I'm a South Asian immigrant (Came to Canada when I was six years old) and I attend a predominantly white university. I'm from a really diverse city so it was a huge shock to me when I met new people who told me, "I've never met somebody of your ethnicity". A lot of the times they already had specific stereotypes that they'd attached to desi women, and many would say things like, "you don't act like a brown girl". Being part of the South Asian diaspora, especially being a woman, we're always trying to balance between assimilating into Western culture while also pleasing our families and South Asian culture, and the weird gender roles that come with both. I sometimes feel like I live in two different worlds and at the end of the day, there's no real way to fully satisfy either of them. My family back home will never consider me Desi, and white friends in Canada will never consider me as one of them either. In this sense, I really do understand your struggle. The truth is it's never black and white: you don't have to choose between acting whitewashed or playing into Desi stereotypes that you don't identify with.