Hello! I'm Anglo!

For days I thought about what to write as my first blog post, so I though, "Hey, why don't I write about myself?!"

The problem is, when it comes to my identity and who I am and where I'm from there's a great deal of conundrum.

So, wherever I go people ask me, "Oh Rochelle... such a pretty name... Where are you from?". The moment is say Kerala I swear their mouths open so wide that I see their tonsils.

"Rochelle D'souza? From Kerala?"

The next question usually goes something like "Did your parents move to Kerala from Goa?"

If I knew whats good for me I usually just say "Yes, from Goa, moved here when I was born." End of story. Goan diaspora? No! They didn't move anywhere. They themselves were born and bred and fed in Kerala, both my parents, Elvis D'souza and Eileen Fernandez. (Usually when I tell people my parents names I get another lesson on 'The Inside of the Human Mouth'. I am now more thorough with the inside of a mouth than a bloody dentist)

I was once used as an example in my class to illustrate the 'Colonial Hangover'.

I am what they call Anglo Indian. But I've got no British ancestors (at least, not that I know of). Actually, if my family tree is accurate then I'm two thirds Dutch, and one third...er... Dravidian. That’s on my father’s side. My mother side is a bit of a blur, a dash of Dutch, a hint of ‘Travencorean’ a bit of Portuguese and one large helping of confusion.

But all that aside, at first glance I look 100% Indian. Oh yes. dark brown eyes, thick black frizzy hair and skin colour my mother kindly refers to as 'milk chocolate' (no, not white chocolate, more like Cadbury's Dairy Milk), strangely the other day my new hair stylist took one look at me and said "Are you Anglo? I can tell by the colour of your skin." That's never happened before. Honestly, I look very much like every other Sheela, Sosamma and Sarakutty in South India.

Growing up was when I was most thoroughly confused. I was the only girl in my class with a strange name, and short hair (without coconut oil that too) whose mother wore dresses and pants to school (yes, my mother worked at the school that I studied in, how was that you ask? Well, that's a story for a whole other post!), Who spoke English at home but not really like the English you read in books (I could write a whole other post about that too), who ate weird things like vindaloo and cutlets and tongue roast. At parties the whole 'jing bang' (jing bang is the Anglo equivalent of company or crowd, e.g: "Child, the entire jing bang from my mothers side is coming.") sang and danced (although everyone in the community can jive, I sadly cannot, mother says I was born with two left legs) and made such a racket; the aunties make matches for this ones daughter and that ones son as soon as they hit puberty, God forbid they run off and marry one of those 'Nigs' (yes, we were pretty racist back in the day, but I'm happy to inform you that things have changed, now we call them bloody locals) and gossip about every Tom D'cruz, Dick Pinto and Harry Coelho in the neighborhood and abroad (yes, the Anglo Aunty News Network stretches across the globe, they now have Facebook too!), while the uncles pulled up their brandy and cracked their dirty jokes.

Yes the Anglo life is very unique, very different. We aren't just Colonial bloody hangover. We've created something for ourselves which is a nexus of both this and that. But every now and then, when we step out of our little societal bubble, reality hits us that we are a community who've gotten a bit lost in time. Now that all the blooming white people are gone we've got no one to emulate. Mixed marriages have diluted the culture even more than it already was after 68 years of independence, and I don't know if other kids my generation feel this way, but every now and then I think "Whats the point? Our forefather's folks shall never accept us as their own, (Once my granddad spoke Portuguese to an 'authentic' Portuguese woman telling her that he too was Portuguese and she called him a 'rotten Portuguese man'...in English) and over here we just manage to fit into the social structure and even then we stick out like sore thumbs. (Whenever I see an random aunty at the mall or supermarket with short hair wearing loose trousers and a bright printed top, alarms go off in my head, ANGLO AUNTY!!! ding ding ding!!!! Its like whale watching. So rare these days)

So where was I?

Yes, My name is Rochelle D'souza, I'm an Anglo from Kerala because the Dutch and Portuguese landed in Kerala first (that's right, History, people! In a place called Muziris, about 25kms from where I live) and impregnated my fore....ahem...mothers, and centuries of intra-communal breeding later and here I am. Still in Kerala. Shudh 100% Anglo. OK. Thanks. Bye.

P.S: When I was writing this I realized that I don't really know how to conclude this post because I don't quite know how to come to a conclusion about my own identity. My profile has a little description of myself but is that who I am really?

P.P.S: I would like to use this post to reach out to my Anglo Brethren to give me some closure about who we are and what we are and why it is important that we remain this way.

P.P.P.S: Forgive me for the way I write. I tend to ramble and digress a lot. My mum says I'm a scatter-brain and I write exactly how I think.