#Indian diaspora

[feline17ff]

Me: Oh that's so cool! My language has Caribbean dialects! I wonder how tho

*looks it up*

Slavery by any other name 🥲

[unmattata]

Coventry's Indian youth. Photos taken by Masterji (Maganbhai Patel).

(Source)

[bossymarmalade]

This is my Uncle Meighoo dressed to play mas in Trinidad Carnival -- my cousin just dropped this in the family whatsapp and it’s the first time I’ve seen it lol

Apparently his character was “The Mighty King Criminal”! Blow yuh whistle 😂

[yourbibillyhill]

You see, you cannot draw lines and compartments, and refuse to budge beyond them. Sometimes you have to use your failures as stepping stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair.

– A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

[triviareads]

On Culture, Diaspora, and Kantara

I watched Kantara (2022) over Thanksgiving after hearing about it for weeks from my family and friends, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since. It's a film that is particularly meaningful to me because my mother's side of the family hails from the region it was set in, Namely, Dakshina Kannada or the old South Canara in the state of Karnataka, India. This is where where bhoota kola is still practiced to this day.

The truth was, despite this movie being set in the land of my ancestors, I could relate very little on a physical level: These were rural villagers with minimal education living in a system of near-feudalism. I am.. not. Even the language was unfamiliar. My Kannada vocabulary can get me by when it comes to day-to-day activities, and it is insufficient if I want to consume Kannada media. In addition, because the dialect (or the accent) was true to the region, it made it more difficult for me to comprehend it. Neither my mother nor grandmother speak with the accent characteristic to the area (although they can if they want to communicate with locals), and even my father, who is not from the area but still from Karnataka, had to rely on subtitles.

There was also a matter of the culture itself. The thing about the aspects of the Dakshina Kannada culture shown in this film (kambala, boota kola) is that you'd only really be exposed to it if you lived in the area, or someone took the effort to purposefully educate you. That is because it is more of a folk culture. While I can say I am familiar with another local folk art, yakshagana (a form of dance-drama), that is because I grew up with stories of my great-grandfather, a noted yakshagana artist who brought his troop to the United States to tour. In addition, the practice of bhoota kola is not quite a part of the Hindu tradition I was raised in, specifically the Kannada Madhwa Brahmin tradition. I've read that bhoota kola and the notion of daivas is likely is a tradition practiced in the region long before Hinduism arrived.

To hear my mother matter-of-factly say that kambala (Buffalo races) and cock fights and bhoota kola occurred in her coastal village was startling. I suppose the reason she never mention it before was because she never actively went to kambalas (women from "good" families didn't go to events where there were drunk men; so she only saw the processions and parades before the actual event). As for the actual practice of bhoota kola, my grandmother admitted that when she was in around sixth grade, she snuck out of her house in the night to watch the bhoota kola. The old ancestral home in Bramhavara where she grew up was large enough for no one to notice the comings and goings of one girl. At a friend's house, she witnessed the ritual dance, and at some point, an offering of a live rooster was made to the daiva. The rooster's head was promptly snapped off its body. Eventually, my grandmother grew scared, and ran back home.

Regardless of how much I related to the villagers themselves, by the end of the film, I felt like I had a deeper understanding of my own cultural roots not only because of the film itself, but because of the greater context my family members were able to provide. But I also felt a certain amount of sadness. The thing is, I don't live where these rituals are practiced. In my lifetime, I have seen the Bramhavara house demolished, and relatives move away from their ancestral villages. My own parents moved across continents. I don't have the connection to the land that I imagine my ancestors did. At best, I feel fondness and an attachment to where I grew up, but there is no holiness in that, and a part of me wonders if I am missing out on something. I know migration is a natural part of human history, and perhaps this is the truth for any member of any diaspora, but still... I can't help but wonder.

When I finished watching Kantara, I came away entertained, thoughtful, and moved in equal measure. I felt a renewal of faith in a time I sorely needed it, not only in the classical sense, but all those holy protectors tied to the land.

