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I Never Saw Myself As A Victim
I still don’t, though I was given 6 months to live
In India, there is a group of people called Sikhs. They have a warrior mentality. They are also known for being extremely honest and forthright. The men are called lions, the women lionesses.
My parents came from India. They were not Sikhs. They were Gujurati. My Mom’s father marched with Gandhi to the sea to make salt. My father was a Jain. They believe in extreme non-violence.
Yet in many ways my parents raised me to be a lioness.
I refuse to see myself as a victim. It’s not that I haven’t been victimized. But I refuse to let that define me.
I have been discriminated against. I am the child of Indian immigrants after all, who grew up in the United States during the 1970s. Did my family face racism? You betcha.
But my father never stopped trying. He’d be angry sometimes at the discrimination he faced, but he woke up and kept going. And my mother won over suspicious neighbors with her grace and friendliness.
I have often fought expectations as a woman and a minority.
When I was in high school, I was in a bookstore looking at physics books.
