For my Autoethnography project, I explored the olfactory sense and how smells have shaped my experiences of growing up in a multicultural society that upheld neutrality.

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You don't belong here. 

Nor there.      

You belong e v e r y w h e r e,      

And yet nowhere. 

Like many before me,      

I've stared at the stars,  

In search of answers...

 Oh God, what am I doing here?

Drishti Sanger

Circa 2010’s.

Dear Little One,

A love letter to my past selves and the ones formed after this project.

When you left India, life got confusing, didn’t it?

You were crying because you did not want to leave and yet had to leave behind your grandparents, aunts, uncles, and neighbors in our little alley. Basically, the life you knew for one unknown.

When I, the older version of us, revisited in 2016 and then again in 2024, had a difficult time settling in. I wish I could have pulled you forward to experience that because you would have appreciated being back in our childhood home more than I ever did. There were barriers that I built up over the decades mainly to protect myself. How do I begin to express the pain of having to move far away from the people who love you and to not even be able to conceptualize that distance as a child? Here distance is not solely geographic and physical, but also emotional. When our grandfather died and then our grandmother a few years later, those barriers became more fortified.

Therefore, you, the unjaded version of us, would have slipped right back in as if nothing changed. As if you could run up the stairs to the balcony and wait for Grandpa to cycle home. As if he could buy you more kulfis[1] all part of his after-work ritual. As if that moment in time could be preserved in amber forever because as the years go by, my memories are slipping.

This change is precisely what I want to address because our parents did their best to avoid addressing it in our upbringing. Maybe I would be less anxious today or feel less obliged to over-explain. I cannot say for sure, but I do know that this letter is a foot in the right direction.

Growing up feeling we belonged anywhere and yet nowhere at the same time, was confusing. On one end there was the world outside our home that set certain expectations from you. On the other end were parents determined to make sure you never forgot your roots.

Our father would say, “Your name is Indian, and you were born in India, therefore you are Indian”. 

Yes, but we are not exactly living there, are we?

Our Canadian citizenship was made when we were merely a little over a month old and we were never Indian by nationality.  Even when we go back, we are visitors to a land we once called home. Having arrived in Canada at 17, giving up his Indian nationality for a Canadian one, he is a lot more conflicted than I am about where he belongs.

Where do we belong?

How do I even begin to unpack that…

One word comes to mind, “diaspora” and I think National Geographic (a magazine you enjoyed reading) explains it best, “Diaspora refers to a large group of people who share a cultural and regional origin but are living away from their traditional homeland […] but for a variety of reasons are living outside of this traditional homeland”. I think one major obstacle we faced when we arrived was processing a plethora of complex feelings: grief, relief, sadness, excitement, heartbreak, anxiety, fear, and so many others.

I had to forgive our parents multiple times through the years because they did not know better. Maybe at 33, the clues we accumulated in our life can help to provide a better idea. Because you see, while they had to survive, we did not have to. We had some form of instruction, but they did not. Some empathy goes a long way, I’ve learned. When immense love for one another is present, the effort to right wrongs should not be hindered by egos. I think the move was particularly hard on our mother, who arrived around the same age I am today.

So, there we were equipped with knowledge of our past that consisted of our language, food, values, and customs. In other words, culture. It set up some form of stability while we navigated our new home country/province/city. It also helped that our father had already been living in Montreal but recent events in his business pushed us back to the start. I think what most people get wrong about culture is that they assume it is fixed. That it is not supposed to change and perhaps attaching our values to it has something to do with this.

I cannot say for sure, but it is something I observed in people like our father.

So, we went to school in a different setting than our home smelling like our home. It was an aroma of smokiness from the parathas/rotis that mom packed for lunch; incense from the morning prayers; and notes of ghee with spices in a vegetable curry stir-fry. The aroma wove itself between the threads of our clothes and there it hid. We were none the wiser.

That is until our teenage self experienced the comments from classmates. In high school we brought lunch from home and the locker smelled like it. Maybe we should have opted for an insulated lunch box instead of trying to fit in with a paper bag because everybody else was bringing paper bags.

Just maybe.

I wonder if this desire to be alone today came from experiencing so much of it.

Once again, I cannot say for sure.

What I do know is that because of this forced loneliness, we had to learn how to enjoy spending time alone. There is a massive difference between them because “loneliness” expresses an emotion and “alone” is a state of being. But both are worth embracing because this is where we learn about ourselves.  From those countless hours spent alone, I found the answer to where we belonged, was in perfumery.

This art form is a testament to the fluidity of identity when we look at it from the standpoint of individual ingredients, where they are native, their typical usage within that cultural context, and how that use evolves with exposure to other ingredients or practices from different regions. I think people of the diaspora and the society they come to be a part of can be seen through a similar lens.

They say diversity is the spice of life, but I want to also add versatility into the mix because, without it, innovation would suffer. For instance, vetiver, an ingredient used to make Khus syrup in South India for centuries, made its way into European perfumery. So maybe if we treat ourselves as components of a scent, that transforms with time, we may end up with a fragrance that depicts the potential of humanity.

In short, we belong in our entirety, not just pieces.

We belong in spaces where we can freely exist.

We belong without ownership.

We belong as distinct beings in a collective.

That is what perfumery taught me about belonging somewhere.

The last matter I want to bring up is distinction through the physical features we carry. I am grateful for our body because it has carried us so far. Presently, I would never dream of changing what we look like to “fit in”. Yet, one of the major hurdles we need to overcome is regarding our nose, a feature often altered in the world of cosmetic surgeries as a form of assimilation. We can admit to having a strong dislike for the slight hump on the bridge of our nose. Today I feel less emotional about it. The desire of having a functional nose is far greater. However, the decision to go under the knife requires working with a surgeon who shares those values.

With the industry saturated with demands for cosmetic procedures overriding the ethnic roots of one’s nose, how can it not be another branch of assimilation?

What is the ideal nose?

Or even the ideal smell?

How do we unlearn these ideals or simply move away from them?

To what extent do we accept cultural assimilation?

I leave these questions with our future selves. As they go through the motions, I am sure that they will be able to find appropriate answers.

I just know they will lose perspective…but they must remember to:

Explore their life by living it to the fullest.

Enjoy their life because we spent too long not knowing if this was a possibility.

Ask questions because otherwise, we will never know for sure.

Respond to life because reacting to it has not worked for us.

Most importantly, continue building bridges.

As to you little one, you have done so well so far in building a wonderful life. A life where you didn’t conform but practiced versatility instead.  You must know that I am truly in awe of it all when I look back.

Thank you for not giving up on yourself.

With all the love and admiration, I carry within me,

Drishti (the present & future)

[1] Kulfis are a frozen milk dessert made of milk, water, sugar, cream, and nuts typically almonds and pistachios.