Both Not Half: How language shapes identity | Jassa Ahluwalia | TEDxChandigarh

when i was 15 years old i had an argument with an indian street vendor i had been to india many times before but this was my first time visiting the wagga border i was excited i'd heard stories about the wild leg kicking ceremony i'd been practicing but i was also tired it had been a long hot day and as our rickshaw pulled up amongst the crowd a young man rushed over clutching bottles of water water water cold water i already had a bottle of water i showed him smile to courteous no thank you ah but this is cold water sir ice cold feel he thrust the bottle of water into my hand he was right it was freezing but i had a slight headache coming on and i really just needed a moment to myself so being an englishman i defaulted to what i know best awkward politeness no thank you sorry i have plenty of water i don't need anything sorry sorry thank you sir lots of people very hot you will need more water i was impressed by his persistence but still no thank you best price the crowd was starting to swell one liter two liter i snapped up he instantly fell silent i instantly felt bad but he didn't look upset in fact he was he was smiling that he shouted out to his friends nearby punjab the punjab's white man is here i soon had a crowd around me and all hope of quiet was lost this wasn't the first time my punjabi had surprised people and it wouldn't be the last my white english mom was brought up in england and my punjabi dad was born in india he emigrated to the uk as a child and my parents met in their 20s and i was born shortly after i was immersed in my dual heritage from the outset my dad spoke to me in punjabi before i could even speak my mum learned the language well enough to discipline me chopkar be quiet stop that sit down and then when i was two years old my family life changed my sister was born my family was struggling and in true indian fashion i was sent to go and live with my punjabi grandparents in leicester this became my new reality punjabi at home english at school weekends with my parents and summer holidays in india a cross-cultural cross-generational experience my first trip to india was with my grandad aged three and a half i don't remember much but i did forget something english on the flight on the way home the british airways steward asked me if i would like a colouring book i stared back at her blankly before turning to my grandad and asking kikendia what's she saying thankfully the elasticity of youth meant that my english came back quite quickly but my indian accent it it persisted a little longer the story goes that i was at the supermarket with my mum just the two of us and i was sat in the trolley when all of a sudden i shouted out mommy i want a banana she panicked she completed our shopping in record time i had no idea why she was worried i had also had no idea that i was a white baby with a strong punjabi accent i had no idea that that was strange i was just me that said i used to watch the jungle book religiously as a child one monsoon season trip to india i even packed a red cloth i plan to reenact the adventures of mowgli in the pouring rain it would only be later in my adult life that i would come to realize why kipling's famous man cub resonated with me so strongly a young boy caught between two worlds during my teenage years i i happily went around proudly introducing myself as half indian half british it never occurred to me that by identifying as half i was opening myself up to accusations of not being enough even when a clear example presented itself to me it was during a rather dull maths class i was sat somewhere near the back and i was singing a song under my breath for my brown classmates a song inspired by my grandparents mispronunciations i say guarantee and you say grunty i say warranty and you say guarantee guarantee grunty warranty warranty let's call the whole thing off we were in hysterics my gujati friend offered up a few of his own verses but our teacher a south asian lady she was not impressed she asked me to stay behind after class now i was expecting a lecture on the follies of showmanship i clearly never learned but what i got came as a surprise she told me off for mocking the indian accent i tried to explain she knew my heritage but it was no use she told me the song was offensive and that was final why had my gujarati friend been spared this particular lecture i felt weird humiliated and angry but i was a teenager everything made me feel weird humiliated and angry the moment passed and i soon went back to enjoying my white privilege during my twenties my acting career started to take off my breakthrough role came with a leading role in bbc three series some girls followed by roles in ripper street and peaky blinders i was enjoying success but my worlds felt divided at first i thought this divide might be the inevitable result of my parents divorce a few years earlier but the feeling began to grow and trouble me reaching its climax at a wedding it was a punjabi wedding in london i was on the dance floor the pangara was in full swing i was enjoying a moment of familiar bliss and then i saw a young girl she must have only been around four or five years old and she was staring at me her eyes wide fascinated confused i couldn't figure it out at first but then i realized and my body felt heavy she didn't or couldn't understand what i was dancing white man agora to her i was alien as the evening went on my sense of isolation grew white guests approached me seeking fellow fish out of water uncle g's used me to shame their english-only speaking kids harmony in the weeks following the wedding i felt so confused i had this burning desire to find a home but i had no idea where to look i wanted to return to my childhood to those carefree days when i was simply me wherever i was i realized i needed to look inward what was i was i british british asian anglo-indian where was this conflict coming from what was its