On developing an accent..

This is a topic I have to address. I dont know why it is such a bad thing to try to put on an accent but there are many incidents related to putting on an accent and I am open to some ideas on what is the right way of looking at it. I put on an accent once in class when many of my friends were around and GOD you should have seen how much they ridiculed me. (They were guilty of the same crime, if it is a crime).

Primarily there is a communication issue... Americans just dont seem to understand me, if I dont roll my "R"s or make my "HOT" into a "HAWT". You get the picture!.. I hate to be the one who has to repeat my sentences all the time, but its a necessary evil.

The other aspect is one of fitting in. I mean people tell you "When in Rome, do as the Romans do"... I just wanna appear more Roman..(or was it American), of course my brown skin is a dead give away, so there is only that much you can do. But may be it is wrong to want to appear Roman when the truth is you're not. I know people who go to a ridiculous extent to appear more American, like dressing like them and wearing a French beard and stretching their Tamil accents to the hilt and making a joke out of themselves. Basically faking it is kinda eclectic in nature and you get some words with a Southern Accent and some with a midwest one and some with Indian and the whole ensemble is more
incomprehensible than their original accents.

The other thing is ABCD's... American Born Confused Desis. I dont know if they have a problem with their Indianness but most ABCD's I have seen, hate to appear Indian, claim to not eat Indian food, accentize more than Americans do themselves. (Sometimes to a very strange effect...) I dont have too many ABCD friends (none as a matter of fact) but I dont know if anyone of us has a right to the claim of being righteous. Okay so no conclusions on this one... if anything this might tell you how confused I am about this. Basically, until I came here it never was much of a hassle to sound well-educated, cos it is a rare thing to have an excellent Indian accent (Thank you Loyola!!) and be articulate in Pune. (Most Maharashtrians I know have this hint of Marathi in their English, which isn't something I like..). But here its a different ball-game if you dont want people to impose their generalizations about Indians on you.