I’ve been at a wedding in Jharkhand for the past three days, everyone’s asking me what country I’m from (assumption is I’m not Indian) and is convinced it’s because I have bangs and “Indians don’t have bangs.”
Conversation
theorized that’s it’s my body language and not the hair but I’ve been doing trad namastes and like 100x AND speaking in Hindi and it hasn’t been helping so idk
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FOB or American-born? In my experience the latter are simply not aware of how their body language is off enough to read as foreign, even if they speak Hindi fluently and able to do the head-bobble and stuff.
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Somewhere in between?? I’ve been living in the US for about 8-9 years now, but born and raised in India (mostly). I don’t have an accent while speaking Hindi, but my English has a bit of an American accent now.
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My dividing line is ~13. Post-teenage immigration makes you more fob than native
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That makes sense. I was 22 when I moved. Also I’ve been thinking about it—I remember this happening a few times BEFORE I ever moved to the US. (I technically lived in Boston for 2 years when I was around 7 but I don’t think that made much of a difference tbh.)
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I moved at 22. My haircut and clothes are a tell now but I can code-switch and pass pretty easily (grew up in Jamshedpur so same reference point).
Yeah I think maybe I need to work on assimilating better in the Indian context. I was super socially awkward growing up, so “fitting in” is definitely an adult skill for me. I think I just learned how to do a better job of it in American (practice ground) than India.
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