Lost in Translation

Sometimes nobody is right and nobody is wrong. Sometimes I need to put my ego to the side, swallow my pride, and apologize even if I'm not wrong. Because harm done, is harm done regardless the intent. Sometimes our values just don't align, and there's not much more we can really do than recognize our differences, accept them, and move on.

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Today my mother and I got into an argument. We were getting ready to go vote, and I had just walked downstairs in my normal sweatpants, messy bun, and oversized t-shirt. I looked "unpresentable" as my mom would less elegantly put it (in Telugu). But how I was dressed to go vote really didn't bother me.

My mom, on the other hand, was wearing bright new pants and a collared shirt. She had her hair pinned back and seemed freshly showered. "Go comb your hair. I want to take pictures," she said.

I didn't really want to comb my hair. We're going to vote, not for a photoshoot, I thought to myself. I don't want to take an "I voted" picture. I don't like publicizing my civic duties. It feels unnecessary and uncomfortable.

Notice the "I"s in those thoughts. I was born and raised in the US. I'd consider myself an American born in a brown body. A coconut, if you will. The majority of my values embody some version of individualism.

Now let's replay the entire scene from my mother's perspective:

I'm ready to go vote in this important election. I look presentable and decent to go out and I'm excited to go vote for the first time with my daughter! Oh here she comes dressed like a mess as always. "At least comb your hair," she says.

"It's fine, mom, we're just going to vote."

"But I want to take pictures. You don't have to change, just go run a comb through your hair."

"Mom I don't want to. It'll mess up my hair and make it all frizzy. Just leave it and let's go."

"Can you just go comb your hair for me, please? Why are you making this a big deal."

Now maybe you're thinking wow this ungrateful little child can't even go do the simple thing of combing her hair for her mother. Why is she so belligerent?

And honestly, thinking about it from my mother's perspective after she explained this, I understand why she thought that. I agree almost. What a belligerent child.

But when someone stubbornly rejects a little thing like combing your hair, there almost always is a reason why.

Growing up I always dressed how I was told. When we went to Indian parties, I was told to "dress like a girl," to wear the "appropriate clothing," to look a certain way because that is the correct way I should look in order to be "pretty". None of those comments shine very brightly in contemporary times. They come off as mildly sexist and buy into conventional beauty standards, and ring painfully loud in my ears. They come off as expectations of how I should fit into other peoples' minds in order to please the eyes of all the other aunties and uncles that will attend that dang Brown party. Again. Individualism.

On my sixteenth birthday, I was thrown a party that I didn't want, with people in attendance who I didn't know, wearing clothes and makeup that I absolutely did not feel pretty in. In fact, I felt ugly. And that's a feeling I wouldn't wish on anybody, ever.

I relented because my mother was so excited to the throw the party. It was her party. It was her excuse to meet old friends and celebrate the grand ol' milestone that is (for some reason) turning sixteen.

And honestly I was fine with it. I knew it meant more to my mother than it meant to me, and if all I had to do was stand there and say thank you to a relentless stream of "Happy Birthdays" for a couple of hours, well isn't that a sacrifice worth making for the happiness of my mother? Of course it is. Not a big deal.

It was time to cut the cake and everyone started settling down in their clean, cloth-covered chairs. The round dining tables were zigzagged through the event hall and some important family member or the other was standing up front holding a mic. Here we go, I thought. Just a couple hours.

But I have to be honest. It was the worst birthday I've ever had. I felt horrible. I was wearing a heavy flower-hair-thing in my head and my face looked like a ghost packed with white powder. My eyeliner was noticeably uneven and I hated the dress I was wearing. It made me look at once like a 30 year old woman in a sari and a 7 year old who did her own make up from a barbie doll kit. I was miserable.

As people gave speech after speech, I discreetly waddled to the bathroom to take one final look at myself. And I cracked.

I cried so hard my eyes turned red. I screamed in my throat and trapped it there. Just a couple hours, Amulya. But I disgusted myself in the mirror. I hated myself. I normally felt ugly and "not white enough" in school, and the whole barbie doll Indian look really didn't help my self-esteem. I remember that moment so vividly even all of these years later, because it's really hard to forget what ugly feels like. I wanted to sprint out of the hall and rip the jewelry off my body. I just wanted to be me. For one second. I needed to breathe.

Eventually someone came looking for me and knocked on the bathroom door. I sucked the tears back into my eyes and desperately tried to swallow the rock in my throat.

A c o u p l e m o r e m i n u t e s, A m u l y a.

I don't know if my mom remembers this part of my birthday. I don't really even know if she was ever told that I had cried that day. I'm not sure it would have mattered. Because truth be told, I wasn't there for me. I was there for all of the people who came to see me. I was there for the audience. For the show. For the performance. I was there for the collective. Because that's what Indian culture values: collectivism.

I know combing my hair is not a big deal. I know that. And I know that it is really not much of a price to pay for the little morsel of joy that my mom would've gotten from taking the "I voted!" picture. But to me, I didn't want to comb my hair. Even if it would have made me look "prettier" in my mother's words, or was a "little thing".

I didn't want to comb my hair.

And for some reason, I thought that me not wanting to do something that relates to my body and my appearance was only my choice. But in a collectivist culture, it's not.

You are at a Brown party representing your family, not just yourself. How you look says something about how your family raised you, not just how you like to dress. Sacrificing little discomforts for your family is expected, not optional. And choosing to do something simply because you like it or want to, when it goes against the wishes of your family, is selfish.

Individualism and collectivism are different cultural values. They're opposite cultural values. Neither is right or wrong without the cultural context to say so. In the US if a parent forced their child to dress a certain way, it would be considered "stifling their self-expression and autonomy," while in India, a child wouldn't dream of saying no to their parent's wishes, especially when it comes to just the clothes on your body. Switch the peoples' contexts and suddenly right becomes wrong, good becomes bad, and help becomes hurt.

I didn't want to comb my hair because it helps me maintain my sense control over my own life and preserves my self-esteem. It's an exercise of my autonomy, and the foundation of my confidence in how I look. It's something I worked for and took time and tears to build. Society judges harshly and it takes time to grow thick skin.

But me not wanting to comb my hair was also rude to my mother. It was ungrateful and created an unnecessary squabble. It was an exercise in unjustified selfishness in her eyes, and made her feel like I wouldn't make the smallest sacrifice for the smallest pleasure that she got from taking a benign little photo. And this could not be further from my intentions.

Sometimes values don't translate across actions. We read the same sentence in two different languages, with two different tones, and understand two different messages. We misinterpret each other not because we wanted to, but because we simply were raised to value different things.

It doesn't make individualism or collectivism "correct" or "incorrect". It doesn't make one culture inherently better or worse. Just different.

At the end of the day, harm done is harm done. So I'm sorry for making you feel unheard, mom. That was 100% not my intention. But please know that some actions that seem small to you weigh heavier on my heart. And so sometimes I refuse to do them, not in order to spite you, but because it's just the reality of what cultural values I hold and how they make me feel. And in certain circumstances, I'm just no longer willing to prioritize your photo-op over my sense of comfort in my own skin. And that doesn't make it right or wrong. It just makes it my preference, which I hope you accept. as a result of being raised in different societies.

Hopefully next time we can both rethink each other's intentions before jumping to conclusions about each other's intentions. Even if sometimes I can't speak your language, I can always learn. And even if there is no right answer, refusing to learn is the one thing I can definitively say isn't right.

Maybe next time I'll comb my hair when you ask me to. Or maybe I won't. Either way, I hope my intentions don't get lost in translation.