But such questions don’t occur to me any more. 23 years
have taken their toll on softening my attitude.
I had some adjusting to do before I got used to the
American way of calling people. In the British way that we
are taught in India, everybody is either your superior or
inferior so need to be called by Surname with a Mr. or Mrs.
or Miss as a prefix.
Here everybody is called by his or her first name by default
preferably by the nickname. Even your boss will call you by
your nickname, put his arm around your shoulders with a
grin, before firing you and saying ‘it is nothing personal,
just a downsizing in our effort to please the Wall Street’. He
may even ask you for some leads for his own job hunting
efforts if I had found one for myself.
That was a far cry from the Gestapo techniques of German
companies I had worked for before coming here.
It also took me some time to get used to the etiquette, lingo,
spellings, pronunciations and expressions. I had to unlearn
quite a bit of my Indo-British ways and relearn the new
way, consciously or sub-consciously. It is quite possible I
might have fallen somewhere in between making this
Trapeze jump.
Take for example those words that have special
connotations, American style. A ‘guy’ does not necessarily
mean a male homo-sapien. It could be female or even a
material or abstract entity. Then ‘bitching’ does not mean a
female canine that trades carnal pleasure for monetary gain.
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It is a behavior that is preponderantly stubborn,
unreasonable, bad tempered and nasty as displayed by any
person of either gender or a thing.
I wondered why do I have to smile and say hello (preferably
by name) whenever I cross somebody on the street or
hallways even when I don’t know that person from Adam?
Now that comes to me quite involuntarily.
Then there are of course the unmentionable bathroom
manners of using toilet bowl and toilet paper! The light
switches work differently here. You push them up instead
of down when you want to turn anything on. The traffic
moves on the ‘wrong’ side of the road. People still measure
in miles, pounds and Fahrenheit. These are of course minor
trivialities.
I still don’t feel quite comfortable wearing baseball cap in
reverse gear or sneakers with my trousers.
When I watched the American Football, I had a hard time
figuring out why in the heck so many fellows were fighting
with each other at different parts of the field when the ball
was at quite a different spot altogether? It takes a winning
home team to turn you into a fan of the game. I am now a
fan of the Dallas Cowboys, even though they have not done
much of winning in the last couple of Seasons. The Stars
and the Mavericks follow closely.
My first job was as an Encyclopedia Salesman at a cold and
dry West Texas little town called Odessa. I was walking
down a neighborhood with my African-American (you are
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not supposed to say ‘Black’), boss. A cop pulled us up and
asked for our IDs.
I found that quite unpalatable in the “Land of the Free”!
The ID had to be something credible like a Driver’s
License.
Later my partner explained to me that it was a kind of
‘crime prevention’ effort! People in that neighborhood did
not want some bums loitering without purpose.
I quickly learnt that to be counted as a person, you had to
have a Driver’s License—even if you do not drive a car.
That job did not last very long since they wanted me to
sustain myself on a commission and not a fixed salary. The
next 18 months were like doing hard labor at a prison camp.
I worked in a sweatshop at a wage of $1.10/hr. I could not
be paid less since that was the minimum wage by law. Only
two persons in that place spoke English and were legally
allowed to work in the country, one was I and the other was
the President of the company. I picked up a few sentences
of Spanish from my ‘undocumented’ Mexican co-workers.
One of which is ‘Mucho travacho, pokito Dinero’ meaning,
‘too much work but too little money’.
When they found out that I could read, write and count 10,
they gave me the responsibility of Inventorying meat
packages. At the end of the day when the stocks did not
tally, my Supervisor told the President that I did not know
how to count, while in actuality it was he that was stealing
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the stuff, giving to the women working for him in exchange
of ‘special favors’.
Whenever I asked my Supervisor for a raise, he would give
me more hours of work at the same rate per hour. I was still
able to balance my monthly budget and save $700 to buy a
10-year old Toyota Corolla, which had some 100,000 miles
on its odometer. All cash down. I had no idea why would
people want to borrow money or have things called ‘credit
cards’. I had been brought up with the credo that if I had the
money; I could buy, if not go without it. I asked my
neighbor to drive me to the Drivers License Department
before I could take a Drivers test. I paid 45 cents per gallon
of gas.
