On Being Foreign

“I do not understand.”

My first memory of the semester and its associated feeling of alienation was decades ago and oceans away, in a context far removed from common parlance. I struggled with languages. Growing up with English as my  mother-tongue, in a state with allegiance to Marathi, and then one fixated on Hindi, contending all the while with my “natural” mother-tongue of Bengali, languages are at the core of my identity, and having distanced myself from the larger concept of communication, rather than clutching at languages like grains of sand, allowed for a broader perspective on the nature of being the “other”.

To be foreign is not difficult. It is easy, and can be capitalized by anyone as one grows older. The rich tapestry of personal history can be hidden or veiled over by coquettish appeals to privacy, and then between each person lies a gulf, which cannot be spanned by what politeness is left. To be foreign, however, is more complicated than simply opting out of unnecessary social contracts. It is more than that. It is to appeal to a personal anchor. A place (typically mythical) where one belongs. Such are the fallacies of the human mind when burdened with the adversaries of life. To “belong”, to not be foreign, to be “understood” goes beyond cultural mores. Who among us has not felt alienated or chained by the “expectations” of their fellow human beings?

Misunderstandings happen all the time, between people, cultures, and disciplines. Communication allows the possibility for miscommunication.. We do not often feel offended by an inability to understand graduate scholarly texts in disciplines not our own, yet with the naive hubris of collective humanity strive to understand the nature of being “foreign”.

What does it mean to be foreign then, really? Is it to sample like a reclining monarch, a splattering of hospitalities while being unable or unwilling to reciprocate? Is it to refuse to bury what little self one has and conform to the behavioural patterns of the nearest ten primates, knowing all along that the last vestiges of “otherness”, of not having a shared experience, of not looking the same, can never really go away?

To be foreign is to be displaced forever. Like Adam and Eve cast out of the garden of Eden, it is to become conscious of that which can never be changed. Returning to the place from whence the “foreigner” has come does not alleviate the burden of “otherness” one has experienced. Nor can it erase the subtle solidarity in those on the other side once returned. The native experiences acute discomfort in both ecosystems. Like big fish in small ponds, to not recognize the inherent “foreign” nature in oneself is to have had the unenviable happenstance of never expanding beyond one’s immediate surroundings.

To belong on the other hand, takes a special kind of persistence. A belief in a collective. Hope. To belong to a place is to be welcomed in perpetuity. To become a part and parcel of the past, present and future. The art of being foreign then boils down to being unable to have such a place in perpetuity. To not belong. To have no expectations placed other than having to leave, or to have the impossible expectation of not being different from the rest.

It can be liberating in a sense, to not understand. To not have to be on the lookout for social clues until spoken to in a common tongue. Every linguistic shift is an unconscious expression of self, and therefore an underlining of the divide between two people. It does not need to be strictly a shift in language. Inside jokes. Pet names. Shared memories in conversations. Perhaps all these things, the bread and butter of interpersonal interactions, are exclusionary to everyone not involved.

One possible reality is that perhaps people do not actually have it in them to consider large numbers. People. Populations. Millions. Others. Perhaps, no matter the population density or language, each person can only sustain a limited number of relationships across a spectrum of emotions. To deal with the rest of the world requires bracketing. Us against them. People who are not like us, who might change the ones we do know. Perhaps, some double down on cultural mores, becoming more tied to their “cultural home” or “roots” than ever before. Some band together in an act of petty creationistic defiance, attempting to recreate on a microscopic scale, the warm feeling of belonging, before the sin of being foreign became known. Others give in to silence, save for topics where understanding is a simple function of mathematical precision and hard work. Where are we all “foreign” together?

I cannot give an answer to end this motion, which has dogged the human race. I cannot even promise an improvement. I can only point to the bars that bind us all. Everything we have experienced, no matter how populous the country, sets us apart, offset in time, it is a memory and a past history from every other person. Sit back, dear reader, and be engulfed by the “foreign” nature of yourself, and recognize what insecurities arise from such contemplation.

We’re all foreign here, to those that lie beyond the grave even, if nowhere else.