My Indian Culture And Heritage

When I was young, my parents introduced to me to the world using a very black and white approach. Everything was labelled as either right or wrong, good or bad with nothing in between. At the same time, I was exposed to two different cultures, two ways of life: One, my Indian culture and heritage handed down to me by parents, and the other, the American culture that embodied my peers and surroundings. My black and white approach to thinking led me to believe that I had to choose one culture, being a part of both was not an option in my mind.

As a result of this style of thinking, I rebelled against both cultures at different points in my life in whatever way I saw fit, whether it was having my teachers and classmates start calling me “Vish” in 5th grade instead of my true Indian name “Vishrudh” to make it easier on them, or refusing to listen to American pop music until 9th grade despite being ridiculed. In 8th grade a couple of my classmates were talking about someone I didn’t know, and when I asked them who she was they all stared back at me like they had just seen a ghost. However, when they realized I was being serious, they all burst out laughing hysterically. I was teased relentlessly for weeks and even today I’m occasionally mocked for not knowing who she was. Her name was Beyoncé. Despite this teasing, I refused to get involved in American pop culture for no other reason than I felt that I would be betraying my Indian culture. Similarly, I refused to learn the Vedas, the Hindu equivalent of the Bible for Christianity and participate in many Hindu events purely because I was embarrassed about what my friends would say if they saw me with white ash on my face while chanting in a foreign language which was unintelligible eve...

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...o cultures the way I was. The logical and practical approach that this experience has given me has also heavily influenced my love for engineering which I developed while working in Professor Maruthi Akella’s Aeronautics Engineering lab in UT Austin. The precision of the mathematical aspect along with the creativity of the design aspect make engineering the perfect mechanism for exploring my capabilities and exceeding my potential.

Over the past couple years, I have learned to be proud of my heritage and at the same time be open minded about new cultures, experiences and ideas. Although I feel as if I have found a good balance between the two cultures that molded my personality, thirst for knowledge, and beliefs, I know that there is still more work to be done in the future. After all, as our founding fathers put it, aren’t we all looking “for a more perfect union”?