The Chameleon’s Dance

By Chinmayi Goyal

The photo captures it all in a moment. 

An eight-year-old girl stands near the bustling confines of an airport: her eyes are wide, her smile bright. However, beneath that radiant smile lies subtle hints of deeper emotions known only to the girl herself.

The discovery of this photograph had been an accident as I was sifting through a neglected box of keepsakes. The moment my eyes met the image, a floodgate of memories unleashed. I could feel myself stepping off the plane and onto American soil, the soft glow of the cabin lights, and the sea of unfamiliar faces. The conversations flowed around me as I stumbled blindly into a linguistic labyrinth. 

The memory of that first day in American school etched itself in my mind. The teacher introduced me, and I blushed as the other kids looked upon me with fascination. I felt like an outsider unable to fit in. My thick Indian accent, which I had never thought about, was now a stain that separated me from others. My tongue stumbled over words spoken with the cadence of another world. The perplexed gazes of strangers mortified me. That day I made a promise: I would do anything and everything to fit in and change my accent. It was an instinctive reaction, born out of my desire to be native in a foreign land. It was a survival mechanism, a way to navigate the social structures that formed the scaffolding of this new world.

Beyond verbal communication was the challenge of writing and spelling. On the first day, we had a benchmark spelling test. I performed miserably. Growing up in India, I was educated in the British English system. Words like “colour,” “favourite,” and “theatre” adorned my vocabulary with their extra “u”s and “re”s. These linguistic quirks had been ingrained in me since childhood, and I had never questioned their correctness. Soon I realised that my spelling, which I considered impeccable, was peppered with these “mistakes.” I was embarrassed. I developed an obsession with consciously correcting my old habitual spellings, like “colour” to “color,” and “favourite” to “favorite.” Like leaving behind my Indian accent, I sought to rewrite this part of my identity.

I grew up to become a chameleon, forever adapting my linguistic hues to blend seamlessly into the ever-changing landscape of my life. In a peculiar dance of identities, I became a performer mastering the art of disguise. Even now, I marvel at my own adaptability, at how I can effortlessly switch between rhetorical worlds. It’s as if I have a wardrobe of culture, with an American accent for the world outside and my own familiar Indian accent tucked away at home. When I’m with my family, when I return to the comfort of my roots, the switch is automatic. The words flow with the rhythms of home, and my voice reverberates with the echoes of my heritage. It’s a return to a world that doesn’t require adaptation, a place where I can be unapologetically myself.

In this continuous performance of linguistic acrobatics, I’ve realised that my identity is not fixed but fluid, a reflection of the multiple worlds I inhabit. I am the chameleon, forever changing and adapting in this intricate dance between accents and authenticity. I’ve found a new version of myself—a person who can navigate two cultures, seamlessly switching between accents yet remaining true to my unique identity. I was neither wholly Indian nor entirely American; I was the synthesis of these two worlds, a living metaphor of cultural fusion. As the years passed, I found solace in the poetic beauty of my dual identity. In the end, I realised that it was in this tapestry of language, accent, and identity I had truly discovered myself—a narrative still being written, a story still unfolding, a girl who had found her place in a land of dreams.

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Chinmayi Goyal, a student at Yorktown High School in New York, is passionate about writing. She serves as editor-in-chief of a newspaper called VOICE and has published several of her pieces there.

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