Fun Party Game: Guess Where I’m From but Every Time I Make Up a Fictional South Asian Country

Picture this: you’re at a party. Any party. Perhaps you managed to stitch your eyelids open to brave the mission of staying awake for 57 straight hours, just to show face at that one on-campus fraternity’s late-night, or maybe you’re really close with the people on your floor, and your RA throws a social in her bite-sized dorm, and every hallmate shows up because that is the way of life at Hill College House. Either way, a couple mixed drinks and a humbling shot of Svedka later, you begin to feel how one usually feels after a few drinks: socially and morally conscious about your racial identity. 

Currently, it’s social hour at this damn party, but what do you do when you forgot to charge your ethnic battery? You gulp the remnants of your red solo cup, searching in the sea of heads for something… anything… when a cutie rubs against you. Naturally, all that race shit falls out of your head as you respond with a thoughtful grind back. Everything goes swimmingly, exchanging heated pleasantries until she brings up the godforsaken question: “Where are you from from?”

Fucking hell. What do you say to this census-checking bitch? Before you could come clean and admit that you’re just a New Jersey native, foreign words glide out of your mouth. You say your family is from… the kingdom of Ghar… channa? Yeah… right next to India… you identify as Gharchaneese-American, ethnic slur is Gharch…anus? Yes, they definitely called my father a Gharchanus when he was looking for work in the 90s. 

This chick has to know that you made up a fake ass nation that sounds like a sexually-transmitted disease. But somehow, you didn’t fumble the bag? She claims she’s going there to study abroad next year?!? She’s deffo an Urban Studies major, all right!

By the time the party ends, you’ve rebranded yourself as the most exotic guy at Penn! You even received an internship offer with Penn’s very own FGLI Program, because the recruiter at the party was too lazy to fact-check any of your lies and looked for the first non-white person he could find! Talk about the diversity quota filled! So many good things happen when you gaslight literally everyone about your ethnic identity. Literal brown man moment!

Best moment for sure was when you convinced that acne-ridden Mormon freshman about the ongoing-nuclear war that ravaged your village in Gulugulu (a tropical island landlocked in Pakistan, if anyone’s curious). The cause? The CEO of SHEIN forcing my Gulugulunian cousins to produce the new fall wardrobes for every third-gen legacy baby here. Get Jai Hoed, bitch!