| Remade in America By Kavita Chhibber
Indians reinvent themselves.
No
story is a straight line. The geometry of a human
life is too imperfect and complex, too distorted by
laughter of time and the bewildering intricacies of
fate to admit the straight line into its system of
laws.”
— Pat Conroy
The
Indian American dream is paved with crooked paths,
curve balls, detours, and not infrequent derailment.
This month Little India explores the fascinating stories
of Indians from all walks of life who traveled the
seven seas, overcame uncertainty, discrimination and
hopelessness, and embracing change and chance along
their path, struck that proverbial pot of gold at
the end of the rainbow.
Picture Perfect
If some one had told Gursharan Pannu, the son of a farmer
who had gone on to become an academician and a successful
businessman in India, that in 1991, he would be standing
on a corner street in California selling cheap picture
prints, he would have scoffed at the idea. Look who
is laughing now.
Pannu left his business and a secure government job
in India after the assassination of Indira Gandhi, when
the backlash faced by the Sikh community changed his
life in an instant.
“Things became very tense in Taran Taran district and
there were attacks against the Sikh community, and we
decided to leave, ” Pannu recalls. The family first
went to Hong Kong to stay with his father and siblings,
but then not seeing much future for his children there,
decided to try his luck in California where his brother
had a business selling pictures.
 Gursharan Pannu.
“I found myself standing on street corners selling
prints and wondered if this was the right thing for
me. I always believed in the dignity of labor and
had already gone against family tradition to first
get into academics instead of agriculture and then
the manufacturing business, but this was really different
and I wasn’t sure it was the right fit for my personality.
People of course were curious when they saw me standing
on a street corner selling pictures. They were courteous,
but they did have questions about my turban! However
my first day’s sales were over $400, which was not
bad. I learnt everything from my customers, and I
actually made a profit at the end of the day. I knew
English, so there was no language barrier, but the
accent took some time to be understood.”
A month later Pannu moved to Seattle and not having
a work permit, worked for others selling everything,
from picture prints with cheap plastic frames, which
went for $5 to more expensive reproductions on demand.
His employers often took advantage of his lack of
legal status in the country, but he continued to work
tirelessly, until finally his immigration status was
regularized and his children also joined him in 1992.
“We had already decided that if our children did not
like USA we would go back, but they told us that we
were a family and would work hard and make it here,”
says Pannu.
Pannu bought a truck, deciding to go into the wholesale
business, and would drive from city to city selling
prints, until a chance meeting with a fellow Sikh
at a gas station propelled him to try his luck in
Atlanta.
“The Olympics were round the corner and we were told
that things were booming there.” Pannu and his wife
arrived in Atlanta, leaving their children with his
sister in Seattle. Suddenly his sister called and
asked that they return, as she had to leave town.
Pannu says that day stands out clearly in his mind.
Having driven 20 hours non stop, traversing highways
he did not know, he reached the airport on a rainy
night at 3.30 a.m. He put his terrified wife, who
couldn’t speak much English and was a village belle,
on a flight to Seattle to collect the kids, while
he stayed on in Atlanta, scouting flea markets and
locations the next morning.
A kindly Mexican restaurant owner let him sell his
prints there. “In four days I had sold a third of
my inventory.”
Pannu would stay nights at a local gurudwara and worked
incredibly long hours selling his prints and in two
weeks business picked up. He then began looking for
a warehouse, but without any credit history no one
was prepared to rent him any space. Finally he found
a warehouse where the owner trusted him instinctively
and without asking for any guarantees or credit history,
rented him the space.
His kids and wife worked long and hard to fix pictures
in frames, and by 1996 Pannu was a millionaire. Today
he has built a palatial and opulent multimillion dollar
home, has a thriving print business, which he is handing
over to his 20 year old son, and is planning to pursue
his new passion of building and designing homes.
“When I look back I see God’s grace, but more than
that it was the hard work and the family support that
has brought me where I am. There are a lot of people
who started out with me, but none of them reached
the level I have and a lot of them are far more talented
and far more intelligent. I feel that I took advantage
of the opportunities that came my way; a lot of people
don’t and therein lies the difference.”
Clothing to Construction
Ramesh Butani too would have scoffed at the idea that
he would be working with tailors in Hong Kong after
graduating with a degree in civil engineering in India.
“A rich uncle gave me a ride to Hong Kong, in 1966,
and I thought I had it made,” recalls Butani. He discovered
instead that since it was mandatory to speak Chinese,
he couldn’t get a decent job. Instead he ended up
being a liaison between the Chinese tailors and their
buyers in the clothing business, since he knew English.
Two years elapsed before his English speaking capabilities
landed him an offer to come to the United States to
sell clothing.
 Ramesh Butani.
