WHO ARE U?

By Divisha Deepti 

Who Are U?

It’s always hard trying to explain to people who you are. In Oceania I guess everyone struggles with a bit of an identity crisis. 

The worst part is having to logically explain it to someone when you’re kind of in the middle of trying to figure it out yourself.

You see, I’m Fijian but I don’t speak Fijian/itaukei because I’m a Fijian of Indian descent. My mother tongue is Hindi but not the Hindi spoken by those in India. I speak a different version of it altogether.

I didn’t think this was a problem in the first place because when you live in FIJI it’s normal to see all different types of people from all over the world and the calamity of having to explain your origins never come up… why? Because people here just know that you’ve probably got mixed blood in you. Fijians of Indian Descent have been living alongside itaukei’s (native Fijians in case you didn’t know) since forever now.

I feel that the only way I could explain it to someone was to start from the beginning. 

So the whole thing started during the time Fiji became a British colony. During this time which was somewhere between1879-1916, a total of 42 ships carrying Indian indentured labourers came to Fiji to work on sugarcane fields and cotton plantations. That’s what I learned in school though.

One of the people who happened to be a labourer was my Great Grandfather whom I know absolutely nothing about except for the fact that he came from India – at least that’s what my mum told me. If she was playing a joke on me then I’ll just tuck my invisible tail between my feet and crawl out of here BUT! For now… let’s get back to my story. 

Now those Indians that came to work were told that they would be given a safe passage home but guess what! 

They couldn’t go back to their homeland. I don’t know if it was a con, fraud or scam; yes I totally put three words that mean the same thing in one sentence but yeah… things did not work out so the people had to settle.

Now fast forward to 2019 Indians have the second largest population in whole of Fiji followed by many more people from different backgrounds.

Moving on, since I am an Indian I should speak Hindi but I don’t. You see what happened was that over time, the Indians in Fiji created their own little version of Hindi known as Fiji Hindi which happens to be very different from the Hindi spoken by the Indian headquarters – India. I   understand them just fine although I do feel weirdly nervous around Indians from India because of the fact that I can’t speak their standard Hindi.

Let’s add another interesting fact about myself. My grandfather happens to be an itaukei. My Dad had a full afro back in his day and now I’m here with curly hair looking like a native Fijian. I have people speaking to me in itaukei while I give them an utterly puzzled and confused look. Heck I even have fellow Indians talking to me in English because they assume I’m itaukei.

I didn’t know about my Fijian side for half of my life because my Dad would never speak about his Dad and my Mum was the one that told us (me and my brothers) about our Fijian granddad. We still don’t know about but it’s alright because just knowing I have Fijian blood made life a tad bit easier. How?  Because I got accepted in the Fijian community faster in school. When I thought I was all Indian, it was hard trying to get into the Fijian crowd. It wasn’t intentional but you would feel like you weren’t part of the group. Once I told others of my Fijian heritage, it was easier for everyone to warm up to me.

I was accepted by my itaukei friends faster, my Indian friends as well as those that were of mixed race like myself. So I guess things worked out in the end.

This is the easiest way I could explain my situation.

But I’m alright because my best friend is of Scottish, Irish mixed with Chinese and Muslim. As result she has an even harder time having to explain herself and where she stands on the identity clock.

Good luck to everyone trying to figure out where they stand!