, fulfilling love and first matured as an adult in relationships.

The urban identity also crept on me during the four years I spent in Mumbai, which is a city of extremes. Living in Trichy in a highly educated, affluent, liberal family was sobering, but I was still not as 'urban' as my cousins and friends from Chennai. But Mumbai blasted open those brackets, with the juxtaposition of poor and rich everywhere in the streets of South Bombay, like a reminder of the vast extremes of India itself.

In 2019, I moved from Mumbai to Germany for my Master's study. I was hoping to jump right into another melting pot of culture, but the language barrier and cultural shocks proved much harder to overcome. Social circles were formed mainly on national and linguistic identities, and most internationals mixed only among their own people. So my Indian identity was plastered on my face everywhere I went, and I became sensitive to another racial identity, that I was Brown and not Black or White. And I was clearly in the middle in terms of social acceptance.

I became aware of the eliteness of my identity when I realized I think and express myself much better in English, the language of my British colonizers. Surprisingly, much better than fellow Western Europeans who conversed and studied in their mother tongues. My grasp of English gave me a small edge in several parts of my research, in quickly understanding articles and complex concepts, giving presentations, and writing my papers and thesis.

This was also the first time I faced the question of my religious identity. I was born a Hindu, but for as long as I can remember, I was a more detached atheist who didn't really feel the significance of any religious festival. However, I liked most of them, at least the very few that brought people together. And I liked seeing communities come together in faith, no matter how superficial it was, or purely for the sake of merriment. I shared this way of life with most young European atheists who looked forward to Christmas just for the carnivals, holidays, and family time. But one question irked me inside - if I am not a practicing Hindu, if I don't regularly eat Indian food, wear traditional Indian clothes, celebrate Hindu festivals, etc., then what does it mean to say that I am culturally an Indian?

Around this time, during the Covid lockdowns, I discovered Eastern forms of spirituality and started becoming highly spiritual. I then realized that these identities are merely social constructs, even biological ones such as sexual identity. As a human being, a single entity, I belong to several communities and share common characteristics with other humans, and that is what gives rise to these labels. But none of them define me, not even all of them together. And even under every broad identity - Tamil, Hindu, Brown - was a plethora of sub-identities, implying that its 'fitting' depends largely on the context of invocation.

But it's not that easy to escape identities in civilization. It seemed to me that identities differentiate and stereotype people. To define who I am is to say also who I am not, and it was hard for me to accept the sectarian divisions that emerged. And every label comes with cultural norms that are meant to make people conform. I've carried my gender, caste, class, regional, linguistic, religious, racial, and national identities with me everywhere, unable to own any of them with a strong attachment or 'pride'.

On the contrary, some of my identities feel like home. There are people attached to them I love unequivocally. The identities of my parents and closest friends already feel a little bit like mine too, as if warmth and a sense of belonging flow through our bonds. And every time I've gone out into a new cultural environment, it is always the people of my roots, Tamil and Indian, that form the bedrock of my support and stability. Moving away from home has always brought me ineffably back to my roots.

This was my identity crisis, my inability to fully own or reject any of my cultural identities. I felt like a potato dropped into different exotic soups. I did not add to the taste of any soup, but I quickly assimilated all the flavors for my own satisfaction. I blended in perfectly, but still managed to retain my sense of individuality. Most Tamil and Indian diaspora I met, have faced this crisis and they respond by holding to their roots strongly.

One of my best friends was a Sri Lankan Tamil woman who had escaped the civil war between the Sri Lankan state and the Tamil people, to settle down in Trichy several years ago. She had a strong sense of several identities. She wore some of them with pride, and some of them she could not escape due to a very different force - oppression. My struggle to evade mine was against only the gentler force of conformation. Her identity was the foundation of the story of her life, the strength of her rebellion against the world.

Through long, deep interactions with her, I realized that the freedom that I had to transcend or evade the traps of my identities at will, was a privilege. A luxury guaranteed by a society that is mostly designed for me, in which I am at the top of several social and structural hierarchies, almost all of them just by the accident of my birth. They are privileges in a society highly unequal in the economic, social, and political realms. Already unable to own any of my identities, this deeply unsettled me because I no longer knew who I really am in these conditions.

"Unless I am able to analyze the unconscious aspects of the society in which I live, I cannot know who I am, because I don't know which part of me is not me." - Erich Fromm

I confessed to her, "I don't have such a strong sense of identity, but I am unable to reconcile my deep sense of love toward certain communities and cultures more, those that I've grown up being immersed in." She said something that has stuck with me ever since, that revealed the depths of her own story. "You will, when it's being snatched away from you. When you face the threat of losing it." And with a finishing touch of friendly assurance, she added, "I know you will."

This was the seed of a deep desire in me to understand my roots properly. In the far future, I believe that letting go of identities is part of letting go of the ego and all its burdens. But, having had very little exposure to the world, doing that at this age and stage of my life feels like cheating. I do not even know what exactly I have transcended. And most importantly, I cannot appreciate the freedom to evade the traps of identity, because it has been guaranteed by those same set of identities, in inexplicable ways.

This is a journey of a lifetime, one of my inclinations in uncovering the vibrant colors of the human condition: How does history give someone an identity? How does identity bloom into a story? How does a story transcend history?

Another reason I think everybody must consider these questions is that India is going through a turbulent crisis of identities. Under every single identity - gender, religion, language - is a host of subcultural ones that are lost with time, or tend to get washed out and homogenized by powerful sections of society. This cultural homogenization is clearly seen all across India with the rapid pace of urbanization and even concerted efforts to 'unite' people into a single cultural consciousness. I find this unnatural and deeply worrisome. Now is the time to understand, celebrate and sanctify the diversity hidden below all broad identities, while never holding onto any identity at the cost of human dignity and fraternity.

I am most attached to my Tamil identity because it is my mother tongue, the language of my deepest roots, and the language in which I uttered my first words as a human. So I have begun traveling all around my home state, exploring both the sensational and non-sensational aspects of Tamil people and their culture. This journey is மண்வாசம்: chasing the fragrance of my land.

Stay tuned for articles and photostories on my blog and social media :) I wish to leave you with a famous Tamil poem from Sangam literature - Kurunthokai 40. Although it is a romantic verse sung by a lover, its implicit idea is that love obliterates identities.

யாயும் ஞாயும் யார் ஆகியரோ?

எந்தையும் நுந்தையும் எம் முறைக் கேளிர்?

யானும் நீயும் எவ் வழி அறிதும்?

செம் புலப் பெயல் நீர் போல

அன்புடை நெஞ்சம் தாம் கலந்தனவே.

- செம்புலப் பெயனீரார்

My mother and yours, what are they to each other?

My father and yours, how are they related?

You and me, how do we know each other?

Yet, like rainfall on red Earth,

Our hearts in love have merged into one.

- Sempulapeyaneerar