Vinal Lakhani

“I don't think I would say I'm a Southerner…But I would say I'm a North Carolinian and I would say I am from Charlotte and I'm from the South.”

Vinal Lakhani poses for a portrait outside the Mary Duke Biddle Music Building on Duke University’s campus. / *Photo by Maydha Devarajan.*

For most of Vinal Lakhani’s childhood, a typical Saturday might include a morning of cartoons, a day of sweeping up at the family laundromat in downtown Charlotte, and if he was really lucky, a biscuit from Bojangles.

It’s a tradition that started with his parents and aunt and uncle, who immigrated to North Carolina in the early 1980s from Gujarat, India. Not long after the 8,000-mile move, they set up King’s Cleaners, a dry cleaners business that became a cornerstone in the family, especially when Lakhani’s four other uncles and their wives eventually joined his parents in North Carolina.

Lakhani said every Friday, as a treat, his parents and aunt and uncle would make a trip to the local Bojangles or Hardee’s for a biscuit — one of a few staples in Southern cuisine that the family could eat as vegetarians. Thirty-five years of biscuiting-eating has prepared Lakhani, he says, even to the point where he once refused to balk at confusion from a Carl’s Junior cashier in San Francisco over what a “chicken biscuit without the chicken'' could possibly look like.

“I was like, ‘This is where my Southern pride kind of came out, like, this is the Southern thing,’” Lakhani tells me.

When it comes to food, Lakhani says one particular dish is representative of his blend of Southern roots and Indian heritage: apple butter chutney. It might sound strange, but he swears by it — a recipe first made by the women in his family mainly out of a lack of ingredients for tamarind chutney.

For him, family is everything. Lakhani grew up in College Downs, along with two little brothers and a slew of cousins

Lakhani’s family was involved in the establishment of the Hindu Center in Charlotte, which is sat on around 9 acres of land off Independence Boulevard; he remembers long Sundays of driving out to the temple to participate in children’s programs.

Lakhani said in some ways, he thinks his parents’ generation has held onto traditions and versions of the 1980s India they left as young adults. When he thinks about his parents, he says their connection to Charlotte would be quite strong. But would they identify with the South? Maybe not.

For himself, Lakhani says there are identities that immediately jump out.

“I think before the pandemic, when people ask me where I'm from, I was like, ‘Oh, I'm from the South. Born and raised, so like Charlotte, born and raised.’ And I would say it in that like, sort of like, ‘Yeah, born and raised down South, kind of like—’ like that's how people say [it] down here, right? So like, you know, I endear them that way. And then, yeah, I guess I would get the, ‘But where are you really from?’
And then I would say, ‘Oh, actually, my parents are from India or whatever.’ And then I think when I used to say that, I felt a little awkward because I'm like, ‘Yeah, I'm from here. My parents aren't, they should leave.’ Like I felt that I was like, ‘Am I implying that by saying, I'm born here but my parents are from there?’ …I think my mind changed quite a bit after that election. So I now I think I would be like, ‘Yeah, I'm from Charlotte, kind of, but where are you from?’
And then press the point.”

And when we press on the specifics of whether he would use the word “Southerner,” Lakhani says that reads as “white” to him.

VL: Yeah, I guess I never said I'm a Southerner, though. That, to me, speaks white, though.
MD: When you think about the American South, what do you think about? Is there something you like, picture?
VL: Yeah, it's a little odd, because now I'm like, I guess what I see in the news and the stereotypes and stuff, that's also in my head, but at the same time, like I've lived here, so I know the more realistic versions of it. I've got coworkers that are in California, and so like they have their own stereotypes of the South. And so I'll push back, actually and this is now becoming true countrywide, it's very much city versus urban versus rural. So whosever closest to the city, then you have the suburbs, and then the stereotypes kind stuff settles in the rural areas. It's also the same for rural California. It's like the very sort of Republican, kind of conservative kind of viewpoints. Same here. So like on the one hand, like I know the stereotypes of being in the South, I would say, like, yeah, that's also my head. If I leave the city area from between here and Asheboro, then yes, I'm going to see that. But as soon as I hit Greensboro area or like Charlotte area or Asheville, Wilmington, Triangle, like, I know it's going to be like a bit safer in that sense. I don't have to be as on guard or put on airs or something. So back in the day when you weren't born, you know, we had to stop for directions and ask gas station people like, "Oh, well, how do I get here? What is the map and stuff?" And you have to go in with a certain attitude and like, you just have to put on certain airs. And I guess I feel less aware of myself doing that in the city.
MD: Like code-switching kind of?
VL: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

For some time, Lakhani says he didn’t necessarily feel like he could claim the South as his own.

“I don't think I would say I'm a Southerner…But I would say I'm a North Carolinian and I would say I am from Charlotte and I'm from the South. Because just because North Carolina's part of the South, so then I have to say that part. But then it's like, ‘Well, why don't you say Southerner?’“

Lakhani says, in some ways, that reluctance could be due to generational differences and parts of the state changing from when he was a kid.

There are moments throughout his upbringing that he recalls experiencing covert racism; a PI in college singling out Lakhani’s lunch order for a laugh at a restaurant or non-Indian kids in school making fun of the rakhis — a bracelet typically tied by sisters around their brothers’ wrists to symbolize protection and love for the Hindu festival Raksha Bhandan — tied around Lakhani’s hand that his female cousins made.

As a kid, he wouldn’t be likely to dissect why those instances made him uncomfortable with his parents, though. Instead, it was just expected as part of a “racism tax” that immigrants pay.

Understanding the complexity of his various identities took time. And much of that does have to do with place, Lakhani said.

“It got cemented in my head, like this is a country for white and Black people, and they've got their own business going on. Like, ‘I don't understand why white people are still mad at the Black people, like they did all this to them anyways. But like, this is their country. People like me, like Indians, Asians, Latino people, we're all coming in new…’ And I bet 100 percent, if I had grown up in California, any city in California, I would've had a totally different history. It's like, ‘Oh yeah, Chinese-Americans came to build railroads—" and you got this in high school. But by then, it was a little bit too late in my head to get into my medulla, the base of my brain, where it was like, "No, this is a country that is actually made up of a lot of different people.’
And, you know, my wife has like a list— critical race theory, talks about this list of Supreme Court cases redefining white over and over and over again as the decades go on just to, like, keep drawing the line differently, just to exclude certain people or include certain people or whatever. So yes, the binary 100 percent, like I honestly thought it was like a white-Black country and we were just like kind of jumping in like, ‘Hey, can we like hang out?’ kind of idea.
And so you have to sort of pick.”

Lakhani lives with his wife, Dr. Krupal Amin, the associate director of UNC-Chapel Hill’s Asian American Center, and their daughter in Durham.

“I don't think I would say I'm a Southerner…But I would say I'm a North Carolinian and I would say I am from Charlotte and I'm from the South.”

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