I’ve started just sticking with “South Asian” or “Desi.” Of course, the flip side is that when people finally understand the desi part, quite often, I get some sort of weird hippie mysticism question that follows. You know what I mean, those goofy raise-my-consiousness-kama-sutra-wow-that’s-really-deep-and-spiritual types. They hear “Indian” and pick the wrong stereotype. When I was a teenager, I actually had someone ask me if my dad can levitate (he’s my Desi parent). Can he levitate? Really? I didn’t have a good answer back then, but now I do. The answer is “Of course, he’s an engineer.” (natch)

These are the types that ask me if I “speak Hindu,” and tell me that they’re really into “Indian culture.” They can tell me where all the chakras in the body are, but they wouldn’t know a laddoo if it beaned them in the nose, and I KNOW they’ve never seen “Devdas.” Sheesh.

I guess I’ll never be happy because I don’t want desi culture to be ignored, but I don’t want it to be made into a charicature of any type. I am so fiercly proud of my heritage (on both sides) and so happy that I come from such a diverse place. South Asia is big, bigness produces variety and I want the world to see that.

Have you interested yourself in the most recent research or have you contented yourself with dismissal? PBS had a show on the subject a few years ago–nordic artifacts were indeed found in these areas. It’s really no stretch once you realize they were going to Greenland on a regular basis and were the most intrepid seafarers of the day. That there was a norse settlement in North American in the pre-Columbian era is not really even controversal anymore, though there is varying opinions about how well established they were or whether they came deliberately or by accident. But it made little impact and was quickly forgotten. What has surprised me is the more recent information that there was a pre-Columbian Scandinavian presence in Massachusetts. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v63/n1625/abs/063192a0.html

I am know less about the Chinese and cannot support that. Claims for the Chinese discovery rests on the reputation of a particular Chinese general whose name I cannot remember. Generally the Chinese were not a seafaring people, but this particular individual was quite intrepid.

So, there is a possibility that some people can be both DOT AND FEATHER.

As far as I know everything but the Scandanavian colony is unsubstantiated myth. The visit of the Chinese mariner story, especially, is almost certainly BS.

I think there were political and cultural reasons for Columbus promoting the “India” landing. A lot of Europeans knew about the land mass we now call North America. The Scandinavians had fishing colonies in Nova Scotia; certain secret societies were using it to stash treasures they didn’t want confiscated (though this is controversial); Irish monks drew maps of it and had place names in common with native American place names; lately they’ve been promoting the possible visit of a Chinese mariner; the ancient Phoenicians were here. As one maverick student of history commented: all and sundry over here before Columbus. Somehow though the Columbus landing held.

If he did mistake natives for Indians, it could be that Indians varied a lot in physical appearance. They didn’t all have the markedly eastern Asian look of the plains Indians. The Indian laides of Virginia were described as having similar looks to English women except for the darker color of the skin. The “Indians” living on the east coast of North America had a different sort of phenotype from those familiar to us in picture of Plains Indians. Europeans noted this as they came into contact with native Americans further west. This has been written about but I can’t find any sources now–it’s a hard subject to find keywords to google. Since there haven’t been any full-blood east coast indians for a couple hundred years, this has sort of fallen into the realm of legend. However, it may explain why some of the natives were mistaken for Indians, if indeed they ever really were.

You may be missing India, when you …… ——————————————————————————– ….Re-wire all the lights in your house and insert a random selector. ….Start washing your clothes in the local river. ….Start commuting to work on the roof of the train. ….Start sucking aniseed so you can spit on the wall in the yard. ….Put a ‘Horn OK’ bumper sticker on your car and blast horn every 3 seconds. ….Re-wire the bathroom to leave all the cables exposed. ….Start peeing in your sink. ….Argue with the newsagent over the cost of your daily paper. ….Set the farmers cows free to roam the streets. ….Take your granny to a festival so you can lose her. ….Open a market stall to sell used false teeth. Can anyone think of any more.

Does something like this happen often? Being spoken to in Hindi/Tamil by someone who isn’t desi?

Sometimes they are people like these.