How to be an ABCD

Last year, I was asked to pen a piece for an online Indo-American site (which will remain nameless) about cricket. The editor said, “Keep it simple. Oh, and Indo-Chic.” I remember having a, “Hayeen?” moment. WTF is “Indo-Chic?” I thought. She said, “American Indians don’t consider India their home. They are Americans who happen to be Indian.” If you know me well, you know that at that moment, over a hundred-million gaalis (bad horrid obscene ones) went through my head. And then I thought to myself, “Maybe it’s not them…maybe, it’s me.” I was too Desi, no? I needed to fit in. But how on earth does one become an ABCD? This is how.

Shorten your name. Krishna becomes Krish, Samarpreet becomes Sam.

Choose between adapting to either White people or Black people lingo making you either ‘white-washed’ or ‘ghetto’.

Secretly keep only one or two Hindi/Punjabi tracks on your iPod.

Date Americans, Italians, Blacks and Mexicans before you finally allow Mama to choose you a life partner.

Meet at your local place of worship every Sunday so you can ogle at other Desi hotties and/or gossip about the local ‘slut’.

Dance (read: grind and gyrate) on Friday nights out at clubs with complete strangers but stand in a corner at local Garbas.

Wear strapless/sleeveless/über short skirts in college but when you come home, wear jeans, a tee and look exhausted.

Learn to make the roundest roti ever but you must scream ‘ew’ and ‘yuck’ when you smell tadka.

You can only like one of two Bollywood actors: Shah Rukh Khan or Salman Khan.

Only post videos of Justin Bieber. Make sure you poke fun of friends who post Bollywood videos.

Make videos called, ‘How to be Brown.’

Your room’s wall must be plastered with at least one Eminem poster.

Christmas/Thanksgiving > Diwali.

The answer to, ‘Have you been to India?’ is always, ‘Yes. Once.’

Make a trip to India to, ‘Find your roots.’

Laugh at and hate FOBs.

Use the acronym MLID for everything. 

Relate to every Russell Peters joke.

You must think cricket is a ‘poor man’s baseball’.

Make sure you’re shocked when you see a steamy scene in a Hindi film even though you’ve seen hotter bolder American films.

Wear a sari to at least one of your proms so your friends can ogle over how exotic you are but make a fuss about wearing a salwar suit on Sunday to the temple/gurudwara.

You must own one tube of Fair N Lovely while your non-Indian friends admire your natural 'tan'. 

‘Jai Ho’ is your understanding of the Indian National Anthem.

Brag about how you’re not scared of your parents but fear them like no other in reality.

Never eat with your hands.

Karan Johar films. Enough said.


Not so hard to become one in the end, eh? As for me…yeah, I pass. It's far too cumbersome to become one of them. I think I’ll stick to being myself: fobby, deeply rooted and far too Desi for the average person.