Only in August 1979 I found a desk job and I moved to
Dallas. I drove some 350 miles of dusty Texas road in my
Toyota without A/C; windows rolled down and wind
blowing through my hair, one Saturday afternoon for the
job interview. Raj Kapoor could not have done it better on a
camel back, singing “Mera Joota Hai Japani…”. I had all
my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees besides testimonials
from 15 years of career, tucked under my armpit. My
prospective employer asked me just one question. ‘Do you
know how to type?’ I said ‘Yes’. I got hired.
Dallas had one Indian restaurant. After finding about it in
the Sunday newspaper, I drove several miles to hunt it out.
They would serve Masala Dosa every Sunday morning. In
all there were about a 1000 Indian families in a radius of
about 50 miles. Once in a while there would be some
performance of an Indian artist on a tour of the country. But
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Dallas was always an ‘also ran’ town where they would
come only on a mid-week evening, on their way to some
other Big City that got the ‘prime-time of the week’ spots
like Saturday evenings.
As I would drive on LBJ Freeway, I would wonder why in
the heck they would want to have 3 lanes on both sides
when there were hardly a handful of cars driving in either
direction.
It is amazing how things have changed now. Indian
restaurants and grocery stores are mushrooming all over
tow
n. We have an ‘Udipi Café’ and a couple of restaurants
serving authentic South Indian Shappadu, on plantain leaf.
Being a center for Electronics and Software Industry
besides having several schools and universities, you cannot
pass a day without bumping into some Indian anywhere you
go.
We have a movie theatre that just shows Indian movies on 5
screens everyday—in Hindi and regional languages as well.
No month passes without any of this bigwig Show-people
showing up with a blockbuster ‘Live-in-concerts’.
Aishwarya Rai, Shahrukh Khan, Karishma Kapoor, Aamir
Khan, Akshay Khanna, Shushmita Sen, you name it. They
have all been in Dallas within the last one-year. These
events get so crowded and expensive, it is much better to
stay home and watch them on TV. That is back to Square
One.
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Like any normal Indian boy, I grew up developing a passion
for cricket. Even as a pre-teenager, I used to bowl and bat
on the dusty street in front of our house. When we could not
get a real cricket ball, my friends and I used to play with
tennis ball and any wooden stick for a bat. As I went to
College I almost made it to my college team as an opening
batsman and off-spin bowler. Some months ago here, my
Pakistani neighbor who was another cricket maniac and I
got into an argument with an American about the merits and
demerits of cricket versus baseball. As you can imagine that
was not a debate any one could go home with a win-win
situation.
I used to miss cricket so very much after coming here. But
only cricket I could get was the one chirping in my
fireplace!
I have now 5 channels of Indian programming on my TV
via satellite dish. Ajay Jadeja has been hosting a program
called ‘Cricketer of the Millennium’ which I have been
following keenly. He narrates and shows clips of some very
fascinating personalities and events that I remember so well
from past, when I used to follow the game with ears glued
to the radio. CKNaidu, the 3 Vijays - Merchant, Hazare &
Manjrekar. How can I forget that rainy English summer
when Vinoo Mankad retrieved some of Indian pride at the
Lord’s in 1952 after Alec Bedser and Freddie Truman gave
the purge of 0 for 4 wickets at the Leeds? Or Eknath Solkar
making that magnificent catch to get Wadekar and his team
a victory at the Oval in 1970. Of course that new found
‘Wunderkind’ Gavaskar on the Caribbean tour of 1971.
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We now have at least 5 different teams playing cricket in
the Dallas/Fort Worth area.
When you slice the trunk of an old tree across, you will see
different layers of fringes of its bark, from its different
stages of growth, the innermost being the oldest from its
stage as a sapling. Human personality is very similar to that.
Layers of different influences keep piling up on one’s
psyche. I spent first 37 years of my life in India, in its
different parts, that have had their influences on my
personality. The next 23 years in the U.S. have their
experiences overlaying that. But the influences at childhood
and formative years are so much more powerful—one year
of the childhood is not same as one year of adulthood.
