Descent of the Ganges, a group of monuments at Mahabalipuram in India, and the Elgin Marbles. Photo by Mahesh B.

“So what is it that you do?” the Auntie simpers, while my mother stirs nervously beside her in her sari. Another day, another Indian gathering of friends and relatives. “Classics,” I say – not without a hint of acidity, I admit, but there are only so many times I can deal with this conversation. She blinks in distate.

But she recovers quickly. “Oh…that’s – nice. You know that Priya is doing Accountancy at Bolton University?” She addresses my mother again. The chat continues. I slip away.

It’s always the same – the confusion, the disapproval, and then the smug smile that her own daughter Priya, or Esha, isn’t wasting her time with an Arts degree. As an Indian girl studying Classics at Oxford, I recognise that I’m not exactly a stereotype. But sitting there in a lecture on Homeric style, I wonder – how? How did I end up reading the subject that is possibly the very antithesis of the “typical Asian degree”?

I certainly grew up in a household that was as Indian as any other. I would wake up with a jolt on a Sunday to my father yelling down the phone to my grandparents in Bangalore – as if somehow by increasing the volume of his voice, it might get to India faster. I would smell my mother cooking Sunday lunch – daal, chapattis, and subzi – with the wails of some classical singer resonating around the house. I would grumble and duck under the covers.

But, naturally, I rebelled against my heritage. Listening to cooler girls in my class gossiping about which parties they were going to that weekend just reminded me that, at fourteen, on a Saturday night, I sat with my family and watched the latest Bollywood film. So understandably, I started defying all things Indian: I pulled away from my traditional Asian friends at school, I started dating non-Indian boys, I didn’t learn Hindi or wear salwar kameez unless it was necessary.

Descent of the Ganges, a group of monuments at Mahabalipuram in India, and the Elgin Marbles. Photo by Lisa Lunamoth.

Two years later however, having grown out of my teenage angst, I started to feel like something was missing – I missed my roots. I tried everything to reconnect with them. I went to garba, a traditional North Indian dance festival but ended up with sore legs and a sore ego. I tried to make an extra effort in the kitchen, but my puris were flat and my raita was bland. I even thought about doing medicine, but the smell of the hospital during work experience made me nauseated – and, to my embarrassment, I discovered that I fainted at the sight of blood.

Somewhere along the way, I started doing Classics. I immersed myself in stories of Greek heroes, their values, and their culture – so inspired by it that I chose to study it at University, over the traditional options like law or medicine. I was never really sure why, though. No one in my family has even studied Classics. In fact, ironically, most of them are doctors.

Then, recently, my eccentric grandmother sent me a copy of the Mahabharata, the great Indian epic about the war between the Pandavas and Kauravas, asking me excitedly (and completely unrealistically) to translate it into Ancient Greek. While I perused it, something struck me. Classics, while it seems an odd and bizarre choice of subject, was made for me. It isn’t taking me away from my cultural heritage, but bringing me back to it.

The Ancient Greeks, in a weird and wonderful way, are just like the modern Indian community – their religiousness, their eccentricity, their myths. When I learn about ancient customs of guest-friendship, I remember my mother telling me as a young girl how we never turn away a guest. When I read about Odysseus’ feats with a bow, I remember the days my grandfather put me to sleep with tales of the archery skills of Rama while I lay in bed, my nightclothes sticking to me in the Indian humidity. My degree, somehow – crazily – has helped me feel more in tune with my heritage than any garba or daal-making disaster.

And that is more than can be said, I think, for Accountancy at the University of Bolton.