New to the Parish: ‘I could have been the worst human being ever’

Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan: arrived from the UK, 2012

When Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan thinks about her time growing up in India it feels like a dream. Living in Rashtrapati Bhavan, India’s presidential palace – with its 300 rooms, sprawling gardens, badminton courts, cinema and swimming pool – seemed normal at the time.

“I did things like cycle around the palace gardens and rollerblade around banquet halls. I used to have these absolutely insane birthdays, with a ferris wheel and fairground rides.”

Two decades on, she realises that having a bodyguard for six years because your grandfather is the president of India is not exactly normal for most people. “Looking back, it just feels like someone else’s life.”

Mohan’s grandfather, KR Narayanan, was elected president of India when she was nine years old. Despite her lavish lifestyle in the presidential residence, Narayanan-Mohan says her family were “bizarrely really grounded”. As an only child who was “spoiled rotten”, she’s still surprised she turned into such a normal adult.

“I could have been the worst human being ever. But my family were low-key as people. Somehow we never felt like an abnormal family.”

This “diplobrat” and her mother lived abroad during her teenage years. The international school she attended in Stockholm had a different set of social rules to a regular high school.

“We were all equally bullied, but there was also an equal amount of camaraderie. Everyone had different ideas of what was cool.”

Although she carried an Indian passport, she struggled to identify with her homeland, particularly because English is her first language. “My grandmother is Burmese, my grandad was Indian, and they spoke English together. So my whole family on my mum’s side spoke English as our first language.”

She often finds herself wishing she spoke Hindi fluently. “I had to learn it as a second language and still don’t have a very good grasp of it, because I haven’t spoken it in years. It’s hard to be Indian and not know the language fluently.”

She identifies as a “third-culture kid”: a child raised outside their parents’ home culture. “When I learned about third-culture kids, it was like I’d just found my nationality. They have a different sense of national identity. When you ask where’s home, they either don’t know or have a few different places.”

A move to Turkey

At 16 she moved to Turkey, the country she still considers home. “I love Turkey. Even though I don’t know Turkish – it’s a really hard language – for me that’s still very much home. A lot of my closest friends are Turkish.”

When the time came to move on to university, Mohan decided to study art history and English literature in York. There she met the people she calls “the chosen family”.

“When I moved to York, I completely fell in love with it. The friends I made there – besides a small group in Turkey – they’re my family.”

As international students, the group of friends rarely saw family during term. After college they moved to London together, where Mohan studied an MA in art history and began doing internships.

She realises how privileged she was to have the financial support of her family to intern at places such as the Victoria and Albert Museum and Christie’s auction house. Despite working in some of the world’s top art institutions, she struggled to feel at home in London. “It was just really big and I felt dwarfed by everything. London was like an abusive relationship. You grow to love it but it beats you down.”

Mohan was forced to abandon plans to do a second master’s in arts management when a change in UK immigration rules meant she had to leave the country. “I had a letter from the university saying, ‘We want to accept you but are forced to reject you.’ That was a huge shock. All of a sudden it was like you have to figure out a new country to go to, which was absolutely crazy.”

She began searching online for master’s courses in arts management and came across an Irish university she had never heard of before. “I thought UCD was like some made-up polytechnic, because when you’re not from Ireland you know about Trinity and literally nothing else.”

She applied for the course and was relieved when a week later she was given a phone interview and was accepted into UCD. By the end of August 2012 she was living in Dublin.

Although she quickly met Irish and foreign students in her class at UCD, she struggled to find a new group of friends. “Ireland is a very small place, and people have their own friends from school so they just hang out with the same people. I found it really hard to open up to people because my friends just kept leaving.”

She began to explore the city alone, going to literary events and theatre. “It was completely new for me. I had a vague interest in plays, but I was like, ‘These plays are incredible.’ This place is small but electric.”

Open-mic

During her first week of exploring Dublin, she attended an open-mic night for spoken word. “I’d literally never gone before a microphone in my life. Moving here made me actually make a conscious effort to perform. I didn’t even know I was a performer; I thought I hated stages. But it turns out I love them.

She now works as arts and culture manager at the Liquor Rooms on Wellington Quay. She enjoys working with Dublin’s artistic community and running events in the bar, where she has been able to develop real friendships and relationships.

With her mother living “nearby” in Switzerland, Mohan says she can imagine staying in Ireland and “becoming Irish. There’s so much to encourage you and support you as a writer or a performer here. It’s a very alive arts and literature scene. It feels like Dublin’s small enough that you can actually be someone here. Dublin provides a stage for people.”

• We would like to hear from people who have moved to Ireland in the past five years. To get involved, email newtotheparish@irishtimes.com