I wonder how many readers of this article or international dancers of any of the Indian classical dance forms have gone through unfairness, inequality or unreason in their lives because of their nationality, skin colour or other backgrounds that are naturally acquired and cannot change by one’s own effort. I am one of them who has faced various versions of this mystery.
During my student life in London, where people from a variety of places and cultures live, I never felt my national flag on my face, at least at the school and mostly in the city, maybe because its majority of students are from Asia and/or Africa and others are also with warm and kind understanding on the diversity of the area. Except my academic struggle and poor English ability, I have only good memories from the year I lived there thanks to my lovely friends, professors, dance teacher and dancemates. None of them treated me as a foreigner, no one mentioned anyone’s skin colour, and even if the topic of conversation is on the place where any of us belongs to, it was always with awareness and respect of diversity.
However, moving back to Delhi, India, my nationality and appearance always made me tired- the first question of people are always where I am from. And random screams, ‘Chinese’ or ‘Nepali’, to me walking on streets were a part of my daily life, especially when I was a dance student and live in an economic area. Some people, who initially think I am from somewhere else then realise where I am actually from, changed their attitudes into better. These experiences forced me to think about something unpleasant pervasive there.
Another opposite example is here. One day, while we were traveling for a performance tour out of Delhi by train, one of the classmates, mocking laughter on her face, showed me a video with her mobile phone displaying Japanese school students cleaning their classrooms by themselves. In Japan, it is commonly understood that cleaning school facilities is a part of education for children to understand the value of hardworking and the importance of keeping the public facility hygiene, but to her, whose trademark is to show off her wealthy and the number of her servants, the video was an indicator to tell how poor we are. I felt mixed emotions to her of not only nasty but also misery, though I am still not sure if she, who was an undergraduate student, was really unable to understand the real message of the video because of the socio-cultural or economical difference or it was maybe her intentional derision towards me.
When I visited someone’s house, who, at that moment, was in a meeting with a guest, the guest was reminded intentionally repeatedly my nationality, implying the fact I am not a servant, for the guest not to ‘misunderstand’ me as a servant from my look, skin colour or my Hindi accent. Also, from time to time in my class, I hated to be reminded that I am ‘a foreigner’ or ‘Japanese’, which raises my self-consciousness about my appearance and accent that are DIFFERENT from theirs. Over the period of time, I realised they shall never let me play a main role in dance dramas, joking, ‘Radha is finally going to be international.’ - the Hindu goddess cannot be a foreigner or non-Hindu.
Gradually, at some point, questions started to occupy in my mind- being different from others causes any problem to them? Though, at the same time, I knew that I may not be a complete follower of the religion -I, being a non-religious Buddhist, may not really perfectly believe in Hinduism or any other religions from the core of my heart, even if I try to. It was a teary moment as my years of efforts to understand the theory of North Indian classical music and language related to the dance form are never enough to be ‘equal’ to the ‘natives’. This was something I did not experience nor did I need to think about, at least at the school in London, and I still hate and feel scared to be divided or separated by nationality, culture and race.
After four years of dance training at the school being financially unstable and leaving a stable and secured career behind, I finally stopped regular practice of dance in spite of my ten-year dream and unforeseeably long way to go learn there. I still love dancing but I question what and who is the art form for?
Another bitter memory from my Delhi life is from the queue at the domestic airport. When I was about to proceed to the check-in counter, a man, breaking the line, cut in front of me. As I reminded him to follow the line, he angrily said, ‘we are struggling to feed ourselves, how could we think about others!?’ I was left behind open-mouthed…
These are icebergs of my years of life in Delhi but, as I started to open my eyes wider, it is happening not only in the city but many places on the planet. Also, having been immersed in the society and faced the notorious parts of it, I even feel the fear of possibility if my thoughts have been affected by unhealthy environment around me. I have been thinking why and how the world become like this?
Yet the more I think, the more strongly I realise my unchangeable identity and the ill-structured parts of society of the world. Keeping these in my mind, I am still seeking possibilities to contribute to change the society and the world, although finding myself useless, especially in this time of pandemic, without having any practical knowledge or skill of medical, public health, development or any sort of those. So, the following is a small first try to move forward and sharing with you- a Japanese book on Marti Luther King.
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