Flickr/Os Rúpias. Some rights reserved.We met at university abroad.
We were bound to meet, a natural pair – the Indian girls – wonderfully brown in a sea of apologetic white privilege. Our peers were just what you would expect from a student body at an elite European university: liberal, crème-de-la-crème folks, as eager as we were to diversify their social circles, and full of warmth when it came to embracing ‘the other’.
So-called cultural barriers seemed to dissipate as we laughed amiably over chai-tea and naan-bread. Our weekends were full of Indo-German bake-offs and butter chicken. We were a western university’s dream team of diversity; so varied in race, gender, outlook, and sexual orientation, we often joked how poster-perfect we’d be for next year’s academic brochure.
