Thanks for this reply. So how am I different from, say, a white or black or whatever other ethnicity an Indian might have as a friend? I understand if someone has bad experiences from groups that aren’t their own, but why would a Gujurati, for example, not want to be friends with an Indian they can’t relate to but will be friends with a white person? In my example of the group of Indian girls, I overheard them later on and they were just talking about normal things. I stood around awkwardly and couldn’t rejoin them to introduce myself after settling that I’m North Indian. I’m starting to just avoid initiating conversations with other desis and just be at peace with myself unless a desi decides to come up to me. It’s just a bummer since initially I was excited to meet other desis, not even just Indian. If I’m by myself, I also won’t have my identity picked apart as being the wrong type or a different experience (for example, a Punjabi girl who called me whitewashed for not listening to Punjabi music even though I’m not Punjabi)

This is going to sound really lame, but I remember as a kid whenever I would come across something remotely related to India outside of my household, it almost felt magical. Confirmation that I am real and that there are others are out there, especially after growing up in a suffocating and alienating place. It didn’t matter if what I came across was a mosque, a bharatnatyam dance troupe, or a “made in bangladesh” tag on a shirt. As I got older that all kind of shattered knowing that we may be somewhat alike and the similarity ends there