“No you cannot go to the prom, unless your brother goes with you.
“You must become an engineer, doctor or a lawyer. What!! Rap singer? Over my dead body!”
“Dating? Boys are bad news especially American boys. What will people say?”
“You want to date an American girl. Oh my God. She will corrupt you.”
“You have to go to the Kathak classes and learn Hindi – and don’t call Hindi a foreign language.”
Sounds familiar? It seems the south Asian community has been frozen in time since the 1960s, each generation passing the baton to the next, stacking up honors as the “model minority’, shoving mainstream issues and concerns under the carpet. It is only now that these very issues have come back to haunt them as their children struggle from turbulent teens to an anguished adulthood; trying to bridge the gap between bearing the back-breaking burden of the “rich cultural heritage and our values” unceremoniously dumped on them without a gradual initiation, and living in mainstream America that engulfs and often overwhelms them in a flood of mind boggling ethnic diversity.
So what does it really mean to be young and South Asian in a country pulsating with lightning quick changes? One which provides a stew of experiences, allows one the freedom to experiment and also to experience a lot that is alien to the mindset of the older generations.
Growing Pains
The problem has many different manifestations in each stage of growth. Adolescence, for example, brings its own set of tensions.
In an Indian Bubble
One of the most common complaints is that parents are excessively restrictive, all the more if they come from small towns. “My perception of South Asian, especially Tamilian, parents is that they are very protective of their kids,” says Arun Jayaraman. “My mother and father used to control my daily activities even when I was an undergrad student. They wanted me home at 6 pm, prevented long phone conversations, changed channels when scenes of sexual content appeared, prevented me from being friends with guys who smoked or drank and so on. I have noticed the same thing in the homes of all my South Indian friends, whose parents migrated from small towns and villages.”
Indira Sarma, who grew up in a very traditional atmosphere, has a similar tale to narrate. Her grandparents were always staying with them, speaking their native language, and parents Ravi and Seshu were deeply involved with activities related to the Indian community and culture. “I always joke that my early years were spent growing up in an Indian bubble. I never went for sleepovers to my American friends’ homes. It was not until middle school or high school that I started breaking out and making my own friends from outside the community.” Indira also attended an elementary school that was both ethnically and socio-economically diverse, so fitting in was not a problem at all.
It was middle school where she faced the toughest times. She left for India to study in a school there while in 6th grade, then returned back to the middle school for 7th grade and then again changed schools to enter a private school in 8th grade. “I really missed India, and in 6th and 7th grade a lot of things change here. Girls are much more interested in clothes and boys and I did not know how to deal with all that. In India things were much more conservative, especially in the type of small towns from where my parents hail. I don’t think Indian parents are really equipped to handle the fact that their preteens may have a girlfriend or a boy friend.”
But, friends can be a problem even at a much younger age. Tina Mathur, who came to USA as a toddler, recalls that her parents always pushed her to be friends with other Indian kids. “If there was another Indian girl in my class they’d ask me why don’t you go talk to her. I think just because they felt more comfortable with people from India, they expected me to be more comfortable with them as well. Even now they are more comfortable with my Indian friends.” Tina went to a preppy high school and the snooty Indians would not talk to her. “I also felt that I was different. I didn’t do all those things other Indian girls did like bharat natyam, going to the temple, etc; these people fostered their own community and I was left out – it was sheer snobbery. I try to be friends with everyone, but it’s taken longer for me to be friends with Indians,” she says, adding, “In college too, I was a transfer student to Emory, I wasn’t a part of any clique and was not included, so I became a free floating loner.”
Integrating by degrees
Learning to integrate different identities can also be tough as Anu Sheth discovered. She was three when she came to USA, and her parents, though in the medical field, struggled like all immigrants. Anu went a private Baptist church school and became a closet Christian to avoid going to hell, forced her mother to make peanut butter jelly sandwiches for her when her American friends mocked her idli chutney lunch—‘yew igloo? What is igloo?’ It was in 7th grade that she decided she’d stay a Hindu, because she did not want to go to heaven without her parents! An ace student and all rounder she was at first thrilled to meet fellow Indians at the University of Illinois, but was actually shunned because they already had their own clique. It was only when she met her husband-to-be in the second year of college, was introduced to his set of Indian friends and then became the first Asian to be homecoming queen, that she eventually found the acceptance and appreciation that was her due. “I finally felt comfortable with both my religion as well as being Indian, and could be who I am. I wore an Indian Punjabi salwar kameez to one of our dances.”
