ARTWORK: Beth O’Sullivan
Soy Originalemente de… Nayantara Ranganatha One of the first phrases I learnt to say in Spanish after moving to Chile was “soy originalmente de la India.” Every time I met anyone, however proud I was of my Spanish pronunciation, I’d immediately get asked where I was really from. My friends and I began joking about my trademark response, and the way my voice changed into a high-pitched, child-like tone when I tried to express myself in a language so foreign to me. Every time I said this phrase, I would be reminded that however confident I felt using this language in my head, I’d feel like a stranger in this country as soon as the words left my mouth. Recently I’ve been thinking of this idea – the idea of being a stranger in some places. I think to most people, it’s implied that you feel like a stranger in one place, because you belong to another. The idea of belonging is necessary in order to notbelong. Yet I have also increasingly found others like me – other kids who don’t belong in the traditional way. The truth is that I’m not even originally from India. I have never lived there. I was born in Singapore, but Singaporean laws led me to inherit my parent’s citizenship, and my physical appearance makes it easy for me to introduce myself as Indian. Though I speak Kannada and frequently travel to Bangalore to visit family members, I can’t forget the time a street vendor mistook me for a tourist in front
of Mysore palace and addressed me in English. Or the fact that I haven’t attended school in India and don’t share the same knowledge of Indian history as my cousins. When classmates ask me about Hindu practices or popular tourist destinations that they’ve visited, I often don’t know how to answer. Some have tried to convince me that I’m actually Singaporean – I was born in Singapore, so I am Singaporean. It’s that simple, and the same rules must apply everywhere in this world. But my ties to Singapore are limited to the vague, washed-out memories I have of my first three years of life. I don’t speak Singlish, I don’t remember eating at any of their famous food courts -- Singapore isn’t home. No, if I could truly call one place home, it would be Tübingen. The small town in the south of Germany where I spent eight years of my childhood. It was here that I graduated from Kindergarten and Elementary School. I learned to read and write, went through a horse phase, played in the snow in the winter and polished off daily ice creams during the summer. It is the place where I feel most safe, accepted, and calm. I yearn to see the graffiti on the walls of the train station and visit the same crepe stand that has been standing for more than a decade. But I don’t “look German”, have not kept in touch with most of my childhood friends, and my German fluency is declining.
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