The backgrounding task was challenging for me, because growing up in a rural town, and going to a school where my sister and I were the only Indians that we knew of, I spent a whole lot of time and effort trying to assimilate into 'Australian Culture', and pushing my Indian identity aside, so that I ended up feeling like my 'Indian' and my 'white-assimilated' self were two different people. In class this week, when we were asked to get into pairs and talk about our background, I found so much of my complicated relationship with my cultural identity resurface and Isere, who was my partner for the activity listened so patiently.

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Because I formally studied Hindi (which is not my mother tongue) for 5 years when I lived in Hyderabad, I immediately gravitated towards making a work about the Hindi language and script.

I remembered this one homework task I was given to us in Year 2, where I had to write out each of the 36 'consonant sounds' with each of the 12 'vowel sounds' on a massive piece of paper, and I remember it taking me a painfully long time. I tried recreating that sporadically at 1 am one night. But I realised Hindi doesn't play a big part in my life anymore, and I also realised that I never properly learnt the Bengali script.

 

So I asked my mum to teach me.