[Image Description: A photograph of the lower half of S' legs against a black background. She is wearing purple tights and her feet are the main feature. She is wearing green and gold decorated anklets (payaliyaan).]
So these are my feet, all purple-bestockinged and decorated with green and gold payaliyaan. I choose this photograph as an introductory glimpse into my story. I have always loved tights, but I have not always loved payaliyaan. When I was little, I took some kathak lessons and I felt fairly indifferent about the ghunghroos I would wear for dancing. I probably thought payaliyaan and ghunghroos were pretty, but I would never have worn them in the US, or even really in India outside of the dance context. Now, I try to wear my payaliyaan in style, mixing it up as I am mixed up too.
Backtracking: Hi, my name is S and I am half white, half South Asian (Indian). My mother is white and a US citizen, and my father is brown and an Indian citizen. I am a US citizen, though I was born in India. I grew up mostly in India on extended visas, and then eventually (relatively recently), I was able to acquire an OCI (Overseas Citizen of India) card, which means I can visit and live in India easily throughout my lifetime. During the first four years of my life I spent a lot of time going back and forth between the US and India, because my parents (particularly my mother) were working in the US to some extent and also because they were trying to find out more about my disabilities and get me the support I needed. I have a relatively minor hand atypicality, and I also have moderately severe hearing loss. When I was about three and a half, I started wearing hearing aids... I often received hearing aid care in the US, though also in India. Though most of my schooling before college was in India, I spent tenth grade in the US. My experiences of biraciality and multiethnic cross-cultural confusion have intersected with my experiences of class, disability and gender/sexuality in many ways. This is the beginning of my exploration on this blog of what it means for me to be a South Asian person of colour, a survivor of many things, and a transnational supposed "globetrotter" who is really only trying to find out what home really means.
Sometimes I call my feet "Indian feet," some of the parts of me that are most visibly recognizable (at least to me) as South Asian, as brown, with all their callouses and cracked heels and dryness and toenail flavour. I am often ashamed of my Indian feet. In pictures like these, I feel prouder of them because they are covered by stockings... It seems like a small thing, but for some reason I have fixated on my feet a great deal. I have my white mother's slender feet, but they are brown, not white. Together, our feet are similar perhaps only because of genetics and also our shared experience of walking on floors so much, barefooted and in chappals, in dust and grain and all these ways that so often more privileged people's feet do not signify things. (My feelings about feet are extensive...)
I am trying to figure out whether I identify as a migrant. I have certainly moved across countries, and within countries. But I am also a much more privileged migrant than most migrants... While middle class, I have had access to things (like my education and my travels) that for many people would only be possible with more class privilege. I am starting to learn that positionality is slippery and never static... I am perceived and I perceive in ways that are constantly changing.
