SERIAL : 13 INDIAN IN COWBOY COUNTRY
THE INTERVIEW
“What, you resigned? What about your green card?” she asked, her voice turning uncommonly shrill.
“Oh, don’t worry about it. I’ll get it sooner or later. For now, I don’t have to work for that Pete or his gutless staff anymore. Come, let’s make some tea.”
As he put the kettle on, she came up behind him and hugged him.
“Now why would you do something so drastic, Satish?” she asked tenderly.
“Because, sweetheart, I don’t want to be at a company that condones such behavior, especially from its president,” he said, matching her singsong, tender tone, as if talking to a child.
“Be serious, Satish. This is no joke.”
“Seriously. This is no joke. I have seen enough prejudice and discrimination in my life. First, my grandparents had to leave Tamil Nadu because they were Brahmins. They dropped their last name because it denoted our caste. That did not help, so they came to Mumbai hoping for a better life.”
He paused, waiting for a response from Priya. She remained silent as she looked down at her task of cutting okra.
As he stirred the boiling pot with split peas, he continued. “Then my parents had to go through prejudice again in Mumbai because they were South Indians. This time they changed their last name to Sharma because it was common across most parts of India. We all got non-denominational first names that made our linguistic and ethnic origins impossible to trace, at least in India.”
He started at the lather forming in the pot. When it was about to overflow, he skimmed it and threw it away in the sink a spoonful at a time. After discarding the last spoonful, he reduced the flame. He watched the split peas in the pot dance from the bottom to the top, perceptibly changing their color and texture from solid, golden brown hemispheres to yellow platelets with serrated edges.
“Did you know that at the multinational company I worked for in Mumbai, we had three of everything? One for the European whites, one for Indian managers, and one for Indian staff. We had three lunchrooms, three sets of travel plans, and, for heaven’s sake, we even had three different toilets. Anyone who had any self-respect and dignity would have found this humiliating.”
Priya had finished cutting her vegetables, and she moved toward the range to take her turn at sautéing them. She nudged him aside and poured a few spoonfuls of oil into the pan. She added torn dried red chilies, mustard seeds, and other spices before the oil could heat up. He stood near the doorway and watched her.
As the pan of okra simmered down, she stepped back from the range. He came forward and poured into the pasty, yellow split peas a reddish-black concoction of boiled tomatoes with rasam powder, tamarind, and salt.
“I think you should call Tim and take back you resignation,” she said.
“No. You know I cannot do that. It’s done. It’s an irreversible action. It’s final! There’s no going back.”
“You have to,” she pushed.
“No, Priya. I came to this country because I believed it to be the last bastion of principles and equality. People would value me for my values and my work, and not the color of my skin or my ethnicity.”
“But, Satish, what about your green card?”
“It’s not worth it. If I have to fight back, I might as well go back to India and fight my battles. That’s my home turf, and I know the lay of the land better. Screw this place,” he said testily.
“Don’t get excited. Take it easy.” She tried to calm him. She filled a plate with vegetables and rice and poured some rasam on the rice. “Do you want some potato chips?” she asked.
“No, thanks,” he said as he poured some cold water into glasses, took them to the living room, and placed them on the end tables.
Priya soon joined him with two plates of food, both with potato chips. She smiled at him and said, “I know you are upset. But don’t show your anger at your food. You never eat rasam and rice without some potato chips, so I brought some for you. If you don’t want them, I’ll take them.”
Priya was right. He loved potato chips with rasam and he was glad that she added some. As they dug into the rasam, rice, okra, and potato chips, Priya asked, “Why don’t you play some music? Stan Getz?” She knew that it would soothe him.
In moments as the soft strumming of Charlie Byrd’s guitar began strumming the first chords of “Samba De Una Nota So” and a tenor sax joined in, he calmed down and began enjoying their joint culinary effort.
“This is great,” he said as he took another tablespoonful of an Indian version of Cajun gumbo – rice, rasam, beans, and fragmented potato chips for that added crunchiness in the otherwise semi-viscous mass.
