From Gifts of Passage / Santha Rama Rau
In this week's reading from Santha Rama Rau, we read about her experiences attending an English school as an Indian child. Her stories of ostracization and marginalization were impactful and made me think a lot about what it means to feel like you're living a double life. She mentions having a "dual personality" at school vs being at home. at this British school, they gave her and her sister "pretty English names" because their birth names were too hard for the headmistress to understand. this made the author and her sister feel as if they had to be a completely different person at school than at home. at this age, you already feel as if you need to act like someone else in order to fit in but for someone to give them a new name, especially someone in a power position, takes away a large part of their identity and can cause a variety of identity crisis in a child life as we see in this reading. I know that when I was in school, it was so easy to get caught up in how everyone else was acting and wanting to be liked or accepted so I would try to assimilate into their world instead of bringing them into mine.
I agree with you when you said that it was like she was living a double life. Her going to school and being called Cynthia instead of Santha was dehumanizing/made her feel as if she had to separate her life as an Indian to the life that was clouded by British standards. We see that for her and the majority of her family. They resist British rule when they can, but at the end of the day they remain subservient to the British.
ReplyDeleteIts really interesting to see her sister, Premila's story in relation to this idea because the two sisters reacted very differently in this environment. Premila is characterized as strong but at the beginning we see her desperately trying to fit in with the crowd by asking her mom to make sandwiches for lunch and other things. But the tipping point in this story is when the teacher disrespects the remaining bit of identity that the school could not steal. Premila angrily leaves the situation and says that they should not go back. There is only a certain amount of disrespect that she can take, while Santha notices some issues but not as many as Premila.
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