Cultural Border

There’s an adage in ancient Hindu philosophy: You are not one person but three, the one you think you are (manas/mind), the one others think you are (buddhi/intellect), and the one you really are (chitta/consciousness). In Adwaita (non-duality) philosophy, you are the essence of god, a part of the cosmic consciousness. That’s not necessarily how people might perceive you, nor might you consider yourself to be so. But it does not change the truth about who you are. 

I feel the same way about my book(s).

Last week, I started my search for a graphic designer to design the cover for my first book. In my head, it is a story that transcends cultural boundaries, not in the way of rising above them, but rather seamlessly blending multicultural experiences the same way our lives do in today’s globalized world. And yet, one of the five artists I queried, instantly responded that she was excited to work on the book and envisioned “some kind of cultural border” for the cover. Uff, the cultural border! The exact reason I wrote this book was to get away from the cultural border: the stereotyped Indian culture and characters that have proliferated in North America. 

Long years ago, when I used to teach WGSS 101, I began my introductory lecture with Chimamanda Adichie’s video, “The Danger of a Single Story.” [This was before she became mired in the transphobia controversy, and if I was still teaching I would have offered a more nuanced analysis to go with the video or would have replaced it with something else.] Adichie’s warning against the danger of a single story is about the pitfalls of stereotyping a culture, a region, a people. We tend to see only one side, one strand, one string of culture that’s never been a monolith. No culture is a monolith, and yet, when I say my story has South Asian characters, there is no attempt at understanding the context of my characters. All I get is a cultural border. The very border has affected just how wide South Asian characters can spread their wings. We are either Apu, or the strict parent that grants their kids no agency, or the kid who needs to sever the umbilical cord to their family, community, or culture in order to find themselves. We are another thing: we are the arranged marriage. The concept has become so synonymous with South Asia, especially India, and Pakistan, that we can’t seem to shake off its hold on our identities. And the phenomenon itself makes no effort at understanding the difference between arranged marriages and forced marriages. Again, this isn’t meant to deny that arranged marriages take place every day in the region, but it is also true that young people fall in love every day outside the context of an arranged marriage. To zero in on arranged marriage is to deny the existence of desire, lust, pleasure, and love that exist irrespective of, or despite, the cultural emphasis placed on an arranged marriage. This is the exact reason I wanted to tell a different kind of story. A story that I hope will bring joy to my readers.

The tagline on the homepage of my website says, “Stories of Joy for my People,” but who exactly are my people? My people are all those who long to see a different kind of representation in romance. My people are those who want to languish in the beauty of brown bodies, imperfect bodies, fat bodies, queer bodies, bodies that deserve and demand romance and pleasure. My people are those who yearn for a different kind of story, who don’t need to be told what caste means, who don’t need to be explained what paneer paratha looks or tastes like. And yet, my people are also those who don’t know the gravity of caste and the existence of paneer paratha but are willing to look it up without placing that burden on the writer. You know, like we, the colonized looked up sausages and salami while growing up, or every unpronounceable French word. Because those stories we read as kids were written and received as universal, in the same vein as mankind and man were used as universal terms.

The cultural border then serves a very specific purpose, to signal that stories like mine are “the other.” Not written for a universal audience nor received as such. A cultural border expects the author to explain every non-English word in the book. A cultural border expects pandering to the western stereotypes of my people, instead of writing about experiences like my own. A cultural border assumes it knows who “my people” are without paying heed to the breadth or depth of my connections. A cultural border attempts to force me into my box, the one I was supposed to be in as defined by the same cultural border. Cultural border is the master’s tool. 

Cultural border is the reason the same graphic designer canceled my query with an unkind note when I didn’t respond in two days. It is the social, spiritual, psychological, and economic burden placed on people of color to behave in certain ways, to be a certain way. To exist according to the rules laid down for us. It expects us to stay in our lane.

So, no, I do not want a cultural border for my book. 

But I have yet to address the third part of existential philosophy: the one you really are. This book, per the reception theories of Jauss, Barthes, and Hall, will be read in as many ways as the number of readers. The moment I let it out in the world, it ceases to be my creation. It belongs in the realm of my readers’ imagination. Some might receive it in the way I had hoped, some might not. Some might provide constructive criticism of it; some might outright hate it. I have no control over any of these reactions (easier said than done, though, and as a first-time writer, my nerves are all jitters). But none of this changes the actual essence of the book. The thing it really is. Neither my understanding of it nor my readers’ perception affects the true essence of this work. It is what it is supposed to be. I can tell you how I envisioned it but that doesn’t mean that’s the only scope of this work. It will have a life, an existence of its own and neither I nor my readers can control or channel it. 

All I can hope is it isn’t circumscribed by a cultural border.