Viral Kapadia, 21. (Photo: Courtesy, Viral Kapadia)

India, the country where I have spent, lived, and experienced a large part of my childhood, begins to fade into a distant memory today as I near the completion of my 12th year in America. Turning 21 this year, I feel like the Indian culture, the traditions, and people are still a very engrained part of my life.

Coming to America with my parents and younger brother was a risk we took that could have led to very perilous ramifications since we left everything in India, and were making a new beginning in our lives.

I still remember looking out from the window of the Lufthansa Boeing 747 jet as we touched down in the United States. My first sight of this wonderful country was the shimmering ocean meeting the coast, which was lined by a highway with cars zooming by, just like I had seen in the movies. As we landed at JFK Airport in New York, we had left India forever with a one-way ticket, and there was going to be no looking back after that.

My first day in school was a very pretentious one with the other students being critical of my clothes and my “Indian” ways. Standing up to speak in class and saying gum instead of glue were just some of the anomalies I made while adjusting to this new world.

Today, looking back on those days, I realize the risk that my parents took by coming to America without knowing about what we would do once we got here. However, they still took the chance for a better future, and for that I am very proud.

Growing up through the years as an Indian American, and having lived in both cultures, I feel that I have a strong

understanding of fusing the two together. Adjusting to this

new culture obviously also brought along many contradictions and cultural norms that I did not understand at the time.

One of the first things that struck me was the common use of the terms white, black and brown to refer to people. The

first time I heard people being referred to as colors; it perplexed me.

As we know, India is a nation that comprises many different cultural segments, such as Gujaratis, Bengalis, Punjabis, and many more, but none of them is referred to by color even though people from certain parts of the country tend to have darker skin than the others or lighter skin then others. Even to this day, I feel that referring to a person as a color is morally wrong, and blacks should be referred to as African Americans, and whites as Caucasians, and Indians as Asians. The racial and cultural waning glass barriers that still exist in American society are ones that immigrants have to face as a reality.

Within three years of coming to the United States, my family decided to make a trip to India to visit our family and friends. It was this trip of mine to India that threw me into a complete tumult. I came to visit India with the impression that life would remain as it was three years ago before I left, and it would be easy to adjust. On the contrary, things had changed very much, and adjusting became extremely arduous. I did not feel like we could get back to the ways of India, and many saw it as arrogance, but the truth was that it was not arrogance, but just an environment that was difficult to revert to.

One of the most common traits of an NRI is always carrying and drinking a Bisleri or another mineral water. The food we eat and the restaurants we eat at is another example where NRIs tend to be very careful, and having to think twice about places where you used to eat earlier creates a feeling of alienation that never existed before.

It were things such as these and many others that made me realize how distant we had become from the normal things of India by going to the United States, and this could never

change. The ‘going home’ feeling that I had before leaving from New York, was not the kind of feeling I had about India close to the end of my trip there. In fact, at that point I felt, going

back to the U.S. was actually going back home. Upon

returning to the U.S., I felt very confused as to where I

actually belonged.

Today, I am a junior in a college in Greater Boston, and I feel that I know my culture and traditions very well. Maybe I feel this way because I had spent the early part of my life in India, but I know friends who were born in the U.S. and are just as “tuned in” as I am with their Indian side as they are assimilated into American culture.

As a result of having spent the last four months in London for a semester abroad, and seeing the British culture, I can definitely say that my ability to assimilate into a new environment has grown very much. London is an extremely cosmopolitan city, very similar to New York, and is very transcended by Indian culture, food, and movies, and perhaps that integration will also come to American cities like New York preserving the Indian culture.

Perhaps, having lived for a number of years in India, and then coming to the United States, has given me an understanding and made it easier for me to keep in connection with both sides of my background.

I strongly believe that the future will bring a great amount of change, and as Indian Americans assimilate further into American culture, it will be very important to see how the third generation will relate to their cultural and ancestral background of India.

As an Indian American, I feel that I have the best of both places. Michael Paquette, a columnist, sums it up well by

saying, “A foot in both places, Indian Americans say their deep devotion to India does not come at the expense of their love for America.”