Thread by @tarang_chawla

When lockdown is lifted and Chadstone Shopping Centre @fashion_capital reopens, I’m going, dressed like a Prince. No, not the British kind of Prince. Like a Maharaja. Let me tell you a story about why.

I grew up living right near Chadstone Shopping Centre. Whenever family visited, we always took them there and mum would proudly be like, “COME CHECK THIS OUT!”

When I was around 15 or 16, my aunt visited and we all got ready on a Sunday morning for the obligatory trip to the “Fashion Capital”

But here’s the thing about growing up in Australia in the 1990s and early 2000s - there was so much racism around where I came from that I, too, internalised it and became prejudiced about where I was from.

I tried to avoid being seen as “Indian”. I was genuinely embarrassed because I got bullied for it my whole life growing up here so it felt like the only way out was to be as “white” as possible.

To my Indian relatives, I was as Aussie as they come. But to my Aussie friends - no matter how hard I tried, I wasn’t like them. So I tried harder.

By my teen years, I had internalised being a “normal Australian” so much that when my aunty visited and put on a sari to go to Chadstone Shopping Centre, I pleaded with her to please wear something else.

She was so confused. She always wore saris - she wore saris, salwar kameez, churidaars. All of it. Maybe another day I’ll tell you about the history of fabrics and fabric mills in Indo-Pakistan and how it was pillaged over hundreds of years.

Anyway, my aunty just did not get why I wanted her to wear something “Australian”. Why did her Indian nephew care so much? Well, I didn’t want to say it was because it was embarrassing for me if she wore a sari. But that’s the truth.

What if someone from school saw me? What if those who bullied me saw and got more material? What if my crush saw and thought we were different? I was so scared of being judged as “other” that I didn’t want any of us wearing something that would make us be seen as different.

Can you believe that I didn’t want my Aunty to wear a handloom silk sari, steeped in centuries of craftsmanship and identity because that was somehow embarrassing?

That’s what racism does. Racism by its very nature is to make us second guess ourselves. To make us scared of expressing who we are. It makes us embarrassed to be proud of what we are and where we’re from. It makes us think that other peoples’ notions of what’s good matters.

But none of that is true.

I don’t want the next generation of young adults to ever feel so alone and scared that they learn to be embarrassed and not proud of where they’re from in order to “fit in”.

If you’re a person of colour: Don’t let anyone else dictate to you the way I felt it did to me while I was growing up. Don’t try so hard to fit in that you feel you’re losing your own identity.

Just be. Be you. Be proud of you and where you’re from. That’s all. I really wish I had someone to tell me this growing up but I didn’t.

I hope my Aunt is able to visit Melbourne. I’m taking her to Chaddy and I’ll be damned if she doesn’t wear a handmade sari if she wants to ❤️