On the other hand, Anu’s sister-in-law Reshma Shah who teaches at Emory’s Gouizetta School of Business went to India to study in a boarding school from the age of 13 to 15 and felt that was an incredible experience. “I did not have a tough time transitioning back and felt very much at home in both cultures, people living here and those who came from India. If anything I think I helped bridge the gap between these two groups,” says Reshma.
For Ritesh Desai it was a lot more difficult. He came to USA at the age of 12 and went from living in an affluent neighborhood in Mumbai to a small town in North Carolina before finally moving to Atlanta. “I was in an all boys school in Mumbai while here I started off in a co-ed school and that was an initial change.” Ritesh was one of four Indians in the school and the only one to come straight from India. The others were all born here.
Ritesh faced issues, not of racism or acceptance, but of being shunned by other Indians. “I was a fresh off the boat, I dressed, walked and talked differently. My hair was not cut in the right way. I was 12 and people asked me how many girlfriends had I had and I’d blush and say ‘No, I don’t have girl friends’ and then they’d ask ‘Are you gay?’ I had no clue what the word meant until an American friend explained to me. I became more conscious and so I went through a phase where I’d watch more American movies, listen to more American music just to be that cool person, and know the songs when I went to the dances. I had to create a playboy image, but after I came to Atlanta it didn’t take much for me to change and do worthwhile things and be active in leadership areas. If you follow the herd mentality its easy to give in to peer pressure.”
Cultural cross currents
The intellectual and creative way of looking at life inherent in the richly cultural city of Calcutta, where he grew up, helped shape Aditya Kar’s identity as a Bengali and South Asian. This is something that he misses in the USA to this day. Kar who is gay, went to Virginia and he remembers it as a huge transition as he was still discovering his sexual orientation. “You talk about being in a closet, I was at the farthest end of it; and in America it was not easy to fit in. I was the minority in every sense of the word as compared to in Calcutta where I was the first born, the coveted male child in a well to do Hindu family. Here my skin color, my accent and then my sexuality made me a minority of the third order.”
Shaila Bheda agrees that it was indeed a challenge growing up caught between two diverse and often contradictory cultures. “The Indian culture taught deference to the elders first, but the US culture is very much oriented to the individual. My parents had been raised in a culture that did not easily discuss taboo topics like sex, drugs, and alcohol, which the young people had to deal with. So initially they did not encourage open communication.” Shaila says adolescents want to fit in and it is difficult being South Asian. You have a different name, you don’t go to church like your American friends, eat different food, and your different skin color also sets you apart. It was our white neighbors who opened our mother’s eyes and made her more open minded, she concludes.
Mixed Parentage can cause problems too
If you think it’s tough being South Asian, then listen to what two children of mixed marriages have to say. Anneliese Singh’s father was Sikh and mother American. When they married, her father’s family welcomed her mother with open arms, but her mother’s family was very displeased and told her if the marriage did not work she was on her own. They often discriminated against Anneliese and her brother. Anneliese’s father wore a turban and was threatened during the Iran hostage crisis.
“The 50s and 60s in the south was a time when people were not tolerant of diversity. Still, despite the prejudice that I saw my parents deal with, I also had the benefit of seeing a lot of love. I think I grew up feeling neither ‘American’ nor ‘Indian’ … more like I didn’t fit into any category at all. Of course, this experience was a love-hate kind of thing. I was by nature a person who did not want to follow the lead of others, so having no ‘set’ category to fall into was a true blessing. On the other hand, I often felt a void deep within me … a true lack of understanding of who I was and where I came from – even though my parents did a wonderful job of educating me about both my American and Indian culture.”
Her trip to India in her twenties proved to be a life altering experience for Anneliese. It “solidified my pride in being bicultural and dissipated the isolation I had felt while growing up. People recognized me as an ‘Indian’ there … and more specifically as a Punjabi.”
Ryan Anand Bandy’s father is a Bengali and mother an American. Their marriage also caused displeasure among his mother’s family. Ryan says his father changed his name from Rabindra Bandopadhyay to Robin Bandy, and though they often had philosophical discussions on religion, “my father tried very hard to hide his being an Indian from me.” As a child Ryan never felt he was anything but white, and it was only in college at Emory, surrounded by a large South Asian community, that he began a journey of self discovery, of what it means to be “half South Asian in America.”
