[Before reading this, do forgive me for my eccentric writing and many mistakes]

Where are you from? Hmm... Can we have multiple answers for this question?

What Indiraji or Di wrote evoked in me the feelings I thought long buried in my subconscious. The truth is, I still cannot answer with absolute certainty when asked where I am from. I am not a writer nor a journalist (and my writing will prove correct to that statement, desolate sentences as my cousin would say) but a simple Manipuri searching for identity.

Like her, I was not born on Manipuri soil: not even in my own country. Dhaka was the place and Friday was the day; smack in the middle of midday prayers. Was I supposed to wait until everyone was done? Nope I wanted to come out with a bang and destabilize my host surroundings. This first insolence of course was not gone unnoticed by The Man Upstairs. He would punish me by making me search for my identity all my life, which is not over yet so the search goes on...

When I was a wee little girl, I was shipped to a foreign land across the ocean that my poor immigrant parents could never truly understand and was left there to fend for myself against all obstacles befalling me.

So now I'll stop writing gibberish and get to the point. I am, one could say, a Manipuri who was born in Bangladesh, raised in Canada. But wait it's not over. One can't really say I'm Canadian because I'm not the Anglophone-only speaking kind. I'm Quebecoise, and very proud of it! A Frenchy, a frog, go ahead you can call me all the names Canadians like to call French Quebecers. So, on a Canadian perspective, I am a Franco-Canadian-Indian-Bengali-Manipuri.

Wow does that call for a celebration or a brain re-calibration? Talk about an identity crisis to the power five.

Try explaining to a crowd of French-speaking white people searching for their own identity the meaning of Franco-Canadian-Indian-Bengali-Manipuri. Yes it's true; they are trying to assert their own identity to the rest of the country just like us Manipuris to the rest of India. They want to be recognized as a distinct culture because unlike the rest of Canada, their heritage is from France not from Britain or Ireland although some of them have Irish blood.

So Les Quebecoise speak an "improper" French according to Les Frangais and have autochtone (Amerindian thanks to the un-brilliant Christopher Columbus; bringing about more confusion to the equation) and sometimes Irish blood and try to find their own identity amidst the majority English speaking Canada. Let's just say that they didn't really give a hoot about my "little crisis".

When I grew up I had to clarify to people where I was from not knowing myself the answer. I spoke English like a Canadian, I spoke French not like a French but like Une Vraie Quebecoise, and I'm from India, from Bangladesh and am MANIPURI. So where did I belong? When I played with my Canadian friends, they wondered why I acted and talked like a "frog" ( sort of curse word against French-speaking Quebecers), when I was with my "French" friends, they wondered why I also had Anglophone friends, to my Indian friends ( which I only started having in college), they wondered why I was so whitewashed ( a term non-whites use for very very western) and to ALL of them, I could not have been Indian because I looked too CHINESE, CHINOIS, CHINI, CHINKI.

To Chinese people I could never be Chinese because I'm too dark. One of my favourite racial slurs I've had to hear was " Chingtok au chocolat" (Chocolate-flavoured Chink), isn't that amusing?

In one of my last phases of belonging somewhere, I thought I could pull it off as an Indian. Needless to say it didn't work. "But you don't look Indian at all!", "Where did you say you were from, Jaipur?", "OK then what's your name? Likla? That doesn't sound Indian at all!", "How come you don't speak Hindi then?", "Oh you mean, you're a Tibetan born in India?", "But India is just a big triangle, it doesn't have a smaller triangle in the East." no, No, NO, NO et NON!!!! Vous jtes tous des idiots! Pourquoi ne me comprenez-vous pas? Sorry I had to vent out a little of my frustrations and yes I do this in French.

Leaving my house, I never felt I belonged here even though I was thankful to have been raised in Quebec. I always had the impression I was an intruder. That's when I got to know where I really came from.

My first taste of Manipur left me breathless. It was a paradise like I had never seen before. So much so that I cried when the plane's wheels first touched Manipuri asphalt. It was an epiphany. At that very moment that was when I new I belonged there and there ONLY.

Of course like in every almost-fairytale-story my bliss was ephemeral, my dreams short-lived. I soon realized I was more of an intruder there and in any other place. I could not fit in. The Big Disappointment was the daily reminder of "the broken meiteilon". "Nanggi meiteilon yamna khoi-ko" (sorry my meiteilon is indeed bad). Oh dear! And for a second I thought "This is IT! I made it!". Thank you Manipur for reminding moi! Don't mind the sarcasm, it's only temporary!

That is my little bric-`-brac story about finding my identity. I suppose I'll have to practice a great deal to say "ko" like the REAL manipuri people "ko-a". It's mind boggling how the Manipuri accent is so powerful, boy all you guys sure have to put many Joules in your tongue!