Sometimes I feel inauthentic in my quests to understand my Indian heritage. Sometimes I don’t feel like I should be allowed to eat shaak and rotli and rice and daal with my right hand, even though that is how I ate those meals with my grandmother. Or to wear a sari to a wedding and take a picture of myself because I look nice. Or to say that I am Indian when I don’t look it, and my connection to my family feels faint and far away. I had to look up how to spell some names of foods to write this e-mail. Just mentioning them makes me feel inauthentic, even though I grew up eating shaak and rotli
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