He continues, “This was both a very exciting and a painful process. It was exciting at first because I felt like I was discovering a long lost part of myself. I went to garbas and cultural shows, watched Indian movies, hung out with other Indians. It was a wonderful exploration. I was impressed by the importance given to community, something that I felt sorely missing in a culture that puts so much emphasis on the individual, beyond all other things. I explored so much that it changed my identity. I no longer saw myself as wholly white, with a “different” side (my father’s accent, the Indian parties, etc) that was excluded from conscious identity. It became part of how I identified myself.”
And yet as he became more involved in the Indian community in Atlanta, he felt restricted by the language barrier. “I didn’t speak any Bengali. I found the racism against white people that occasionally came out of those I thought were my very good friends, offensive. I was tired of going to Indian events and being asked, ‘What are you doing here?’ They felt no need to restrain their comments about how I was an outsider. I felt that I was a novelty to some – one uncle tried to hook me up with his daughter, simply because I was half Bengali while at the same time making me feel like something from the circus. And so I began to withdraw slowly from the community. It seemed that the Indian community in America is for first generation Indians that are fully Indian. This created a problem. I had explored my Indian heritage that it had become part of my Identity. I no longer lived in a country that was entirely my own. I was an outsider, I wasn’t completely mainstream anymore, I was half Indian. But if I didn’t fit in there, I didn’t fit in the Indian American community either. And so I created a separate space. I think everyone who is half has to, because there aren’t enough of us to form our own community.”
The Ride To the Wild Side: College Chronicles
But, perhaps the true test of South Asian character is on the college campuses when suddenly there is no one to look over your shoulder, and there is this sudden freedom to do as you please.
Learning responsibility
Ronnie Merchant a volunteer for Raksha Inc. a non-profit, social service organization for South Asians, put it very aptly “I think when you are first exposed to that kind of freedom, you skip a lot of classes, a lot of school; but you learn very fast that that’s not getting you anywhere. American parents usually will not worry when you head to college because now your grades are your responsibility, but Indian parents still worry about your grades, and when they see them drop they panic and start monitoring you – when you least expect it you get caught.”
Ritesh Desai admits that he did let his hair down but straightened up his act quickly. “The best thing my parents did was to put the onus on me, ‘What do you think? Have you given this thing your best shot? You don’t have to answer us; ask yourself.’ And soon I realized I am cheating myself.”
The opposite sex
Dating is taboo in most South Asian families, but pretty much everyone is doing it. Several interviewees were open about it, though several others spoke on grounds of anonymity. There were a few who were not dating. Khabar decided not to mention any names, but present a picture that emerged after talking to several people at length. Most South Asians have dated both Americans and South Asians. They see a lot of their peers indulging in heavy drinking at parties, several have experimented with marijuana, and premarital sex is on the rise.
According to Ritesh Desai, “Most parents don’t have a clue what their kids are up to. Just about every South Asian person I went to school with had some sort of sexual experience. Drugs were there, but there was a limited crowd who could afford it. People indulged in drinking and smoking freely. For South Asians, promiscuity is much higher these days and especially among women. If it’s someone who has lived in India during their formative years and then them come here, they will tend to hold out a little longer. They want to work at it and get serious. People get lonely, mom and dad are not here, especially when mom and dad are in India and they need companionship, so they have relationships. When there is nobody watching over you, it often gives people the mindset that they have the license to do whatever they want.”
Sumeet Bahl opines that times have changed and Indian girls are becoming very promiscuous. “Before coming to Emory I never believed that Indian girls engaged in any type of sexual activity at all. Then I learnt otherwise. They are all good girls until they have had some alcohol, then they will do anything.”
Parental confidantes
A few have parents who are very open minded and the children can tell them anything. But, most often all the dating, drugs and partying is done behind the parent’s backs. One interviewee told Khabar that “dating is a tricky issue. Of course I’ve dated, but I’ve never been caught, and nor do I want to be. However, I’m now in an extremely serious relationship with great potential for the future, and it’s with a boy my parents would love — an Indian pre-med, an intelligent, handsome, kind person whose parents are their friends. Life is funny, isn’t it? However, neither of us has deigned to tell our parents because we have no idea about their reaction, and we don’t need the stress right now. I know that I could never discuss sexuality issues with them or even innocent relationship problems. That’s simply not in their line of thinking. But perhaps I don’t give them enough credit. My mother recently told me to ‘find a nice boy’ and I’m wondering if that means it’s the right moment to tell her about this relationship that is so integral to my life. I feel like I’m hiding something so huge from her, and it hurts every time I think about it.”
Anu Sheth recalls that she was such a prude that when her first date with an American hunk turned into the dorm event she did not have a clue as to what to do. Her mom called three times that day asking her what was she going to do on the date, and of course her date did not even get a kiss from her.
