Six years ago, I helped four others create this space for us; I am immensely grateful that I was gifted with such an opportunity. It has, without a doubt, changed my life.
When Abhi dreamed up the concept of a group blog for the American children of immigrants from South Asia, there was nothing else quite like Sepia Mutiny, anywhere. We didn’t have a virtual adda to discuss politics, prose or polemic. We were born in this amazing country because of the epic struggles and sacrifices of our courageous parents; yet no matter what we ate, wore, read or said, we were often considered “apart”, not “a part” of our own culture and country.
You younger types have it so much easier than the first wave of post-1965-era babies did. 🙂 We didn’t have the internet (not until college, and even then, it was IRC and Pine!) and many of us went to schools which didn’t have massive “Indian Associations” or inclusive “South Asian Student” orgs. A non-trivial number of us grew up in homogenous areas, around people who neither knew nor understood anything about what we ate or how we worshipped (and why we weren’t allowed to go to Prom). For every kid who graduated from a diverse place like Mission San Jose, in Fremont, I feel like I’ve met ten who were the only brown kid at their school. That was often a lonely, challenging experience.
Was it the end of the world? No. We survived. Many of us thrived. But many of us also sport faint scars from the digs, disses, and yes, even the depression which was summoned by difference.
Do people who are hyper-recent immigrants to America also feel lonely and face challenges? Yes. But with all due respect, none of this was created for you because we are not you; we could never fully understand or do justice to what it is like to be you. You are welcome here and you are respected here, but please, keep our intentions in mind. Lower your expectations accordingly. 🙂
My favorite Sepia Mutiny posts, the moments which I cherish, the conversations that I adore– those occur rarely, and always when we examine our identity, because we are unique, damn it, and we deserve to evaluate and make sense of that. My Mother is fond of saying that her children are the lost ones, and thankfully, we will be the only ones. That by the time we have kids of our own? Those future grandchildren of hers? They will be fine. Grounded. Accepted. Taken for granted. 100% American in a way that was denied to us. Then she grows quiet, doleful.
“I am sorry that my choices meant that you would hurt.”And she means that, with every cell within her. And both Mother and Daughter blink away tears. Because each loves the other so much that they wish it weren’t true– but each knows that it is.
So this post is an opportunity to pause. To examine. To reflect. Because these experiences which molded us and defined us, which continue to keep us apart…they deserve to be understood and appreciated, even as they slice our insides, and make us bleed in hidden, painful ways.
::
I saw my friend Vijay last week. After exchanging pleasantries, he paused and mentioned this blog. Specifically, he said that he had been thinking of it, recently. I playfully asked, “Oh? Why’s that?”
“My maternal paatti (that’s Tamil for grandmother) died last week.”
“Oh, no. I’m so sorry for your loss. I’ll keep your family in my thoughts and prayers.”
Later, he wrote to me and I immediately understood why SM had been on his mind. This is what he said…
She was 91 and had lived in Trivandrum for the last 20+ years with my uncle and aunt. She had lived in India her whole life, and had never visited the US, where I grew up. She was kind, energetic, and a gem. Her life had its ups and downs — one of her six children died at the age of eight, there was some drama amongst her five adult kids, and she was a widow for almost 20 years. But she didn’t show any of it on her sleeve and was blessed with 11 grandkids and 12 great-grandkids.
Growing up, like many of my contemporary Indian-Americans, my family took big summer trips to India every three-odd years. I visited her about a dozen times spending between weeks and days on the various visits. Post-college, I visited India three times and made it a point to make it to Trivandrum.
She only spoke Tamil, so our interactions were minimal. She was the only person for whom I felt justified getting the nerve to go into that uncomfortable space of speaking Tamil–which could, at best be described as “pigeon“– to communicate. My last three real Tamil conversations were with her– sadly over a 7-year span.
In 1996, I went to India with two friends, largely not visiting relatives, except I couldn’t miss seeing my Paatti, so I broke apart for a few days and went to Trivandrum and spent two days with her. A decade later, I would learn that the fact that I had made that visit profoundly touched her.
On my last visit to India in 2003, just after I got married, my wife and I went to Trivandrum and my paatti showed us something she had been keeping tucked away like a treasure. She opened up a dusty locker and in it were stacks of carefully organized photos. She had created a stack of photos of my life, collected over the years. My wife and I were so touched. With a little translation help and a lot of hand gestures, the three of us ended up having a great conversation about her memories of me, through her “once in three year”-snapshots.
