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Abhijith Ravinutala

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Abhijith Ravinutala

Category Archives: South Asian Experience

The Indian Dream

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Posted by Abhijith Ravinutala in South Asian Experience

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career, class, dreams, economics, education, India, money, society

When I think of my childhood in India, Ramani always comes to mind. Ramani and her wrinkled face that stretched into a gap-ridden smile, often accompanied by laughter as contagious as an afternoon yawn. Seemingly frail limbs with strength enough to squeeze you breathless by the end of a massage. Thin saris of myriad colors, always with just two accessories: huge, thick silver anklets on her leg. It looked like she had been chained by the legs in a prison and managed to break out. Ramani didn’t give birth to me but she did most other things a mother would do. She stayed in my family’s humble home provided by the Railway Commission, and worked for us day and night. Now she’s nearly 70 and continues to work odd jobs for different families in her village. She’s lived her entire life working as house help, and had little to no classroom education herself. But through her insistence and her savings, somewhere along the way all her grandchildren received college degrees: one has even made her a great grandmother, while another works as an engineer in Dubai. When I heard about how well her grandchildren were doing, I was amazed at the speed at which the circumstances of Ramani’s family have changed, while Ramani herself had stayed so much the same. In a way, her story encapsulates much of the Indian Dream as it is today.

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She always hated photos…

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A second mom to me in many ways

In the 70 years of her lifetime, which coincides with the lifetime of India as an independent country, education has become the Indian Dream. We talk in America of the value of hard work and sayings like pull up your “bootstraps.” While the American conversation is centered around this idea of working hard, perhaps originated from a post-WWII prosperity where hard work gave you a suburban house and two kids, the Indian conversation seems to have been centered around education. In India, education is instead the escape from hard work. From a young age, your family tells you to study hard precisely so you don’t have to “work hard” like they had to, or struggle like they had to. For many families in India (mine included), “hard work” doesn’t bring nostalgic memories of men clocking in at the shipyard/ factory/ office and getting home by 5 to eat dinner with the family in front of the TV. It brings memories of uncertainty around where your next meal would come from. The work of educated jobs in modern India, conversely, is not the debilitating hard work of our country’s past; and for some, education is the only way to escape generations of low social status or caste expectations. So education became the promised land upon which Indians’ dreams were built.

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Whatever the hell that means…

Over time, even this need for education become more specific and demanding. From 1950 to 2005, the number of colleges in India grew by 35 times, while universities multiplied by 18 times.¹ Just from 2008-2015, the number of engineering colleges nearly doubled, while student intake more than doubled to ~2 million a year.² Part of the cultural reason for the increasing demand for education is pure competition. Due to the 1.2 billion population, there are just not enough jobs available for all the qualified applicants, and it’s understood from an early age that you have to study hard enough to beat your peers in this pursuit (the minimum score needed on entrance exams for any chance at medical school seat is around 91%).

As our education becomes more demanding and we become more ambitious, the Indian Dream slowly morphs. Once it was enough to be educated and have 3 meals a day, now it’s about having a job that can afford A/C in your apartment, a car, and children (just look at the Indian conglomerate Tata – its best selling product lines are A/C units and cars). In fact, the middle class now makes up 50% of India’s population, while households with disposable income of $10K has grown twentyfold since 1990³. Upward mobility and the Dream are being realized every day. Ramani’s family realized this middle class mobility in the short space of a lifetime thanks to her insistence on education. Of course, for those who want much higher disposable income, the Dream has often led them to leave India altogether in search of even more learning and opportunity (like Ramani’s grandson). More recently however, stories of Indians moving back to India from the US, or forgoing immigration altogether for a high-paying job in India are increasing.³ Technical education has even afforded us options for our Dream.

MC

This emphasis on technical education and the speed of advancement have left the Indian Dream in a limbo of contrasts that could only be conjured in the subcontinent. On one hand, education is enough to surpass the centuries-old caste and class barriers that have so structured and defined Indian society. As I mentioned above, Ramani’s grandson works an engineering job that takes him between Dubai and India. No one there needs/ cares to know that his grandmother still works as as house help – and so his class and caste no longer define him as much as his occupation. This is the case for many young Indians working in software/ engineering fields in Indian cities – occupation is the new hierarchy. On the other hand, however, the generation of children that were born to a newly independent India in the 40s still have the memory of strict hierarchy defined by ages past and hardened by the British (this reminds me of Americans who lived before the Civil Rights Bill was passed). The fire of that memory has to run out of fuel, but it cannot be stamped out all at once, as its embers burn through passed down values. To this day, despite all my attempts, Ramani refuses to sit on the same couch as one of us who “own” the house. She always sits on the ground or a small stool. My grandmother, who’s spent the most time with Ramani, finds this to be the natural order of things and asks me to let it go every time I come to India and try to disturb the order. This begs multiple questions: would Ramani’s grandson feel hesitant to sit on the couch as our guest? Does education and a good career (i.e., the Dream) provide you a place at the table when societal baggage says you shouldn’t have one? How inclusive is the Indian Dream really?