history my first major breakthrough came when i discovered that national identities were an invention of the 1800s as cities began to develop national identities emerged to fill the void left by the breakdown of traditional communities i realized that national identities were not some essential truth they were a construct a construct i didn't need i was amazed a simple understanding of history had fundamentally changed my sense of being for the better i was inspired i went looking for more answers but as i went searching i also grew afraid during my last trip to india in 2014 i had visited my bind my ancestral village and that's when the fear got hold of me i grew terrified i found myself crying i realized i was so afraid of growing up growing distant from india of family dying of being left untethered i also felt that i was losing my punjabi i i didn't have the vocabulary to express complex thoughts and emotions my mowgli days were over and it hurt the solution i discovered came from another of my fictional heroes philip pullman's his dark materials concludes with the protagonist lyra losing her intuitive ability to read a magical compass-like device called an eleometer lyra asks how can she regain this skill and she's told it will take the work of a lifetime but that her knowledge will be even better then after a lifetime of thought and effort because it will come from conscious understanding it will never leave you it occurred to me that my elethiometer my golden compass was punjabi my heritage the language that had once so easily replaced my mother tongue now required study the culture that felt so innate to me in my youth now demanded research my sadness was replaced by excitement i've been shown the way beyond naivety and nostalgia i began the pursuit of wisdom more books history music art i learned to read and write punjabi via youtube which allowed me to use dictionaries and then google translate which allowed me to expand my vocabulary it also gave me a new and meaningful way of spending time with my grandparents particularly my grandad keen to keep his aging mind active i would find punjabi children's stories online and read them with him he would correct me explain the meanings of words i hadn't encountered before and inevitably he would digress into anecdotes he died in 2017 and though the sadness was immense i didn't feel lost i felt i was being offered a great opportunity the chance to carry a flame to keep it burning bright and perhaps one day pass it on at the start of 2019 i was feeling frustrated by the lack of opportunities for me as an actor to explore my heritage my history despite efforts in the entertainment industry to tell stories that better represent audiences progress has been slow a major west end play recently posted a casting breakdown seeking an actress who is black or mixed race mixed race it seems has a very particular definition a definition that excludes me and countless others i also feel that the term mixed race is itself problematic a linguistic hangover of scientific racism complete with fears of race mixing i prefer to think of myself as mixed heritage and of one human race these ideas and frustrations came together one night unexpectedly last january while i was making some dal being a vegan dabbling millennial i had decided to include a meat substitute in my tarka i imagined how an old punjabi uncle a uh my grandad perhaps might react to such an unorthodox ingredient i turned it into a comedy video there and then i posted it to social media it went viral i had no idea that i just set my year in motion a year that would end with me hosting the brit asia music awards at the historic wembley arena this was the first time i had expressed my punjabi identity publicly something i could point to and say look i am punjabi without being entirely conscious [Applause] without being entirely conscious of what i was doing my video was an attempt to push back to take control of my identity my narrative as an artist as the video went viral i realized i needed to somehow communicate this identity to succinctly offer an explanation to the growing number of confused comments and then something just clicked and it all made sense both not half [Applause] but what does both not half mean is it merely a hashtag or is it something more for me it's the distillation of my struggles with my sense of self the answer to a question i didn't realize i needed to ask but most importantly it's not a label it's an idea both not half is a non-binary approach to life an idea that's always existed it's a rejection of easy distinction and historical prejudice now whatever our backgrounds ethnicity nationality gender sexuality social class we are each whole individuals whose constituent parts cannot be separated power structures love labels labels facilitate division and ultimately control they allow people to whip up tales of us and them oversimplified propaganda divide and rule but we can take back our control our power by recognizing the language of division in all its forms and rewriting it into a language of inclusion we force the world to engage with detail instead of simply seeing how we differ from others we begin to notice how complex we ourselves are instead of seeing divergence we begin to notice mixes all around us the same goes for fashion food music engineering thinking so much of our world is defined by what it isn't as opposed to what it is but that's another talk both not half is a rewording and a rewiring of our minds none of us nothing is half anything everything all of us are both something thank you you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 60,475

Rating: 4.930337 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Entertainment, Achievement, Activism, Bullying, Comedy, Family, Happiness

Id: SP0bAQ8J6C0

Length: 17min 13sec (1033 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 13 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/anshika526]

Omg i watched this and loved it