Anglo and Proud

The word Anglo didn't mean much to me when I was growing up. Yes I knew my family and I were different, but I didn't know it was significant or even what it meant, this difference, so it didn't bother me. But since the first day of college there has been a paradigm shift. We were all required to introduce ourselves in class and when it was my turn I stood up and said “Hi! My name is Rochelle D’souza and I’m from Kerala” after our session two of my classmates came up to me and said:

“Hey Rochelle, do you like Pepsi or Coke?”

 I didn't get it. I thought he was offering to buy me some, so I said, “Neither, I like Mirinda”

“Dude, admit it, you like Coke…”

Ok. Now I was confused. “Why would I like coke?”

Just as I said that he looked confused too. “Dude, that was supposed to be a practice joke. How come you don’t pronounce coke like normal Mallus, man?” (They pronounce it as ‘Cock’ it seems)

“Did you study in Dubai or something?”

I had to go on and explain the full details of my family and its roots to this guy, Siddharth Dangi, who later went on to be a really good friend of mine. My college friends were so intrigued by my lineage and way of life and just the way we do things, that every time I returned from home they’d sit around me and so “So what happened this time? Did your grandparents say something funny? Was there anymore family drama? Did you guys have another dance?” They knew every member of my extended family by name. When we went out on Thursday nights the girls would laugh at my ‘jiving with an imaginary guy’ moves and call me ‘Anglo Jawani’. When I bring back beef pickle and cutlets from home there would be a “Let’s all go to Rochelle’s room and raid it for food and then eat everything and pass out on her bed” party and every time the holidays approached someone always wanted to come home with me just so that they could be a part of this ‘Anglo-ness’ they've heard so much about. Honestly, that was when I truly started appreciating and loving who I am and where I was from. My Anglo-ness.

I got a lot of critique on my last post for “running the Anglos down” and ridiculing our community. Let me set a few things straight. That was and never has been (or will be) my intention. This blog was meant to be a celebration of who we are, just the way we are. To look at all our rough edges and our tarnished reflections and all our flaws and just say “Well we’re just like that” and revel in the fact that there is so much beauty in this imperfection. We've been this way since the dawn our first Anglos forefathers. We were never an ‘accepted’ community. We were never this nor were we that, but THAT makes us unique. The ‘ideal’ community or society exists in the Ideal World and we happen to be living in the real one.

So please do keep an open mind.

I hope I haven’t offended anyone. If I have then I apologize or maybe I don’t. Depends on what you were offended by.

I am open to criticism so send me a message, smack me across the head when you see me in public, complain to my mother if you want, or just bad mouth my blog, go ahead, because it will just increase my readership (Any publicity is good publicity) So thanks for that. But seriously, don’t like it? Don’t read it. No one is stuffing it down your throat like bitter medicine. Or why don’t you just learn to laugh at yourself. Everything is written in good humor. If I were to write a blog saying “The Anglo Culture where do I begin? So unique. So mesmerizing.  So poetic in an ‘Empire strikes back’ kind of way. Our way of life is so this and it’s so that and so blah blah blah…” Ok thanks, but we've all heard this story before; of the European Ancestry that …*Insert snore* BOREDOM! I fell asleep just trying to write that sentence. Plenty of people have written about the food and the culture and all that you call “good stuff”  so I’m here to tell you about everything else, just as I experience it every day.

And just because I do so doesn't mean I’m some blithering idiot who burns her own community to the ground though her writing. That I am not.

I am Anglo and proud.