Butani moved on from there to selling industrial chemicals
and then to a construction company. Four years later
a Filipino customer gave him the incentive to become
a contractor by promising him orders.
“In 24 hours I had the license and went to work. I
had no idea what it entailed, how to get a contract.”
The first year, 25 years ago, Butani’s company HRGM
grossed $250,000, specializing in roofing and waterproofing.
Butani has moved on to become one of the biggest contractors
in the District of Columbia. Today his companies renovate
and build schools, clinics, police stations, raking
in nearly $50 million worth of business annually.
Butani says the business of construction has evolved
into a very competitive industry over the years. “The
advent of computers has made it difficult for people
who are not computer savvy to survive. Every one has
to have a novel business model to nab business and
you have to have concrete numbers to back you up.
You can’t throw numbers in the air and get away with
it now.” HRGM roster of clients include District of
Columbia, the University of Maryland, the Washington
D.C Department of Public Works, the U.S Department
of Agriculture, and Chevron. Butani was nominated
as a finalist in the Ernest & Young 2000 and 2001
Greater Washington Entrepreneur of the Year award.
The Hand That Rocks The Cradle Rules...
These three women demonstrated tremendous courage
and grit, carving their space in the American dream,
while rocking the cradle.
 Leela Sharma.
Leela Sharma lost her father at a very young age and
went to nursing school in Kerala at a time when nursing
was looked down upon, because her family could not
afford to send her to medical school. She married
to a physician and came to the USA to live the American
dream.
“In those days it was easy to come to USA, and I got
my visa in 1973 within 3 months of applying.”
Sharma came by herself leaving her husband behind
and felt like a fish out of water.
“It was tough to understand folks and people in turn
thought I was dumb. When I went to the hospital and
they asked, “Can you hand me the PDR, I had no clue
it meant the Physicians Desk Reference book!”
While she was preparing for her board exams, Sharma
went to work as a waitress. “I could not understand
the language and had never been around any kind of
liquor, so when I was asked to serve martini on the
rocks, I said I don’t see any rocks here! I was earning
$1.19 per hour.! I quit the job as soon as I passed
the nursing exam and started working.”
While Leela had learnt a little driving she only knew
how to go forward and had no clue how to reverse and
had no money to hire an instructor. “So I would drive
to work, then take a road where I did not have to
reverse. I would get stuck in a mud pile or get lost,
because I didn’t know the difference between south,
northeast and west. I can laugh now but it was very
scary then.”
Sharma also recalls the time when she moved south
and had to live in a trailer with some colleagues.
For the first few days she was petrified that while
they were sleeping some one would come and drive off
with them at night. She did not know how to turn the
heat on and was too shy to ask, and would cover herself
with all the saris she had to protect herself from
the cold. She walked 5 miles to work, sometimes in
freezing weather.
In the meantime her husband came checked out the place
and decided not to stay since he had a very lucrative
job in India. It was another four years before he
returned to America, and in that time Sharma worked
16-20 hours each day, seven days a week until she
finally saved the money needed to bring her family
and her siblings over.
Today Leela Sharma settled all her siblings, raised
two children, invested well in real estate and lives
in a million dollar mansion. She says she believes
that not only does this country teach you dignity
of labor, it also makes you realize that if you are
willing to work hard, nothing is beyond your reach.
 Shashi Kumar.
Shashi Kumar was born in an affluent family and came
to the United States in 1969 with her husband who
was an army officer. They stayed with her in laws
in Chicago. “We had barely any money, may be $16 dollars
expenses.”
A few weeks later her father in law threw them out
of the house asking them to fend for themselves and
her husband went back to India as he was still in
the armed forces. In desperation Shashi applied for
a job as a teacher in Chicago. There was a shortage
and she was hired, but the owner of the preschool
who sponsored her knew her problems and underpaid
and ill-treated her. “I was so desperate and ignorant
that I had no idea I could have fought against that
racism and discrimination.”
Somehow with her meager income Kumar found an apartment,
but had no money to buy furniture. She found a discarded
bed, a table and chairs, and a sofa. Her son would
sleep on the sofa and she would sleep on the bed with
her daughter. Kumar worked two jobs and went to school
as well and often left her kids home alone by themselves.
“I could not afford to put them in day care. Often
my son would catch the bus with my 4-year-old daughter
by himself. If the social services had found out,
they would have taken my children away from me.”
She remembers the hopelessness of a night when her
daughter had 105-degree fever. Kumar had no medical
insurance and no one to help her, as her husband still
in India. “My son and I put my daughter in cold water
and finally her temperature came down.” On another
occasion a tornado hit the city. “We were on the third
floor. We had no option but to get under the table
and hope for the best.”
Kumar says it was the well-being of her children that
made her continue struggling and working long hours.
