Posts

Showing posts from March, 2025

Let Me In.

Image
On a trip last year I got engaged in a discussion about identity and the sense of belonging. My discussant, a young medical student of Indian descent. Born in the UK, she confessed to feeling perpetually out of place. She shared with me that, during several visits to India, she experienced a sense of belonging she'd never found in her birth country. I questioned her to understand the root of this disconnect: Was it a race issue? Culture? Religion? Morality? What was it? I usually have a pet peeve for privileged people and their proclivity for bogus humility and modesty. Occasionally quick to sling the hackneyed ‘all these privileges don’t matter, I’d rather have the short end of the stick’ response. But something about her disparagement felt genuine. She went on to tell me about how differently she was made to feel as a child. She told me about her largely Indian settlement on the outskirts of London, which was her bastion. She utilised many words to express how outcast she felt. T...