"Bombay is my other country"

Two years ago, I received an email from a lady in Palo Alto. She’d read and loved my personal essay1 on my early impressions as a displaced desi in the US, the proverbial 2dhobi ka kutta, caught between ghar and ghat. In the most common version of this Hindi proverb the washerman’s dog goes hungry because people at home assume he’ll be fed at the waterfront, and people there assume he’ll be fed at home. That was the premise of my essay, which came from the same miserable wellspring of homesickness and confusion that became the fountainhead of a lot of my writing3 around that time.

After reading this lady’s email though, I was compelled to look at the other version of the saying: the dog —forever caught between two worlds, confused about where he truly belongs, who belongs neither here nor there but in a third, imaginary, place which exists only in his head— is fed 4twice. In her world, the dhobi’s dog is one lucky bugger.

“There is so much good in both countries… we are the lucky ones who get to experience the best of both these worlds in one lifetime,” this lady wrote in her email. “Very few people have our fortune. The US makes dreams come true, no matter where your roots are from.”

I wrote back, fighting her optimism and positivity with my sob stories of anxiety and frustration, and soon enough, we’d exchanged dozens of emails, which spilled into long conversations over beverages, some chilled, some steaming, and just like that, this stranger from Palo Alto became my friend.

Nishita is a physician who moved here in her early 20s, for her residency in 1996. One of the hallmarks of her brand of immigration was that she was already an American citizen (she was born in the US because her parents spent several years here, before eventually moving back to India) and didn’t have to deal with the convoluted American immigration system. A hefty third of my own immigrant angst comes from my visa-related woes, a shadow I’ve been trying to outrun for four years now.

“I had certain privileges that are undeniable,” she said, acknowledging the advantages that an American passport affords. “The only thing I was dealing with was a new country. No legalities, no paperwork, none of that. So that was the biggest privilege. I can’t deny it.”

The downside, she reasons, of coming here as a doctor who dove straight into a demanding residency program was that she missed out on the fun that immigrant students have here before they enter the workforce. “Undergraduate schooling just immerses you so beautifully into the system… you’re with the people, you form a whole new circle of friends…”

Initially, she lived in Cincinnati, Ohio, after which she moved to DC, to be closer to her sister who was there. Also because - “I just wanted a bigger city.” By the time I got acquainted with her, she’d long since made California her home.

Hearing Nishita speak about her early days here was like watching a movie from 30 years ago. The broadminded, blunt, Bombay-bred heroine arrives in the United States to pursue a career in medicine. At first, she misses her friends with whom she’d enjoy going out in Bombay —(“it’s alive,” she said about the city at a different point in the conversation)— but the initial loneliness of her empty American apartment is quickly replaced by the one thing she values most: freedom.

“I got a sports car within the first month! I would drive for hours and hours… what I’d always imagined, open roads and driving into the sunset. That was one of my key dreams. Which I could actually do here,” she said. “I cannot tell you the importance I put on freedom, to be able to spread my wings and fly. That doesn’t mean I don’t love people but I need space to fly. I’m a Sagittarian… we take up space. And that’s the first thing the US allowed me to do — lots of freedom with lots of financial stability.”

Freedom also meant not having to deal with endless social obligations that life in India is replete with —(“did I really need to keep going to so many people’s weddings… on a Tuesday night?”)— and escaping the psychological encroachment of one of the most dangerous, multi-tongued organisms in Indian society: the extended family.

“Almost everybody’s misread me at multiple points in my life and given me advice… I’ve never enjoyed that,” she said, in the manner of all fiercely independent women who find wings here. “Because phone calls were so expensive, there was no advice. I made my own mistakes, I made my own victories, I was my own person here… when you come here on your own, with nothing tying you down, with nothing anchoring you, the beauty is you get to explore who you are. I came as a free agent (as opposed to someone who comes here through marriage, like her sister did). So it was a lot more defining. It teaches you a lot about yourself.”

Early on, she tried to scout other Indians to befriend, but quickly discovered that she didn’t quite fit in with them, in large part because she didn’t relate to a lot of the things they bonded over, for example, the whole temples-festivals-pujas vibe that many Indians who live abroad embrace in a bid to build community. “I didn’t do all of that in Bombay. I didn’t even have a huge Indian wardrobe… I just never did. So I thought - ‘why am I changing my entire personality to fit into this mold here?’ I then switched to hanging out with people who see the world the way I do, which is a very global way of looking at things. It wasn’t based on religion.”

She also came to the conclusion that Bombay ≠ India. She spoke of Bombay’s pace, pulse, spirit and cosmopolitan culture with proprietary affection, likening it to New York City. I’m inclined to agree with her. I think both cities have their worst side on full display -congestion, filth, rodents- and their best side hidden deep inside people’s lived experience, in their hearts and souls. Just recently I told an American friend that Mumbai is like New York × Los Angeles × 1,000 × tuberculosis. I told someone else that Mumbai is to India what America is to the world, in that it’s a magnet for ambitious folk seeking professional opportunities, and is therefore diverse and an identity unto itself.

“Bombay is just such an integral part of my identity… Bombay is my other country,” Nishita said. “I don’t identify with the rest of India, I never have.”

When I asked her how soon after she left Bombay did the United States start feeling like home, she said, “I think I really felt at home within the very first year…” While she does have tremendous admiration for American values like meritocracy and capitalism, her reason for feeling at home here so fast has everything to do with her thirst for autonomy. “I think what home means to me is just freedom — making my own decisions, my own choices, just being me.” Later in the conversation she said, “I think it’s the independence that made me assimilate…”

Speaking of assimilation, she remembers visiting the US embassy, in a neighborhood called Breach Candy in Bombay, just a year after she’d moved to the US. She was there for some passport renewal related formalities.

“In the old picture in my passport, I wore a salwar kameez and had long hair. And in the new picture I wore a t-shirt and had short hair. Not that I didn’t wear t-shirts and jeans previously, but it just so happened that in the old picture I was in a salwar kameez. As for the short hair, yes, it was definitely an American hairstyle. The guy at the embassy looks at me and goes, ‘wow, one year and you’ve already changed… you’ve already assimilated.’”

His comment, she reasons in hindsight, was most likely meant to be a compliment, but at the time it certainly gave her pause.

“I’ve never left my personality. I’m obviously more mature and more thoughtful, just from age, but I am the same person that I was in Bombay 30 years ago.”