Thanksgiving

As badly as it started, this year Thanksgiving was far more fun than previous year. Graduate student council (GSC) at Stanford sponsors thanksgiving dinner (actually it should be called Thanksgiving meal as you can't serve a dinner at 12 noon, 2PM or 4 PM(the shifts they divided the meal serving)) for students (I have never attended this event before for various reasons) and I was offered to photograph the event on behalf of GSC (read: I will be paid for the deal). So I spent four hours photographing different people, OFFICIALLY. The term makes whole lot of difference in my approach towards people though it didn't make me any better photographer. I need to post at least one of the photos, so here it is (officially, I am not supposed to share these with anyone, not yet at least):

Anyway, the most interesting part of the day started after that event. I was invited to dinner by one of the friend. Her daughter, Amy is very fond of India and is making a career out of it. And I don't mean it in any crooked way. She is very serious about going to India and work there. She speaks pretty good hindi, watches bollywood movies and is taking classes of hindi literature. Thats not all, she is learning how to read and write Urdu! But thats the academic side of it. She knows and understands Indian culture and history very well too, better than quiet a lot of Indians. Its just great talking to her. But today she startled me by asking me about my last name in respect of my caste, like an average Indian. Can you imagine that? She has picked up the nasty Indian habits! She actually understand difference between Varna (वर्ण) and Jati (जाती).

Anyway, the discussions were pretty interesting. Amy's brother, a political science major, made the statement of the evening:

Indians in America are the new whites.

He compared Indians in America today to the Jews immigration during late nineteenth century and the way they got assimilated in American society. He compared Indians with other Asians and said that Indians are more easily assimilated in American society than Chinese, for example. Obviously we all disagreed at first, as Indians love to be in their well knitted society even in foreign land and inter-racial marriages aren't welcomed by the families. But, as he pointed out, the Indians are different from other ethnic groups in the way that they can easily get accustomed to/mingle with an American group as friends, if not necessarily get married. They have better language skills (read: Good in English). Their technical superiority is being acknowledged, making them a respected and desirable member in any educated society. Well those were good points and we didn't have arguments against them. No matter how we, Indians, view foreigners; those goras and kallus (at least the educated ones) are recognizing us as a welcomed member of society, just like Jews in America in late nineteenth century. I am not sure how long will we Indians take to recognize these changes and welcome them back.