I won’t start this article by pleading poverty, or by claiming that I’ve been the victim of great prejudices or injustices. I grew up in a middle-class household in the Home Counties. I speak with an androgenously southern English accent, and have had no greater share of hardships than anyone would expect in the course of a life thus far.

Yet there is one issue that constantly sits in the back of my brain, murmuring as I go about my day, its existence I only become cognisant of whenever I enter a space clearly tied to one of the two cultures I come from. This issue is identity, and this isn’t my first time writing about it.

But there is a uniquely challenging conundrum that bedevils everyone fortunate enough to be mixed. Despite the innumerable benefits of access and exposure to two, often distinct, cultures, histories and societies, there is the issue of language. And I don’t merely mean having to learn something via Duolingo. The entire posture of interaction, the fundamental structures that determine connection, differ depending on which side of my family I’m talking to.

My Indian family is large and sprawling, the product of my grandmother—or Nani—being one of seven children, all of whom had had at least two children—and most of these going on to have families of their own. This last generation includes both me and my sister, and at last count approximately 25 cousins, some of whom are closer than others. Like pollen in the wind, my family has scattered all over the world, with some settling in Southeast Asia, others in the United States, and a smaller contingent of us setting up base in the UK.

The branch of my family that settled in the UK has picked up most of the small cultural tics and linguistic hints that indicate settlement and assimilation to the outsider, but differences remain. Even the names I called my grandparents—Nani and Dadu—were adaptations produced by the unique circumstances of life in the UK, merging the Punjabi and Bengali terms for the maternal and paternal grandparents together. Why? Because my grandfather preferred how it sounded to Nanu, and for a man who’d demonstrated an irreverence for all things traditional most of his life, whether it be diets, religion or Brill Cream usage, it was unlikely that he’d experience a Damascene conversion on this, of all issues.

My grandmother made sure I spent most of my early life exceedingly well-fed, but alongside rice, paratha and curries were heapings of pasta bolognese, and perhaps one too many Magnums. This habit she shared with my paternal, Welsh grandparents; generous portions of lasagna sat well when ensconced in the comfort of their quaint village, but didn’t fare so well when confronted by the M4 and the inevitable potholes of English roads.

Even the language both sides used to express their affection and admiration differed. The Indian side, the more tactile, vibrant culture, was unafraid to effusively heap praise or to hug. Partially as a product of their relative distance from me; partially due to a more small conservative attitude towards expression and feelings. There were the regular motions of conversation—how was school, sports, some small talk about the news—but there was never a great closeness nor a real amiability, for that didn’t sit within what they thought was their duties, their role, their responsibility. 
Again, I have suffered no slights nor ill from being mixed. I bore no greater conscious burden than any of my peers whose family stories are even slightly more complicated than having been here since 1066.

But still, wherever I enter a room, a building, an event distinctly coded in the social language of one of the places I draw descent from, I feel an enduring sense of unease. A lack of belonging, of unfamiliarity with concepts that everyone else utilises effortlessly. Perhaps this will never recede, unless I wholly abdicate my sense of mixedness. And that I won’t do.