When a family took their newly married daughter to India, her American bridegroom won everyone’s hearts by doing ‘pranam’ to the elders and acting more dutiful than most Indian grooms!

Yet another young Caucasian who accompanied his fiancée’s family to India for their wedding awed the entire extended family by insisting on sweeping the floor that was to be decorated with rungoli. He had no princely ‘damad’ attitude and endeared himself to everyone with his hands-on informality. While matrimonial ads and wedding fairs still hope to find the ideal spouse from the same region and community, many Indian parents have also seen weddings within the community that have not turned out happily. They are more willing to be more open-minded about their children’s choices, be it from a different region of India or a different race altogether.

So are Indian immigrants finally becoming American? Observes Pandya, “More than becoming Americanized, I think the fear is gone. The very first generation that came was very fearful of western culture. They were trying to guide their children very strictly, because they didn’t know what was out there. As their comfort level has increased, they have begun to let their guard down.”

The story of Ajit and Lata Mody of New York illustrates how immigrants negotiate their way through two cultures and pick the best of both. Mody came to study mechanical engineering at Pratt in 1968, and went on to become an engineer with the city of New York. In 1990, aware of the burgeoning South Asian population, the couple turned entrepreneurs and opened Rajbhog Sweets.

The Modys raised their two sons Sanjiv and Sachin here: the boys went on American colleges and non-Indian wives while still retaining their Indian culture and connections. The closeness between parents and children remains, with not even a day passing by without frequent phone calls.

Would Mody have been a very different parent had be lived in India? “Yes, because the surroundings are diehard and customary and people have to stay within the boundaries,” he says. “Here your next door neighbor could be Spanish, Greek or Italian, and when you see other people, you learn something and go through a real practical life change where you start adjusting your thinking and your lifestyle. It’s not like back home where you live always with the same group of people.”

Television and print media also have an influence and then, he says, gradually you figure out the right way to live in a world which is getting smaller and smaller because of globalization. Although belonging to a vast Gujarati clan where 60 immediate family members can turn up for a get-together, Sanjiv and Sachin turned tradition on its head by marrying Caucasian women. Were there expectations that they would marry Gujarati brides? Says Sachin, “Initially yes. When I got married five years ago, there wasn’t such a big Indian population in the schools I went to and where we lived. So my parents came to the understanding that so long as we were happy, so be it.”
Mody says, “Initially it was not easy, but we decided why not see to the happiness of our children rather than enforcing our ideas on them? Once the children are grown, it’s their lives.” Both daughters-in-laws, Suzanne and Suzy, have picked up some Gujarati, participate in cultural events and have adapted to the Indian culture.
Says Mody, “We participate in each other’s festivals, their families are happy and so are we. Both sides are happy because without parental blessing I don’t think any marriage can survive ideally.”

In a way, Sanjiv and Sachin, with degrees in accounting and electrical engineering from prestigious universities, have paid the supreme compliment to their parents by giving up their jobs in Corporate America to tend to the traditional business that started out as a mom and pop venture. They’ve taken the all-Indian mithai shop and turned it into a corporate semi-mechanized business.

Says Sachin, “Our parents put a lot of hard work into creating it and as we were growing up we often spent the summers helping them out in the business. Basically it became a part of our blood.” They’ve used their American education and know how to mechanize the sweets business and take it national, distributing in 40 states.
The modern machinery for meatballs now churns out gulab jamuns after Mody modified it to fit their needs for producing ethnic food. It’s almost a metaphor for immigrant life, which has to be retooled to succeed in America. Says Mody, “Basically when you come to America or any foreign country, you have to modify your life to local norms, be it practical daily life, married life or business.”

He believes the young student who came here 30 years ago is very different from the man he is today. Previously, he says, it was a diehard attitude of “I’m perfectly right and you’re perfectly wrong,” but age and experience have taught him to see both sides of the picture. This nuanced thinking of allowing space and respecting opinions has resulted in a happy family life.

While the early Indian immigrants from the 1960’s and 1970’s may have clashed with their children on career choices and marriage plans — or lack of them — or falling in love with non-Indians, the children of the new immigrants wrestle with some new issues.