I originally thought of writing this six months ago when I visited India in January 2017 and heard about the success of Ramani’s family. I wanted to say something purely about the progress brought by education and hope in my home country. Instead, I couldn’t help but realize that things are not so simple.

In January, I was sitting at my grandmother’s house, just passing the time on a lazy afternoon. We had informed Ramani, through her son-in-law, some days ago that my family had come to visit from the States and we’d like to see her. We received no response or any indication that she would be coming. But that afternoon, she waddled through the door, holding a single straw bag with everything she needed for 2 weeks. When she had hugged all of us and settled in a place on the floor, as the look of sheer surprise faded from our faces, I took a good look at her. She represented at once the future of all that is possible in a progressive and independent India, but also the ancient relics of caste and class-based shackles that forced us to walk when we could’ve been running. I saw in her the simple, forward march of hope.

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Source Notes:

  1. World Bank
  2. All India Council for Technical Education
  3. World Economic Forum

Little India

26 Monday Sep 2016

Posted by Abhijith Ravinutala in South Asian Experience

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america, belonging, culture, dallas, immigration, India, South Asian Experience, texas

If you’re driving through Irving, a nearby suburb of Dallas, TX, you might pass by a neighborhood park known as Thomas Jefferson Park. At first glance, it’s like any small park you might see in suburban America. A grassy field. A small pond with ducks running around. A basketball court. A couple of benches in the shade. When you take a closer look though, you’ll notice something slightly different about this park – every single person walking, playing, or sitting in the park is Indian. In fact, the locals don’t even know it as Thomas Jefferson Park. It’s known as Gandhi Park. And the cricket matches there are no joke.

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Told ya so.

When I moved to Dallas in 1998 with my parents, such a concentration of Indian people would not have been possible. I went to an elementary school where I was one of two Indian kids in my grade, my parents and I only went to Pasand or Tajmahal Imports for Indian food, and there was only one Hindu temple to attend. In 18 years, the population of Indians in Dallas has pretty much exploded. Indian children going to school in Dallas suburbs face no shortage of other Indians in their grade (some have up to >50% Indians in a grade!!). Irving practically has an Indian restaurant on every block, and I can’t even count the number of different Hindu temples my family has visited.

The growth in the Indian community in Dallas is undeniably impressive, especially in Irving. But has it all been good? What does it mean to be an Indian-American when it’s so easy to just be Indian?

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Seems like a conundrum worthy of Philosoraptor

 

There’s certainly some good to this growth. Immediately, new immigrants have access to a sense of community and familiarity, akin to what other immigrant communities have had for years. Namely, we have our own Indiatown now around Irving1, just like all the Chinatowns, Koreatowns, etc. (interestingly, Microsoft Word recognizes Chinatown and Koreatown as words, but Indiatown gets the red squiggly line). This sense of community means we begin to have a more noticeable presence in Dallas. And not least of all, it means we have plenty of good food options to choose from.

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ALL THE FOODS ARE HERE

 

 

But there are also some real drawbacks to the Indian population growth in Dallas. By bunching together in certain neighborhoods, we’re choosing to self-segregate. This belies the so-called “melting pot” that America is supposed to represent. And worse, it can create suspicion among others. It prevents Americans from learning about us. How many of the Trump supporters who’ve harangued Muslims over the past year have actually lived with regular, friendly Muslim neighbors? Self-segregation only reinforces the fact that we’re outsiders.

Also, part of living in America with a hyphenated identity is supposed to be the struggle with the hyphen. Is the hyphen long or short: Do my two identities have a large divide or could they coexist relatively easily? Is the hyphen weighted towards one side: If I had to choose just one, which one would it be? But many Indians around my age who move to Dallas now don’t have to face these same questions. You can ostensibly move here, work in the IT department of a company that is full of Indians, eat Indian food night and day, watch Indian entertainment, and in some cases not even have to speak much English.

If you tread that path, is there any point in moving here? (other than the dolla bills). Indians in Dallas need to be careful. We should certainly embrace our culture and the ease of finding each other in a place that is foreign to us in many ways. But if we don’t simultaneously embrace the learning opportunity of America, a land more heterogeneous than our own, we’re doing an injustice to ourselves. After all, immigration is one of the greatest learning experiences a person can have. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with Gandhi Park, I’m just saying we should invite some non-Indians to come play cricket once in a while.

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Generic bro confused about how to play cricket

Note 1: Irving became a hotspot for Indian immigration due to a couple of reasons: A) Several companies located nearby had large IT needs in the 90’s and Indian immigrants to Dallas, who largely held technical degrees, were prime for filling those needs; B) Irving is centrally located in the greater DFW area and has relatively cheap rents with relatively great schools. It’s the practical Honda Accord of Dallas suburbs.

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