One day, in my life in California, when I was working as a transportation planner, the secretary buzzed and said that I had a call.
In an unmistakable Indian accent, he introduced himself as Kris, and that he was a professor at the local university. He called to appreciate my commentary in the newspaper.
In that short phone call, he invited us over for dinner.
It turned out that Kris was an an Americanized name. He was Venkatakrishna. He and his wife, Kirsten, were much older than me, almost as old as my parents.
Kris was delighted that a younger Indian immigrant was writing commentaries in the paper. He wanted me to join him at the university as a colleague, and even introduced me to a couple of people to explore if I could at least teach as an adjunct. Nothing worked out. He was more disappointed than I was. If memory serves me well, Kris unexpectedly died before my return to academe.
Kris was a strict vegetarian, but not a cook. Kirsten was a good cook. She made idlis for him and froze them in packets. All Kris had to do whenever he wanted to eat idlis was take a packet from the freezer and microwave the idlis.
Kirsten made plenty of other Indian dishes too. Including sambhar for the idlis! And chicken tikka masala for her sons. And a whole bunch of Danish delicacies.
Yes, Danish.
The two of them met in Denmark where he had been as a graduate student, and the couple made America their home.
I was reminded of Kris and Kirsten when I read this memoir essay about an Indian father and a Puerto Rican/Italian-American mother.
In 1979, when Loretta and Roop were dating, he’d take her to restaurants in Jackson Heights, in Queens, where many working-class immigrants lived upon arriving in the US. The aromas, colors, tastes and textures that flowed out of storefronts from merchants selling Indian goods intoxicated my mother, and piqued her interest in Indian culture.
Imagine that! Forty years ago, a young man from India going out with a young Puerto Rican woman. Perhaps a rare thing even now?
The author continues with anecdotes. I love this one after the young bride "failed" in her attempt to make a chicken curry with coconut milk:
It was an embarrassing moment for my insecure mother, as the unforgiving wives and girlfriends she had cooked for reveled in her failure. “So, how does it feel to be marrying a foreigner?” one of them said to Roop. “No, we are the foreigners,” he said, referring to himself and the entire dinner party of Indian immigrants, and defending my mother.
That is something!
I hope that President Biden will make more such immigrant stories possible. After all, these stories are possible only in America.
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