How much Indian and how much ‘American’ am I? I don’t
know.
I can still wear a dhoti, sit on the floor and swipe Rasamshadam
running all over the plantain leaf. Then I also enjoy
a cold mug of beer and a well-broiled Texas steak. I am still
a Hindu and have delved quite deep into its beliefs, history,
philosophy and theology. I understand the sentiments of
performing Shraddham or Sandhyavandanam. But if I had
not worked in a beef-packing factory, I would have starved
to death. Wouldn’t my forefather Aryans that wandered the
slopes of Himalayas chanting Rigveda, agree? They were
hunting and gathering for surviving, is it not?
Not everybody has same experiences or has to make same
choices. Life is one long road strewn with conflicts to be
resolved and compromises to be made. When I visit India I
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find many Indians trying to be more Americanized then I
and be proud of it, while I try to be my original Indian self,
expecting them to treat me as such.
I come across numerous Indians here that try to insulate
themselves into their own little cocoons trying to prevent
outside winds of change blowing into their faces. Sooner or
later one has to make a choice—how much blending of 2
cultures is palatable? Even when we were growing up in
northern or western parts of India, we were trying to
preserve our Tamilian traditions as we knew it at home,
while the Tamilian culture in the South was getting evolved
differently.
I was in Thailand some time ago. They took me about a 100
miles from Bangkok to show their old capital city. It is
Century AD. I wondered if BJP should not build Babri
Masjid here and make everybody happy.
There are people of Indian origin in Fiji, Guyana, Bali and
several other places where they practice Hinduism as they
brought and transplanted a few centuries ago. In many
ways, their brand of Hinduism is more authentic than one in
their homeland today. But then, the Good Lord had not yet
created MTV and Internet at that time.
Today Dallas/Fort Worth Metropolitan Complex
(Metroplex for short) has grown far beyond I could have
imagined when I first came here. LBJ Freeway is so
congested at peak time that bumper to bumper traffic
extends as far as eye could see. This gargantuan Leviathan
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is gobbling all neighboring little towns up into satellite
suburbs.
When I went for the interview to get the U.S. Citizenship, I
was tested whether I had workable knowledge of English
and Civics. The English part was easy enough. Then when
the interviewer asked me questions on Civics it was
interesting.
By the way, I have a Master’s degree in Political Science
from India. I had to study the Indian Constitution and its
history in great details. I also had to study 5 other major
political systems of the world namely British, American,
Swiss, Soviet, Chinese and French. The Indian constitution
itself is based on the British Parliamentary system and the
American Federal system. Therefore I was very complacent
and confident of facing the Civics questions of the
interview.
First she asked me to name the 2 Senators from Texas. I
could muster the name of only one. She grinned and said
that was fair enough.
Then she asked me what were the first 10 am
endments to
the American Constitution called. I pondered for a while
and said, ‘I guess they are called the First Ten
Amendments’. Eureka, how could I go wrong on that?
She laughed and said, ‘Smart, but there is a special name
for that, what is it? Do you know?’
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I was bowled over. I had not got the foggiest idea. I pleaded
ignorance.
She laughed again and said, ‘Shame on you. That is called
the ‘Bill of Rights’”.
I was thinking in terms of the Indian Constitution. ‘Bill of
Rights’ is known in the Indian Constitution as the
‘Fundamental Rights’. That is the very first provision of the
constitution.
“How could that be called an amendment? If that itself was
an amendment what would be the constitution prior that?” I
asked her.
She laughed again and said she did not have the foggiest
idea. She passed me on the test anyway.
On the day I was sworn in as a U.S. citizen, I had mixed
feelings. At the pit of my stomach I somehow felt I was
betraying my country of birth. I am sure I was not the only
person in that large hall feeling that way. There was this
lady from the Immigration Service who gave us a very nice
and soothing speech before we took our oaths. It may sound
like a cliché but true. She said we should not think like we
are losing a country but as gaining one.
The U.S. allows dual citizenship. According to the U.S.
Laws, once having acquired U.S. citizenship you may not
regain it if you decide to renounce it.
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At that time India did not allow dual citizenship. Lately
there has been a lot of talk of India allowing dual