[honey-stick]

every so often i realize how much racism has taken a toll on me mentally. i started reading the madame petit manga (no spoilers, im on ch 3) and the main love interest rn is an indian guy, and he's not drawn as disgusting, but as someone so handsome & desirable.

like! look at him!

he's so dreamy and hot! he looks just like me!

i just have so many feelings bubbling up. he's handsome and looks like me. i can really be seen as beautiful by others? i'm not disgusting for having brown skin? im desirable? my indian features are handsome? traditional clothing doesn't make me weird and ugly? white people have seen themselves as pretty and attractive and desirable all this time?

i've been missing this, i never knew i could be pretty & desired. i know there are many people who have told me im hot and have flirted with me. but it's different here. i havent fully realized im wanted & hot till seeing it reflected back at me.

[sudamaniparva]

this is a weird entry, but i think Mon Mothma and her daughter Leida are the best metaphor for the indian mainland vs diaspora children divide. for this metaphor to work, i'll be simplifying quite a bit and i know that all people are not like this.

Mainlanders tend to be a lot like Mon Mothma. there's an awareness for the horrors committed by the culture, all the unsavory aspects are alive and well. while the good of the culture is present, it's shadowed by the knowledge that real human abuses are being perpetrated. your understanding of culture is a lot more balanced, and people who chose to support it mostly do so from a reformist point of view.

diaspora children act a lot like Mon Mothma's daughter. diaspora tend to be isolated and mocked for their beliefs, and just generally are isolated from the culture. the loneliness that comes from that causes people to double down on their beliefs, and cling to everything. the bad is brushed aside as you fight against the pressure to assimilate to the dominant hegemony. as a result, diaspora do often have more conservative points of view about the native culture.

and thus, the clash is born.

[corepaedianews]

Humza Yousaf: Scotland gets a Muslim leader in a moment of extraordinary change for British politics

Parveen Akhtar, Aston University and Timothy Peace, University of Glasgow Humza Yousaf’s appointment as first minister of Scotland is a historic moment for the UK. It means that, for the first time in history, the country has a Hindu prime minister in Westminster (Rishi Sunak) and a Muslim first minister in Scotland. In his victory speech, Yousaf said: We should all take pride in the fact that…

[webley-art]

[queerlyfemmeandblack]

Diwali in Trinidad, 2012 by Roger Seepersad

[bossymarmalade]

Before my father died, he read an autobiography by another Trinidadian man in his peer group about what life was like on the sugar cane estates. My dad lived in the labourer barracks on Golconda Estate with his grandparents when he was little, so he was very disparaging of this other man’s account and started noting down his own experiences out of spite  XD

We found a bunch of his notes after he passed, all in his draftsman’s block capitals (a little shaky in his 80s) and I’ve been very slowly going through them. Sometimes it’s hard to conceive of the change that my dad saw in his lifetime. The indentured East Indian workers arriving in the Caribbean seem so long ago to me, but he still saw the direct legacy of all that shit.

[ TRANSCRIPT ]

DUTIES: 

1) The Gen. Manager (white English) was the head of the estate & reported to a head manager delegated by [to] owners (”Tate & Lyle”) of England.

2) The overseers also white were mostly bachelors sharing a multi-room bungalow. They dressed in [kakhi] short sleeved shirt, khaki short pants, khaki tall socks, boots & khaki cork hats & supervise all top personnel.

He used to talk about seeing those overseers ride up and down the estate roads on horses, in their cork hats, with whips. In another section of his notes he remarks that all the white English had servants, too.

“In 1937 Kielberg sold his Liverpool sugar refinery to Tate & Lyle and in return was invited to become a co-investor in the company’s new West Indies raw sugar venture.“ <--- this is all that the Tate & Lyle website has to say about its history of exploitation in the canefields. We were nothing more than the living machinery of its venture.

[yourbibillyhill]

Please always remember, the secret of survival is to embrace change, and to adapt. To quote: "All things fall and are built again, and those that build them again are gay."

– A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

[skpoornima]

The Sunday Afternoon Oil Massage

We have a lot of rituals where I’m from,  but perhaps none like the Sunday afternoon oil massage

[following the Sunday morning cleaning* *with the voices of Late and Mukesh in the background]

a mango tree’s roots go deep into the earth 

and come out on the other side of the world

in my grandmother’s garden

bearing the same juicy fruit

that dripped from my grandfather’s lips

as he spat out the seeds

back into the soil, wet from the monsoon

the smell of home wrapped with coconut oil

into the nape of my mother’s neck 

tied into a knot of a wet cotton towel

with black tresses flowing like a fountain