When I learned of her passing, I felt naturally sad. I was about to mention what happened to a colleague, when I simulated a reasonable dialogue:
“I am so sorry, when did you see her last?
“2003”
“Oh, when did you two last talk?”
“2003”
“You’re going to the funeral, right?”
“No, my mom is going to represent our family”
“Oh, ok”
I realized I had started going through one of those episodes that puts the “C” in ABCD. I wouldn’t be able to relate this situation well at all. Our relationship was mutually considered good. Yet the combination of language, hearing loss and distance made it seem completely broken to a conventional eye.
I found myself not sharing my news with the majority of people I interacted with last week. I just didn’t want that conversation. Here I was feeling as awkward as I’ve ever felt in elementary school.
My grief is not one that will be omnipresent at Thanksgiving or Christmas. It will not emerge because I have to change my weekend routine.
It won’t be experienced by my six-month-old son, Manoj, who, in half a year of his life, has seen his grandparents as many times as I saw mine over my 36.
I am doing better this weekend. I saw off my aunt and mom to India. They’ll be able to make the 10th day of my paatti’s rites.
My aunt relayed a nugget that has lifted my spirit. We had sent photos of Manoj and had no doubt that they had been meticulously cherished.
What we didn’t know was that she had kept one under her pillow.
::
I was deeply moved by this because I identified with it, consummately. I knew some of you might, too.
My father was the tenth of eleven children. I have only been to Kerala three times in my life, and the first barely counts because I was 16-months-old and there for the funeral of my paternal Appachan. And yet, when the news is haphazardly relayed that one of my Father’s elder brothers has passed away in Thiruvilla or Trivandrum, I am seized by grief. I have met these men twice. But they are my blood.
For my entire childhood, their photographs gazed out at me from frames lovingly dusted and displayed in places of honor in my home. Their voices boomed over then-rare, static-coated telephone calls from the other side of the world, as they vigorously demanded, “How are your studies?” and then shouted, “Veddy good!” after my dutiful replies. Their stories still ring in my ears, though the beloved teller of those tales has now been gone for almost eleven years, himself.
But I never explained, at work, the next day, why my eyes were red. Why my voice cracked. Why I seemed lost in my thoughts of regret and grief. I never said a word.
The only thing worse than losing someone is having to justify your pain over it. Why should we mourn people we’ve barely seen or known? What right do we have to grieve? Why should I have to dignify such intrusive, disrespectful queries with answers? I shouldn’t. I won’t.
I don’t.
And I thank Gods that precious little Manoj will never have to. Because he is not lost. He is a part, not apart. He will see his grandparents and learn from, love and know them, in ways that neither Vijay nor I ever knew our own.
Beautiful post, Anna. Thank you.
And thank you for sharing your story with us, too, Vijay–you are also a good writer! My condolences on your loss.
Beautifully written Anna. And Vijay.
I was very very close to my grandfather who I grew up seeing nearly every day of my life. And then one day an accident nade him fall into a coma from which he never recovered. The suddenness of that incident has been very very difficult to deal with, even 15 years after he passed away. I wish I had one last chance to say a goodbye.
a lot of that speaks to me. my last grandparent just passed away…i was hoping she would meet her great-grandchildren at some point soon (i’m workin’ on it mom!). last month i was in europe and had some beers with a cousin who i had never met. he was raised around newcastle and he’s a proud ‘geordie.’ interesting world we live in. we were so different, and yet like me he’s an atheist and a xenophile 🙂
great post as usual anna. we can always count on you to speak from the heart, no matter if we agree with you are not.
and speaking of meeting up, saheli i’m leaving a FB message for you. i wanna meet up before i go back up north for the summer.
Beautifully written, Anna and Vijay. I loved this post. While I had the benefit of my maternal grandparents living with us in the US almost all my life, I never really knew my paternal grandparents, who died when I was a child, nor any of my extended family. This post really touched a chord in me.
Anna – I love it when you write pieces that come straight from your heart.
Sad post – and I would like to revive a discussion which I hope doesnt denigrate into us vs them.
