Where Am I From

Eshaan Nandy '29

When asked the question, “Where are you from,” my head went into a tailspin. I identify with so many places and cultures that my mind began to race. There are places where I have lived, and there are places that are associated with my identity because either my parents or my grandparents hail from there. However, when I pull myself back, I see the ultimate fact: just like every other living thing on this planet, I am from Earth. 

A person’s origins are unique; they can always keep moving, but where they are from does not change, it just expands to include new connections and experiences. The question of where you are from can have many different meanings. To some, it may mean the country they were born or grew up in. To others it may not be a place at all; it could be a feeling or a group of people.

Let me zoom in on the broad statement that I am from Earth to a more specific and personal origin. 

To truly understand where I am from, it is crucial to understand things that happened before me and my birth. Both of my parents are from India. India and its culture are distinct in its elements, including its food, its music, and its art. There is even a saying in India that the dialect and the food changes from train station to train station! By official count, India has over 19,500 dialects. If the number of dialects is any indication, you can hardly begin to imagine the food variety. India’s rich culture and heritage come with its own established family values: respect for the elderly, nonviolence, hard work, and education. 

When my parents were growing up in India, opportunities to go to universities and opportunities to get a good-paying job were limited. There were a scant number of respectable careers and were limited only to engineering and medicine. If you did not enter any of these fields, you were considered a failure. 

This led kids to grow up in a culture of competition, being taught that they need to be the best academically to succeed, and, compelled by their parents, they worked hard to prove this. My mom is from Bihar, and my dad is from Odisha. Both of them grew up in India in large joint families with different languages, foods, and general cultural milieus, but with a common refrain of fighting to succeed career-wise. 

The search for success brought my maternal grandfather to the US in the early 90’s and with him came my mom, with a dream to do something big and different. My dad moved to the US in pursuit of his MBA after working for four years after his engineering studies. They both brought their own distinct cultures to the melting pot that is the United States and happened to meet in 2003 and got married in 2004. The medley of the diverse cultures my parents brought defines me and my early childhood and makes me identify myself as an American-born East Indian, from parents who grew up competing at every step in their lives. My pursuit of competitions in math, engineering, writing, and soccer is a reflection of their incessant hunger for success and is a distinct sign of who I am and where I am from. 

But then, I step back in my thought process– I was born in the great state of New Jersey– the backwater of the Big Apple, in the Eagle Nation of Greater Philadelphia. I was born in November 2010 in Voorhees, New Jersey. 

A few months after my birth, my dad’s work made us move to Richmond, Virginia, and we stayed there for a few years before moving back to Marlton, New Jersey. That is another part of where I am from; I am from Richmond, Virginia. Virginia gave us that southern love, so much so that we spend a few weeks of summer there almost every year, even now.

When we moved to Marlton in 2012, we found a house that was less than 5 minutes from where I was born. I am from Marlton, New Jersey. There, I went to a Montessori school for preschool and kindergarten. The Montessori method aims to instill a sense of independence and curiosity in their students, while also deepening their appreciation for learning. They did this by making learning fun through independent, hands-on activities. There, I made many close friends among the kids and had a deep connection to the teachers as well. I was excited to go there every day, knowing that I would enjoy my time learning among my peers. At that time in my life, other than our physical home in Marlton, the feeling I gained going to school felt like home to me and became a part of where I am from. I enjoyed learning, and that school shaped me into who I am today, academically and otherwise. 

For elementary, I transitioned to public school. This was difficult, because it was sad to leave behind my Montessori school, and it was different from how I was used to learning. 

In the summer after my sixth-grade year, I moved to Pennsylvania and began going to school at an independent Quaker school for 7th grade. It was a big cultural shift from my public school in New Jersey, not just because of the change of having a campus in the city, but also due to the beliefs and values of the school. It is a Quaker school that introduced to me many unique traditions such as a weekly 30-minute period for reflection. Finally, for high school I moved to Germantown Academy, and am loving every minute of it. 

At first, attending the Quaker school as a new kid was a challenge, because I felt a bit like an outsider. I had just spent 6 years learning at public school, and I was used to a different environment –one with larger class sizes and a more traditional structure. In addition, many of my classmates had known each other for years, and sometimes I felt as if I was catching up on their inside jokes and shared experiences. But with time, my new friends helped me adjust, and we created new inside jokes and new connections through new experiences. I am sure that new friends will do the same at Germantown Academy this year, and I feel that I will soon be able to confidently identify Germantown Academy –as a place and as a culture– as somewhere that I am from. 

Now looking back, I reminisce about the travels across borders and countries and their influence on me. Be it the Barcelona trip of 2015, the Vancouver trip of 2016, or the London trip of 2023, each left an indelible impression on me.

In 2015, we went to Barcelona on a week-long vacation and stayed right in the middle of Barcelona –near Placa de Catalunya. My little brother soon started calling it the Pigeon Square because every morning, he would walk out of the house to play with pigeons– so much so that one day he caught a flying pigeon, and folks began looking askance at us! My little brother had a huge smile on his face! 

Our trip to La Sagrada Familia and Casa Batlo gave us the taste of Gaudi and his immaculate imaginations, full of colors that life represents. At times, in the middle of humdrum, when I look back at the arts, I identify myself with those moments in Barcelona.

In 2023, we flew to London for a vacation and then took a train to Paris to see the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. While standing in the line to go up the Eiffel Tower, I saw my little brother begin to play with a kid –a complete stranger– a kid who did not speak English, and their only language was the game of Rock-Paper-Scissors. They developed their own unique language through those interactions so much so that that kid’s parents and grandparents were soon talking to my parents –albeit with broken English. A new identity was emerging for me as to who I am and where I am from.

In the end, I am a New Jersey-born child of Indian immigrant parents, from Virginia and Pennsylvania. I am from that Montessori pre-school that felt like home, and from the school that will feel like home. I am from the moments traveling in Barcelona and Paris, and from the proud Eagle Nation. 

But when I zoom out, I am from Earth. 

I can adapt and assimilate to identify with many cultures, because I am more of a global citizen than a native to a particular place. Whether it's chasing pigeons with local kids in Barcelona, or playing Rock-Paper-Scissors with a Slovakian kid at the base of the Eiffel Tower, I am a citizen of this world, and it's the place that I call home. It is a place that has hate and violence, but also has love and peace. This is the place that I am from.

To cap it all, in the wise words of Socrates, “We are not citizens of just our hometowns or nations, but of the world.” 

That is where I am from.