Identity OS: The Manual
When your “people” don't feel like your people
A Nigerian chick from Vaughan, a Guyanese chick from Richmond Hill, and a Gujarati chick from Scarborough walk into a downtown Toronto bar. Awkward small talk lasts five minutes max, and somehow they’re acting like old friends by round two.
Why? The same human operating system. Let’s dive in.
I didn’t grow up surrounded by other Indians. My daily orbit included Persians, Italians, Koreans, Armenians, Tamils, Taiwanese - you name it. As a kid, you don’t question it, you’ve got no other reference point. By 15, I knew exactly when to say Eid Mubarak and Gong Hay Fat Choy like muscle memory (still can’t say half of it, but my timing is on point).
Then I hit university and met other Indians - mostly Sauga and Brampton-ites. For the non-Canadians, its the New Jersey of the US or the Leicester of the UK. Finally, I thought, people who’ll get it. A Diwali fireworks crew. And while I made good friends, something was off.
For years I wondered if I was the issue - the girl who can sing every late 90’s Shania Twain hook but can’t identify which movie the song Mere Mehboob Mere Sanaam is from? I naively thought heritage alone would guarantee connection. It stung a little to admit - I was wrong. The friendships that lasted and I enjoyed the most weren’t built on food, language, or religion - they were built on appreciation and understanding.
So I started mapping out what I now call Identity OS: The Manual - the different builds people run depending on how migration, diaspora, and community shape them. It’s the invisible software beneath our cultural identities, where each one has its own unique glitches and features - not better or worse but just different ways of seeing the world.
The Builds:
v1.0 Baseline Build: Monoculture
Ex: Indian kid in India, Polish kid in Poland
Heritage + environment perfectly aligned.
Code Switching: Not required.
v2.0: Enclave Edition
Ex: Punjabi immigrant parents in Brampton, taking nightly sair (ie a walk)
Daily life mirrors “back home"
Glitch: Feels lost outside the enclave - understandably, it can be rough out there
Code Switching: Only beyond the community
v2.5 The Bootstrap Build: Adult Immigrant with No Diaspora Back Up
Ex: My mum arriving solo in Canada for college, surviving on Kraft-D and Bryan Adams
Survival first, community second. Micro-networks built out of necessity.
Glitch: No back up system, every crashed fixed solo. Loneliness hard wired into the early build.
Code Switching: Maxed out, pragmatic
v3.0: Enclave Kid Patch
Ex: Child of the Punjabi parents in Brampton, juggling Costco runs and bhangra practice
Bilingual, toggles between home and community.
Glitch: Identity feels shaky outside of the enclave
Code Switching: Moderate
v4.0: Blended Context Build
Ex: Ghanaian kid in Newmarket, switching between Afrobeats at home and Jesse McCartney at recess
One heritage, but daily life demands blending
Glitch: Never fully authentic anywhere, always the remix.
Code Switching: High
v5.0: Classic Third Culture Kids or Pre-Mixed Build
Ex: Indo-Caribbeans, Chinese Jamaicans, Pakistani raised in Dubai migrated to US
Hybrid identity shaped by mobility and multiple “homes”
Glitch: “Where are you from?” triggers existential crash
Code Switching: Constant + automatic
V6.0 - Overlay Mode - My People <3
Ex: Any v4/v5 kids raised together, often by v2.5 Bootstrap parents (firmware pre-installed)
Mixed friend groups is the default setting - roll call sounds like the UN.
Glitch: Inherits fragments + mash-ups instead of full cultural packages
Code Switching: Limitless + collective. The group runs the OS together.
Plug and Play Friendships
It’s a little ridiculous how many versions it took me to identify myself, a v6. I’m a TCK kid with Bootstrap parents who raised me on CD-shuffle mode. One moment it was DDLJ, the next Wham!, over to Jambo Bwana, and we didn’t think twice.
The pattern came full circle last weekend. I told my mom I went to Centre Island with my Chinese Jamaican friend Lily. She laughed - in college she did the exact same thing with her Italian friend. My OS was clearly built on hers, just patched for a new decade.
Hanging out with people like Lily is effortless. There’s no need to run in compatibility mode, showing only specific version of yourself. It’s a plug and play friendship. She doesn’t blink when I suggest tteokbokki for lunch, make her suffer through my Max Amini Persian mom impressions, and then belt out Espresso together on the way home. That’s the standard.
Which is why some of my earlier friendships fell flat - like when jokes stayed only in Hindi (which I can’t speak), or when I was someone’s only ‘outside-the-enclave’ friend. Not because of race, but because when push came to shove, they defaulted back to v3: the enclave OS.
Some could have run more blended builds - they’d had the exposure. But the enclave felt safer, clearer, more rooted. Fair enough. To me though, retreating to v3 feels like passing up a free upgrade offered in Toronto, a city that is diversity central, you just have to try.
The Punchline
So yeah - a Nigerian, Guyanese, and Gujarati walk into a bar downtown… and don’t leave until last call. That’s Overlay Mode in action.
The joke? On paper, we’re not supposed to click. But none of us downloaded this OS on purpose - it installed itself through circumstance. Now it just runs in the background: no translating, no explaining.
Which build are you running or switching between? And if you don’t see yourself in the manual, maybe you’re the next software update. I’m betting the mixed kids will be writing v7.0 and beyond, while roasting all the glitches the rest of us have too.