You are from WHERE?

Being a British Indian who lives in the USA, is a particularly strange and sometimes confusing condition.

My parents moved to England when I was just a year old. I grew up totally in London, all of my schooling took place in London. I went to college in Winchester and London, I have a British passport, and only moved across the pond at the age of 28 because the man I intended to marry was based here.

Five years on, I live a comfortable and happy life with my husband and daughter in a suburb of Washington DC. However, I still sometimes yearn for the grime, and buzz of London. I dream of Mince Pies and Top of the Pops specials (look it up) at Christmas, and the words 'blimey' and 'git' are a natural part of my vocabulary.

I am a Londoner - not a fake Dick Van Dyke cockney - a proper Londoner. I did grow up in a pretty traditional Indian family, surrounded by a tight knit Indian community. However, like most of the second and third generation British Indians in London I know, I have always felt VERY much a Londoner. This was never questioned by any of my non-Indian British friends in London. It was just taken for granted that I was one of them. I felt and sounded like a Londoner.

However, since moving to the USA, my identity has been in dispute. I have been surprised, and sometimes taken aback, by people's expressions when they hear my accent. There is often a raising of eyebrows followed by "your English is very good". Very often, when I mention that I am from England, I get the response "no you're not" or "but where are you really from?"

Last month, a client commented that he couldn't get used to my accent "your voice and face don't seem to match up" he said. Could you ever imagine the outrage the above comments would provoke if they were made to an African American?

Many people who have been confounded by my accent, seemed to assume that Britain is made up of Caucasian people, and to be fair, this has been influenced by the media's representation of British culture over here.
I would like people to understand that, just like the USA, Britain is made up of people with different cultural heritages and Ethnic backgrounds.

This whole discussion brings up a deeper issue about how nationality is perceived by us. It seems to me that it is time to start thinking more deeply about questions of identity. What it is really that makes somebody British, or American, or Indian, or all three?
Interesting food for thought in a world that is rapidly getting smaller and smaller!