As a DBD i often wonder – how come such intelligent folks who are born here – who excel at spelling bees, crack SATs, get 4.0’s in ivy-ies, become neuro-surgeons and even learn spanish or french – do not take the effort to learn the language of their parents and their grand-parents. My own son is having this problem – and I dont know how to fix it, except just speak to him in Hindi and hope one day he makes me proud. Forget the cultural significance, I imagine this to be good for even business reasons – as India will surely be a economic power to contend with and desis with good grasp of the language can have this as an asset on their resumes.
Until language is spoken, close bonds can be hard to form with pattis and ammamma’s and dadi’s…
Thank you for this, Anna. It was beautiful. You have a knack for putting into words things many of the rest of us feel but don’t know how to express, let alone explain.
I’m younger than you, one of those “younger types,” but my experiences in my small, suburban, lily white town mirror yours. I’m in college now, and it is the first time in my life that I’ve been around desis in my daily life. I spent my whole childhood trying to explain to my non-hyphenated peers why it was so important to my parents (and to me) that we visit India in the summers or why my heart raced when we got a phone call from any number starting with 91 or why the arrival of little blue aerograms in the mailbox was a major event. As a child, the only model I had for my relationships with my far away relatives was my parents, who have spent the last 20-something years yearning for the families that grew up with, loved, and left. I love my relatives, but in a distant way. When my grandfather passed away last year, I mourned for him. But I also mourned for me and for us, because I never had the opportunity to know him or to have a relationship with him. For me, that’s the greatest difficulty with being an ABD. I was taught that family is most important, that family comes before everything else. But I don’t have an extended family. I do, of course, have parents who love me and who I love dearly. But aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents? For me, they’ll always remain distant and elusive. I love them. But I love them because they’re family and they’re inherently important and meaningful to me, and not because I know them. I don’t know them the way they know each other or the way my parents do, and it is for the loss of relationship that I mourn when they pass away.
nice article although the malayali in me got tripped up by the title. thought it was going to be about something else.
I respect the space created by SM and understand it wasn’t created for desi born peeps like myself. But what I love about SM is exactly opposite of what this article represents, immigrant experience trope. American fiction by minorities is dominated by the immigrant experience as exile (i.e..poor misunderstood me) model, and it almost seems impossible to express something original about the same. As Hanif Kureishi put it in a dead brutal takedown, “There’s a lot of pretty girls who go to American universities and write about their mums and dads”. Hell our gal Jhumpa has milked a career out of it.
On the other hand, for me atleast, SM as a lens to view contemporary events through the Indian-American angle is invaluable. I know nobody forces me to come here, but ’tis less a critique and more of a request, as a regular reader and somewhat self-aware comment-troll.
Anna, That was beautiful. It really spoke to my heart–I’m also one of those “younger types” and yes, I have grown up in a place that has huge South Asian cultural organizations (Bay Area represent!)…but Vijay’s/your story resonate, because I too barely see my family members, but for trips made to India every four years or so.
I’m lucky, I have time before I get busy with life and get a job and everything so trips to India can be made less. But I also regret I spent my life never trying to learn my own language and relying on pigden words to subsist our conversations. I love my extended family, and thankfully the love exists with or without proper communication. But I wish I knew their stories, could better understand the words of love they relay through the phone without getting frustrated at the fact that both of us cannot understand each other. I wish I could make my grandparents proud by talking to them in a language they know well.
I’m leaving to India in five days. Thank you for this post..it reminds me that I should never stop trying to make connections with my family and there is time. And thanks for making assimilation and the transition for our generation much easier. 🙂
BrownBag, Your post starts off with “I respect the space created by SM” but it is so abundantly, arrogantly clear that you do not as you proceed to casually rip apart a heartfelt post as “trope” (such easy reduction…do it often?) rather than attempt to, i don’t know, critically or emotionally engage? You steal Hanif Kureishi’s line (and try, effortfully, but fail effortlessly to appropriate his clever pith) with a flick of an upturned nose and proceed to piss. goodness. how easy it is to be you, in your gleaming, goodmannered, original, critically self-aware glamour-dome. Blinded as I am by your trenchant incisiveness, I am baffled by your desire to start of your post with a total lie. You don’t respect this space, you come, you shit, you leave. At least be honest.
Anna you rock! Not only do you understand the ABCD experience but you totally relate to the human experience. We are all one big haPPy family. You go girl !
