the desi dream

I had nev­er been aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly in­clined like ma­jor­i­ty of the In­di­ans who mi­grate to this coun­try.

Not hav­ing a de­gree in en­gi­neer­ing, med­i­cine or any oth­er sci­ence re­lat­ed field was a huge road­block. I was con­stant­ly ad­vised to study and take tests for ad­min jobs with the state of Cal­i­for­nia. This, I was told would open doors for me and se­cure my fu­ture with sol­id ben­e­fits and a great pen­sion plan.

There was just one prob­lem; I was young and rest­less and had ab­solute­ly no in­ter­est in do­ing any­thing I did not quite care for. Who am I kid­ding. I’m much old­er and wis­er now and still won’t do a thing I don’t give a rat’s ass about. So, I de­cid­ed to pur­sue my de­sign ca­reer in­stead and spent my mea­ger sav­ings on out-of-state fees at a com­mu­ni­ty col­lege to brush up my graph­ic de­sign skills.

This was in com­plete con­trast to the Desi Dream in Amer­i­ca and meant I would nev­er be pres­ti­gious enough, earn tons of mon­ey, live in hu­mon­gous homes in the best school dis­tricts, throw fan­cy par­ties, and dri­ve fan­cy cars among oth­er things.

Back in those days, if you were from In­dia, and a woman, it was most like­ly you did not know how to dri­ve. Which meant go­ing to school in a pub­lic trans­port be­came quite the ad­ven­ture in this Cal­i­for­nia sub­urb.

Most times I was not quite sure if the pas­sen­gers were plain sleep­ing, drunk, drugged, or ac­tu­al­ly lived in that bus. This might sound ter­ri­ble, but I think I was hap­py to know poor peo­ple ex­ist­ed be­cause I had nev­er felt poor­er dur­ing my first few years of mov­ing here. I con­vert­ed every­thing to Ru­pees and was se­vere­ly con­fused as to why noth­ing had a fixed price. The fact that the same bot­tle of sham­poo was priced dif­fer­ent­ly at each store I vis­it­ed was mind-bog­gling. This meant, no mat­ter how much re­search I did, there al­ways re­mained the pos­si­bil­i­ty I paid more. This, I be­lieve led to the on­set of stress in my pre­vi­ous­ly sim­ple life.

Lit­tle did I know that the words “sim­ple” and “life” would soon not gel. It all start­ed when our friends be­gan to grad­u­ate from their two-bed­room apart­ment to their four-bed­room “starter homes.” In­evitably one bed­room was for the fu­ture child, a guest room for vis­it­ing fam­i­ly, and of course the fourth bed­room to al­ways be con­vert­ed to an “of­fice” room. I im­me­di­ate­ly want­ed all of that, in­clud­ing that darned “of­fice” room be­cause I was a poor de­sign in­tern earn­ing min­i­mum wage and re­al­ly need­ed an of­fice at home to make me feel I did im­por­tant work too.

So we spent mon­ey we did not have to own a 2,300 sq. ft. house with a two-car garage, four bed­rooms, large back­yard, and yes, good el­e­men­tary school. Now my par­ents, or their par­ents, and all gen­er­a­tions above, (I guess you get my point here) had nev­er tak­en a loan from any bank or liv­ing be­ing their en­tire lives for any­thing.

So the first time I had to sign a loan for 30 years, my heart al­most skipped a beat. But I told my­self the white­washed walls, the new cream car­pet, and my gi­nor­mous walk-in clos­et were all worth it. To make things sweet­er, I con­vinced my­self, like most of us do, that the house was ac­tu­al­ly an in­vest­ment. Sev­er­al years lat­er I had a good laugh though my bank bal­ance prob­a­bly did not think it to be the least bit fun­ny.

When I think about the In­di­an dream in this coun­try, I no­tice a shift be­tween the gen­er­a­tions. Here I will tell you a lit­tle sto­ry to hope­ful­ly ex­plain what I mean.

Sev­er­al years ago, an old­er cou­ple once bought a new leather couch for their house from an out­let store. It was a great leather couch and was not cheap by any means. How­ev­er it was at a dis­count­ed price than it would be at Macy’s. Two things hap­pened right af­ter the new couch found its new home. The cou­ple threw a par­ty to dis­play their new liv­ing room and made sure every­one knew the couch was from Macy’s and bought at full price. Their friends in turn would go back and look into re­do­ing a part of their homes with more ex­pen­sive fur­ni­ture from a bet­ter store and the par­ties would con­tin­ue. My gen­er­a­tion on the oth­er hand loves a bar­gain and will boast about the deal that was found while friends will try to beat that deal by a cheap­er bar­gain on their end. But what has changed is that these days, the com­pe­ti­tion does not end at mere fur­ni­ture, but homes, cars, de­sign­er stuff and kids.

Yes, kids! A key in­gre­di­ent to this Desi dream is our kids and as they grow old­er, which school they go to and how many ex­tra-cur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties they are in­volved in. If you thought my pre­vi­ous couch sto­ry was bad, this gets worse. Our kids are ex­pect­ed to be good at every­thing, es­pe­cial­ly math and pi­ano be­cause they are re­lat­ed like asth­ma and eczema. Bad anal­o­gy, I know. The pres­sure is tremen­dous to be en­rolled in the ad­vanced learn­ing pro­grams since Kinder­garten to then move on to IB programs/private schools, and even­tu­al­ly be­come a doc­tor or an en­gi­neer while per­form­ing pi­ano recitals or earn­ing In­di­an clas­si­cal dance diplo­mas (be­cause we want to stay true to our roots), which lat­er in life these over-achiev­ing kids will nev­er have time to pur­sue. Along with homes get­ting big­ger, cars more ex­pen­sive, va­ca­tions more ex­ot­ic, chaot­ic par­ty sched­ules, Michael Kors be­ing re­placed by Louis Vuit­tons, comes ex­ten­sive re­sume of our kids that be­come key to mea­sur­ing the family’s suc­cess.

Liv­ing the dream con­tin­ued for me af­ter mov­ing into my first house fol­lowed by the path to earn more mon­ey, buy­ing more stuff, hav­ing a baby, show­ing up at par­ties, shop­ping, and so­cial­iz­ing with peo­ple I did not care about, till one day I woke up and re­al­ized I would nev­er have enough mon­ey, I would nev­er be good enough, my child would nev­er be good at pi­ano, and I was go­ing to lose my mind if I tried to keep up with this in­san­i­ty. So here I am to­day, falling in love in­stead, and dream­ing that our lives are full of liv­ing in the mo­ment, love, laugh­ter, and an urge to be true to not only our­selves but also to those around us.

As for my kid­do, my dream for her is to con­tin­ue be­ing the rock star she is now and know she can be ANY­THING in life she wants to be.

Na­maste!

 

—mala paul

My ut­most re­gard to all im­mi­grant fam­i­lies who have come to this coun­try, worked ex­cep­tion­al­ly hard and be­come suc­cess­ful in many as­pects of life. This post is in no way to dis­re­gard my peo­ple and their ef­forts or my cul­ture, but mere per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ences that were and still are a part of my jour­ney here.

Flom­mist Mala Paul is a pro­tégé of the god­dess of ten hands. Form to form­less all in a day’s job. A moth­er, de­sign­er, dancer, food­ie, fash­ion­ista, blog­ger, who is al­ways ready to be the change. Copy­right © 2016 Mala Paul.

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