What am I? And why do I doing the things I do?

I want to get to the bottom of this someday. But let's start at the beginning now. When I started to exist. In India. Being an Indian.

Today's India is nothing like what came before us and the modern Indian citizen struggles to place themselves appropriately in a society caught unaware between glorifying the past and dreaming about the future.

This is because we are living in a time where the world has imploded into itself because of the rate at which humans can communicate with each other.

This has caused new ideas to emerge and a new Indian to be born out of this diaspora, exposed to the local culture in physical space on one side and global ideas in virtual space.

The exposure to both these sides (lets call them the local and global) created a contrast within my subconscious where I had split myself in two different parts internally to act appropriately in two different realms of my life.

While this division had it's advantages, it prevented me from understanding myself more clearly. And while this divide is the main topic of the essay, let's first lets start with some context.

I was born in Mumbai, at the edge of the 2nd millennium around the peak of the internet boom. I grew up watching anime and spent a lot of my time lost in the worlds of science fiction built by Arthur Clarke. I was primarily taught in English but did not speak any English at home. And that is where the divide first started.

It goes beyond the division of language caused by the local and global exposure to me. As I grew up in two worlds, I was divided to think in two minds, to live two lives. To be two versions of myself so I could operate easily in both those realms and switch between each with ease.

Which is why this divide is almost invisible to anyone on the outside and was hidden to myself in plain sight for most of my life. I assume it has surfaced and occurred to me now because I was looking for something within me that would give me a better understanding of my own self and once I saw how I was split in two, I could not unsee it.

Once I moved out of India it became more apparent. I was outside the local realm and suppressed or forgot about that part of myself and to an extent that world and that caused a few problems.

Firstly I felt like a cultural amnesiac, every time I came in contact with things from home, I felt nostalgic about my past but unconnected to it. It was almost as if I had severed myself from where I come from and I didn't like that.

Secondly I wasn't using the unique perspective that was provided to me by my nation. I was not using my own experience to give shape to my work and trying to embrace a sterility that would make me look more modern or forward thinking.

Pursuing this sterility was holding me back from operating at my full potential as a creative but also as a human. Which begs the question.

How do I mend this divide within myself?

Is it even possible to unite these two distinctive modes of operation that I had subconsciously divide my identity into one?

I don't know If I will be successful in doing it but I have to start somewhere and I think I have already started doing it by writing this piece of work. It feels awkwardly apt to come to this conclusion as I stop here, for now.