What’s all this desi business, anyway?

A client asked what I mean by “desi.”

(It’s pronounced with a soft D, something like “they-see,” with the emphasis on the first syllable. And FYI, I’m dropping the quotes from here on out. It’s a regular old word! No more jazz hands!)

The root of the word is des, meaning country, or nation.

Desi is an identifier, and means something like “countryman.”

It refers to people and things of South Asian origin (South Asia: the region that includes India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, and the Maldives, a.k.a. the Subcontinent).

It’s an adjective, used to modify terms, and also a noun.

Like: desi people, desi food, desi attire (all of which are very broad and vague categories themselves, of course). And just plain desi (when referring to a person).

It’s not used to narrowly define, but more to refer to something or someone who traces her origins to this region — kind of like the way Italians in the US self-referentially use paisan in talking about each other and to identify that someone is of Italian cultural origin.

Please have some fun examples of the word used in context.

My mom, walking with me down the sidewalk in New York every single time she visits:

“Look – desi people!”

(She does this a lot, bless her. I think it’s a holdover from when she first came to this country in the 70′s and we were not thick on the ground, and it must have been a complete delight to see someone who looked like her, who she could maybe even stand a chance of being able to speak to in her mother tongue. I finally told her that if she pointed out every desi we passed in the street here, we’d talk about nothing else all day.)

My grandmother, on the phone, interrogating me re: my cooking habits:

“Do you cook desi food, or Amrikan? Do you even know how to make desi food? I bet your cooking is bland.”

One interesting thing about the word: it means something quite different when I use it here in the U.S. than when my cousins use it sitting in Lahore.

For me, it’s a catch-all term to refer to things having the quality of South Asian-ness.

For them, the term means something more akin to “native.”

For example: my  aunt raises desi chickens. These chickens are rangy and scrappy, with gamier meat, and smaller than all the other chicken breeds that are also raised there.

If you see them scratching around, it’s obvious there’s something jungly and old-fashioned about them. Like they haven’t had all the wildness bred out.

These desi chickens, as you might expect, lay desi eggs, which are considered more health-giving than any other kind of egg, and prized for their deliciousness.

So desi in this context means “folk” or “native.” And its opposite, depending on the specifics, means something like “foreign” or “imported” or “British.”

Am I making this difference clear? When they use desi in the homeland, it’s a term that distinguishes old from new, traditional/native from imported/transplanted.

When we use desi outside of the des, we’re using it much more broadly to mean “of or related to South Asian things.”

It’s a kind of shorthand — one word that’s meant to convey a whole giant heap of back story and geography and a degree of shared history.

And I wanted to lay it all out here so I can use my customary shorthand forever more, instead of typing out the overly self-conscious (to my ears) “South Asian” all the damn time.

Any questions?

Comment Fu

Please no opinionating on how I identify, or why. This space is like a Quaker meeting that is happening in my living room. Honored guests, please speak as you are moved to. And let’s be awesome to each other, because graciousness among friends is why we hang out together.