Soon she went on to become the only woman manager
of a multimillion-dollar retail department store in
the 1970s in the Chicago area, when there were no
women in the top brass, much less an immigrant. A
head hunter called soon after and she received an
attractive offer from Target stores, who moved her
to Denver and gave her a big raise. Kumar has not
looked back on her professional life since.
Both her children are now successful professionals.
Kumar divorced and subsequently remarried, is now
afflicted with lupus, which leaves her fatigued, but
her courage ensures: “I guess the stress of all those
years has taken its toll on me. I never thought I
would ever have to face adversity of this kind, but
adversity does bring out the best in us.”
 Deepa Dharamrup.
Deepa Dharamrup is the quintessential bag lady. She
first came to New York in the early 1970s to join
her husband, who was in the travel agency business.
In 1993, Dharamrup, newly divorced, began interviewing
for jobs with travel agencies, but discovered she
was a hard sell, because she was over qualified. At
one agency, she recalls, “the manager said very openly,
I can’t hire you because in 2 months you will take
over my job.”
Dharamrup and a close friend Manju Vaswani decided
to launch a business together, starting with selling
a large consignment of leather handbags that were
thrust upon them. They succeeded in selling 1,500
in a couple of months.
“We became known as the bag ladies,” laughs Dharamrup.
The timing was right, says Dharamrup and soon they
got into the business of home furnishings. The work
however was very different. “In this business you
have to create the need for the product, whereas in
the previous business people came to us to fulfill
their need.”
By 1997 they had built it into a lucrative wholesale
and retail business. Dharamrup had to raise two daughters
along the way as well. “It was not easy raising them,
as a single parent, while working full time, but they
have turned out to be strong, independent women, and
know that if they have a mother who can do it, they
too can stand on their own two feet.”
Dharamrup says as she looks back at her life, there
are times she cannot believe that she has pulled though.
“When I went through my divorce there had only been
one divorce before me and both my daughters and I
lost a big section of friends. I don’t think the Indian
community here was ready to deal with a divorced woman
They have come a long way since then, but you do the
best you can under the circumstances you are in at
that time. There are always going to be obstacles
and there will be people trying to cut you off, but
if you know that you have made the right decision
within you, you do not need to seek anyone’s advice
or approval. I have never wavered in what I needed
to do and I firmly believe that when one door shuts
another one opens. It did for me. I never felt I was
better than everyone, but then there was never a point
where I felt anybody was better than me.”
The Tamilian in US
Giriraj Rao may not have lived to live the American
dream, had he not been in the bus that took him to
Bombay harbor to board the ship that was to take him
to the University of California at Berkeley on a government
scholarship.
 Giriraj Rao.
“It was 1947, our bus had just made it to the Bombay
harbor while subsequent buses were set on fire as
communal riots erupted in downtown. We escaped death
by 30 minutes,” recalls Rao, who along with 250 fellow
Indians had boarded a 7,000- ton displacement ship,
which had previously been deployed to ferry supplies
across New York and South Hampton in World War II.
It took them 30 days to reach San Francisco, only
to be stranded by a maritime strike while waiting
for clearance to disembark.
“We had no food or water. The vendors threw us sandwiches
from below for 25 cents. We caught every one of those
sandwiches, only to discover they were bologna sandwiches
and I was a vegetarian. That was the moment of truth
for me. Was I going to be a scrupulous Hindu or eat
meat to survive. Let’s say I survived!”
Giriraj Rao remembers his vegetarian diet being limited
to egg sandwiches and ice cream and bowls of fried
rice at the only Chinese restaurant near the campus.
The university exposed Giriraj Rao to people of many
cultures.
“My first roommate was a Pathan Farookh Shah Razani,
who was a big follower of Khan Abdul Ghafar Khan and
was against the division of India, and then the other
one was a Muslim from Bengal, but wanted Pakistan
to be created. It was quite a sight, two Muslims fighting
each other and a Hindu in the middle trying to hold
the peace!”
Rao was very pleasantly surprised by the camaraderie
between professors and their students. “There was
a cordiality I had never experienced in India, where
our professors treated us as peons. Here we had professors
fixing dinners for their students.”
Then Giriraj Rao, the Tamilian Brahmin, did the unthinkable.
He fell in love, eloped with and married an American
Catholic and then returned to India armed with the
knowledge he had gained, the sense of liberation he
felt.
“I no longer had the peon mentality. I was ready for
India,” he says, only to discover an irate mother
who was convinced he was not married and staged what
Rao refers to as “suicide strikes against me.”
Rao also discovered that the India he had left behind,
was now full of corrupt officers. He was disillusioned
and returned to USA, but ran up against discrimination
as he looked for jobs in California where his wife
was already a teacher on contract.