They ate quietly as Brazilian music filled the still calm of the garage apartment.
“Do you realize that you have put our future in jeopardy, too?” she asked softly.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Satish, you know I love you and I would do anything for you, but without your green card my future in this country is in jeopardy, too.”
He did not say a word. He knew there was more to come.
She set her plate aside and continued. “I was hoping that we would get married after you got your green card.”
“Why did you not tell me this earlier?” he asked.
“I thought it was obvious. I did not think you would want to move back to India.”
As Astrud Gilberto sang the One Note Samba, he put his plate aside and turned to a distraught Priya. “Don’t you want to go back to India?” he asked.
“No, I absolutely don’t want to go back to India. I want to stay here, do my Ph.D, and raise my family here. I don’t want to go back,” she replied, close to tears.
“Sweetheart, I don’t see a life without you. If it’s important for you to stay here, I can look for a job at another company that will sponsor me for my green card,” he assured her.
“Be realistic,” she said. “In this economy? Oil companies are laying off thousands of people. Who would hire you at a time like this? Besides, you are technically out of status. You are required to leave the country immediately.”
He recognized the truth in Priya’s words. He remained quiet, thinking about his limited alternatives.
“What should I do?” he asked Priya.
Brushing back her welling tears with the back of her palm, she sniffed and said, “There’s only one thing you can do. You have to go back to Clark and get them to take back your resignation.”
He remained silent. He was not about to go back to the firm and beg them to take him back.
He argued, “Priya, even if Clark took back my resignation, it would stay on my records, and this is the end of my career at the firm. They’ll fire me the first chance they get. That, too, on their terms, not mine.”
“What would you rather have? No green card, head back home, leaving me behind? Or would you like to get your green card, get married, and settle here? And if you think your career is going nowhere, change jobs when you want to, but get your green card first.”
Priya had this uncanny ability to bring things into perspective very quickly. While he was prone to consider a situation logically, generate seemingly infinite alternatives, and slowly throw out unrealistic ones, she could intuitively bring things into focus faster than he could.
Over the past seventeen months, he had learned that her instincts were rarely wrong. Time and time again, he had quietly tested her intuitive conclusions with his slow, tedious ones and found that they were not too far apart. The processes were different but the conclusions were the same. He did not have time to go through his analysis and synthesis, so he conceded to her alternatives, with their obvious choice.
“The choice is clear, Priya. On one hand, I have no green card, I have to leave the country, and I may lose you. On the other hand, I get my green card, stay here, and continue to be with you. What do you think I will choose?” he teased, delicately wiping away a remnant of a tear from her cheek.
“I hope you choose to go back to India. Then I don’t have to deal with you and your impulsive acts,” she said, still distraught.
He hugged her, gently stroked her hair, and said softly, “It’s not going to be that easy to get rid of me, sweetheart. I’ll call Tim tomorrow and take my resignation back.”
She got up and walked to the kitchen, sniffing along the way. “Come, let’s clean the dishes,” she said.
It was about six thirty the next morning when the phone rang. Still in a deep slumber after a long night of discussing how to get his resignation back, Satish, without getting up, groped for the phone in the dark.
“Hello?”
“This is Tim,” said a familiar, raspy voice.
“Who?” asked a disoriented Satish as he tried to raise himself.
“This is Tim; I want you to bring your ass in my office by eight o’clock.”
“What?” he asked, still unable to comprehend the situation.
“I want to see you at eight o’clock. In my office. Bring your security badge.”
“Eight o’clock?”
“Yes, eight o’clock. In my office. Wake up. I gotta go. Be there,” he said, and before hanging up he added, “Wear a decent tie.”
Satish drowsily put the phone in its cradle and reluctantly got out of bed.
He was confused and nervous when he arrived at Clark’s parking lot fifteen minutes before his appointment. He walked hesitantly to the security device at the entrance to Tim’s office building. Till then, he had taken his entry into this building for granted, but today was different. The security card scanner was a threat.
He nervously swiped his card and waited for the tiny green bulb to light up, followed by the metallic sounds of locks unlatching. Nothing happened.