ANNA, one more thing- but you took the words right out of my mouth you closed the Joel Stein cow dung post before I could comment. Why do posters have to sign in before they can put up a news story? Like you I also want to share my values of the human experience with sensitive newsworthy nuggets. But I want to retain anonymity. I know, I know, no one forces me to come on to your blog. But gosh I like being part of a free public service. ; )
ak, I was clear about the kind of posts that I appreciate, like the excellent series of posts covering the campaigns of Indian American candidates. Being ‘heartfelt’ alone is generally not enough for me to give a thumbs up ( although your response tempts me to choose another finger). Perhaps trope was too strong a choice of word, maybe maudlin would have been more apt. Unfortunately not all of us have your gift for wording or an abundant supply of shit,piss analogies handy.
In any case, you win & I leave henceforth. I have been a troll long enough to realize that flame wars are pointless.
can we chill on the meta-commentary so early? sigh rude dude.
It should be “Paatti.”
I could relate to different parts of this post. Up until a few years ago, I had “only” been to India three times, and the last time was at age 10. It was quite an experience going back after a couple of decades. Also, this part “She was the only person for whom I felt justified getting the nerve to go into that uncomfortable space of speaking Tamil,” is how I feel about my grandmother, my last surviving grandparent. Before she had a stroke and stopped speaking, she was the only person I spoke with in Telugu.
And amazing post ANNA J.
Man o’ man, I am so dam lucky, lived and grew up with my grandparents. These memories are priceless. my grandfather died last year, but the weekend before he went he got to meet his great grandson for the first time and catch up with one of his best friends for the days when he worked in Burundi. He showered all his kids and grandkids with blessings. If you meet them for a moment or a life time relish it, because as my aunt says “their love is like no others”.
ANNA – this was beautiful. And good timing (for me), since I’ve been missing my Thatha a lot in the last few days. Obv. it is much harder for our parents, but even for us, there is something about the distance that makes these losses, in many ways, much harder. Thanks for opening up your heart to share this post with us, and thanks to Vijay, as well.
@ cali dad – it is an odd phenomenon, isn’t it? i think part of it relates to what ANNA noted in her post – the entire aspect of fitting in, such that appearing ‘too’ desi was just not cool (this is definitely applicable to my parents’ circle of friends). the other aspect, of course, are the parents – on a personal level, while my parents did put in a lot of effort to make sure we were exposed to certain elements of indian culture (mostly classical arts) but when it came to things like religion and language, i think they forgot that, unlike their experience, it was not all around us that we could absorb it without serious efforts on their part. and so they never forced us to speak back in tamil or telugu. so i think the issue needs to be looked at from both sides – sure the children are not putting in the effort, but i don’t think the onus is solely up to them, it prob. also does not help that your children know you can speak fluent english and so don’t NEED to speak in hindi to communicate with you. but if you do want him to learn hindi, i think hoping he will do you proud is not the way to go – languages, esp. desi languages, are best learned by doing. maybe formal hindi lessons or a mandatory half hour a day where you two only speak in hindi? it’s not a lost cause, but i think with something like language, the small efforts at an earlier age will pay off.
@ak – Language is interesting the way its absorbed by kids. I grew up in Hindi-speaking Delhi as the only Telugu speaking boy in my school and neighborhood (Its kind of the same alienation that ABDs face here in the US). But thanks to my parents who only spoke Telugu at home, I can converse very easily in Telugu as well (my trips to Andhra helped). You are right that parents have to do the same work as kids if they want language to be passed on.
Btw, to not confuse my kid, I decided one of the Indian languages is enough – so Hindi it is.
i agree re the exposure -but i think it’s the speaking, more than the hearing, that really drives home the knowledge of the language. good choice re hindi, only because telugu can be a bit of a tongue twister. but don’t underestimate him – i learned telugu first, but then picked up tamil just by hearing my parents talk amongst themselves (and the movies helped), so maybe he’ll learn telugu eventually, as well.
Sad but true for our generation…however many of us in Uk rebelled against Indianess and only speak to our kids now in English, as we wanted to be accepted…now half our kids are divorced from heritage ( as they can’t read , write and sometimes speak the Indian languages, as we chose to communicate in our houses in English) the others are looking into it with some becoming confident fully rounded British Asians, just like I guess Gen 3 in your land are becoming full AMericans…
Thank you for writing this, Anna. I picked up the phone as soon as I finished reading it this morning.
beautiful post.
i’m stuck in the middle of two life changing events as well…on one hand my beautiful wife is pregnant with our first child, and on the other my grandfather (who like you i saw every three years) just passed away recently too. i’ve never been more aware of how i grew up, and how that formed me into who i am.
your statement on how your son has seen his grandparents more times in his half year of life than you did in your entire life left me almost on the verge of tears. how true!
thank you for this.
