Visible and yet invisible

Soon after reading the news item that an Indian-American woman had been appointed to lead Oregon State University, I wrote an email welcoming her to the state.  I wrote there that "it absolutely gladdens my heart that a fellow Indian-American will lead and manage the state's largest university."

Within minutes a reply from her appeared in my inbox.  Truly busy people do have time for everything because they know how to manage really well the same 24 hours that all of us have.

With Oregon Institute of Technology having an Indian-American president, it would have been three public universities with my fellow immigrants at the lead, if only the presidential appointment had not derailed at my former employer. 

When my old university appointed an Indian-American as its president, I tweeted about it, with sarcastic humor, of course:

#WesternOregonUniversity laid off a balding and graying middle-aged #IndianAmerican professor and has hired another balding and graying middle-aged Indian-American professor as its president.
So, are we even now? 🤣https://t.co/XPdMrzfWy5#HigherEd #Academia #Layoff @wounews

— Sriram K (@congoboy) April 21, 2022

That appointment was short-lived.  I suspect that the newly hired man smelled something rotten and withdrew.

The public often equates Indian-Americans with tech-support, convenience stores, and motels, and often forgets that even the Vice President is one of us.  The public doesn't always connect the dots when their health care specialists or professors and even entertainers are Indian-Americans.  I suppose we have flown under the radar because there is no history of white supremacists ill-treating us, unlike the history with other non-whites: Blacks, Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, Filipinos, Koreans, Vietnamese, Cambodians, ... 

Our arrival here in America was made possible by all those other non-white groups, especially Blacks and Chinese.

The story begins in 1965:

Inspired by the Civil Rights revolution in American society, the 1965 Immigration Act explicitly abolished the discriminatory national origins quotas that had regulated entrance into the country since the 1920s. It explicitly prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, sex, nationality, place of birth, or place of residence in the U.S. government’s decisions to issue immigrant visas. Instead, the law established a new system preference system based on professional status and family reunification.

America was now legally welcoming non-white immigration.  A radical departure from the previous centuries!

When Congress and President Lyndon Johnson enacted that sweeping immigration reform, they didn't really think that brown people would rush to America.  But, hey, what's good for white migration is good for brown migration too, right?

In the 1990s, Silicon technology was altering the global economic landscape at warped speeds, and the population from India flooded in; a lot more would have come here if not for the restricted number of work visas.

But, a new kind of problem has popped up.  Congress restricts the number of Indian immigrants who can become permanent residents in America.

The U.S. offers roughly a hundred and forty thousand employment-based green cards a year, a quota that covers both the person sponsored by an employer and their family members. But, by law, no more than seven per cent of nationals from a particular country are supposed to receive employment-based green cards each year. The caps were established to support diversity within the immigrant pool. Immigrants from Mexico, China, and the Philippines also far exceed their country limits, and have longer wait times because of the backlog. But because of the sheer number of Indians applying for employment-based green cards—as of September, 2021, eighty-two per cent of the petitions in the employment-based backlog were filed by Indians—their wait times are longer than that of any other immigrant group.

Many are, therefore, on work visas forever.  It is a “bonded labor situation” because the visa holders in the backlog are allowed to renew their visas in perpetuity, while their permanent residency is delayed.

That itself is a lesser problem compared to the ones faced by the children of the "bonded labor" visa workers.  If the children were not born here but came here with their parents, then into adulthood they lose their standing as dependents to be legally in this country.  "Once in college, they are usually ineligible for either in-state tuition or federal financial aid, and required to pay the fees of an international student."

This group of children, who came here legally, call themselves "Documented Dreamers or Visa Dreamers."  It is not a handful; "there are more than a quarter of a million young adults."

Indian-Americans flying under the radar means that the Documented Dreamers problem is also invisible.

This is merely one of the many problems in the highly messed up immigration system.  Every politician knows about the urgency for a comprehensive immigration reform.  But, any talk of immigration riles up the white supremacist base of the GQP.

I wonder if the political climate in America will ever change for the better in order to have rational and constructive discussions and policies on the issues that impact our collective future: Immigration, climate change, structural racism, ...

Do you hear me sneeze?

Finally, the rains stopped.  The sun and warmth have arrived as if responding to our calendars that it is now officially summer.

The warmth has also triggered an explosion of grass pollen that was otherwise kept under check by the cooler temperature and precipitation.  The count jumped to way, way, way off the chart:

Source

The fortnight ahead will be rough because my body will react to unknown foreign agents entering my system. 

I have had to deal with grass pollen ever since I moved to Oregon.

My first spring in this state, I started sniffling in response to all the pollen.  The season ended and the sniffling also did.

The second spring was worse.  I suppose that my body had by then figured out that the grass pollen was one dangerous enemy and was all set to defend itself.  But, I hadn't received that memo.  So, there I was enjoying the river and the walk as I always did.

