आप कहाँ से हैं?
the body becomes the boundary
B.A. Bacigal
- written work
- written work
I don’t want to answer because I hate that sound, the sound you make denoting a mild but palpable disappointment at non-recognition. Hrmph. or is it Mhmm?
I have never been to Dallas I say, but I hope your daughter is enjoying her time there.
Yes, I’ve heard it’s nice. Sunny, yes sunny.
I hope she is keeping warm, the cold where I come from is a different kind of cold.
I don’t realize when saying it that there are multiple truths there.
I don’t want to answer because why are you even asking? Just by asking, you have already outed yourself as having determined a satisfactory answer, haven’t you?
‘Not here’
You can see it before you ever part your lips to ask.
I don’t want to answer because I left for a reason, can’t you see that I’m here now, why can’t I just be here? You’re here, we’re both here, is that not enough?
I don’t want to answer because I don’t want you to hate me or hurt me, though I doubt that was your intention. I don’t want you to ask me questions, or make comments. I don’t want you to see in me the politicians and pain and poison. And because I don’t have the answers. In fact I don't even want to be talking to you at all, who are you?
Migrant’s Crises, 2021 Sunandita Bandhu, India,
| Woodcut, H. 42.6 cm, W. 32.5 cm; H. 65.6 cm, W. 53 cm, 1/6, From the series : THE EXODUS, Modern & Contemporary Art MAC.03264 |
Entering and choosing to exist in an environment of visual nationalisms implies changes to the perception of one's person and occupation of space one cannot independently control. It’s a choice (unless it isn’t) to enter a space of difference, a liminality, within a perpetual state of transit, whereby the body becomes the boundary. There is a visual ‘othering’ of the self in these new states. State, here also adopting multiple meanings. And it therefore is expected that such a presence is to be questioned by the visible majority whether by curiosity or condemnation. Of late I’ve opted for a path of self condemning. Because more than anything, I don’t want to answer because I am ashamed.
When booking tickets, the ICRTC website requires you to select your nationality from a dropdown menu that only has one option: Indian.
On an overbooked train from Jaipur, a man who isn’t using headphones watches reels on his phone at full volume. Flipping from clip to clip the rhythm of hindi is broken by an unmistakable english voice. Trump. The sound bite that I catch before the man scrolls on is ‘This is country-changing, it’s country-threatening, and it’s country-wrecking. They have wrecked our country.’ They aren’t, but it feels like more people than before are looking at me. It didn’t, but it feels like the air got drier in my throat. Don’t they know that on the train everyone is Indian.
I do not wish to be misinterpreted, for on the spectrum of this experience of differentiation and othering based on visible identities, I do not claim disadvantage in any way, so this is by no means in pursuit of pity and I would be remiss to not recognize that. It is instead a personal reconciliation with my privileged positioning, with my fluidity of transit, with my ease of reception, at a time, like so many times throughout history, when my country is making those things harder or impossible for others. For those who cannot leave, who cannot move, who are being killed. My method of conscientious objection thus far has been to leave, yet I see the irony in this. And I haven’t lived in the US for over four years, so it’s hard for me to slip back into a label that doesn’t feel like it quite fits, yet now that excuse too feels wholly insufficient and escapist: leaving, when so many cannot, discomfort carrying something so many covet.
When I scroll I cannot have my volume up all the way like the man on the train, because my feed shows me children burning.
Following the reelection of Donald Trump to President of the United States many Americans reacted with despair, fear, and disbelief, the sort which one would have expected for over a year now, had their eyes been open. Had they been able to see the self in the other. The election may have come to them as a shock, but to me it came as a reckoning. That there is nothing feminist about America sponsoring genocide.
I am in Delhi during Diwali and the only other time I’ve seen so many fireworks in my life is for the Fourth of July. While in Delhi, again people ask, and again, I know there’s nothing malicious in the question, if anything there’s a curiosity and even kindness. So often my response is followed by, ‘welcome’ a word soon to be lost from the American lexicon, if Trump’s first term is any indication.
And again, I don’t want to answer, because I fear that what you see in me when you ask is not simply skin deep, not your daughter in Dallas nor a sunny sky, no -- what I fear you see in me is this jus soli complicity.
“The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions hidden by the answers.” - James Baldwin
So to answer, America.
I sought to explore ideas of visual nationalisms in states of transience. Being in transit for me, has been a paradoxical experience where the further I go from home, often the more closely associated with it I am assumed to be. So, I wanted to write this piece on my personal reconciliation with that paradox, and how it is exemplified in transit particularly during my time so far in India, during the 2024 US Presidential election cycle.
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