“What, you resigned? What about your green card?” she asked, her voice turning uncommonly shrill.
“Oh, don’t worry about it. I’ll get it sooner or later. For now, I don’t have to work for that Pete or his gutless staff anymore. Come, let’s make some tea.”
As he put the kettle on, she came up behind him and hugged him.
“Now why would you do something so drastic, Satish?” she asked tenderly.
“Because, sweetheart, I don’t want to be at a company that condones such behavior, especially from its president,” he said, matching her singsong, tender tone, as if talking to a child.
“Be serious, Satish. This is no joke.”
“Seriously. This is no joke. I have seen enough prejudice and discrimination in my life. First, my grandparents had to leave Tamil Nadu because they were Brahmins. They dropped their last name because it denoted our caste. That did not help, so they came to Mumbai hoping for a better life.”
He paused, waiting for a response from Priya. She remained silent as she looked down at her task of cutting okra.
As he stirred the boiling pot with split peas, he continued. “Then my parents had to go through prejudice again in Mumbai because they were South Indians. This time they changed their last name to Sharma because it was common across most parts of India. We all got non-denominational first names that made our linguistic and ethnic origins impossible to trace, at least in India.”
He started at the lather forming in the pot. When it was about to overflow, he skimmed it and threw it away in the sink a spoonful at a time. After discarding the last spoonful, he reduced the flame. He watched the split peas in the pot dance from the bottom to the top, perceptibly changing their color and texture from solid, golden brown hemispheres to yellow platelets with serrated edges.
“Did you know that at the multinational company I worked for in Mumbai, we had three of everything? One for the European whites, one for Indian managers, and one for Indian staff. We had three lunchrooms, three sets of travel plans, and, for heaven’s sake, we even had three different toilets. Anyone who had any self-respect and dignity would have found this humiliating.”
Priya had finished cutting her vegetables, and she moved toward the range to take her turn at sautéing them. She nudged him aside and poured a few spoonfuls of oil into the pan. She added torn dried red chilies, mustard seeds, and other spices before the oil could heat up. He stood near the doorway and watched her.
As the pan of okra simmered down, she stepped back from the range. He came forward and poured into the pasty, yellow split peas a reddish-black concoction of boiled tomatoes with rasam powder, tamarind, and salt.
“I think you should call Tim and take back you resignation,” she said.
“No. You know I cannot do that. It’s done. It’s an irreversible action. It’s final! There’s no going back.”
“You have to,” she pushed.
“No, Priya. I came to this country because I believed it to be the last bastion of principles and equality. People would value me for my values and my work, and not the color of my skin or my ethnicity.”
“But, Satish, what about your green card?”
“It’s not worth it. If I have to fight back, I might as well go back to India and fight my battles. That’s my home turf, and I know the lay of the land better. Screw this place,” he said testily.
“Don’t get excited. Take it easy.” She tried to calm him. She filled a plate with vegetables and rice and poured some rasam on the rice. “Do you want some potato chips?” she asked.
“No, thanks,” he said as he poured some cold water into glasses, took them to the living room, and placed them on the end tables.
Priya soon joined him with two plates of food, both with potato chips. She smiled at him and said, “I know you are upset. But don’t show your anger at your food. You never eat rasam and rice without some potato chips, so I brought some for you. If you don’t want them, I’ll take them.”
Priya was right. He loved potato chips with rasam and he was glad that she added some. As they dug into the rasam, rice, okra, and potato chips, Priya asked, “Why don’t you play some music? Stan Getz?” She knew that it would soothe him.
In moments as the soft strumming of Charlie Byrd’s guitar began strumming the first chords of “Samba De Una Nota So” and a tenor sax joined in, he calmed down and began enjoying their joint culinary effort.
“This is great,” he said as he took another tablespoonful of an Indian version of Cajun gumbo – rice, rasam, beans, and fragmented potato chips for that added crunchiness in the otherwise semi-viscous mass.
They ate quietly as Brazilian music filled the still calm of the garage apartment.
