Decades ago, one of the first Indian-Americans I met in the San Joaquin Valley city where I lived for a while was a man who was way older than me. He was a couple of years older than my father.
Back in the old country, a younger person like me would have addressed him as "uncle." Any older man is an uncle, and any older woman becomes an auntie. But, we met here in the US. So, "uncle" was not in the vocabulary of social interactions.
We called him Mr. G.
A fun-loving man, but Mr. G. closely guarded his personal life. I did come to learn a few things about Mr. G. He was working somewhere in Iraq in the early 1940s by when it was becoming clear that it was only a matter of time before the British abandoned the Subcontinent that they had colonized.
In 1947, the British drew in haste political borders that created India and Pakistan. Sindh, where Mr. G. was born and raised, now became a part of Pakistan.
Fortunately, Mr. G. was far away from the Subcontinent, and was not trapped in the violence of partition.
But, as a Hindu, Mr. G. faced a tough question: Because his home was now in Pakistan, which was explicitly carved out as a country for Muslims, did he want to claim Pakistan for his citizenship? Or, should he apply to become an Indian citizen?
He eventually got an Indian passport, though he continued to live outside India, in various countries throughout the Middle East.
From his stories, I understood that some of his favorites were Lebanon and Cypress--where he even owned a vacation home. I do not recall him ever talking about a home-base in India.
Much later in his life, Mr.G. immigrated to the US from Bahrain.
I was reminded of Mr. G. when I read that Dr. Raj Panjabi will be the next Senior Director for Global Health Security and Biodefense at the National Security Council.
This is the office that President tRump dissolved a year into his term because he was so convinced that there was nothing to worry about global biosecurity and pandemics, thereby leaving the country less prepared for Covid-19!
As always, I became curious with yet another Indian-American at such an important position. Could the last name mean that he or his people are from Punjab?
It turns out that Dr. Panjabi's coming-to-America story is not straightforward as one might imagine:
My family and I arrived in America 30 years ago after fleeing civil war in Liberia. A community of Americans rallied around my family to help us rebuild.
— Dr. Raj Panjabi (@rajpanjabi) February 9, 2022
From Liberia?
Fortunately, there is Wikipedia:
Panjabi's grandparents were refugees from Sindh Province following the British Partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, resettling in Mumbai and Indore in India. A generation later, Panjabi's parents migrated to West Africa, where Panjabi was born and raised in Monrovia, Liberia. After civil war broke out in Liberia in 1989, Panjabi, at age nine, and his family fled on a rescue cargo plane to Sierra Leone and eventually sought asylum in the United States, resettling initially with a host family in High Point, North Carolina.
What a story!
I am sure Mr. G. would have been elated with this news.
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