An Indian Through And Through

By Sanaa Shaikh

It was the November of 2017. I was visiting Dubai for the first time and my eleven-year-old self was completely and truly enamored with the city. I had always been more of a city girl. Snow-covered peaks and glassy rivers never quite did the trick for me; but sky rise buildings and fancy hotels were an entirely different case. They could get the ball rolling like nothing else could.

This trip to Dubai marked my first international trip. It was also my first year celebrating Diwali away from home. Not celebrating Diwali in India entailed a lot of things, like not needing to wear Indian traditional apparel, not having to stuff my face with sugary sweets and most important of all, not having to torture my ears with the sound of fireworks and drums for hours on end. A sweet bargain, in my opinion.

I had always heard people say that life was unpredictable, and that night, I understood why. Promenading through the streets of Dubai, a feeling of emptiness and absence followed me. I knew that something was amiss. The answer presented itself to me soon enough and to say that it surprised me would be a ginormous understatement.

At around eleven in the night, my parents and I reached the hotel complex, and were greeted by the sound of fireworks exploding from the building nearby. An unprecedented smile made its way onto my face when my mother explained that the building beside ours was occupied by Indian residents, and very frankly, I don’t think the English dictionary has a word to correctly encompass the plethora of emotions I was feeling at that moment. The sound of crackers bursting, children ecstatically laughing and Hindi music blaring from speakers felt familiar. It felt comfortable. It felt like home.

I had spent all my life hating festivals, and my mother had spent all her life convincing me not to. Guess what? She didn’t have to anymore.

I had understood that hating Diwali wouldn’t make it any less important in my life. I had also realized that many things in life seem inconsequential, but before you even know it, become an indispensable part of you. While in India, I despised the sound and sight of firecrackers, but once away from it, I couldn’t help but find the lack of it, an oddity. It dawned on me that a festival is not just a social obligation, but an undeniable link to the culture and country we call our own. The Diwali of 2017 was irrefutable proof that no matter how much I seemed to dislike Indian festivals, they were a part and parcel of my life, and formed the very foundation of my identity, and my existence. They made me an Indian, through and through.

By Sanaa Shaikh