Saturday, October 16, 2010

Missing India...Missing Home



Lately I've been thinking a lot about what it is that keeps me away from India...why have I spent most of my life as an expat and tourist with no home country to call my own?  

I came to the US to study, as so many do.  And stayed to continue my training and eventually stayed because the job opportunity here was great...at least for the short term.  The experience I can get where I am now, the mentorship, the resume building are all unsurpassable elsewhere.  So it was certainly difficult to pass all that up when it was time to become a grown up and move out of student/training mode and into real job mode. I've come to love the city I live in (which I never though I'd say), and I've made a family here amongst friends I love.  I have a network of support and love that is fantastic...and freedoms to live my life in ways that would be unparalleled in India.

But it's not home.  

I recently went back to India for a wedding (what else!) and saw cousins for the first time in years.  So many of them have husbands and wives I've never met...kids I've never seen who are now 7, 8, 9 years old.  Engagements, weddings, childbirths, birthdays, and even a few funerals...I've missed so many important days and moments that I can't even begin to count them.  

In fact, at no time did I miss home more than I did in the last month.  And oddly enough, it wasn't because I wasn't there for a beloved cousin's wedding, or that I missed yet another niece or nephews birth or birthday.  It was because several family members got very sick...and I couldn't be there to help.

I'm in the medical field...and the only one in my family at that.  So I always expected (as did my family) that I'd be the family medical expert.  I frequently get calls about lab results, medications, medication side effects, etc, etc...most questions, in fact, completely out of my realm of expertise.  But I can look things up and come up with a cohesive understanding of most of what's happening and I can help my family understand and negotiate their medical issues to the best of my ability...a fact I've always found comforting, and gratifying.  After all, my family is a big reason I joined the medical profession so being able to use those skills and education for them is very very important to me.

But as I discovered recently, it's very difficult to do anything when you're on the other side of the world.  My aunt got cancer and I could do nothing to help...except try to be the one person with whom she didn't need to explain what a Portacath was, or what the staging of her cancer meant.  I would have liked to have been there with her when she got her first chemo treatment...or when the doctor was explaining the biopsy findings.  Or at the least to be able to be there if she needed.  But instead I just spoke to her on the phone.  A cousin got sick and I could do nothing...could barely sort out what was going on from far away.

And worst of all, my uncle ended up in the ICU and I was helpless.  Had I lived closer, I would have flown to the city and camped out by the bedside...been the one to talk to the doctors on the phone so that I could both understand and then explain to my aunt and all the rest of my family what exactly was going on with him, what to expect over the next few days, and what the medical terms the doctors were throwing around meant.  Instead, I was forced to try to understand third hand what the doctors were saying...or to have 3 minute conversations over a bad phone line with the physician and then try to read between the lines.

It's funny that as much as I regret missing all the joyous moments in my family's history, it's the sad, stressful, and potentially devastating moments that are really difficult to be far away for.  It's the feeling that I'm somehow letting my family down by not being able to support and help them as I desperately want to that's the worst feeling of all.  

And as a result...after many years, I find myself thinking that it's time to start figuring out how to go home.  To quote a song that always always brings tears to the eyes of Indian expats "bade dinon ke baad, hum bewatanon ko yaad, watan ki mitti aayi hai".  So...I don't know exactly how or when...but somehow, sometime soon, I know I'm going home.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

South Asian Americans - Invisible minority no longer



Although Desis have become more visible in the US lately, we've remained a quiet minority...until relatively recently.  

For decades, we seemed to epitomize the Model Minority stereotype.  As a group, we're more educated and better off than Americans as a whole.  We worked as engineers, doctors, computer programmers.  We ran large companies.  We even showed up in movies and TV shows...playing engineers, doctors, and computer programmers.  And we rarely spoke up and made ourselves heard.  The model minority!


But lately, that trend has been changing.  


There are Desis like Nikki Haley and Bobby Jindal rising up the political ranks...granted they've changed their names and their religions so that I have trouble remembering that they are Desis, but Desis they are.  I may not agree with their politics but I appreciate that they provide a younger generation of Desi Americans the vision that they, too, can shape the directions this country takes.


There are entertainers like M. Knight Shyamalan who have enjoyed both the successes and failures of being a household name in the US.  And there are Desi Americans playing non-traditional roles in TV and movies - Mindy Kaling plays Kelly Kapoor on The Office, a boy-crazy, pop culture fanatic; Maulik Pancholy plays Jonathan on 30 Rock, Jack Donaghy's idolizing and vaguely homosexual assistant; Kal Penn portrayed Kumar Patel in Harold & Kumar, a stoner who goes on a hamburger hunt; Aasif Mandvi is a regular on The Daily Show, hilarious and brilliant; Padma Lakshmi, model and host of Top Chef, is not afraid strut her stuff in print and on the screen; the list goes on...


But for me the true mark of a culture that's finally becoming comfortable in its skin is when they feel bold enough to protest and speak out when disparaged or mocked.  Which is why I was so gratified and proud to see the response, a few months ago, to Joel Stein's article in Time Magazine.


Mr. Stein's article was meant to be a commentary on the slow cultural shift that occurred in his hometown of Edison, NJ.  He says he was trying to show how even he, an educated American who believes immigration has enriched this country, finds that he is sometimes uncomfortable and nostalgic when he sees the changes it has wrought in his hometown.  And if you read the article with a charitable eye, he does mock the anti-immigrant sentiment and himself throughout.  But the article falls just a little too flat and goes a little too far to have been featured in a magazine like Time.


Leaving aside the cliched jokes (yes, we have many gods; and yes, one has an elephant nose) and some unfortunate terms ("dot heads"...not a good idea to use a term that was once used by a hate group responsible for several Desi American deaths), what I really objected to was that Time Magazine thought it would be acceptable to run this piece at all.   Can you imagine an international magazine of Time's caliber running a piece in this era that makes similar disparaging comments about the Jewish community?  The Muslim or Christian communities?  How about Mexicans?  Or Irish Americans?  African Americans??!  If Time truly didn't think they were printing something objectionable, why did they choose to leave the article out of the international edition of the magazine?  


But hey...Joel Stein is, in the end, a writer and he can choose to write about anything he wants, and Time Magazine can print what they decide to...I never liked the magazine much anyways.  What I care about is what we, as Desis, do about it.  Which is why I was SO gratified to see the loud response from the South Asian community ultimately necessitating an apology from Time and Mr. Stein.  For me, it was a sign that we, as Desis, have truly, finally found a voice in this country...and I loved it!  So...thanks, Time & Mr. Stein, for providing such a great cause for the community to rally around.  Next up...Desi American politicians who actually retain some of their Desi-ness...and still win the election!