“Be the most interesting person in the room.” The Instagram ad, designed to inspire and excite, was surely wasted on me. From being a minority in my native Singapore, to a brown woman in Beijing, to bringing a rare dose of melanin to Moscow, and then falling directly into the ranks of "suspicious category" in Montenegro, and finally to Luxembourg, where being a person of South Asian descent is hardly unusual, my journey has taken me many places where I was, for better or worse, the most interesting in the room by default – or at least the one who drew the most attention upon entering.
After a long journey spanning decades, I love and embrace how I look, and the colour of my skin, but on many occasions I have longed for what many are used to or take for granted: Normal. Uninteresting. Average.
What a quiet pleasure and a privilege it must be, to be unremarkable in how you look, and to stand out only for your interests, your ideas, your passions, your self.
SINGAPORE
Outspoken, messy, ambitious, and perhaps worst of all, the brownest I could be under the hot Singapore sun. Growing up in Chinese-majority Singapore meant for a long time that my social life was limited to being the single girl of the group. “I love hanging out with you,” a close male friend once told me, “I just.. can’t imagine dating a girl like you,” he elaborated.
Funny you should say that, I mused to myself. I hadn’t asked. But he had unwittingly summed up what my teen years would be like: I like you, just not like that.
I started to travel and found out rather quickly that what was undesirable in my own country was "exotic" in others – an unfortunate label that brought with it its own set of problems. It took the better part of a decade to understand my self worth and, through my strengthening feminism, see myself through my own eyes instead of those of the uninterested men around me.
BEIJING
The brown girl in a Chinese-majority setting continued in Beijing, where I moved at 25, with one major difference. Here I wasn’t local, but categorised with all other foreigners, regardless of whether you were black, white, or brown. There were many others from Singapore who lived and worked in China – they just didn’t tend to look like me. Beyond this expat bubble, my placelessness continued: “Are you sure you’re from Singapore?” A question I still get asked often. As we all know, one does often forget where one is from and needs help to get to the bottom of it!
“Sure you’re not from India? Pakistan? Colombia? The Seychelles?” a stranger would – and this happens more often than you might think – helpfully offer in a quest to find an answer that makes sense to them. “Sure, why not,” I say.
They’d seem confused but victorious at my willingness to concede. They say you should choose your battles, and convincing strangers of something they’ve already decided against, I quickly realised, needn’t be one of them.
MOSCOW
No one in Moscow knew quite what to make of me. But in a big city that, unlike other parts of Russia, was (at the time) desperately trying to become more international, the suspicious or curious stares were as frequent as the pickup lines.
Even when I was with my partner, a straight white man of 6 ft 1, men would approach, start conversations. In one instance I was serenaded in a supermarket, in another a man grabbed my arm and pulled me towards him.
It was assumed we weren’t together: He was white, I was brown, and in Russia interracial couples were incredibly rare. “Sorry,” they’d said once they realised.
To my partner, of course – never to me.
MONTENGRO
Never have I been so equally loathed as I was propositioned in the Balkan country of Montenegro. It was not uncommon for me to hear spiteful words I couldn’t understand muttered as I walked past strangers in the street. On the other hand, I was just as frequently sexually propositioned by men — in cafes, driving past in cars, approaching me in trains, or on the streets.
I asked a local friend who had an immediate answer. “They think you’re Romani,” she said, indicating the colour of my skin. In this country, she went on, Romani women are seen as beggars or sex workers. Here I quickly understood that it didn’t matter that I was dressed for the office, headed for the bus, bright and early, with headphones on and very much minding my own business. “Sex?” a man yelled one morning as he pulled over in his car, gesturing to the back seat. Had I been in a freshly pressed power suit, holding an old-school briefcase while walking with purpose in sensible court shoes, none of it would’ve mattered: they would see my colour, what they’d decided it meant, and it was that that told them all they needed to know.
Many still looked at me as if I was looking for trouble, or about to ask for money. They despised the fact that I was there, and soon enough, so did I.
LUXEMBOURG
I didn’t know very much about Luxembourg before I moved here, but what I’ve learnt so far is promising. It is in fact where the EU first formed, home to Schengen itself, and far more diverse than I thought it would be. It isn’t that racism and discrimination doesn’t exist — one report went so far as to declare Luxembourg the EU country with highest levels of discrimination based on job opportunities and the ability to rent an apartment.
But after a long time of being the only one in the room who wasn’t white, I have to admit it was with absolute delight that a few weeks ago I looked around a crowded bus and realised that the minorities were in fact, at least in this bus, the only ones there.
I didn’t feel special at all; it was absolutely wonderful.
SRI LANKA
For a brief and glorious time when I travelled in Sri Lanka — the native homeland of my father’s side — I finally caught a glimpse of normalcy. My last name, Perera, is the most common name in the country: you only need to watch the cricket team play to see that "Perera" is in Colombo what "Smith" is in London. Common, unremarkable, and most importantly, no one would ever ask you how to spell it.
It was towards the local cricket team that I found myself drawn one morning as I wandered about the capital. The Colombo Strikers were training, and I wanted a closer look. “No entry beyond this point!” a sign warned. “Well, that hardly applies to me,” I smirked. “What’s the worst that could happen?” And off into the grounds I went.
On reflection I wonder if this is the entitlement so many walk the world with: the idea that I probably shouldn’t but hey, the consequences, if any, can only be so bad.
In my case, it was a guard gesturing at the sign and waving me off. With a shrug I backed away cheekily apologising with my hands up, and just for a while, I understood what it was to have privilege simply by being the default.
FINDING MY PLACE
With everything that I’ve learnt and observed over the years, much has changed, but perhaps most of all myself. Sure, I’m still the same brown woman finding her place in a world that isn’t always welcoming. Except far from the frustration of my younger self, I’ve now found the inner strength and confidence to not give a damn whether I’m welcome or not — a privilege in itself, and not one that all may have.
And when it comes to those who still make assumptions because of the colour of my skin? It really is their loss. As much as I’ve grown to love the melanin I was born with, it’s hardly the most interesting thing about me.