Where You’re from

It’s the start of high school; the start of another year of drama and studying and competitions and headaches in the hot Bengaluru heat. I sit in the front row, all cheerful scribbled notes and scrubbed-smelling furniture.
This year, I think optimistically, this year I am ready. I have friends, finally, after three years of loneliness. I have notebooks and pencil cases that are like all my classmates.
I am ready to take on the year.
But I falter on the very first thing the Science teacher says.
“Hello, I’m glad to meet you all. Please introduce yourself by telling us your name, hobbies, and where you’re from.”
I despise introductions from the depths of me. I don’t mind sharing my name and my hobbies; it’s the third part of the question that has my mind making a face.
Where you’re from?
I have absolutely no clue how to answer that one question.
Where you’re from, it runs again in my mind as if haunting me. I am from opposite sides of the world, from clean detachment and messy relationships. I am from a country of crisp-clean powder puff snow and maples and red and white, and I am from a country of riots of rainbows, of peacocks and people and noisy traffic.
I am from a place of nobody-there, modern and clean and minimalistic.
And then some people picked me up, quick-quick, to my utter bewilderment, and plopped me down, quick-quick, in a place of people-everywhere, of tradition and mess and vibrancy.
How did they expect me to answer that question, those three words that are really so simple?
Where you’re from- and I notice a boy two rows behind me confidently declares he’s from Bengaluru, and that’s all very well for him, but I am not from Bengaluru and I am not from Toronto either.
I eat mor kuzhambu for lunch (notice my attempt to type Tamil into English) and pasta for dinner, pancakes for breakfast with imported, expensive maple syrup.
I return proudly from bharatanatyam class, and quickly change into jeans and a loose t-shirt.
I am not Indian because my passport says Canadian, and I am not Canadian because my family says Indian, so perhaps I am from nowhere, from both places, half-here and half-there.
But I can’t very well say that to my new class, can I? -so I chew the inside of my mouth as the girl sitting behind me says she plays football.
And even though it’s been three years since I came to India, my mind corrects her impulsively- it’s not football, it’s soccer.
And then everyone is staring at me and I notice it is my turn to speak, has been my turn for a few awkward seconds now, and I paste on a reluctant grin and say,
“Hi, my name is Sanmita. I like writing, looking at the sky, reading, and dancing. I live here in Bengaluru.”
And there- the crisis is averted, and the perpetual question
Where you’re from?
is submerged again; but it’ll resurface next time, when I least expect it. I assume I’ll never know this part of my identity, this part of who I am.
And then the Science teacher leaves, and the Math teacher enters, and he smiles at the class and says;
“Can everyone say hello, their name, why they like Math, and where they’re from?”