From: rangok@wpi.WPI.EDU (Rangaswamy Keshavan)
Newsgroups: alt.culture.us.asian-indian
Subject: being asian-indian/american
Date: 28 Dec 1992 01:15:45 GMT
Organization: Worcester Polytechnic Institute
NNTP-Posting-Host: wpi.wpi.edu

For all people who are first generation immigrants or sons and daughters of
immigrants (I fit into both, because I grew up here, but was born in India and
lived there for my first 5 years, which is supposed to be very formative, as I
am seeing with my 3 year old daughter now) there is a crisis that goes on inside
about defining ones identity.  Where do we fit in?  Are we Americans?  Now there
are enough Indians in the USA to make it a true ethnic group, and not a formless
minority.  Not true when I was growing up.  

But are not we Indians as well?  We
did grow up with many of the Indian cultural values, to whatever extent our
parents believed in those values themselves, and to whatever extent we would let
them into our lives.  So, many of us do go through an identity crisis sometime
in our life.  I certainly did, in my early 20s, no doubt.  It was during that 
time that the inevitable pressures to marry came down on me, especially after I
moved back to the east coast and closer to home, and though my parents are not
the "traditional" Indian parents, they did want me to meet an Indian girl and
settle down.  

Now the whole thing starts to swell up, because, we also grew up
in this culture and how can we just marry someone without really knowing them,
and hell, I don't want to marry an Indian just because she happens to be an
Indian, and so on.  And where do we fit in?  Most of my friends were Americans,
and most of the Indians from India seemed foreign to me.  Yet, I also wanted to
belong to that section too, as that also was a part of me.  So, I decided the
thing to do would be to go to India for a long time and explore the country and
my heritage.  

I quit my job (at that time, in 87, it was not a hopeless economy
for engineers as it seems today) and with my backpack on my back, went first to
Nepal, to trek in the Himalaya, and then down into India.  Immediatly in India
I had the task of dealing with relatives who expected me to behave as an Indian
even though I was an American, and my grandmother and me had a ton of arguments
about who I should marry and all that crazy stuff.  But the wonderful thing 
about that time is I did a lot of travelling also, and got to know and see India
and my relatives in a way that a few weeks would not suffice.  And also I did
find a wonderful woman there to spend my life with, and even though it was an
"arranged" marraige in the sense that we did not date as we do in this country,
though once we were engaged (after 3 meetings) we did spend the next two months
in each others company every day and fell deeply in love before we were wed, it
was the best thing that could have happened to me.  But that is a different 
story of going by ones intuition, and not my point here.  

My point here is that
going to India and being and Indian for that time, really made me appreciate 
my folks here and Indians here, and allowed me to understand much of what being
and Indian means.  I am now fully comfortable with being an American as well as
an Indian, and much happier for it, as both countries are great and have a lot
to give to the world, if only the damn world would listen!  They are both very
similar in many ways.  

So, we can't just forget our Indian culture even though
we are Americans, just as other ethnic groups here have assimilated theirs into
this country, ours too is starting to, and it really is a great thing for the 
USA, as the Indian culture, Hindus, Muslims, and Buddhists, have a great deal
to give to the American melting pot and make this place an example of hope for
the rest of the Earth to look up to.  That is the real American dream...

Newsgroups: alt.culture.us.asian-indian