“Where are you from?”

“India.”

“Oh, you don’t look Indian.”

About 30 years ago, this conversation would have thrilled me as a child growing up near India’s biggest tourist attraction, the Taj Mahal. The non-Indians were attractive with their mostly cute clothes and accents. Today, the umpteenth iteration of the above is annoying at the minimum. Passing follows the law of diminishing returns even in terms of joy. I resist the urge to snap at enquirers in Kenya, Sardinia, Italy, the US, the UK, West Asia and countless other splashes on the world map. Paradoxically, many a time, they are from my mofussil in Uttar Pradesh. My Italian friend once quipped while gobbling golgappa in my hometown, “More people are curious about where you are from. You look more ‘foreigner’ than me”. She was dressed in jeans and a dainty sleeveless long kurta, while I just threw a freshly washed but unironed long-sleeved kurta over my crumpled linen pants. Nothing foreign-like in our attire at all. And, everyone knows my parents there and I bear unmistakable facial patrimony.

Let us begin with the background to the question itself: What does it mean to “look” Indian? Wearing Indian dress, eating Indian food,........

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