From Poor Immigrant to MIT Graduate

I was born in Bombay (now Mumbai), India, but we moved to the United States when I was 2 1/2 years old.

While my parents were relatively well off in India, in America they were poor. Due to his deep accent and his unfamiliarity with American ways, my father had a hard time finding a decent job. So the early years of my life here in America were rough.

We started off in a one bedroom apartment in a working class neighborhood. It was on the bottom floor of a three family house. My Mom got on her hands and knees and scoured out the grime when we moved in.

I remember sleeping on a mattress on the floor and sticking up pictures of Bugs Bunny on the wall. When my brother was born, it got quite crowded. At least we had access to the back garden.

Fortunately, by the time my brother was two, we were able to move to the three bedroom right above us. Because it was on the second floor, we had a balcony and stairs to the garden.

My highschool graduation photo — yes, I wore those glasses. The blacony is right outside my bedroom and I loved it.

My bedroom was the one with access to this. It became a little slice of heaven for me. I was a thoughtful, peace-loving child and this became my retreat.

The size of the garden allowed my Mom to grow vegetables, which she shared with neighbors and friends, and mint which she sold to the local Indian market to help pay for groceries.

Because my parents were Indian and I had a vaguely British accent, the other children weren’t friendly when I was in nursery school. The teachers were kind to me though. I remember that.

In grade school, children Mom packed my lunches since we were vegetarian and I couldn’t eat the meat that was served in the cafeteria. So people thought I was a bit odd. If you’ve ever seen the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding, you’ll get it.

Ironically, many of my classmates were children of Greek immigrants, since many of them lived in Astoria, which has a large Greek community. But while they were used to “odd” foods, they all ate meat.

“How can you be strong if you don’t have meat?” one girl asked me. She was actually concerned for my health, not unkind.

In fact, to be fair — very few of them were unkind. Many were friendly, but my father and my own personality made it hard for me to make friends.

Mom and I in India. She missed it dreadfully but she made the best the situation, quickly becoming part of the community.

My mother was gregarious and easily assimilated with our neighbors. She made friends not only with other Indians on our street, but also the beautiful Pakistani woman with four children that I liked to play with, and also the white women, most of whom were also immigrants from places like Greece or Italy or Ireland or Russia.

The women would gossip together while leaning back on the garden wall in front of the apartment across the street from our house. They exchanged recipes and shared concerns, while also keeping a close eye on their children playing. Misbehavior was quickly corrected.

The Greeks were the elite of the bunch. They had been here the longest, some of their children were second generation, and they had become the most assimilated. Many had their own businesses. Some of them owned the homes they lived in. We rented.

My father never bought a home.

He did eventually improve his circumstances by diligent hard work. I remember him going to school at night. He was often very tired, but he always made time for his family on the weekend.

He helped the kids with school projects and he took us to the park. He always took us out Friday night for dinner to give Mom a rest from cooking.

During the week, when he got home from work, he would go lie down in bed and rest for a little while. Mom made sure no one bothered him. When he got up, after he washed and prayed, she served dinner. When he prayed, he lit incense and waved it in front of a brass statue and a picture of a Goddess, I think it was Saraswati.

After dinner, he washed the dishes and read us bedtime stories.

Of course, when he started to go to school in the evenings, we didn’t see him every night anymore. And he was much grumpier.

Me as a senior at MIT. Yes I was still wearing those glasses.

I lived in that apartment in Queens until I went to college.

I was a bright child, and, as the child of Indian immigrants, I was encouraged to work hard.

I remember learning to do my multiplication tables in grade school. The teacher had asked me to do up to times 10. Mom looked at it, and said, “No. You need to learn it to times 16.”

At the time I resented her, but later, when I started to learn to program, I realized how useful hexadecimal was. When I went to high school, I volunteered to help build and program a robot, and that was when this first became useful. It continued to be useful when I went to MIT.

Mom and Dad visiting me while I was in grad school in Colorado.

Yes, I went from a working class neighborhood in Queens to the the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I had to work my butt off to do it though. And I learned those values of hard work and perseverence from my paents.

I think this is one reason I have survived a type IV cancer as well as I have.

I do not give up.

Adversity just drives me harder. And I don’t listen to people who say I can’t do it. I am stubborn and I believe in myself.

I am also oddly fragile. I remember being a stranger in a strange land and sometimes that exposes weakness and areas where I’ve been hurt in the past.

But there were also kind people in my life, friends, teachers, neighbors, stangers… God bless them for helping me get through what was often a hard life and for helping me see the beauty and goodness in the world.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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