Notes Jan 2006 ---------------------------- I have been visiting my brother in Florida. Today he’s promised to take us to a Mexican restaurant. Not the Taco Bell or Qdaba type which churns out South of the border fare to suit Caucasian tastes. No, this is the real-deal he assures me, patronised mostly by Mexicans who have illegally crossed the border and made their way to Florida. Sitting here in the middle of the hustle and bustle of this small family-owned restaurant, I feel at home. The hot steaming dishes being carried out of the kitchen by the waiters have either a greenish or reddish colour to them, much like our corriader-coconut or red-chilly masala dishes. The Mariachi band is doing its best to entertain a raucous group sitting right next to our table. Nobody seems to mind much, that their singing is drowning out the conversation. There is something about Mexican music that always reminds me of the lilting narratives set to song, the tempo and the musical arrangements of our own tiatrists. Could I possibly be part-Mexican?
My nephew, who is fast asleep at the table, has no such confusion in his mind. He is part South American and part Goan. My brother married a girl from Honduras of Spanish and native-American ancestry. Add to that a dash of Goan, and my nephew is a genetic and cultural hodge-podge. Perhaps in another fifteen years, when he stands on the cusp of adulthood, he too will ask himself the question, who am I? And what will his answer be? We, Goans suffer such angst on account of our Identity. Identities are not moulds cast in concrete. They are amorphous, dynamic and always in a state of flux. Everytime we learn something new about ourselves, individually or collectively as a society, it becomes part of our identity. We can’t be in the business of preserving identity but we have to be in the business of creating it. And we do so not by building walls around us or by shunning all that we consider alien, but by being in constant dialogue and engagement with the world. selma
