22”x30” watercolor painting

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I crave connection. As a child, little orphan Annie and Julia Roberts were the first icons with whom I identified, for their curly hair, toothsome smiles, and spunk. During my moody adolescence, I felt akin with Manisha Koirala of Dil Se, hair windswept in the desert, almond eyes full of sorrow, her affixed pout. I wished I, too, lived in faraway India where a Shah Rukh Khan might recognize my spark and rescue me from irrelevance. I long to find common ground in others, to identify my place in their context. As I was raised in the American Midwest and still live among those who differ from me in appearance, lifestyle, religion, worldview, I am now the queen of forced connections. 

I opened my first Indian art history book as an adult and encountered “Head of a Damsel” a 6th century terracotta sculpture in the collection of CSVS Museum in Mumbai. As she is described in the museum catalog:

This terracotta head is probably that of a dancer. Notice the exotic jewellery! Her elaborate hairdo is adorned with beautiful hair ornaments with Makarika (crocodile) decoration. These Makarikas hold a circular floral ornament, resting on her forehead in between the bands of her curly hair. Behind this is another ornamental band over an attractive coiffure. The face is a combination of the Gandhara and Gupta styles. Observe the large bow-like eyebrows, the elegant nose, and the full, sensuous lips. The head is stylishly bent in a slight profile highlighting the beauty of her face.

I felt a rush of recognition and connection with my art historical doppelgänger. She made perfect sense in ancient Akhnoor where she was created, she made perfect sense on display in tropical Mumbai—she would have languished in Lansing, as I did, shopping at the mall to fit in as well as possible with other girls by means of scrunchies and butterfly hair clips, refusing Indian jewelry in a gold too bright for the suburbs and begging my parents for fun earrings from Claire’s. 

When I encountered “Head of a Damsel”, my own 6th century face looking back at me, I realized I too am a cherubic damsel, yet born and raised and living utterly out of cultural context. With the damsel I felt kinship, I felt reassurance that I exist and might make sense somewhere—not in Lansing, where I languished, not in suburban St. Louis, maybe not even in San Francisco, though there are enough of us here who fit in nowhere to at the very least commiserate over our shared circumstance. The damsel, my 6th century sister, offers a glimmer of hope: why try so hard to force a fit when there exists, somewhere out there, a tribe to which I belong?