What do you think of this story? My kitsch is their cool!
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I remember the old smugglers underwear.
When I left India there are nearly two decades in America, my mother bent all the spices that I might need in my underwear. Turmeric, cumin, green cardamom pods little-all carefully packed between layers of underwear, socks and computer manuals. I was not alone. I met Indians who smuggled mango, homemade pickles and ready to fry puris stuffed with peas. In those days before 9 / 11, customs officials were not very interested in me, a young, single, dark man with a busier world. They (and their sniffer dogs) were much more concerned with middle-aged Indian women to visit their son. They were rummaging through their luggage, looking for contraband and mangoes gourds.
Fast forward 20 years.
My friends and I walk from a Fremont Indian cinema on an evening sweet California. The latest Bollywood opened the same day she did in Mumbai. At the intermission (for Bollywood films should have an intermission), you can get samosas and chaat with your popcorn and sodas. We go shopping in the Indian market off the main street. It's Sunday evening. All stores in the mall are closed, except for this one. Lit by fluorescent lights unflattering, its shelves are stacked with all sorts of things lentils, ready-to-cook packets of saag paneer, ayurvedic ointments hair, even chocolate biscuits Bourbon (Bourbon no real in them) that I remember my childhood in India. Then we bicker Indian restaurant to go for dinner. Do we want North India? South India? We settle for a buffet with both.
What happened?
Well, we did. There are now 2.57 million Indians in the United States, according to the American Community Survey U.S. Census Bureau. Therefore, it is one of the fastest growing ethnic groups. The Indians are well off in general. Median family income exceeds $ 69,000. The Indians are educated, mostly. Sixty-six percent have at least a college degree. The post-1965 boom immigrants, which led to a drastic change in U.S. laws on who could enter the country, was followed by the dot-com boom. In his novel The Bride Tree, Bharati Mukherjee describes how "a fog of South Asian immigrants in America slid." When the chronicle of Silicon Valley is written by some of the 21st century, F. Scott Fitzgerald, it could well be called she wrote, "The Great Gupta. "
India is everywhere. It is in the lists of the Booker Prize, spelling bees and specially-for-you treats nuclear. It is in the batter chicken tikka masala Sukhi homecooked at Whole Foods. It is in the aerobics classes and Bhangra remixes of Britney. Newsweek has called on Southeast Asian "new American Masala." Five hundred years after Columbus thought he had discovered the Indians, we are really found.
And I'm not sure how I feel about it.
When I arrived in the United States, the Americans interrogated me about this "point on the forehead." Now, Madonna wears a bindi. Bollywood Hollywood takes intrigues (for example, two or three to a three-hour movie). Now, the Kronos Quartet reinterpreted Bollywood composer RD Burman. Birthday cards are reproducing ancient Indian kitsch matchbook covers. Close-fitting T-shirts worn by gay guys in the Castro called "San Francisco" in Devnagari script. There are even classes in the assessment of Bollywood in the universities. I became their kitschy cool.
Of course, not everything has been alchemized cool. My big fat Indian wedding could be hot ("I want one," a gay man with a Southern accent told me to my neighborhood bar lesbians, while sipping a cocktail sweet), but this does not mean the driver Indian taxi, the 7 / 11 clerk or merchant Gujarati are no more acceptable.
Our Krishnas.
Posted on May 8, 2011.
