I spent the evening looking across the cafeteria at a table full of Indian families, wondering why they didn’t seem to notice that I was like them. I compared their hair to mine, their skin to mine and, God help me, even their noses to mine. At one point, I actually dug through my purse, put in my nose ring and thought, Bam. Now I’m Indian.

I laughed at myself, but later that night, I cried. Because underneath the humor was an ache I thought I had healed years ago: Where did I come from? Who do I look like? And where, exactly, do I belong?

Turns out, I was looking at the wrong table.