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Bengali by Blood, Italian by Birth, Canadian by Love
Urmi’s Story: Episode 6
Urmi is an Italian-Bengali who lives in Canada and identifies as “Italian by birth, Bengali by blood, and Canadian by love.”
Urmi’s passion for women and children drives her to volunteer in nonprofit organizations and children’s hospitals and to help underserved women raise money. She was born in Italy to Bengali immigrants, and she always felt out of place in both worlds. She gravitated toward interests in mental health, lifestyle, and financial education, and especially how women are affected, but confessed she still, like many children of immigrants, struggles with feeling like a disappointment to her parents. This narrative is true for many children of immigrants. Urmi lived in Italy for 19 years, moving around with her parents before finally settling in Canada all by herself. How did she navigate the differences between her traditional culture and that in the west? Anyone who has experienced this can understand the constant conflict between your parents’ traditional expectations your parents and the very different life you may have imbibed in the west.
She was always surrounded by Italians in her younger years and didn’t know then how to keep explaining to friends why she sometimes behaved differently or came home at a certain time. She was surrounded by fellow Bengalis at home but also felt out of place. Her two cultures often came into conflict, especially regarding ideas about women. Her parents forbade her to go for walks or shopping with her Italian friends, even girls, and would sometimes lie to hang out with them. Hanging out with males was entirely out of the question. Her cousins in other Western countries had similar complaints.
Many of my own friends from other cultures have had similar experiences, and I have come to realize many parents do these things in their own definition of love, and especially out of their concerns about the different values in western cultures. But that itself is in conflict with the fact that those same parents brought the…
