Widening Pespectives | Natasha Meher | TEDxYouth@BrookhouseSchool
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfbX5qLfDTA Video ID: IfbX5qLfDTA ============================================================ [Music] so [Music] [Music] growing up i was only informed of one way one way to love one way to be educated one way to act and one way to show emotion but in reality we live in a world in which there are multi-faceted cultures ethnicities cognitive abilities and so much more and yet despite my knowledge of this i still believed there was only one way when you look at me what do you see or rather who do you see the majority of you will say black east african and you'd be correct but i'm also indian i'm of an indian religion explaining the kara on my right hand this silver bracelet used to represent that god is never ending my name is natasha maher now majority of you might probably be shocked wondering how maybe even looking at the person next to you and giving them a whisper is she adopted well to satisfy curiosity i'm not i'm the fourth generation of indian migrants who came to kenya for the construction of the railways i'm also a native kalingen and romero with all this i may have lost a few of you along the way but trust me i was in the same place a few years ago and maybe i still am at the age of 12 i struggled with my identity i was so terrified of discarding my heritage be it kenyan or indian i grew up mainly around my indian side my family was so passionate about the sense of community and relationships religion brought around as such i was kind of forced to tag along but as you can tell i'm not the typical punjabi you'd expect to find in a temple luckily due to the blissful ignorance of a child i was quite oblivious to everything i mean unless it included food or being given duties by the gyani the person who leads prayers but around the age of 12 i started noticing things it was though i had stepped into a whole new world in which all of my senses were heightened ironically this is the same year i found out i needed glasses with my newfound senses i can now see the world a whole lot clearer i can now see the eyes following me the whispers in the corner and even the slight judgment when i went up to my very own cousins i mean it felt as though i no longer belong in the only world i'd ever known it took me some time to realize that i was having an existential crisis the only thing that was going through my mind was if i'm not her then who am i each time i looked in the mirror i kept wishing i was paler had more indian features maybe spoke punjabi or even handle chili better i mean i just wanted something to prove that i fit in that i was indian but then i soon came to realize that i was only looking at it from one side of the story the danger in believing that there's only one side of the story is that we so easily forget that these narratives written by people who didn't take into account the billions and billions of us who walk this earth they were written without taking into account the struggles and challenges we all go through because they were written in regard to the author and not in regard to their reader we live in a world in which diversity is treasured but in reality standing out is frightening a world where hypocrisy runs the streets as we yearn for validation from rules we didn't even create and why is that because we hope to play a role in a story written by somebody else instead of creating our own i began writing my story in 2020 three years later with the aid of the pandemic i was forced to be alone with my thoughts and really have a heart to heart i began writing a blog titled widening perspectives and aims to make sure that no one ever believed that there was only a single story a place where everyone could give their own perspective and show that the only difference between a single story and yours is that you just have to write it i came to realize that i live a life of multiple and not one of a single story thank you [Music]