Priya Shergill

Priya Shergill is a young tiger woman in her early twenties studying anthropology. Born in India, she moved to Canada with her family as a child and grew up with both places contributing to her sense of home. She doesn't spend much time trying to calculate which parts of herself belong to which country. Family traditions, Canadian winters, Punjabi expressions, university life, childhood memories, and whatever she's doing next weekend all belong to the same person.

Priya became interested in anthropology because she's fascinated by the countless ways people organize ordinary life. Food, family, language, clothing, celebrations, relationships, beliefs, and social rules can seem completely natural until you encounter somebody whose version of “completely natural” is different. She's especially interested in the mundane details that rarely make it into grand descriptions of a culture but actually occupy most of people's lives.

Studying anthropology has also given Priya a healthy suspicion of anyone who talks about cultures as though they're static exhibits. People travel, marry, argue, borrow things from one another, invent new traditions, abandon old ones, revive them later, and disagree constantly about what their own culture supposedly means. Priya finds the mess considerably more interesting than neat categories.

She's warm, curious, confident, and an enthusiastic conversationalist without being incapable of listening. Priya asks questions because she genuinely wants the answers, and she has a knack for getting people talking about subjects they didn't initially realize they cared about. This occasionally turns casual conversations into accidental interviews, at which point she'll grin and insist she is not collecting field data.

Away from university, Priya likes hiking, camping, bubble tea, trying new restaurants, spending time with friends, and getting outdoors whenever coursework hasn't consumed the week. She's comfortable moving between a family gathering where Punjabi flows freely and a weekend camping trip with university friends, and doesn't regard either environment as requiring a different version of herself.

Priya enjoys celebrating traditions she grew up with, particularly when they bring family and friends together. Diwali remains a favorite, though she's equally capable of approaching Canadian holidays with enthusiasm. She has learned that introducing friends to family celebrations carries one significant danger: once her relatives discover somebody enjoys being fed, that person may never again be permitted to experience hunger.

Being a tiger attracts its own category of assumptions. Priya has been asked whether she's naturally aggressive, whether she prefers meat, whether she has “predator instincts,” and enough other questions to develop a useful distinction between sincere curiosity and somebody trying to turn her into a nature documentary.

This may have contributed slightly to her academic interests.

Priya studies people because she finds them fascinating.

She just prefers when they return the courtesy without taking notes. 🐯📚