Illustration: Romina Meriç

“... Cause I’m not that innocent  … “, emerged Britney Spears’ voice from the metallic blue boombox that my khaala [maternal aunt] brought from the US, my fingers interlaced with my older sister’s as we danced away on my 6th birthday. 

My arms were crowded with silly bands and my fuchsia capris hit my legs at a rather odd length. My feet were bare and heated up with friction as they rubbed against the fawn carpet of our drawing room and my hair was getting stuck to my sticky bubble gum flavoured lip-gloss. 

Ammi, my mother, came into the room to place a glass dish with Rafhan custard on the dining table and giggled when she saw us. She rolled her eyes when she came in a second time with bowls of bakery chips, as I screamed at my sister for dancing off-beat and not knowing the lyrics to Britney. I am now surprised at how chill and lenient Ammi was as I screamed at my sister who was a whopping 11 years older than me. Being respectful to people older than you is pretty inherent to Pakistani culture.

My sister, 17 at the time, wore a printed red-and-yellow cotton shalwaar kameez. Her best friends were her biology books as her only aspiration in life was to become a doctor, like every Pakistani kid her age at the time. 

I, on the other hand, was a child of Disney and Nickelodeon. I don’t know if it was internalised xenophobia or something else, but I was definitely compelled to consume a lot more of Western media as opposed to South Asian content. 

I spent my days dreaming of becoming a fashion designer and hosting lots of parties. But in order for any of that to be possible, globalisation had to work its magic enough to enable Pakistan to become a testbed for western fashion and culture in the first place, for which I spent my days yearning. Keep in mind I had no idea what globalisation was or how it worked, but something inside me knew that my country would adapt to “white people trends” more in the future. 

I would force my family to attend “slumber parties” with me since none of my friends or their parents were on board with the idea. Ammi would reluctantly have her nails painted in a glittery shade of purple and my sister was force-fed s’mores made with Wheatable digestive biscuits because nobody, around me at least, knew what a graham cracker was in 2007 Pakistan. 

As the dialogues from Munna Bhai MBBS echoed in our living room, I would be in my own world, playing games on Barbie.com and filling out pages in my Sabrina’s Secrets activity book. All while sucking on a tube of Cadbury Choki, slurping Pakola, or munching on vegetable flavoured Slanty chips. 

I was pissed at Barbie, however, for being white 98% of the time, black 2% of the time and for looking like me 0% of the time. For that reason, Dora quickly replaced Barbie as my number 1 inspiration. Before I knew it — thanks to generous uncles and aunts living abroad — I had all the Dora merchandise, complete with a blanket and a set of bowls and spoons. 

Dora wasn’t South Asian but at least she had the same skin colour, haircut and sense of style as me. A lot of kids my age did not support me pushing the Dora-over-Barbie rhetoric, claiming she wasn’t as “pretty” or feminine and that all she did was roam around. The handful of white-washed kids that I fit in with would always imply that pretty equals white and blonde, but that just meant I wasn’t pretty, that I could never be pretty, or that Ammi wasn’t pretty, which I simply knew was wrong. I wonder if that is what began my passion for denouncing gender roles and conventional beauty standards and for advocating for women of colour to reclaim public spaces.

The superiority complex developed by my elementary school self over my own family and friends due to my exposure to western pop-culture compared to their lack thereof, came with a very confusing sense of sadness.

My family was living the life that they saw in the movies they watched, where the characters spoke, ate, dressed and acted like them. I was not quite familiar with the privilege of doing that. 

When I watched the movies I watched and listened to the music I listened to, I felt like Rapunzel, looking through a window at people living their lives and desperately trying to emulate it up in my own little tower. I didn’t like looking at the white world through a window and not being able to experience that life in my peripheral country, but I couldn’t help it.

My identity was scattered into broken pieces between different roadside book stalls on Tariq Road and in Bahadurabad, selling Bratz and Trollz activity books. I would tug the sleeve of Ammi’s kurta as I begged her to help me collect all my pieces and amalgamate them into my whole self back in the safety of my very desi house.