“Do you realize that you have put our future in jeopardy, too?” she asked softly.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Satish, you know I love you and I would do anything for you, but without your green card my future in this country is in jeopardy, too.”
He did not say a word. He knew there was more to come.
She set her plate aside and continued. “I was hoping that we would get married after you got your green card.”
“Why did you not tell me this earlier?” he asked.
“I thought it was obvious. I did not think you would want to move back to India.”
As Astrud Gilberto sang the One Note Samba, he put his plate aside and turned to a distraught Priya. “Don’t you want to go back to India?” he asked.
“No, I absolutely don’t want to go back to India. I want to stay here, do my Ph.D, and raise my family here. I don’t want to go back,” she replied, close to tears.
“Sweetheart, I don’t see a life without you. If it’s important for you to stay here, I can look for a job at another company that will sponsor me for my green card,” he assured her.
“Be realistic,” she said. “In this economy? Oil companies are laying off thousands of people. Who would hire you at a time like this? Besides, you are technically out of status. You are required to leave the country immediately.”
He recognized the truth in Priya’s words. He remained quiet, thinking about his limited alternatives.
“What should I do?” he asked Priya.
Brushing back her welling tears with the back of her palm, she sniffed and said, “There’s only one thing you can do. You have to go back to Clark and get them to take back your resignation.”
He remained silent. He was not about to go back to the firm and beg them to take him back.
He argued, “Priya, even if Clark took back my resignation, it would stay on my records, and this is the end of my career at the firm. They’ll fire me the first chance they get. That, too, on their terms, not mine.”
“What would you rather have? No green card, head back home, leaving me behind? Or would you like to get your green card, get married, and settle here? And if you think your career is going nowhere, change jobs when you want to, but get your green card first.”
Priya had this uncanny ability to bring things into perspective very quickly. While he was prone to consider a situation logically, generate seemingly infinite alternatives, and slowly throw out unrealistic ones, she could intuitively bring things into focus faster than he could.
Over the past seventeen months, he had learned that her instincts were rarely wrong. Time and time again, he had quietly tested her intuitive conclusions with his slow, tedious ones and found that they were not too far apart. The processes were different but the conclusions were the same. He did not have time to go through his analysis and synthesis, so he conceded to her alternatives, with their obvious choice.
“The choice is clear, Priya. On one hand, I have no green card, I have to leave the country, and I may lose you. On the other hand, I get my green card, stay here, and continue to be with you. What do you think I will choose?” he teased, delicately wiping away a remnant of a tear from her cheek.
“I hope you choose to go back to India. Then I don’t have to deal with you and your impulsive acts,” she said, still distraught.
He hugged her, gently stroked her hair, and said softly, “It’s not going to be that easy to get rid of me, sweetheart. I’ll call Tim tomorrow and take my resignation back.”
She got up and walked to the kitchen, sniffing along the way. “Come, let’s clean the dishes,” she said.
It was about six thirty the next morning when the phone rang. Still in a deep slumber after a long night of discussing how to get his resignation back, Satish, without getting up, groped for the phone in the dark.
“Hello?”
“This is Tim,” said a familiar, raspy voice.
“Who?” asked a disoriented Satish as he tried to raise himself.
“This is Tim; I want you to bring your ass in my office by eight o’clock.”
“What?” he asked, still unable to comprehend the situation.
“I want to see you at eight o’clock. In my office. Bring your security badge.”
“Eight o’clock?”
“Yes, eight o’clock. In my office. Wake up. I gotta go. Be there,” he said, and before hanging up he added, “Wear a decent tie.”
Satish drowsily put the phone in its cradle and reluctantly got out of bed.
He was confused and nervous when he arrived at Clark’s parking lot fifteen minutes before his appointment. He walked hesitantly to the security device at the entrance to Tim’s office building. Till then, he had taken his entry into this building for granted, but today was different. The security card scanner was a threat.
He nervously swiped his card and waited for the tiny green bulb to light up, followed by the metallic sounds of locks unlatching. Nothing happened.
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