And we start from here.

I would venture to call myself a researcher. A young and naïve researcher, of course, since I am barely over two decades old, but a researcher nonetheless. I find myself constantly asking why and how, causes and consequences, reasons and remedies.

And yet, the curious thing about many researchers is that despite all our questions, we often miss the subject right in front of us.

During the past three years that I’ve spent in James Madison College at Michigan State University (go green!), I have devoted myself to studying what most would consider abstract tragedies--rampant underdevelopment, mass onslaughts of sexual assault, genocides and gendercides. My academic research primarily has circled the African continent, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and Sudan.

A year ago, if asked where I expected to be this summer, I easily would have answered, “Tanzania,” “Kenya,” “South Africa,” or another of the fifty-something African nations I still hope to visit one day.

Yet the title of this blog gives away that those summer plans have moved to the wayside. As I write now, I am sitting alone at the Detroit Metro Airport, eagerly awaiting my flight to India--a country I last visited with my family when I was in seventh grade. I stayed in Calcutta and Delhi for a little over three weeks, with a few other sightseeing stops, such as in Agra. If you can imagine what most teenagers are like, I assure you I was no different--our family album has photographs of me in pure angst and lankiness at the Taj Mahal. Even one of the world’s wonders could barely dent my thirteen-year-old torment.

Since that trip eight years ago, the relationship between me and India has been tenuous, if not completely estranged. By most standards of Indianess (yes, some of my white friends may be amazed there is even such a thing), I haven’t fared well. I’m not pre-med. I don’t bhangra. I can’t speak Bengali or Hindi. I can probably count the number of Indian friends I have on two hands. For all intensive stereotypical purposes, I joke that I am a self-proclaimed ‘coconut’--i.e. “brown on the outside, white on the inside.”

As ridiculous as the coconut metaphor might sound, at the core is a clear shard of truth in the joke. I know virtually nothing about my heritage and family history beyond my parents and my younger brother. I couldn’t tell you my grandparents’ first names, let alone any of the anecdotes and stories that comprise their lives. I haven’t met the vast majority of my relatives, and of the few I know, I’m not sure how we’re even linked to begin with. To be frank, I don’t know where I came from.

So we start from here. From June 18 until August 6, I am devoted to uncovering my India story. I arrive on June 20 in Kolkata to see my mother’s family (her sister, mother, and my cousin Avi). A few days later, I go on a whirlwind trip with my father’s brother to visit his side of the family. From July 8 to 28, I get to be part of an international student seminar by my uncle’s nonprofit, the India Foundation. The seminar, titled “The India Story,” appears to be a multidisciplinary crash-course on the nation I have neglected for so long, including everything from ecology and geology to classical dance and sightseeing. Also sandwiched into this exciting trip is three weeks with my boyfriend, the famous circumnavigator, Nick Micinski, as well as even a chance to learn reiki, an alternative healing practice.

For more reasons than I can detail in this brief post, there is something about the identity of an Indian American that is worth investigating. Cultural negotiation, assimilation, and the immigrant experience are alive and well--I hope you will join me on my journey.