Satya Chheda, who grew up in Springfield, Ohio, teaches social studies at the 9th grade level in New York, about five classes a day totaling 170 students. Since two of the classes she teaches are ESL classes, the majority of her students are South Asian, newer immigrants from Punjab region in India and Pakistan and Bangladesh. She points out that the parents who have lived here longer are more in touch with the education system, have better English language skills and so are able to be involved with the school. The new immigrants generally don’t speak English and mostly don’t attend parent teacher conferences.

One thing she’s noticed is that the children of new immigrants have a community in school, with many children from similar ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds and similar experiences to share. She recalls growing up in a small, largely white community in Ohio: “When I grew up the other Indian families were richer families and my family was middle to lower class.”

Most inner-city immigrant families live in under-resourced neighborhoods with overcrowded schools which are not always culturally sensitive to the needs of South Asian youth.For these children, life is very different from that of immigrant children living in suburban palaces, where the anonymity of the suburbs facilitates assimilation.

While children of earlier immigrants had no choice but to immerse with the mainstream, because they were so few in numbers, the burgeoning South Asian population means there is critical mass: “In urban settings the larger numbers translate to more support for maintaining the culture and so a greater expectation on the part of parents that the children will maintain the culture,” says Seecharran. “There’s not so much pressure for young people to assimilate, there’s support for their Indianness, if you will.” Having a large community can be both a blessing and a hindrance to assimilation.

But it also means their experiences are much more complex, because when they are thrust into urban settings, they are also exposed to the negative influences of drugs and gangs, creating greater conflict with parents. In her work, Seecharran sees the communication gap between parents and children: “The lives of these young people are so complex. They are struggling with their identity in the school system or with the difficulties of getting a summer job. They have pressures to fit in, pressures to have the latest fashion. All these factors create a very difficult emotional life for young people.”
Immigrant parents, on the other hand, have straightforward goals of economic well-being and expect their children to do well in school and get a well-paying career and there’s friction when they feel they are getting side-tracked.

Says Seecharran, “The kids really feel that they are not heard by their parents and that some parents can’t even begin to understand that their children may have an emotional or psychological life that warrants support. Children often feel they cannot discuss their lives with their parents.” SAYA’s program director Deepali Bagati has seen enough of the lives of her own extended family in the United States to realize that the assimilation happens at different levels: “With any immigrant group that comes in, there is a certain number of years that have to go by for acculturation to happen, and sometimes some groups tend to hold on to their culture, because they think they will lose it if they become all-American.”

She adds, “At the end of the day, they are living here and they are American.. The people who came in the 60’s and 70’s were generally from the affluent section of society and so their struggles were very different from the struggles the parents of the young people who come here are facing on a day-to-day basis. So when you’re trapped at that level what do you hold on to? Your culture and your tradition. I think that’s what grounds you.”

Deepa Patel is one young woman who grew up as the child of new immigrants and has seen the ups and downs of the immigrant life. Her mother first came here as a nurse and then called the rest of the family. But making a living was hard and her father could not find a job so the children were sent to India to relatives.

Her father found work with the city eventually and called the children back to New York. She says, “Yes, my parents are definitely very traditional. My entire family, my uncles and aunts they all came in the 80’s, and I can say that each and every one of my family who is in America is much more traditional than the families that are in India.”
Now a student at St. John’s University, she points out though her father may be traditional, he encourages her dreams of one day joining the United Nations. For her and for many other children of new immigrants, SAYA! has become the bridge between home and the world. She says: “It has made a big difference in my life. There are many South Asian youth who didn’t have a place to go and SAYA! helps them to progress in life.”

She’s started a leadership program called Awaaz at SAYA! which organizes social activities for South Asian teens: “A lot of the families are lower middle class and they do have financial problems so it’s really a place for the youth to get away and our main goal is for them to have fun.”
The dynamics between Indian parents and their American children continue to change and evolve as each finds their own comfort level in America. Satya Chheda, for one, has long since reconciled with her roots and in fact is keen to put her children in closer touch with the Indian culture than her parents had.

“Being raised in America, they will already be exposed to the influences in school,” she says. “ I want them to learn a language, Hindi or Gujarati, because I don’t speak my own language and I can’t communicate with my grandparents and my relatives in India and that’s really frustrating.” She also plans to take them to India more often and get them involved in community events so that they have a full identity and an appreciation of their Indian culture too.

Loss and gain. That’s what the immigrant experience is all about. The first generation was enmeshed in the struggle of making it in America, often changing their names and beliefs to fit in. Now their children have the luxury of choices, of creating their own template for what it means to be Indian American.