Biographical statement:

Trinish Ch. is pretty much your average kid. He was born in New Dehli, India, but immigrated with his family to first Philadelphia, PA, and then Rockville, MD, at the age of 2. He grew up with two cultures side by side just like the millions of other immigrants to the US, and is a quasi-active member of the local Bengali community. He speaks four languages (hopefully more later), including his native Bengali, but is still trying to learn more about the literature and poetry of his mother tongue. He is currently a sophomore at Richard Montgomery High School, a (once) avid reader and bibliophile.

Introduction:

As an Indian-American, I often am faced with a subconscious decision of which culture to choose as the “right” or “better” culture in certain aspects of my life. Food? Indian. (Curry is actually really good!) Infrastructure? American. (Load shedding is not fun in the summer). Overall, though, I think I’ve found a good balance in terms of the mindset and morals of the two cultures I’m a part of. Certain aspects do go awry sometimes, though, and for my short story I chose to address a few issues and also struggles that I had dealt with in my experience of culture. I tried to emulate F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose writing style (in Gatsby) has two large components: subtle metaphors and an unreliable narrator. The former I tried to apply through diction, and the latter through plot. While the title may make the story seem like a bad review of Indian culture, the narrator also exhibits the titular hypocrisy in certain places that invalidate what he says. I also pulled from Hurston by trying to emulate the way that teenagers speak today, and also by trying to transcribe the nuances of Bengali speech into English in a way that seemed believable to me. A few things are quite exaggerated, and the main character in this piece is not me, so please tread lightly. Also note that the song mentioned in the passage is by Rabindranath Tagore, originally written in Bengali and translated by yours truly.
















Hypocritical
I really didn’t want to be there that day. I walked into the murky auditorium air and immediately felt the chill in the air like a wall, even among the swarm of people. Groups were shifting across the auditorium and in and out of the hall, spilling into the foyer, creating everywhere they went that familiar buzz of small talk. Like droplets people moved from one end of the room to the other in seamless cascades, pushing up against the doors and trickling down the aisles all in one singular motion. My parents bore themselves into the current naturally, splitting up with us to talk and gossip and find seats near family friends, leaving me and my brother to roam the packed hall until we found anyone of acquaintance. My brother immediately spotted one of his friends, (in the 4th grade, like him), and ran up the aisle to sting him in the back with his finger, screaming “TAG!” at the top of his lungs before bolting away back into the rush.
I, at the moment, was left in the awkward position of trying to find any friends in the crowd while avoiding interactions with the “Aunties” and “Uncles” that might happen to home in on me. Looking for passages around the congregated pockets of parents and family friends, I made my way, with my head down, out of the auditorium again. I scanned the vicinity for any (adolescent) life and finally found the island of teenagers across the room that I had been looking for. I perked up and steered towards that corner of the foyer when I, caught off guard, walked straight into a conglomeration of Uncles that I had meant to avoid, and was promptly sucked into a maelstrom of “How are you?”s and “How’s school?”s as my friends guffawed in the corner.
*
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There was a music program going on that day, by some artist whose name I had never heard before but who was apparently all the rage in the Bengali community. And of course, being the wonderful and cultured children we were, all the parents brought along us kids and teenagers to experience such a “wonderful performance”. The first song wafted in from the auditorium into the foyer as we loitered around:
That shepherd boy in a faraway land
Under the shadow of the banyan on my path
Played the whole day away

Oh what songs he sang! Only he knows what they were
His melody played on my soul
But tell me, did you understand even an inkling of his lyrics?

I asked him then: “What should I bring you?”
He only said: “Nothing but just the chain on your neck”
I said: “If I give them what price will you pay?”
He spent rest of the day thinking

Coming back, I see lying in the dust
Is his flute, thrown away


We stayed for the first ten minutes, but by fifteen minutes in we were already at the Wendy’s across the street munching on hamburgers and Frosties.

The guys and girls of our group sat side by side, pulling small square tables together to create a place to sit for all of us. The smell of overused frying oil and vanilla ice cream stagnated in the air. The girls on one side were having an animated discussion on homecoming dates and creepy “stalker” guys, promptly pulling out their phones and looking up on Facebook each and every name mentioned, so that they could voice their approval or disapproval. I was sitting in the middle of the table, talking with the guys about the various football games that had been going on in the past few weeks. The cloudy day outside made the restaurant seem more hearty and warm than it should have been, and I was dozing off until I suddenly caught a whiff of burnt fries and looked up for a moment at the people around me. I could see the machinations whirring in their brains as they leaned in and engaged themselves in conversations, piping up at any time they found a chance to speak so as to convey that they, too, could speak about such topics. Some mutual desire to sociability eventually melded the two conversations into one large debate:

“Ugh Sanjay is getting on my nerves! He’s asked me three times to join his frickin’ Bollywood club and I really couldn’t care less!”

“Oh my god, he is like such a fob!”

“Dude cut him a break he moved here like 2 years ago, he still has an accent and everything.”

“If he was born here he’d still be just as annoying.”

“I mean he’s kinda cute though.” Sitting next to me was the one guy that who had come out of the closet a few weeks ago to us.

“You just like him because he’s Indian!”

