More About Myself...

          Since I'm new to blogging, I feel it's only fair to introduce myself. I am something of a complex character in terms of culture and language; for my entire life, I've lived in America, and been raised by a monolingual family, but since my high school days, I've been learning how to speak Urdu/Hindi along with other South Asian languages (some Tamil, Malayalam, Gujarati), and, for the past two years, Panjabi. However, since this exposure to these languages and cultures, I don't even consider myself American since I have a great cultural gap that emerged between me and other Americans. In learning Urdu/Hindi, which feels more like my mother tongue in some ways more than does English, my manner of thinking has altered, along with cultural practices that I've adopted, and in this way I consider myself "swadesi." But at the same time, I know that I'm not desi in the way that I'm white, a "pardesi" who has taught himself how to speak Urdu/Hindi. Thus I came to the name for myself: Swadesi Pardesi.  But maybe this isn't the best name. I feel as though I am an appropriate manifestation of the old proverb: Dhobi ka kutta na ghar ka na ghat ka (The washerman's dog belongs neither in the house nor on the riverbank).  Maybe you could also call me Dhobi ka Kutta.