After years of sight-seeing Jake Long and Mean Girls and Hannah Montana and The Jonas Brothers and Little Mix and One Direction and Paramore from my window, I grew older and globalisation did indeed intensify. 

I beamed with joy at the fact that I had seen this coming -- until I was hit hard by the things I hadn’t seen coming. 

I earnestly waited and waited for when I could hit the streets in my Juicy Couture track-suit with my Motorola Razr sitting in my tiny, sparkly pink hand-bag, only to find out Paris Hilton would literally be overthrown by Kim Kardashian, Juicy Couture would fall painfully out of fashion, and iPhones would become all the jazz. I waited to line my lips with a dark purple lip liner and not fill them in, but that was replaced by Mac’s Ruby Woo lipstick. By the time Doritos hit the Pakistani markets, Cadbury Choki had left and I was honestly surprised at how sad that made me.

What surprised me the most was realizing how big of an impact the movies that I had watched with my family would end up having on me. I couldn’t believe I had thought Poo, from Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham, played by Kareena Kapoor, was a bigger icon than Regina George from Mean Girls, played by Rachel McAdams. 

It shocked me to the core to remember that I had thought Sanjana from Main Hoon Na looked cooler than Sam from Danny Phantom did, I was appalled that I had thought Kajra Re was a bigger bop than Justin Beiber’s Baby, I could absolutely not believe I had ear piercings only because Kareena Kapoor had inspired me and I could not believe that I liked making references to Hindi and Urdu movies and songs more than I did to Mean Girls.

I don’t know why the familiarity of my mother tongue encircling in my mouth was so unsettling for me, but it was. As I mentioned, the very small band of people I had always fit in with were also kids with a white-washed experience and we had collectively internalised the idea that white culture is superior to brown culture. While a lot of them continued to despise brown trends even as we got older, I instead started to gravitate towards brown culture because it felt like home. Understanding the power dynamics between the peripheral and the first world just made me gravitate more intensely. 

As corny as it sounds, it was almost like the “you only know you love her when you let her go” narrative, her being the desi facet in my experience with nostalgia. I was only realising how intrinsic to my identity a couple of old snacks and songs had become. I just didn’t care about them because those were experiences that were so easily had. Experiences that could be bought from every store down the street for 10 rupees instead of experiences that had to be begged for inside a Liberty Books store.

Then 2016-ish came around and just as I was starting to get over the fact that 00s trends would never make a comeback, tattoo chokers came back into fashion in the white world and you best believe my 16-year-old self ― still watching reruns of The Suite Life of Zack and Cody ― rushed around to find one for myself. 

Snazzy fast-fashion outlets ended up disappointing me, so I found a tattoo choker on a stall inside a Mangal Bazaar, a flea market in Gulshan e Iqbal, splattered with all colours in the rainbow of factory rejects and pre-used clothes and shoes. 

It felt like I had come full circle, tugging on the sleeve of my mother’s kurta, begging her to buy me something off of a stall because I identified with it. Except Ammi was a lot less reluctant this time and knew all about tattoo chokers.

Ironically, I ditched the choker when I went to my 10th-grade farewell party. Instead, I wore a pair of hoops, very inspired by Kareena Kapoor. The hoops belonged to my sister in the 2010s. She would wear them with her crimson and mustard shalwaar kamiz ensembles when she had to spice her outfits up for weddings and other fancy shenanigans. 

Since 2016, I have spent the few years to date dressing like it is the 80s, lining my lips with a dark purple lip liner, listening to Sikandar ka Mandar and Natasha Humera Ejaz, rewatching Hannah Montana and sobbing a bit, watching old Pakistani and Indian movies and listening to Nazia Hasan to catch up on what I have missed out and realising that consumerism is not very fulfilling and makes you feel guilty. 

While the 2000s and 2010s were iconic decades that I had the privilege to live through, I really wish my sense of memory wasn’t so white-washed. I wish I could decolonise my nostalgia. But despite all of it, I would dance to Britney hand-in-hand with my sister all over again. And if I’m being honest, I’d maybe even scream at her again for not getting the lyrics right.