I was born and grew up in India, and I’m trying to remember when I became Indian.
In the summer of 1986, a police constable on a bicycle came to my home in the city of Patna to conduct an inquiry. This visit was in response to my application for a passport. Two weeks later, my passport was ready. I was 23 years old, preparing to come to the United States to attend a graduate program in literature. Did I first become Indian when I acquired my passport?
If so, it would be paradoxical that I became Indian at the very moment I was most eager to get away from India.
But there must have been earlier occasions.
I was 8 when Bangladesh was liberated with the help of the Indian Army in December 1971. I had a vague sense that the Indian armed forces, and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, had beaten the Pakistanis and that they had also outfoxed the rotund man with thick glasses in newspaper photographs, Henry Kissinger. Maybe it was