Well DONE, A N N A.
Updated. Thank you so much for the help.
And thank you to everyone else for your thoughtful comments. Vijay’s story deserved to be shared; I knew it would resonate with so many of us.
Oh, Anna. I don’t even know where to start, but thank you. Like Vivek, I am making some calls tonight.
Dear Anna, Thank you for this wonderful piece. It brought tears to my eyes. What you have gone through, most of the present younger generation will have a disconnect with. My children are among the few Indians in a small central PA town. They have no relatives and a few friends in Buffalo who they meet once every 2 years or so. I used to read Sepia Mutiny to understand what my kids are going through. It has helped me quite a bit. But have rarely come to SM for the last couple of years. I think I understand a little of what you are saying. My sons talk to paati in Bangalore. She also asks how they are studying, Yes Gramma pretty good, if they are continuing music, No Gramma…and then they hand the phone to Dad. Both the paatis are too hep to be called paatis. Both are known as Grammas by my sons :-). Me:My nephew is given strict instructions to call me Atte or else :-).
Thanks to SM for making me understand what loneliness you have gone through and will always have a piece of your heart missing.
You are most welcome, but seriously, I didn’t do anything, girl. This one was all Vijay.
“Do people who are hyper-recent immigrants to America also feel lonely and face challenges? Yes. But with all due respect, none of this was created for you because we are not you; we could never fully understand or do justice to what it is like to be you. You are welcome here and you are respected here, but please, keep our intentions in mind. Lower your expectations accordingly. :)”
I split the difference–not ’65 surely but ’83 ain’t that late–and I did have the benefit of growing up with ammamma and seeing all my far-flung relatives throughout childhood but there never was the sense of being ‘a part’ and not ‘apart.’ Nor was it helpful to grow up around people with all the best brown-appreciatin’ intentions, and the courage of their convictions, but little wisdom. There will always be an apparently valid way to see yourself as ‘not here nor there.’ I wouldn’t want to deny anyone the chance to work through that–the pain is instructive. I hope the process is faster for the younger ones.
It took me quite a while to discover this blog and don’t I wish I had found it sooner! Thanks for making me feel like I’m not alone 🙂
Anna and Vijay, thank you so much for sharing your experiences. I had a very, very similar experience when my paternal ammachi passed away ten years ago. I never discussed my grief then because I didn’t know how to articulate my feelings, but even after all this time it is such a comfort to know there are others who understand.
Beautiful, heartfelt post. One thing I wonder, though, is what would have happened had that conversation that Vijay imagines actually taken place. Sometimes I think that one can make assumptions about what other people might say and have that be completely wrong and thus, be guilty of prejudice herself. I understand that it’s not a conversation you want to get into with everyone, but I’m interested in what the actual conversation would have been.
On another note, even as someone who went to the famed Mission San Jose High School (though a while before it was a brown majority), there were still events that made me realize that my home life was different than my non-Indian peers. At the same time, despite visiting India many times growing up, I was always “the American one” when there. As an adolescent, even though I was in a more brown environment at home, that feeling of difference still existed. 8 years later when my sister graduated, I’m not sure she’d say the same thing since brown and asian were then majority races.
Also, it’s not just language that brings 2nd gen kids to culture–while I don’t think my kids will speak Marathi, they have a much richer knowledge of Hindu stories than I ever did. On a recent stormy night, my son looked at me and exclaimed, “Mommy, I know who’s bringing us the rain! It’s Indra!!”
Check your gmail, Razib. I’m really bad with FB. 🙂
I don’t know else remember this, but there was this awesome/ridiculous show on PBS when I was really little called, “Vegetable Soup,” with this totally amazing intro song that had the line, “It takes ALL KINDS of VEGETABLES to make a Vegetable, a Vegetable soup.” Sappy, but true. It takes all kinds vegetables to make a great group blog too.
Long time lurker here.. Thanks Anna (and Vijay) for such a great post. You’ve really managed to capture the pain of the disconnection within the connection. I’m one of the early generation and it’s so refreshing to hear from others like me. Yes, nowadays more and more Indian youth can speak their mother tongue which was not always the case in the 70’s and early 80’s and I’ve been looked down upon by plenty of DBD’s for not being able to speak fluently. When I’m asked why I didn’t learn, the conversation always ends up feeling awkward. It’s difficult to explain unless you’ve lived it.
