In Australia,
because I do not have the typical Indian drawl or an American or
British Indian accent, the people here wonder whether I really am from India.
“How do you speak such beautiful English?” I shrug their
ignorance with a smile. What I can't shrug off as easily is the
ignorance among my fellow-Indians who make comments/questions such as
these:
“I hardly find
north Indians here, only south Indians... They are not the same.”
“Aussies are
white so they're all beautiful.”
“Only white
people are racist.”
“I had to change
my name to an anglicised one because people here could not pronounce
it properly.”
“Do north
Indians eat with their hands?”
“White skin
means you'll get skin cancer.”
“White people
don't find dark-skinned people beautiful.”
“White people
cannot eat with their hands.”
“Aussies can't
speak or write English properly. Not like us Indians. We speak British English.”
“Their (Aussie)
media focusses only on Australia.”
"Aussies cannot be poor."
"People here are lazy. They work only from 9 am till 5 pm."
"Australia's so expensive. There's no point of buying anything from here."
"If you have to become Australian, you've got to drink beer, eat steak and play pokies."
"Aussies don't even know where India is."
"All they (Aussies) know about India is because of cricket."
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