“An Indian was not a known commodity in the late 1940
and ‘50s. We had a problem even finding a house. In
fact when we finally did buy one, our neighbor complained,
‘Since when have you started allowing these Mexicans
in here?’” laughs Rao.
That story was repeated in Atlanta in the early 1970s,
when Giriraj Rao came as an employee of the Coca Cola
company, the first of two Indians employed by Coke
anywhere in the world. “My wife did not want to come
to Atlanta. In 1973, a white woman married to a non
American, especially a dark one with the only white
thing being his teeth, was definitely frowned upon!”
Initially, recalls Rao, when he joined Coke, there
was a concern in the plant whether he had adequate
knowledge about food and Citrus technology and his
management skills, but after a day or two he won their
respect. Giriraj Rao went on to create the drink Mellow
Yellow, earned high respect in research and development
at home and overseas and traveled to Italy to represent
Coke.
“I brought in a lot of technological information for
the company from Europe, and I was an integral part
of the process, which led to the creation of major
coke products like diet sprite, and in implementing
formula changes and improving the ingredient control
for the Coco Cola company. Introduction of fruit juices
was one of my major achievements. I am a full-fledged
food technologist, chemist and biochemist and came
into Coke with a tremendous experience and knowledge
that was not taught in universities. Today one of
the greatest advantages the industry enjoys is the
technological advantages that run parallel, like liquid
and solid face chromatography. These analytical tools
help synthesize flavors, but in my time you had to
have a tremendous first hand knowledge of flavors,
including spices, since root beer and many other Coke
products have spices in them and I had that knowledge.”
Rao retired from Coke in 1986 as principal investigator,
but remains a consultant to Coca Cola to this day
and is a highly respected community leader well recognized
both in the South Asian as well as mainstream community.
“Things are very different now, but I still feel that
in spite of everything, returning to USA was the best
decision I could have ever made.”
From Birlas to Baking
Nainshad Manekshaw was 15 when his father died. Growing
up in Bombay after his father’s death was a struggle,
but Nick was an ace cricketer who went on to play
in the Ranji Trophy and worked for the Indian Railways
as an 18-year-old while putting himself through college
at the same time. Soon he joined the Birlas and rapidly
climbed the corporate ladders, only to chuck it all
up and migrate to United States with his wife and
two young sons in 1981 to join his other siblings
and mother, all of whom had migrated earlier.
Manekshaw reached New Jersey on a return ticket fully
prepared to go back if things didn’t work out. “The
Indian population was scarce. If we spotted an Indian
in the mall we would talk for hours.”
Having done well in India, Manekshaw was unprepared
for the challenges of starting all over again from
scratch. “I very quickly found out that the Indian
education and corporate experience was not going to
cut it here.”
After struggling for some time Manekshaw found his
first job-baking bread in a bread factory. “As I walked
in on my first day, I hated myself and hated America,”
recalls Manekshaw, “but I decided to hang in there
because I definitely saw some distinct advantage for
the children, and the one thing that really impressed
me was the fact that there was no corruption.”
Luckily since Manekshaw was working the 4:00 AM shift,
he would be done by 2 p.m. and that left him enough
time to interview with corporations. After a series
of interviews and rejections, a Fortune 100 company
in New Jersey finally hired him as salesman.† Residing
in a one bedroom run down apartment and supporting
a family of four on a meager salary was extremely
difficult, but through sheer dedication and hard work
Manekshaw concluded his first year in sales amongst
the top five producers nationwide and a rookie of
the year award to boot. He never looked back.
Although his corporate career was going well, like
most immigrants from India, Manekshaw had a burning
desire to be in business for himself and opened his
first Mexican cuisine restaurant Marita’s Cantina
in Pennsylvania in 1985 along with three partners
followed by a second one also in Pennsylvania in 1987.
In those days, Indian cuisine was just becoming known,
but though the food offered by most restaurants was
decent, the ambiance and cleanliness left a lot to
be desired.† Manekshaw saw the potential and in 1987
opened Palace of Asia along with his good friend and
Master Chef Sukhdev Kabow in Ft. Washington, Penn.†
“The restaurant took off instantaneously and revolutionized
the concept of Indian cuisine in the restaurant industry,
receiving several awards and accolades from each and
every food critic,” says Manekshaw.
In 1990, Nick and his partner opened another Palace
of Asia in New Jersey, which was also a smashing success.†
Since the Indian community was growing rapidly, Manekshaw
in partnership with Sukhdev Kabow, opened a huge Banquet
and Catering facility in Mercerville, New Jersey,
in 1995, which hosts weddings as well.
Manekshaw says he has come to the realization: “Whenever
any one says America is a land of opportunity he is
absolutely correct. Unlike in any other country, if
you are willing to work hard here, the rewards are
yours to keep.”
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End Of Article.....
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