Grade 1 was the first year I ever bought into the materialistic trend of have-to-have, won’t-be-cool-without latest collectible item. At that age, it was a cutthroat competition to have the biggest, sparkliest, fuzziest sticker collection. If you had scratch-n-sniff, you were sailing. My array of stickers was pretty average, but I had one page in my collection book that no one could even contend with—my page of traditional Hindu bindis.
I think it was around that time, at the oh-so-cultured age of six, that I began to think that having a mixed background was cool. Through my teens, my Indo-Canadian blood sometimes meant my appearance was more awkward than cool, but I’ve grown to be proud of it.
My mom emigrated from New Delhi to Belleville, Ontario in 1969, along with my grandparents and my uncle. My dad, originally from Winnipeg, met her in London, Ontario through work. Moving to Canada without knowing a word of English was even harder than they’d imagined, and I guess Belleville wasn’t all they had envisioned either. My mom and uncle moved to Toronto early in their 20s. My grandma, on the other hand, didn’t see the allure of the big city and still lives in Kingston.
Lucky for me, while everyone’s waiting for a half-hour to get a table at Curry Original, I have my own personal chef only 10 minutes away. Her stories about living in India are almost as unbelievable as her butter chicken and matter paneer.
Both my uncle and grandma have been back to India since they left, but my mom has yet to return. That was, until I talked to a girlfriend this year whose Dad is Indian. Her family is finally going to see the homeland this winter break.
I called my parents that night and begged them to finally take us. My mom’s promise that she would take us when my brother turned 10 was not panning out—he’s now 16—and as I enter my fourth year, a few weeks of family togetherness was not necessarily foreseeable in the plans past graduation. I think they had already had the trip on their minds because it didn’t take as much convincing as I thought.
So my Christmas won’t be a white one. I used to be devastated by the mere thought of this, always pitying the family in Home Alone who hauled it down to Miami to spend the holidays. As excited as I am for the trip, I’m terrified at being immersed in a culture so foreign to me and yet so much—half, exactly—of who my family is. I was relieved this week to find out that my grandma will be there at the same time as us, and so I won’t have to explain to all these strangers how we’re related and why I’m in their home, eating their food.
Thinking my background is weird seems ridiculous to me now, and I feel grateful to say that I’ve got parents from two different worlds. And as I spend my Christmas Eve flying halfway across the world, instead of going to the church down my street for mass, I will be counting my lucky stars for being able to experience a place I’ve dreamt of since I put my first bindi in my sticker book.
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