Most Bengalis like other first generation immigrant families live in a cocoon. From time to time we emerge from the fuzz to interact with friends and people from other cultures .... and then re-enter the familiar cocoon. A vacation in India, some travelling, then back to the states and our cocoon..…it is as if we have always lived here….. with the very same people.
It’s a world within a world. Friendship, politics, little hurts, make-ups, celebrating holidays and milestones, elaborate Bengali meals when the families meet…..all within the cocoon….carrying on a lifestyle that originated in our homes in India. Just for the first generation Bengalis though, the second generation usually makes the outside world their primary home.
Some folks in India, refer to our kids as American-born-confused-desi (desi: ethnic..Indian from India!). But I have yet to observe any confusion whatever in the second generation about their identity. These amazingly resilient kids know exactly who they are. And they are not suspended somewhere in the middle of two clashing cultures as commonly perceived back home. Instead, they have assimilated both ways of life into one hell of a smoothie, the best of both worlds!
