Natasha Badhwar
Where are you from? Where do you belong? As children growing up in Ranchi and later Kolkata, my brothers and I had learnt that the correct answer to this question was “Punjab”. We did not understand at that age why we were asked this question so frequently. We were a migrant family, but children don’t see demarcations in identities till we teach them differences.
On the other hand, when we would actually visit our grandparents and extended family in the small towns and villages of Punjab during our school vacations, we would be asked the same question with equal curiosity. In this context, the correct answer was no longer “Punjab”. We stood out as Hindi-speaking children from a non-Punjabi, urban culture and were now identified by the city where we lived and went to school.
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