My Very Own Ararat

My friend Seta recently came back from a vacation to Armenia. She considers herself Armenian first, and everything else sits on the back burner: Christian, Lebanese, American. Although she had been brought up in the Armenian tradition - the language, the customs, the culture, she had never before laid her pedicured foot on the soil of the Fatherland. Of course, she snorted, the macho men would never deign to call it the ‘Motherland’.

I could feel her excitement as she described the flight to Yerevan. As the plane dipped its wings, the pilot urged the passengers to look out of the window and Mt. Ararat came into view. The Mt. Ararat where Noah was supposed to have landed his ark. The Mt. Ararat which is a sacred symbol for the nation of Armenia and its people.

She sat transfixed in her belted seat, she recalled, with tears streaming down her face. I could feel her sense of wonder, the nostalgia, the feeling of ‘coming home’. I felt moved to tears myself. And then I felt jealousy.

I wanted my very own Ararat.

Aww, you have the Taj Mahal, she said when I confessed, trying to placate the green monster. But did I feel the same emotion, the same sense of proprietary oneness when I saw the Taj Mahal? Well, yes, my eyes did open in wonder, my heart skipped a beat, but then I got goosebumps the same way when I stood in front of the Leaning Tower of Pisa ... or the Grand Canyon ... or even while walking on the Great Wall of China.

Did I have no sense of national pride for the eternal and beautiful symbol of India? What about when I see the American flag flying in all its glory? It seemed I harbored no single loyalty. No profound connections linked me with a deep sense of belonging to any one place.

Don’t get me wrong. I love being American ... and Indian ... and love everything German and Italian. I love waving my American passport with pride and kiss the soil with relief when I come back home from any foreign travel. While I hate wearing a sari, I love the salwar khameez and the bindis and enjoy celebrating Diwali and all the other hundred Indian festivals. My need for logic and order and punctuality could give me honorary German citizenship. I crave a pied-à-terre in the Tuscan countryside when I retire, and could die in ecstasy listening to an Italian aria ... preferably with some prosciutto in my hand. I watched Toshiba Sunday theater religiously for years and my husband would roll his eyes and walk out of the room. The Japanese version of “Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi” is much better, trust me.

But I want more. I want a cry-when-I-see-Ararat emotion, a passion that binds me one hundred percent to one culture. Right now I feel like a hybrid mutt, an amalgamation of whatever cultural meme I absorbed growing up.

I lived in a parallel universe - figuratively speaking of course. Raised in India, but speaking English at school and at home, wearing headbands and pedal pushers , singing along with the Beatles, twisting to Chubby Checker, eating fondue, playing roulette and making brownies. The body was a Bombayite, everything else was angrezified. I was an Indian who ate chocolate and cheese and not rasgoolla or ras-puri. I was a Hindu who didn’t know the story of the Ramayana. I was a Gujarati who never did garba, let alone own a dandia. I did eat dhokla - give me some credit.

Learning languages just stirred the pot and exacerbated the hybridization. After English, Gujarati and Hindi, I took French for eight years, then German in college, then Italian in Florence, then Japanese. Language immersion was the way to go, and I slept dreamed and lived the languages and imbibed the culture by staying in the countries.

Was I confused? Did I wonder about my cultural identity? Probably not - being busy dealing with the quotidian life in a milieu as close to paradise as a child could imagine.

There is, however, always the need to box, if not by yourself, by others. There is always the desire to label, to name, to stereotype. I was no fob, no Francophile, no paesano; not a gori, nor a gaijin. Where did I fit? Where is my box to check, my circle to color in? No category for raised in India, lives in America, loves German, homesick for Italy, modifies French verbs and wears a yukata in the summer.

It seems I am an everything bagel. Every sesame seed, poppy seed, peppercorn, garlic and onion flake representing a word, an experience, a custom and a culture baked into the flour of my very being. So I live my life as an amalgamation of different ingredients that I have picked up along the way - a veritable international smorgasbord if you will.

So, Seta, while I envy you your own Ararat, I think I will take my ark and travel the globe with it, letting it rest where it may.