Aqsa Farooqui, who is a Pakistani Muslim, says the Muslim community especially those from Pakistan, remains extremely conservative with a limited dating, mostly marriages arranged by the families, and only a handful of cases of love marriages. “People are not allowed to date but if they do meet someone and he or she is from the same community, the parents will accept the relationship. By and large, however they would prefer to arrange their childrens’ marriage.”
But times are changing. Parul Parikh, a student, says over the years her parents have eased up and now “they’re also really relaxed about my having close relationships with male friends … they’re allowed over to our home and are generally treated graciously, though often greeted with a barrage of questions about majors, GPA and future plans.”
Anneliese Singh agrees. She says she escaped the close-mindedness of the Indian culture in this respect and her parents were very open minded. She usually dated white men, though the ongoing joke in the house was that if she needed help a marriage could be arranged for her at any time. “My father faced a lot of tension from his side of the family because I wasn’t on the path to marriage. He passed away four years ago and when I visited India they felt it was their responsibility to get me married and wanted to know what kind of man did I want. They didn’t understand my lifestyle in America.”
Indian v/s American guys
The guys in the community claim that the girls are not interested in dating them, and prefer to date and marry American men. According to a majority of the women interviewed, that is mostly true, the reason being, according to them, that South Asian men have very unreasonable expectations. Reshma Shah explains, “The Indian males here do have expectations of Indian women which are a bit outrageous; they want beautiful, highly educated women who should be willing to stay at home and raise children and not pursue a career. These are people in their 20s! In reality women are getting law degrees and want to be professionals and that is why the guys find it difficult to meet the kind of woman like their mom who now does not exist anymore. A lot of the men are picking up stereotypes from what their parents want and again there is this issue of what is attractive and what is not. American men find the most ordinary Indian women attractive and exotic.”
Concurring with that statement, Indira Sarma says, “A lot of the Indian guys I have met are very American in the sense that they don’t care about India or the culture or tradition very much, but they still seem to have the same close mindedness as their parents.”
Ronnie Merchant adds, “Its not fair that it’s okay for the guys to do whatever they want. But the moment they find out a girl is having fun she is branded as loose and as someone who will be the last to get married. A lot of American guys accept the girl for who she is, and I dated American guys for that reason. If I wanted to try something new an Indian guy would have double standards about it. First of all, I wouldn’t be able to just date him, he’d be thinking about marriage in the first month. An American guy will give you breathing space. Then again if I break up with an Indian guy he will tom-tom to the world how I am, but an American guy will never put a label on a girl. American guys feel that these cultural boundaries are limiting. The Indian guys will interview you on the first date. Do you like Indian movies? Do you cook Indian food? Those are very important things to them; for the American guy if you can make macaroni and cheese, you are great!! You hear a lot of Indian guys expecting their wives to be perfect and that’s why they head to India in their 30s to seek such perfection there, because girls who are raised here are not going to put up with their close minded expectations.”
Career options
Another pet peeve of the younger generation is the amount of pressure that is put on them to toe the traditional line where career is concerned. One such example is Saurabh Bose. Saurabh came to USA in 1980 when he was five, and says the biggest challenge for him has been career choices. “I did go to Georgia Tech for an undergrad engineering degree. My father still tells people I went to Georgia Tech and that I am an engineer even though I have nothing to do with engineering now. It’s hard for them to accept that I have an alternate career. It was really a struggle for me to get through engineering school, to a point where it was causing severe psychological problems and suicidal tendencies. It was a horrendous experience and at the end of it my parents realized engineering was not for me. I completely switched gears after graduating with an undergrad degree. I got a job doing web and graphic design and then a year later went to Georgia Tech and did a degree in music technology. I am interested in computers and technology, but more for the sake of the arts.”
Saurabh produces electronic music and has an album coming out in September. He does music 50 percent and 50 percent of the time he teaches multimedia, sound design and web design at the Art Institute of Atlanta. “In terms of music it’s been wonderful. I can draw on so much of the music I have grown up listening to, Indian classical and folk music; there is such a wealth of music and it allows me to create something unique.”
“You see these people struggling with what they want to major in,” agrees Reshma Shah. “My mom and dad insist that I study engineering or accounting or something that is very much in vogue for the Indian community or prestigious or reputable. If they move to liberal arts or areas that don’t lend themselves readily to these prestigious careers, then they do have to go through quite a struggle. The parents came here in late ’60s and ’70s and their assumption of what is right and proper is based in that time period.”
