(CNN) -- When the moment finally arrived, 86 of us stood up to utter 31 sacred words. I raised my right hand. My heart was pounding. All those years spent in public schools in America, I'd refrained from saying the Pledge of Allegiance. It was wrong to say it when my loyalties lay elsewhere. But that changed with a ceremony on a July day six years ago. And it changed me. I learned lessons about the meaning of country and more importantly, about myself. I'd been in America almost three decades but happily retained an Indian passport. Over the years, each time it was renewed, my green card changed to pink and white but the status remained the same: permanent U.S. resident.
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CNN reporter Moni Basu writes about making her "Americanness official"
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After almost 30 years in America, she became a citizen in 2008
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Author: "America...is a nation that gives people hope"
In high school and college, I found myself fighting stereotypes and answering absurd questions about @placeholder, such as "do people live in grass huts?"
Sometimes, I felt Americans simply didn't understand me and that everything would be better if I could just go back to @placeholder.