“Hey!” He turned his phone to show me this Sanjay’s unflattering profile picture. “Isn’t he cute?”

“I mean I guess” I responded. The crowd broke out in grins one after the other.

“See, he thinks he’s cute!”

“Doesn’t count, he’s stoned.”

“OK maybe he’s not that cute but still.”

Poor Sanjay.
It had started to rain outside, and realizing that we would come back to the theater soaking wet, we stuffed the food in our mouths and ran across the street so we had enough time to dry off.
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The music program had already passed the intermission and the little kids in the audience squirmed in their seats.

“Ma, can we go outside?? Please? Pleeeeease?”

“Shshsh! The program’s going on right now! Go after this gaan is done.”

The little kids turned back around in their seats eagerly waiting the end of the song, mirroring the adults who turned back to their respective conversations. One of them leaned to the person next to her and began speaking in a low, saccharine tone:

“What beautiful music, na? You know, our kids need more of this.”

“Exactly! You know Preethi doesn’t ever make her children come to these things. They wouldn’t come anyways! Ish, you just feel so bad for the poor women.”
“I know! Do you even know? Her daughter…” The voice trailed off for dramatic effect. Her friend fixed her sari absent-mindedly, looking like a bird ruffling its feathers beforehand. “She almost failed her chemistry class because she was out partying the night before her exam!”
The friend looked scandalized. Her vulturine nails moved over her mouth in blatant astonishment. “How can you even raise such kids? Ish, the poor women…”
“Nikita told me all about it over the phone a few days ago . Like I was saying my son yesterday: ‘Look at Preethi’s daughter, same grade as you, and she’s doing so little, and you’re not doing anything to surpass her!”
“Exactly! And we bring our children here to experience our culture, and they blow it off! I swear, if my son’s not listening right now and playing god-knows-what game on his iPhone instead he’s going to get it.”

“Your son’s right there! The younger one at least!” The two laughed out loud in a raspy semi-whisper at really nothing in particular. There was no joke, but the utterance seemed hilarious to them all the same.

“Of course, but I mean the older one, you know? Always going out with his friends, except of course when he’s studying. His APs and extracurriculars, you know?”

“My daughter is the exact same! Middle school and her track practice is completely draining her. I told her even: ‘Beti, you don’t have to do this if it’s hard on you, but she loves it too much to leave—”

Applause rang out in the audience and both of them, realizing they should be clapping too, began to applaud with the others. The little kids jumped out of their seats and dashed out of the hall as soon as they could, while the small talk again subsided down to a low roar. The audience for the most part continued on with their conversations, but more quietly so as to be respectful. There was an old lady in the corner who closed her eyes and held her head back as the next song began. But what does she know?

*
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The car ride home from the program was filled with tender and juicy gossip that Ma relayed to Baba, who in turn relayed his own reconnaissance on the issue. Naturally, I was bored to sleep, and by the time I got home I found myself lying on my bed, surrounded by four walls that seemed to be slightly crooked from my point of view. Tiredness almost pulled me to sleep, but the sun in my eyes (the clouds had cleared) kept forcing me awake. I cocked my head as much as I could while still lying down to face windows. The crookedness in my vision from my awkward position bothered me, and so I sat up and looked around. Still crooked.

This really wouldn’t have been in issue had it not been for the fact that the shepherd boy from the first song of the program still resounded in my ears. He gives up his flute to go for his chain or whatever, but I’m stuck here in a room on my bed with a thousand eyes on me, just waiting for me to fall asleep. No one bats an eye at his plight except poets and musicians who romanticize him and I’m here trying to be a robotic, standard “brown” kid. My face contorted in disgust for one moment at the whole program. I doubt my parents even listened to it. We left, they stopped listening. Same difference.

I thought back to the kid who came out as bisexual to us a few weeks ago. Before that day, he was completely and utterly average, and after, he was suddenly center stage. It wasn’t even the fact that he was center stage, it was the fact that he had become the perfect rebel. And the other’s too, talking about football and cute guys and such things, they were as much spitting out scripted phrases as the parents. I doubt any them really liked football. Or talked to that guy in 2nd period. Or was bi.

It was after uttering that statement in my mind that I realized that I had gone too far. I broke my own personal boundaries sitting on that bed in that crooked room. I refused to swoop down onto the carcasses of people that (“on ne sait jamais”) might be buckling under the pressure put on them, no matter how much meat or metal I craved. I forced myself up off the bed, stumbled over to the desk drawer, pulled out a bottle of pills and found a water bottle lying on the floor.
I stopped and looked at what I had in front of me. It was neither adventurous nor poetic, neither particularly interesting nor fun to be doing on a Saturday evening. I picked up the bottle and for a brief second made a motion to throw it in the trash can, but I stopped in my tracks. It was either this, or sleep. I opened the bottle and swallowed. Gulped, rather. I held it in my throat awhile wondering if I would turn blue, but it slipped down easily. My moment of insight and imagination faded and I went back to the routine: I sat down on my desk, pulled out my homework, turned on my laptop, and continued on. Drowning myself in expectations seemed to be the only way out, and so I sat crookedly and shifted my concentration effortlessly to less important things. It was going to be a long night.