Dialoguing with Mom and Dad
It seems that little has changed in the past three or four decades. The issues remain the same according to Shaila Bheda who coordinates the youth leadership programs at Raksha. When a survey was done by Raksha’s youth leadership wing among their peers, the issues of concern ranged from lack of communication with parents, identity crises, drugs and alcohol and more recently gang violence, fighting among Hindus and Muslims. “Often children pick up the politics of their parents,” says Shaila. A majority of the interviewees said they could not openly communicate with their parents, but over a period of time things have improved.
Roopa Narsimhan says her parents were extremely conservative. She lost her mother when she was 15. It was a very difficult time for her. Her father remarried and she is now very close to her stepmother, but she went through her share of “Nos.” Her father does not want her to date. “‘Its not you that we don’t trust, it’s the environment around you that we don’t trust’, is his favorite sentence,” she recalls laughing. She says that parents need to have more confidence in their parenting skills, and realize that if they have open communication with their children, there is little probability of the kids going astray. Shaila says that unfortunately the parents’ knowledge of America culture is limited to what they see on television which is not going to portray anything well, and if they don’t have a lot of interaction with Americans they will not understand the culture.
What frustrates Indira Sarma and her peers is the fact that parents will say that they want you to talk to them and be open with them, but they are only open to discussing certain things. “They only listen to what you have to say if you give them answers acceptable to them. Anything that they can’t handle or don’t want to hear, they just flip out and then they either get angry or frustrated. I have parents who are always saying their kids don’t have Indian values. In truth their kids are honest, hard working, straightforward, help friends in need. Just because they don’t seem to conform to the parents’ way of looking at things does not mean they don’t have values. Parents need to ask themselves this question. Are they being fair to their kids when the kids are being brought up exposed to so many different cultures. Their expectations are unrealistic.”
Reshma Shah says, “The biggest challenge for today’s generation is how open can you be with your parents and how open in your perception can they be? Kids who are strong minded and have some ability to at least begin a dialogue with their parents will probably find that their parents are not as unreasonable, or naïve and that they do understand the kind of things that kids go through to a large extent. But the kids are not willing to take the risk of opening up and damaging a so-far perfect relationship. They feel hiding is the easiest way to do what they have to do. Kids are getting into things a lot earlier, so its all the more reason to have a close communication with them.”
Parents need to learn
So has it been a blessing or a burden to be caught between two cultures? Dr Ramanna Dhara who has raised two sons in this country feels it has been a burden. “Even though we have tried to keep our children exposed to both cultures as much as possible, they still found their color and names were very different and they have had to deal with the problem. These kids are facing a lot of pressures not only that they have to fit in, but also as they have to live up to the high expectations of their parents. Having to come to this country we had to work extra hard being immigrants and we had to make it. Having done that, to think we should impose that culture on our children, we are sort of trying to transpose this concept. We cannot expect our children to be perfect. They have to learn from their own mistakes. The younger generation is caught between a rock and a hard place. They have to conform to a peer group and then conform to their parents’ expectation. They must be told, look you are allowed to fail as long as you learn from your mistakes. This gives you hope that maybe I can make it after all. Give them unconditional support. Set examples and bring up children the way you want but once they are old enough set them free. Experience is a great teacher. In the end those who learn from mistakes grow up stronger.”
Roopa Narsimhan says it is a blessing because she has been able to have the best of both cultures. According to her, American culture is very straightforward and open minded. In the Indian culture there are strong family ties and values and a strong identity. “I see the positives in both cultures. The burden is that often both cultures contradict each other. In America you are taught at a very young age to create your own path. Indian parents need to learn that their kids are growing up in a different environment from them, are dealing with different issues and it is up to them to make the kid feel comfortable to confide in them. The more you ignore it the more you’ll find out unpleasant truths.”
Rahul Dhara says on the whole his parents have been very liberal and non confrontational and its hard to realize how free he was when the boundaries were not defined. “America is very fast moving, a land of diversity. The pace is such that you tend to get lost, and then you need something to hold on to, something that is familiar and comforting, and that’s where the traditions and culture comes into play. These are used to remind them what they enjoyed and they try to instill that in their children. Everyone is a parent for the first time and when they are trying to figure out things in their life and don’t have the answers to everything, then the best thing to do is to be conservative.”
Kahlil Gibran put it very aptly in the following verse, and the sooner parents learn to trust, open their minds and let go the better it will be:
Your children are not your children
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you
A nd though they are with you yet they belong not to you
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.