I am writingBut editing was done on day 1 of Inkhaven. this on a flight to Copenhagen, from where I will head to Inkhaven in Berkeley. The last couple days in anticipation of this journey have brought with it considerable stress; battle scars, picked up from a past life as an Indian immigrant student in California, begin to itch. Nowadays, such uneasiness only ever bubbles up in anticipation of border crossings into America (but never on the way out).
There was a time right after this, when I had moved to London, where my anxiety might have even been PTSD. I pretty much stopped travelling to places that needed visas because I would feel a paralysis at the sight of an immigration form. The one time I did go to the Netherlands in this period, a friend had to help me with the paperwo…
I am writingBut editing was done on day 1 of Inkhaven. this on a flight to Copenhagen, from where I will head to Inkhaven in Berkeley. The last couple days in anticipation of this journey have brought with it considerable stress; battle scars, picked up from a past life as an Indian immigrant student in California, begin to itch. Nowadays, such uneasiness only ever bubbles up in anticipation of border crossings into America (but never on the way out).
There was a time right after this, when I had moved to London, where my anxiety might have even been PTSD. I pretty much stopped travelling to places that needed visas because I would feel a paralysis at the sight of an immigration form. The one time I did go to the Netherlands in this period, a friend had to help me with the paperwork. And even then, the anxiety hit me upon de-boarding in Schiphol Airport where I couldn’t, for the life of me, find the sterile and unimaginatively lit queues for border control that I had gotten used to in America; instead, I was wading in a sea of cosily lit cafes and duty-free shops. I was so confused that I was stopping other travellers to ask if I had somehow missed showing my passport to border control. Such feelings are a thing of the past for me now except when I visualise travel into America; it continues to bring with it a stress like no otherPerhaps a future Inkhaven post will recollect failed attempts to move stateside with my parents in 2001..
One of the main benefits of moving to the UK about eight years ago—and now choosing to settle here—has been the complete extraction of such immigrant anxiety from my daily existence. Even when I held Indian citizenship, I was never expected to carry ID on me at all times. Also, the general surprise at never getting carded at pubs was a great touch—a logical one because my age is evident in my appearance. In fact, this frictionless freedom has become habit so I no longer leave home for a stroll with ID on me. My appreciation of this freedom recently manifested as irritation in San Francisco when I wasn’t let into Zeitgeist due to a lack of ID, despite repeat assurances that I wouldn’t purchase any alcohol. I encouraged my friends to enjoy their evening without me and spent the rest of the evening by myself in Dolores Park, reflecting on how it is not unusual to see parents in a pub accompanied by their kids. In America, these carding measures are precautionary impositions that signal that the space is potentially unsafe; but how much of the edgy vibes could be filtered by just being a bit cooler about things?
Open-carry of alcohol is also illegal here (though why this doesn’t apply to guns remains baffling) which I still find abominable; why, for instance, would people in Denver not want to spend a hot summer’s day with a cold can o’ beer along Cherry Creek or under the shade of a tree in one of the large parks near the Civic Center? Permitting this would do so much to resolve the excessively unfriendly tension and, sometimes, unsafe vibes in public spaces.
America, I want to let you in on a secret—this is possible! Just walk down the Islington section of Regent’s Canal or along the Isar in Munich or sit outside a Berlin späti to see how we manage to have a good time without making a public nuisance of ourselves! Imagine if you not only legalised open-carry but also tightened the right to bear arms a bit.
Such informal logic for assessing situations is common in the UK. It has been subtly but incredibly important to feeling accepted in society; to me, this is what a home should feel like: informal and easy. Despite its lower wages, limited job opportunities, and stagnant economy, I often explain to my friends of European and American origin why it’s hard for me to imagine wanting to live elsewhere. Especially America—which holds a soft spot for me as it is where my parents settled over a decade ago and where a lot of my closest friends are from—because dignity is important and I no longer find it appealing to live like a fearful caged animal that develops an eczema induced purely by environmental stressors that have been designed into it. Feeling like you never belong where you’ve called home for years is also why I tell my Indian friends on H1Bs—or the multi-decadal green card waitlist—to “Come On over! The water and beer is lovely out here!”.
