Whenever I find it hard to understand my surroundings, my country, the people and everything worth giving a thought, I go back to the book Blue Collar Roots, White Collar Dreams by Alfred Lubrano. The author describes himself as a ‘straddler’ with one foot in the working class and the other in middle – at home in neither world.
8,431 miles from the US, I feel the same rootlessness in India for multiple reasons.
A number of books, documentaries show that NRIs – among other people – lament and yearn for that rootedness that comes with living in one’s own country. But the idea of rootlessness isn’t restricted to boundaries. Little do they know that you can be born in an Indian metropolitan city, live all your life here and yet be a stranger who never fits in.
A white collar child of a blue collar parent by virtue of his education and efforts manages to attain a privileged position in a corporate company. But life cannot be merely understood in terms of the money you earn or positions you attain. The child, hence, neither belongs to the most Indians, nor those in the corporate world.
When you are the first generation to attend college, the same education can alienate you from the very family who brought you in this world. For you, the religious beliefs, superstitions and other isms that your family blindly follow – are both a mechanism to exercise control and a tool to attain ‘enlightenment’.
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Moreover, straddlers like you are not interested in jobs, they want to build careers – something which many do not get a chance to. Social class matters when it comes to building a career. You need to know diplomacy and nuances to rise through the ranks, which are arguably unknown to the blue-collar folks because they are use to following the conventional set of rules to get by in the world.
The child, who is a product of the two worlds, feels helpless and pays a heavy price of social mobility with lifelong mental anxiety. Their personality reflects a ‘mixed culture’ because they don’t have direct access to certain resources like those who come from the privileged class.
The advent of the internet further provides avenues and choices to escape and the content one consumes plays a key role in shaping a person. For anyone disillusioned with the state of affairs and surviving on a staple diet of world movies, music and literature – it is inevitable to mentally become a netizen who belongs to nowhere. This is the reason why India, with its mind boggling differences, is a hotbed of rootlessness for those who study histories of ‘other people/colonisers/aliens’.
City and country divide further creates differences. With all these differences, it is natural to be in limbo and unable to find a sense of belonging. However, in an ever increasingly hostile world, the question of ‘self and identity’ still remains.
Devender Sehrawat currently works in parliament as a translator. He wrote this while working in Goa for the customs and excise department.
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