Desi and Me
Written by Hasan B.
I couldn’t tell you when I started using the word desi. I’ve always owned it. It was never learned; rather, I soaked it up from my Pakistani surroundings and it slowly trickled into my everyday speech. Desi has always meant brown to me. It means the scent of the spice cabinet, the golden greasy sheen of dahl, and the pulsating tone of Urdu and Hindi; it's an adjective to describe the ‘South Asian-ness’ of something. I own desi because it's a descriptor I attach to symbols of my culture — a title for the whiff of familiarity that cannot be cornered into the box of ‘Pakistani’. In my mind, it's always been a word that encapsulates South Asia as a whole.
At least that is the desi that I own.
Last year, I spoke to an Indian friend of mine, when the word desi rolled off my tongue. He looked confused. I asked him what desi meant to him; he said Indian. Just Indian. I assured him that as a Pakistani, I owned desi too — it's a word I’ve always used. I reminded him that it was a word our once-united countries shared — one of the very few things we do nowadays. Still, he remained insistent that desi means Indian, and doesn’t stretch across borders. The root of the word desi is ‘from the land’. In some capacity, land means territory; it's owned by someone, something, or some group of people. When I consider the ‘land’ that the word desi encompasses, I see South Asia. I see a land beyond its border scars; with its tapestry of linguistic, cultural, and religious differences and similarities, I see desi as a word that can be attributed to it all. But to the Indian friend I spoke to, desi is to be used much more sparingly. To him, the land it celebrates lies within the confines of India’s present-day border; along lines carved by an ill-informed British lawyer. To him, the land desi encompasses is to be cut off from the rest of South Asia by prickly barbed wire, under the glaring surveillance of watchtowers and the barrels of rifles.
What defines the scope of desi is a far more complex and contentious question than I had ever imagined. Desi is a word derived from Sanskrit, the ancient language of Northern Indo-Aryans. The now rarely-spoken language is the ancestor of Hindi; the dominant dialect of today’s North India and a close cousin to Pakistan’s Urdu. But for the rest of the Indian subcontinent — with its tapestry of regional dialects and ethnicities — desi feels more like a foreign word. South Indians in particular feel that the term is forced on them. Even in spaces designed to include South Asians, South Indians, and Sri Lankan Tamils have expressed how desi has left “a bad taste” in their mouths. In their eyes, the Sanskrit-rooted term propagates a deluded international image of South Asia— a homogenous tableau of Butter Chicken, Hindi, and Bollywood as symbols representative of the entire subcontinent. To them, desi drowns their culture, exemplifies another, and washes South Asia of its diversity. The ‘land’ desi encompasses is one that doesn’t include them.
Even within northern Indian and Pakistani communities, desi has its controversies. Desi can demean. In India, the term is sometimes used to mean “country-bumpkin.” This comes from a separate interpretation of ‘from the land’ as a reference to the countryside, the ‘inferior’ backland farms urban city-dwellers would avoid. I’ve never witnessed this weaponization of desi in action — as a Pakistani who has never lived in South Asia, I’ve never wielded desi like a true native. But my mother recounted to me that in her Pakistani school, there was a girl who earned the title of ‘desi stuff’. With her entwined glossy-black braids running from her scalp to her spine, and her dupatta wrapped around the front of her neck the old-fashioned way, her appearance was too ‘traditional’ — she didn’t have the right trendy hairstyle or rest her scarf on the edge of her shoulder like the other girls. She was ‘unrefined’ and not cosmopolitan enough. Desi was derogatory in her case — a tool to shame her for her appearance.
What I’ve always perceived as a simple word is far from it. Desi is an optical illusion; the question of ownership and connotation shifting depending on where in South Asia you stand. Some Indians believe it is theirs, and only theirs to own. Some South Indians believe they own it, but they shouldn’t. Some North Indians and Pakistanis believe they own it as an insult. There is no agreed-upon meaning for what desi is, nor what it encompasses, what it celebrates, or even what it shames.
But a short conversation with my mother revealed another meaning for desi. ‘From the land’ is multi-faceted. Beyond a word used to describe territory or backlands, desi also means natural; from this land in its purest form. While ghee is simply clarified butter, desi ghee is made from local pure cow’s milk, employing intricate traditional churning techniques. While anda means egg, desi anda means an egg laid by a native chicken that grazes through the grass of a local South Asian farm, and has never touched the icy iron grills of a coop. In relation to its ‘land’ root, in this case, desi means from the soil of South Asia.
I was not naturally grown in the soil of South Asia. I was born in the UK as an American citizen, and have spent the majority of my life in Singapore. I’m more of an exported product; despite living abroad my entire life, my bronze skin, jet-black hair, and rich ancestry are deeply rooted in South Asian soil. This is the desi that I own. It's a word that connects me to a culture I am so intimately familiar with, yet have never been fully immersed in. What is comforting about desi is that to me, it doesn’t feel like pressure. I am not the best Pakistani. I can recite a grand total of no more than ten chopped-up phrases in Urdu. I can count the number of Pakistani movies I have watched on one hand. My knowledge of the ins and outs of cricket is appalling. I am not Pakistani enough to own ‘Pakistani’, but I am too Pakistani to reject the culture at all; that is where the word desi finds me. I seek refuge in its ambiguity. Despite the controversies attached to the term — ranging from who is allowed to claim it, who it is forced upon, and who it degrades — it's a comfort word that I don’t have to force on myself; I meet the standard. Desi is the word I use to connect to other South Asians because it is a term I own. It's all I have to claim for my South Asian identity, and it's all I have to give to connect with others. Desi is an olive branch; I can offer it to forge connections over a shared identity, but I can’t control anyone’s reaction. That is up to them, and their subjective experience regarding their own identity.
But the use and inclusive interpretation of desi has power that extends far beyond comforting me. In my mind, Desi is like the root of an old tree, with its many branches reaching far and wide across the Indian subcontinent; through the jagged mountains of Northern Pakistan, along the coursing canals of Bangladesh, and woven between the grand green forests of India. Its ambiguity allows it to transcend borders. Just this past week, a Pakistani cricket commentator in India documenting the World Cup returned home after receiving threats regarding offensive comments she had made about India years ago. Even in the few moments South Asians came together for a cherished cricket game, it was marred by divisive labels — a Muslim Pakistani had criticized Hindus in India. Sides were taken, and differences in identity were emboldened. But desi doesn’t have categories. While I hope that desi is honored as inclusive, the sheer diversity of South Asia means not everyone feels this way; but when it is honored as such, these labels can melt away for just a moment. For just a moment, South Asians can relish in their common identity. For just a moment, similarity can be what we celebrate rather than our many differences.
