Trying to explain your name doesn't help awkward first meetings.

It starts off with the normal hello, how are you, what's your name? Then I get the eventual question (with some variations): "Wait...Cynthia? Is that an Indian name?"

I usually then launch into a once-lengthy explanation that I have now boiled down to this: My mother wanted to name me Sindhu, an Indian name, but my sisters didn't like it, so they compromised on Cynthia.

Then I have to explain the last name.

"No, it's Ra-THIN-a-samy, not Rathin-ASS-my." Some people get it on the first try, but I still have some friends who avoid it altogether.

It's the name that I'd like to think telemarketers dread, deceivingly easy at the beginning, devilishly hard at the end.

In my adolescent angst, my name always represented my mixed identity, which added extra confusion to the raging hormones and high school pressures.

On the one hand, I'm an all-American girl who enjoys trashy Fox TV, 4th of July fireworks and jeans. This is the side that won me over through most of my teen years.

But on the other hand, I'm an
Indian girl who runs on Indian Standard Time, eats heart-palpitating spicy food and goes on a 24-hour plane ride to get to my parents home town.

But I didn't start celebrating this side of me until college.

That first year, I was all brown. Brown jokes, brown parties. As one of my friends describes it, I got "sucked into the brown crowd."

Sure, I had friends that weren't Indian.

However, the cultural makeup of my peer group had altered so much from high school where I had one good Indian friend and other good friends from across the color spectrum.

Who knows what changed? Before college I never called myself brown, never attended cultural events, and I especially didn't understand what my parents meant by "that's not what we do."

But during that time of freshman homesickness when you want to know who you are, you turn to a source of comfort. For me that comfort manifested itself in a more Indian girl way of life.

I imagine that every college student goes through an identity crisis, whether it be one of political, religious or moral persuasions. It might hit you during your first move-in weekend or senior week. We all find ourselves in different ways and at different times.

I know for me it was hard questioning who I was and who I wanted to become, but college is nice like that and leads you into a natural transition.

For me, I think I've balanced those Indian and American sides of me. I have friends, and it doesn't really matter what their race is as long as they're good people. I go to those brown parties, but most of the time it doesn't matter as long as it's a good party. I dance with sticks and in Players. I eat curry and Auntie Anne's pretzels. I'm not ruled by who I think I am, but rather who I know I am. American, Indian, student, friend, sister, daughter.

But I'm still late to everything.

And I can't lie, sometimes I like being known as the girl with the two types of names.