American by Birth, Bangladeshi by Lineage (2)

Ipshita’s parents are Bangladeshis at heart. They want to expose their child to both cultures from a young age. They believe it will enrich her as a person. The two-and-a-half year old Ipshita already knows two languages. She is fluent in Bengali. She understands English but is yet to form long sentences in English. Her pre-school teacher said that her spoken English would improve by the end of the spring semester.

Ipshita wears both Easter and Western clothes. When she visits Bangladesh with her parents she wears salwar suits. She sometimes wears salwar suits at home too. She loves her South Asian fancy dresses. They are so brightly colored! She has quite a few of them – she got a couple of them as gifts from her extended family in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh and her parents’ city.

She visited Dhaka twice in the last two years. The city was always too hot and humid for her. Although she did well during her first trip, on her second trip to Dhaka last September, she was ill most of the time with an upset tummy. Nonetheless Ipshita wants to visit Dhaka again. They will skip 2015 and will perhaps visit Dhaka again in 2016.

The journey to Dhaka has so far been stressful for Ipshita. They fly from the Dulles International Airport, which is almost a 2-hour ride from their home in Wilmington, Delware. It takes some long 14 hours to fly from there to Dubai, where they have their stopover if they fly Emirates.  From Dubai it takes another 5 hours to reach Dhaka. Ipshita dislikes being in any confined space so plane journeys are never pleasurable for her. She loses her appetite too, so her parents have to return untouched trays of food to the cabin crew during mealtimes.

To be continued...

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