Sajbat, I can completely relate. In India, I was the “American” one (not Indian enough) and here amongst peers and the rest of the world I was the “Indian” one (not American enough).
Anna, thank you so much for this post. I shall make sure that my infant (the new ABD baby) gets enough chance to spend time with his grandparents as long as I can and I hope he will continue to do as time passes. I wish to frame this post and show it to him as a reminder. Love you !
The flip side was my experience of losing grandparents one by one (one of them I was more close to than my father) as an immigrant (DBD) and not being able to share with anyone as I wasn’t sure how people react here, and hadn’t yet developed any major friendship with any brown person. Those were defining moments in my life.
I was a euro born indian, although now live in NY. I must say, the indian experience for us indo-scandinavians was similar but much lonelier than for our US counterparts. Which I realized recently when I was at a party hosted by an Indian, and for the first time in my life talked about uncles in Kolkata trying to get me married. After all, you guys had some sort of community.
Love This place though, thx for SM!
Amazing post – it spoke to me on so many levels. Thanks for this and I echo some others who are glad to have a place like SM to belong
From ANNA’s post:
I think our ABD children made much bigger sacrifices growing up in the US than we DBD immigrants of the sixties and seventies ever made. This is based not just on my own but the collective experience of the hundreds of early DBD immigrants and their ABD children that I have known over the past 37 years living in the US. Let me compare their economic struggles first and then the more troubling social struggles later.
Almost all early South Asian immigrants who came to the US, as opposed to those who immigrated to UK and Canada, had marketable degrees, a command of the English language and a middle- to upper-middle class upbringing that put them on a nearly equal cultural footing with the mainstream Americans. When I compare my early life in the US with that of the poor, uneducated Cubans here in Miami or that of the Sardarji whom I once saw cleaning a restroom at Heathrow, I have to admit that I had it easy. The few years of the dues we did pay while obtaining even more marketable advanced degrees were really nothing harder than what our ABD children do routinely – work at McDonald’s for minimum wage and drive old cars with busted AC’s while in high school, live in shabby two-bedroom walk-ups with three other roommates while in college, and so on.
Not only were our short-term economic sacrifices almost a rite of passage in the American society, we had a ball slumming it in the US. We were young and ambitious, living in a country with limitless possibilities, away from those pesky parents (I keed), with the promise of a better life only a graduation and job offer away. Compare that to an ABD’s chances for a better life after graduation. In our case, better than Delhi or Ahmedabad – in their case, better than middle- to upper-middle class America. The bar has been raised and that’s tough.
Moving on to the more traumatic and ultimately more important non-economic issues, the alienation and discrimination faced by the early DBD immigrants is nicely mitigated by two factors. First of all, not having been born and raised here, we have a much lower sense of entitlement than our ABD children do. So what if the boss did not ask me to go on a company sponsored hunting trip, to heck with it – I don’t hunt anyway. If the boss promoted his hunting buddy over me, well that hurts. But look at how far I have come in a foreign country. A nice home on a tree lined street, kids in good schools, enough money to make that annual pilgrimage to India – who would’ve thought! Secondly, not quite fitting in culturally, we resort to our own little community of desi friends that is like a secret society albeit without the secret handshake. We religiously get together every Saturday night, drink JW Black, eat some good Indian food, bitch and moan a little about the hunting buddy syndrome but mostly have fun making plans for the next Diwali party or summer vacation with the kids or dissing whichever President is in office. It’s not such a bad life.
You ABD’s on the other hand are supposed to be those hunting buddies, but wait. There you are different. It becomes tricky. You get disappointed. You have been taught to think like Americans, not that you could think any other way, but many of you had to grow up brown in a sea of white, either completely ignored or unnecessarily singled out for attention, never merely accepted. You had to answer stupid questions about snake charmers and turbans, were given names that nobody in the entire school could pronounce correctly, and if that wasn’t tough enough, had to deal with DBD parents like us at home. There is no need to repeat the no-prom, go-to-med-school, don’t-date, marry-by-twenty-five and other typical DBD-parent admonitions so widely covered elsewhere on this blog.
Therefore I say. The early DBD immigrants had it much easier than the early ABD’s and my next JW Black will be a toast to you.
