Indian Born Confused Indian

"... So where are you from?” asked a colleague while she tried to make polite conversation with me in my company bus enroute home.
This question generates a rush of frenzied activity in my cranium to figure out the best and shortest answer possible. But so far, I have never managed an accurate answer. All this processing finally gives me a headache and for the same reason I run for cover whenever someone asks me this.

Been born and raised as an NRT (Non Resident Tamilian), the cumulative number of days of stay in Tam-land has not been more than 3-4 months all my life. Needless to say, Tamil evolved in a new dialect in our household with generous fillers of English and Hindi thrown in. Our linguistic skills (or the lack of it) were often brunt of the jokes of our much-Chennai-bred cousins. The shopkeepers, there, would throw skeptical looks at us and would eventually answer in broken Hindi until we oblige a few words in Tamil for a response. And then they would delightfully exclaim, "Ooh! Tamil aa?? ". It is quite an interesting sight when their faces light up that moment. The worst is when it is time to haggle with the terrorist auto-wallahs of Chennai. That’s when our "linguistic deficiencies" become so blatant. For the first time in my life, I visited a village recently and that happened to be my husband's ancestral village. Needless to say, I felt like a museum exhibit with all villagers staring away at me from head to toe like I have landed from Andromeda galaxy. In such a scenario, calling myself a Chennai-ite is not appropriate, especially when my parents, too, have spent most part of their lives in northern and western parts of the country.

I have spent substantial number of years in Mumbai, the earlier toddler years. The memories I have of the city back then, is nothing more than going to school, violin classes, evening play time with building kids, hoards of relatives and guests for whom my parents acted perfect hosts to and quarterly visits to meet my grandparents in Bharuch. Still I liked the city and enjoyed the number friends and the lifestyle I led. Was most unhappy when dad announced that he's getting a transfer to New Delhi. Still, at this stage I cannot call myself a Maharashtrian. Because I have not been particularly leading a lifestyle of a Maharashtrian, I had a cosmopolitan set of friends of which Maharashrians were a minority, I was celebrating all festivals pertaining to South Indians nothing close to Maharashtrians (with exception of Ganesh Chaturthi which is THE BIG festival in these parts), all family gatherings involved the few South-Indian families around the locality.

Delhi was a different experience. Would say most of the formative and juvenile years were spent there. Though the huge culture shock was overwhelming at the start, we managed to stay afloat, managing our way through crowded Blueline killer buses, hostile neighbors, the glitzy-flashy attitudes, the 'dadagiri', the Hindi speaking math teachers (imagine them going 'paintees', 'pachattar' and so on while teaching in class), the Hindi speaking Hindi teachers (their league was difficult to match), the bribe-seeking postmen, the terribly cold winters (I could write another post on that, my most favorite thing about Delhi), the scorcher summer, the hep colleges, the campus and hostel life, studying with geeks, the hatte-katte gorgeous looking men, the numerous crushes, the few heartbreaks, the smooth roads, the secret car drives when dad went off on official tours, the trips to "Cute Creations" with M......
In retrospect, it was a very mixed but enriching lifestyle. But that still does not qualify me to be a Delhi-ite. Besides some friends and memories, I have no other bonding with the city.

Now its back to Mumbai and my experiences I have elucidated here.
So, I guess I can only manage a 2-line answer to whoever asks me this question.
Yes, I am an archetypal case of a confused Indian. Born and raised in Mumbai and Delhi, trace my lineage to Tamil Nadu and speak Tamil with a hinglish accent.