I sneezed. My nose was runny.  I took an anti-allergy pill.  Showered and ate.  I was off to bed.

Slowly, the heaviness in my chest increased.  It was as if somebody was systematically increasing the weight on my chest and squeezing it.  My breathing produced a cacophony of wheezing sounds. 

I sat up. It didn't work.

I sat in an incline. It didn't work.

I stood up and walked around. It didn't help.

I was off to the emergency room in the middle of the night.

Even as I waited for a doctor to examine me, I noticed that my breathing was becoming less difficult.  The ER doctor explained that the highly filtered air that circulated in the hospital made it easy for my lungs.  And then handed me an inhaler and showed me how to use it if I experienced such tightness again.

Over the years, I have become smarter and carefully scan reports of pollen levels.  Like the chart above.  When the levels are high, which often is also when the days are simply gorgeous, I have to restrain myself from being outside a lot.  Such a controlled exposure to the pollen is infinitely better than the feeling of elephants walking on my chest. And I rarely ever use the inhaler.

During a sabbatical stay in India, I realized that I didn't have an inhaler with me.  A moment of panic.  My security blanket was not with me.  What if I needed to use one to drive those elephants away when traveling to one of the smoggiest places in India--Delhi.  My friend, a physician, handed me a brand new one.  What an awesome gift that was!  Thankfully, I did not use it even once during the three months.

Allergies are not new to me.  (Most people find me to be allergic to their minds, but that calls for a different post!)   At the 30th high school reunion, some of us allergy sufferers wondered if our systems had been weakened as a result of growing up in a mining/industrial town.

I suppose the body's response to allergens is different from how it reacts to living organisms that enter our bodies.  When a virus enters the system, the body fights it, yes, but at the same time learns how to protect itself from future attacks.  However, it appears that my system has not learnt how to deal with grass pollen.

Every day of our life is another day of victory over all kinds of attempts to kill us.  It is a constant struggle to postpone that inevitable finality.  The story of humans on this planet has been one of systematically fending off various ailments that routinely troubled people's lives in the past.  Thanks to the accumulated wisdom over the centuries, we live long lives now,  Such long lives that many countries are struggling to figure out how to take care of the aged, whose population is rapidly increasing all around the world.

As much as I complain about the grass pollen allergy, I am glad we live in a much better world now.  Further, as Nietzsche said, what doesn't kill me makes me stronger!

A view of the power station complex at Neyveli, 2002

Summertime ... and the livin' is easy

Sunrise: 5:29 am
Sunset: 8:59 pm

Add to that the additional minutes of the early light before the sunrise, and the twilight after the sun goes down.

The longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere.

It is summer solstice.

Source

Of course, I am on a permanent vacation after my former employer laid me off.  But, hey, summer is summer whether or not I am employed ;)

Down under in Australia, where my brother lives, it is the winter solstice.  He is perhaps delighted that the shortest day of the year is history, and from now on the days will get only longer and longer.

When we learnt about seasons and about earth's tilt, it was merely an intellectual idea for me.  I suppose that might have been in the 8th or 9th grade.  It was mere textbook knowledge because in the real world, in Neyveli, seasons did not change dramatically the way the book said happened because of the tilt. 

Neyveli is about 11 degrees north of the equator.  Grandmas' villages, where we spent our summer vacations, were further south at about 9 degrees north of the equator.  The four seasons that I knew and experienced in all these places were hot, hotter, hottest, and rainy, which did not match with winter, spring, summer, and fall ;)

As kids, we didn't care.  The real difference was between school days and holidays.  During the summer vacation, life was about climbing up mango and tamarind trees, or biking all over the place, or playing cricket or badminton, or fighting with my brother while doing any of the previously listed activities, or simply doing nothing.

It has been decades of living far away from the old country.  Just a few miles up the road is a sign along the interstate freeway that notes it is halfway between the equator and the north pole.  After having acclimated to this mid-latitude, it now seems to me that there are only two seasons in the old country: A long HOT season, and rains during the other season!

The change in seasons here in Oregon, on the other hand, well, it is magical.

The cold, damp, and dark months of winter yield to spring when green shoots and flowers appear.  And then summer explodes around the Fourth of July.

When summer comes, the endless days seem to go on for ever and ever and ever.  In a short while, we begin to complain about the heat.  We turn the air conditioners on.  We search for relief in the rivers and lakes.  We flee to the coast, seeking refuge by the cold waters of the Pacific Ocean.

Just when it seems like we can't take the heat anymore, the cooling arrives.  We begin to appreciate why fall is just about everybody's favorite season.  We catch our breath. 

The rains begin.

We embrace the first few rains.  A long-lost friend has returned.  And then the rains keep coming. And coming. The days get shorter and colder and darker.

We do this year after year.

May we live through a lot more solstices!