Of course, in the past 37 years, I have seen America change by leaps and bounds. The overall “browning” of the American population, the hundreds of cable channels and internet that make even a high school drop-out construction worker much better informed than his predecessor about different races and culture, the overarching emphasis on political correctness in our society are all very positive developments for South Asians, and it will only keep getting better.
Wow. The tears are just from punching myself in the face… I swear.
I am a DBD who came here 43 years ago from my birth place Ahmedabad, just to get a Master’s degree and go back. Guess what? One thing led to the other, and I am still here. I endorse and approve everything (well almost) that Floridian @ 39 said above. My hats off to ABD.
So Anna,
I just had to de-lurk to put in my 2 cents here…:) I guess I fall into the category of the hyper-recent immigrant types as you so succinctly put it. Just wanted to pop in and say hello! I’m here (at your blog) because I’m going to be raising an american kid and i want to see what others have gone thru before him. For that I’m grateful to you, as I can see how the choices parents make do affect their kids down the line. As far as the confusion goes- I can relate to it—I don’t belong to your parents’ generation, and neither do i belong to the diaspora, I’m somewhere on the outside, looking in… :). And believe me, even as part of the one billion, there were times where I didn’t really fit in either….so there goes that theory!
Great post BTW!
touche from another DBD, first time user of the term. this is after all the age of obama, a man who has crafted his own identity. while i sympathize with the trauma that second gen have suffered, i also feel it is tiny bit self-indulgent, i am sorry to say.
And I am sorry that you felt the need to say that in a post where people are mourning family members. Self-indulgent? On a blog? About identity? Who would’ve expected such a thing. Think, then type.
Oy, Anna, you gotta stop making me feel so emotional at work. Excellent post. I have often felt some of the things you talk about here, and that you describe Vijay feeling.
I really hope everyone read’s Floridian’s comments (#39) because not only are they heartwarming and sincere, but they offer a perspective that many of us ABDs never get to see.
All this is very good, and all, but Anna, Abhi, and the rest of you ABDs: When are you getting married?
Yo granma
Also, SMIntern, while I usually agree with this site’s decision to step in and moderate comments when they need to be moderated, I’m not sure why you felt the need to comment on the ‘self-indulgent’ comment made earlier. It’s not out of line to ask whether or not our search for meaning and identity is too all-consuming or not enough so, as sometimes we ABDs tend to see everything through a haze of brown (myself included). Sometimes it can be too much, but I am not saying that Anna’s post was..I’m saying that it’s worthy of discussion.
I doubt that the commenter meant to disparage any mourning for any family members, and I think you slapping him/her on the wrist was a little uncalled for.
Your thoughts are heartfelt..sad and nice
Such a bittersweet post. Thanx for writing. I have such mixed feelings about all 4 of my grandparents and the 2 alive grandparents in law I know. I was raised by a stern grandmother who I didn’t learn to appreciate till I was much older and long after she was gone. I carry some of her lessons with me till date.
The grandfather I loved the most and grew up around passed away while I was in the US and I never got to say goodbye and was too young to understand the loss till later. Another grandfather passed away and though I wasn’t as connected with him I felt his loss because my mother mourned it deeply and she was close to him.
The remaining grandmother is someone I don’t speak with nor care to today. She outlived my mother just as my mother said she would. And it might seem sad but I’ve made peace with it. It is what it is.
I have 2 grandparents in law, one alive and kicking and still making a lot of lives miserable around her, known for her strength and sharp candor she isn’t exactly the warm and fuzzy person grandmas tend to be. I met her when I went to visit after getting married and everyone had scared me for months about her but then I saw a little old woman with no teeth and thick glasses and she did absolutely nothing that was scary. It’s like she actually appreciated the fiestiness in me!
There is one grandfather in law I never got to meet and have always wished I had. He is truly in the end of the twilight of his life and I have been pushing my husband to go see him before it’s too late. We call him often and speak to him on the phone and he’s a sharp alert man of 94 and he appreciates these conversations you can tell. His memory is super sharp because he will remember something I mentiond three conversations ago. Apparently I’m the only grand daughter in law that ever calls him to chat with him. And in him I’ve found that grandparent that I never had as an adult and it is rather sweet.
I’m grateful and happy that my children will get to see their grandparents as often as I did as a child and that they will be a big part of their lives 🙂
Thanx for this post. 🙂