Beyond Borders: Finding Pride in our Shared Humanity

The Turks in Turkey speak Turkish. At least that’s what I always thought. 

But as I strolled around Istanbul’s city center on a family vacation, I could make sense of the street side eateries and clothing retailers around me. I knew which stores were selling second-hand goods, had an ongoing sale, or were selling crispy Baklava. 

Many of the Turkish words I saw felt familiar—like I knew them. Now, I’d never learned Turkish; I just brushed up on the hellos and goodbyes to get me through the city. But the words I saw—halva,  kofte, perde—weren’t foreign. I knew them. They were Hindi words. 

Halva sounded like Halwa—the Hindi word for a delicious carrot and milk porridge. Köfte was Kofta, the incredible cutlets filled with meats, cheeses, and vegetables. Perde reminded me of Parda—the Hindi word for curtains. And these stores indeed sold desserts, cutlets, and curtains. 

Despite never living in India, I knew these Hindi words. I’d, after all, spent hundreds of hours with a Hindi teacher, for remembering Hindi words was an integral part to being an Indian kid. Tones, mouth shapes, and tongue positions were all of utmost importance—my teacher would physically adjust my mouth if a sound was coming out wrong. But what neither I nor my Indian-born parents learned was where the words came from. 

We’d always believed the language originated in India, created by the ingenuity and intelligence of our ancestors. But, frankly, it was never so much a belief as it was a hope. A hope that we could say that the backbone of our country is actually ours. A hope that we weren’t the leftover language recipients inferior to the true creators. A hope that we could keep our pride as Indians—that we are Indians and the rest of the world is different.  

Seeing our words in Turkey, we got to thinking about when a language exchange could’ve happened. In other words, we started thinking about when India could’ve colonized Turkey—for we thought that was the only way Hindi could’ve spread to the Turkish subcontinent. Now India is well-known for how they never attempted to colonize a country. And my parents, even after going through twenty years of history classes in India, only knew of Turkey colonizing India. But it didn’t matter. We couldn’t bear to consider that one of the threads that made us us—our language—wasn’t actually ours. 

Our tour guide eventually forced the truth upon us. Turkey invaded India two thousand years ago and enforced Turkish words among Indians. The words we loved weren’t even our own.  

Things began changing around my house. My parents disregarded the “No English on the dinner table rule”. They stopped forwarding me the daily WhatsApp update of whatever religious Indian event was happening at the time. They were distancing themselves from India—distancing themselves when they felt being Indian wasn’t special. 

Now I am, clearly, Indian as well, but not in the same way as my parents. I wasn’t born there, I didn’t go to school there, and my accent is really not Indian. But even I, upon finding out the truth about Hindi’s origins, was hurt. 

It was hard to understand why. Any of my friends would tell you I’m not afraid to insult Indian culture: complain about the incongruence of Hindi sounds or the diabetes-inducing sweetness of every Indian dessert. Yet this didn’t feel like another poke at India’s veneer; rather, it was a stripping of what it meant to be Indian. 

Strange, isn’t it? My parents and my pride in being Indian lied in what made us different from others. That we needed our language to be ours—and only ours. And the opposite made our cultural identity diminish. 

I’ve found that I also long to be different in other parts of life. The first time I chose school extracurriculars was in sixth grade. As I was scrolling through the club catalogue, I wasn’t sure what to pick—but I was sure of what not to. Singing, guitar, and journalism clubs were off the table. Not because I don’t enjoy a round of karaoke, but because my older sister did them. I could never be the same as my sister. Being the same would mean there’s nothing special about my parents’ second child. 

I watched Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl concert three weeks ago. I noticed Kendrick’s symbolism—Samuel L. Jackson as the United States government and the game of tic tac toe between Whites and Blacks. Kendrick highlighted the unnecessary divide in a country where everyone deserves to be one and equal. He wanted people to be the same. Not different. 

My parents and I cared so much about being different. Different from our siblings and different from other countries. And because of that, we forgot what underlies it all—our most fundamental connecetion. That we are human. 

Like Kendrick vouched for, we should feel pride in that connection—not shame. It’s such an achievement for humans from two different parts of the world to have developed a language together. I should feel pride that my brethren—humans—had the ingenuity to blend Turkish and Hindi together. Because, after all, where our languages come from doesn't make us us. It is that we are human that does. 

This doesn’t mean that being different doesn’t matter—Kendrick himself highlights the different education and training African Americans need to pay taxes, for example. But I, and I think many of us, only worry about being different when there’s so much to be proud of in our similarities. We don’t need to keep our connections forgotten.  

The pride I feel in being Indian now no longer comes from the idea that our language is untouched or that our traditions are entirely our own. It comes from knowing that my identity is part of something larger than a single nation or a single history.

As a student in Singapore American School, I often hear others say that one of the privileges of the school is the “rich diversity of cultures” the student body embodies, as it helps us learn the various differences between people that exist in the world. But now, I see another benefit. There’s something special about how all of us, despite our different cultures, languages, and traditions, are connected. We all attend the same classes, attend the same after-school clubs, and hang out in the same spots. And that connection is deserving of just as much pride as our differences. 

Maybe one day, I’ll find out that my favorite Indian desserts actually came from a Turkish chef with a sweet tooth, or that my last name has roots in some distant, forgotten empire. And maybe that won’t bother me at all. And just maybe, that connection will excite me. I’m still not sure about my parents though.