A nice play on Vikram Seth's latest book, here is the piece by Jhumpa Lahiri in the India-focused Newsweek issue of March 6, 2006. She delves into the effects of a dual identity, of living two lives at once, and yet emerging whole despite having once felt that "one plus one did not equal two but zero, my conflicting selves always canceling each other out".

- Sumita Sheth

My Two Lives
The Pulitzer-winning writer felt intense pressure to be at once 'loyal to the old world and fluent in the new.'

By Jhumpa Lahiri

March 6, 2006 issue - I have lived in the United States for almost 37 years and anticipate growing old in this country. Therefore, with the exception of my first two years in London, "Indian-American" has been a constant way to describe me. Less constant is my relationship to the term. When I was growing up in Rhode Island in the 1970s I felt neither Indian nor American. Like many immigrant offspring I felt intense pressure to be two things, loyal to the old world and fluent in the new, approved of on either side of the hyphen. Looking back, I see that this was generally the case. But my perception as a young girl was that I fell short at both ends, shuttling between two dimensions that had nothing to do with one another.

At home I followed the customs of my parents, speaking Bengali and eating rice and dal with my fingers. These ordinary facts seemed part of a secret, utterly alien way of life, and I took pains to hide them from my American friends. For my parents, home was not our house in Rhode Island but Calcutta, where they were raised. I was aware that the things they lived for—the Nazrul songs they listened to on the reel-to-reel, the family they missed, the clothes my mother wore that were not available in any store in any mall—were at once as precious and as worthless as an outmoded currency.