The thing I really wanted to write about when I started this post was from a thought I had whilst walking towards my boarding gate this morning.
Heathrow Airport has several mini-pubs that, I think, are serving alcohol pretty much the entire day. Until August this year, I was only really flying frequently to India1 and would usually make a pitstop for a cheeky pint at one of them once all security check shenanigans were out of the way. The cheeky pint is one of the diabolical changes to my habit patterns since moving to England, where casual drinking culture is… well, hyper-casualised and I have taken to it.
But since returning from a decently long summer vacation in America—enabled by my shiny new Britizenship—I noticed that my urge to make that pitstop had completely vanished. Now I’m not an alcoholicI was staunchly teetotal until roughly 25. but it’s evident to anyone who spends even a brief amount of time in the UK: people here drink too much. It is really endemic to the culture; I’ve even said it’s a feature, not a bug (though I am quite certain the NHS stats will disagree with this viewpoint). So how did my proclivity for this pint go away…?
Now, if there’s one thing I can laud America for, it is for the thing that I criticised earlier. It makes drinking casually less easy, potentially even borderline unenjoyable with the ID-ing culture at American bars—where one can be banished from a venue without original documentation of your age-proof. Admittedly the carding culture is applied inconsistently but what I was subject to in San Francisco became a fuel to helping me drink lesser while in America.
So, by the time I returned to London from this trip in early September, I’d committed to at least2 one dry month3. And now, here in the airport, I felt the benefits of these dry days—the brain felt recalibrated and no longer a victim of temptation that it has previously rationalised as a nice way to ease into a long journey. This time, I decided to pop into the bookshop nearby, where I picked up a copy of John Williams’ StonerIt seemed like apt reading for an academic who, like the book’s eponymous character, finds his career quite unremarkable..
So, while I have returned to drinking socially again, I do notice how much more I’m evaluating when it is actually worth it to me.
I am choosing to publish my first Inkhaven post on this topic of freedoms—to drink and travel—for two reasons. First is that I suspect I’m one of the few (if not only) people here at Inkhaven who has undergone a change of nationality to secure a passport of considerably greater privilege; I think these observations are worthy of documentation—for my own recollections in a few decades but might also inform others in their choices or lack thereof—without making a rant of it (or I hope it doesn’t read like one). The other reason for opening with this is that it perhaps exemplifies the kind of personally flavoured opinionated writing that an LLM might not produce and, if that thesis is true, then it is one I should be trying to do more of.
I suspect that beginning to write this inflight kept me closer and more honest to my emotions, which were quite strong, in that moment. The me of two days later would have missed something that I have then been able to add more colour to over the next couple days.
Britizenship has conferred upon me an ease to life, even if it’s not an easier life. It’s opening doors that wouldn’t typically open or, if these doors were always open, I’ve never been able to just waltz past them as I have always felt an invisible force field hindering freer movement. So, in some sense, I am also writing this to ensure I do not forget my pangs of operating life on hard mode: involuntarily, with a powerless passport; maybe this piece even reaches some of those who do not know that this remains a problem (and yes, the people unaware of this are still out there).
While the trauma of travel has not completely abated, I do feel so much more relaxed now in Britain and it’s also good to know that I can see my parents, who are entering old age, in a pinch.
An Indian passport always made me feel like a second-class citizen of the world. So, I refused to get mired in visa bureaucracy for any country after my time in America. I’d told my parents, when I left for England in 2017, that they’d chosen to make their home in a country where their sons couldn’t visit—not easily, at least. They’d made their bed and they’d have to sleep in it until I became British. ↩ 1.
I originally intended to abstain until the end of the year but decided against it after 35 days, opting for a less extreme yet controlled approach of selective indulgence. ↩ 1.
A trend that people now like to label by the month they do it in, like Sober September or Dry January. Mine was a combination of the former and OctSober (which isn’t a thing but should be). ↩