Growing Up Asian in Australia by Alice Pung

Author:Alice Pung
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
ISBN: 9781921825453
Publisher: Schwartz Publishing Pty. Ltd
Published: 2008-06-01T04:00:00+00:00

Destiny

Shalini Akhil

I was very young when my obsession started; sparked by the cartoon version, it intensified with the television series. Every weekend I’d be rendered speechless from the first bars of the intro to the closing credits as I watched in awe, stretched out flat on my belly on the lounge-room floor. Every year, I’d get the show bag from the Royal Easter Show, and when we got home I’d sneak up onto the garage roof and fight off make-believe villains whose faces always ended up resembling those of my brothers. They were no match for me: my reflexes were lightning fast, my aim was true and my hair flowed like streamers, dark and glossy in the sunlight. It felt right, being her. A perfect fit. It was destiny.

When I grew up, I would be Wonder Woman.

Then one day, my grandmother came to stay with us. She stayed for a while, and she watched Wonder Woman with me. After a few sittings, I thought she was ready to hear my secret. I told her about my destiny. Though she commended me for thinking about the future, it seemed she wasn’t as sure about my choice as I was. As we discussed my plans, my grandmother reminded me that I was Indian. It was then I began to realise I could never grow up to be exactly like Wonder Woman.

My skin was the wrong colour, my eyes were the wrong colour, and my legs just weren’t long enough. Not that it would have made a difference if they were, because my grandmother didn’t like the way Wonder Woman dressed. I tried to explain to her that what Wonder Woman wore was a costume, a special costume to fight crime in. But my grandmother kept saying she thought it looked like she’d left the house in her underwear – like she’d forgotten to put her skirt on. You can fight all the crime in the world, she said, but if you leave the house without putting your skirt on, no one will take you seriously.

So we started to think about what an Indian-girl crime-fighter might wear. Truth be told, I wasn’t too impressed with Wonder Woman’s choice of outfit either; in the cartoons her pants had looked okay, but in the TV series they looked a lot like those plastic protector-pants they put over babbies’ nappies. Initially, I had tried to make up reasons why she’d wear them – maybe she needed the extra padding just in case she ever fell over, or maybe the seat in her invisible jet wasn’t very comfortable. But no matter how I tried to explain it to myself, I couldn’t really see why they thought putting Wonder Woman in a pair of sparkly nappies would make her better at fighting crime.

My grandmother suggested that Indian Wonder Woman could wear a lungi. That way she could run and kick and squat and jump, and still keep her honour. I wasn’t so sure about that, so my grandmother made me a deal.

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