Watering down culture

BY ALISHBA JAVAID

Growing up I’d like to think I was “cultured”

I ate the South Asian food my mother cooked while conversing in Urdu I danced at South Asian weddings every other weekend in pretty lehengas I tuned into the latest Bollywood film and listened to its soundtrack Wasn’t that enough?

It took me 20 years to realize it wasn’t

That my culture is more than its food, fashion and entertainment

That I was ignorantly blissful to the social issues plaguing the country

The floodings, the honor killings, the attacks on religious minorities A complex history rooted in colonialism:

The British rule, A Partition that created the country a civil war that split it

I was clueless about the politics

The political parties, the issues of debate, the government forces To explore them to understand my identity and my roots better

This is all culture too

These are ideals harder to pass on from generation to generation

But I needed to engage and educate myself on them

But I made a commitment not to limit my culture to the pretty features

Because I owe it to myself to learn the full scope