I'm an American - Indian, not an Indian - American. Or something...

I traveled to India in the summer of 2008 for a plethora of reasons. Primarily, I was sideswiped by a dump truck and the first two things I did with the pain and suffering check were to buy an entire camera setup and a round trip ticket to Mumbai. I had returned to my father’s native country a handful of times growing up, but it always felt that when I landed back in the States, I only picked up a few hilarious dirty words in Hindi and a dense confusion as to how a country I didn’t understand could be half of who I am.

This time was going to be different, in my mind. At 19, I felt like I was enough of an adult to approach this trip with both career and personal goals. I traveled to the country for five weeks in hopes of making it less like a vacation and more like a cultural immersion. I dreamt that when I left I would have a grasp on the context of India, enough that I could someday work there as a photojournalist. At the end of the five weeks, I had an innumerable amount of glorified travel images instead of a strong body of work. My personal goal –understanding what part of me was truly and Indian- didn’t go as planned either.

Landing in the hectic and unstoppable motion of Mumbai has always made me feel self-conscious and realistically - very very white. The curious stares from seemingly everyone on the streets created a hyperaware attention to the language I chose, the clothes I wore, and the big expensive camera hanging around my shoulder. This trip in particular – traveling alone and with a purpose – caused an identity crisis I wasn’t prepared to deal with.

The most emotionally difficult experience I had in India was as a tourist with my Aunt Sabrina, my cousin Suhail and his wife Mrunalini. We spent a week in the North, a region of India I had never before seen. The beauty of the place astounded me. It forced me to abandon the images of crowded streets and polluted walkways that I associated with India and begin to absorb the diversity and complexity of the country I was visiting. Snow-capped peaks of hills in the Shiwalik Range of the Himilayas surrounded me and we wandered through small towns that managed to eloquently blend the traditional customs of the people with the undeniable comfort of restaurants and shops that could have accepted credit cards.

My genuine joy and gratitude for the experience were tainted with my stirring feeling of guilt for having people constantly serving me. In the guest house where we spent several nights, my family and I were fed by two young men who were there before we woke to make us fresh, hot aloo paratas. They waited around for us to finish our rum and be ready for dinner, with shy but genuine smiles on their faces. They tried to hold in their laughs when they heard me jokingly belt out Hindi songs from the radio, and although it felt to me like a friendship intruded by a deep language barrier, I was to them a boss.

When traveling through the winding mountain roads, we were only passengers to a personal driver who was at our beckon call for any major or minor excursion we planned. He drove us for hours through Kullu and to Manali and back, waiting for me to pick out a pashmina color that suited my skintone, pulling to the side of the road at discrete turns for restroom breaks, searching for an hour for a location to photograph a sunset, and essentially allowing us to be in charge of our trip while relying on him. When we stopped at restaurants to eat along the way, he refused to sit with us and somehow managed to find wait staff or doormen that he could call friends in every city along the way. The manner in which he scurried off at every opportunity made me feel like he did not want to be seen with us, but in reality it felt unusual for him to have his passengers attempt to include him.

As a stranger to this common etiquette, I felt as though we were not only excluding him individually but also perpetuating a divide between classes that is comfortable to many Indians but painful to watch as a foreigner. After a night of maybe one too many Kingfisher glasses, I broke down explaining this concern to my family.

“He just helps us so willingly, and expects so little in return. He’s left his family for a week to drive us around on vacation and he runs away from any tips force on him. He’s such dedicated worker and that deserves a pairing with a better quality of life,” I pleaded as the knot in my throat tightened. They didn’t sympathize with my view, and pointed out that great service is a staple of their culture, and that ultimately our driver was happy to have pleasant passengers and a steady income. It was the first time in my life I boldly defended “The American Dream” and as delusional I seemed believing it and shedding tears for it, I was somehow emotionally wounded by seeing that an uneducated adult was not able to change careers in his or her lifetime. Much of the American identity, I realized, was about defining an individual identity and being able to do so by a variety of paths. Our driver didn’t necessarily plan on ever getting a different job, but rather put all of his hopes and savings into creating a better life for his daughters. That selflessness was something I had heard about endlessly and sincerely admired, but I had never before felt directly involved in those sacrifices.

I was embarrassed that as open-minded as I pretended to be, I couldn’t wrap my mind around the happiness someone could feel being a server to someone else. By experiencing this internal conflict, my trip to India became more about learning what it was to be an American than what it meant to be half Indian.