Discovering My Roots in India: A Journey to Belonging
Speaking on the theme Identity at Speaker Slam® in Toronto on Jul 2, 2019, Adil Dhalla took the stage with a five minute story.
Transcript
I haven't felt like I belonged for most of my life I was born here in Canada my parents are from Tanzania and my ancestors from India and growing up here in Canada most of the image images that I saw in our Western media of our athletes of our actors and of our leaders didn't look like me in fact the most prominent person in the media that I could relate to was Appu from The Simpsons more of a punchline than a point of pride I was reminded of my difference every time I shared the fact that I was Muslim and particularly after events like 9/11 the
vich world became worse people called me names and told me to go back to wherever I came from and I felt that same fear that same sense of exclusion every time I would go into a public space and particularly when I get on a bus and no one ever sat beside me I took that pain and I changed who I was I wasn't comfortable with who the world saw me as for years I modified my existence I never would have worn clothes that resembled my Indian or Muslim heritage for years when people couldn't pronounce my name which is odd Oh which means just in Arabic
I accepted what they could say I dill a deal dill pickle and I even changed how I looked I dyed my hair when I had it I used to wear color contacts and probably worst of all I used to bleach my skin so I could look a little bit whiter the challenge when you keep trying to modify your identity is that you kind of forget who you were when you started and I had forgotten and particularly in a world where were instructed to be ourself and to be authentic I carried the shame of not knowing who self was but man I wanted to know so
what I did about six months ago is I said goodbye to my life as I knew it I jumped on a plane I left my job and I went to India I wanted to go to where my ancestors were from because I felt that there was an answer there I also wanted to face the discomfort of one of the biggest things that I had hidden from my identity my entire life one of the first things that I learned was that India the stories that I learned here were not matching the stories that I was experiencing there it wasn't an underdeveloped civilization it was a great
ancient civilization the home to yoga and Hinduism and Buddhism and ahimsa and cannabis and more I connected to cows i sat with Babu's the smell of the food tantalized me but I also met people who told me you know because you're Muslim you should probably not tell people that because of the rising religious tensions and then I had other people who tell me but where are you actually from when I told them where my ancestors were from I was kind of devastated even in India I didn't feel like I had a place and then one day I met a man in the mountains in Rishikesh
now he was an old man but if you could picture this a young Yoda looking man he was small in stature but big in presence he had his eternally brown eyes and whiskers growing from different parts of his face he had lived in mud huts and ashrams and meditated every day and every night that we were together we sat on a fire after dinner and I got to ask him questions one night I asked him a nun what do you want and he said in that kind of Indian wago nothing I said how could you not want anything and he said the thing is when
you want things represents something that you're missing and I never want to come from that place and so I asked him well then how does anything happen for you and he says that's easy I just be the thing I want I don't want love I am love I don't want joy I am joy I don't want connection I am connection and so he turns to me and he says well what do you want I told him I wanted to belong and he said well Adele can you be belonging can you belong to yourself and what was amazing for me in that moment was realizing I
had flown halfway across the world to come to India not to learn or to belong in India but to learn that I needed to belong to me first I learned that belonging to me meant that I had to turn down the volume of what people told me I should be and turn up the volume of who I knew I was I learned I learned in order to belong to myself I had to work with others on the stories and the systems that hold us down and don't let anyone fully belong to themselves and I learned that to belong to myself also meant that I could
be part of a community I could belong to it and at the same time I could do my own thing and just do me and those to do a letí's could exist my friends ultimately the world that I want to belong in is the world where I belong to my and that's where I am now thank you you
Transcript generated from the recording and lightly cleaned. Some names and wording may differ from the spoken speech.