If you’re calling yourself a desi, then you’re really not Indian or so it seems. In fact, the usage of this term came about when Indians emigrated to British colonies as well as the US, especially around the 60s. Little Indias spawned into big Indias, with corner shops of chicken tikka masala take away to Amitabh Bachchan dvds, all in the name of desi or “South Asian” culture. It catered to a box that you could at last check to mark your identity in foreign lands. So does this fusion identity make it into the NGI box? Well, if we are going to be strict about definitions here, of guarding our new niche, then it fails to gain membership. For starters, our desi here is not really applying for membership in the first place! She does not count herself as Indian. And say, for argument sake, she does want to belong to our newly nurtured acronym, she would probably interpret “global” as being stationed abroad. However, in our little corner, “global” mean movement, movement of self and ideas. And besides, the quintessential desi is about identity pontification, the kind of material that psychologists dream of but the run of the mill Indian wastes little time in self reflection on their “Indianness.” So here you have it, a new boundary for the NGI!
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