"The bigger shock was that guy was so racist, and racist, and discrimination, I'd heard about it, but I didn't know that, how deeply integrated it was."
"At that time, I used to wear saris. And the thing was, I couldn't say, it was not that I had a I had a cultural barrier to you know, how do I change, you know, but also felt that I had come with all my saris and I just didn't feel like I should I change my wardrobe completely."
"I did not know which part of the world I'm going to. I mean, I knew I'm going to San Francisco. But I did not know it was East, West, North or South. I just thought I'll get there."
"I had to take PE. So I signed up for tennis at eight o'clock in the morning. And I was running around with the tennis racket, in my sari and tennis shoes. So you know. It was quite an experience. "
"The part that I remember is that when I would say that I'm from India, oftentimes people… they mistake me for Native American. So I had to say, I'm not that Indian, I'm from East India."
"I thought about coming to the United States so much that when we walked out of the airport, I like literally cried, which was, which was a different feeling."
"So when I came here, and they were like, ‘Oh, your accent is so funny.’ I was like, ‘Your accent is funny [laughs] to me.’ So that was like, definitely one of the things that I was most noticed for. When I came in, I have, obviously, since changed to like, a white voice."
"So, after I landed, I was supposed to be received by a friend of mine, but he didn't show up. So, I called him and he said, he was in a party. It was a Sunday."
"On the plane, I said, “Nikhilesh, you have to make up your mind - are you going to ask at every stop, at every point, 'Is this vegetarian, can I eat it?'"
"And we were so happy that Rockefeller Center. Oh my god. It was just like a heaven. And people are enjoying so much, so much shopping and everything."
"I was just scared. I was very scared, and excited. You know, it was a very interesting kind of emotions. I don't know how to explain. Fear, anxiety, excitement, everything tied together."
"And one of the classes was in the evening at 6pm. And that professor who was teaching it, I couldn't understand a single word he said on top of that, he used to bring his own sandwich during the class, and he will be eating it [laughs]"
"The muffins were the size of cakes in India, and I was expected to eat that muffin all by myself, something that I would have shared with six other people back in India."
"I remember because Halloween. When I came, everyone was wearing costume. I never knew of this before because in India we never celebrated. So, when I came, I was confused. I thought all Americans were like this. ‘Weird’, I was thinking (laughter)."
"But we were able to get whatever we wanted, in all spheres, in food, living habits, spiritually, culturally with programs, friends, music; everything was slowly coming up."
"In those days, I think South Asians were more proud of being “Americanized,” whereas now, South Asians are really proud of their own culture and they are not ashamed of being from India."
" I almost had a heart attack because I thought that they were going on the wrong side of the street because in India, like in Britain, they drive on the left side. So that was my first thought."
"Having a place of my own, a car of my own, being independent. Being my own person and doing whatever it is I wanted to do, with full responsibility for my actions without having sort of a safety net or somebody to check on me or be worried about me. "
"When I left, I was wearing a silk sari and I was all full of smiles; when I arrived here, my sari was in tatters and my shoes were biting, you know, the shoe bites, so my legs were full of sores. I couldn't even walk, I was limping. And I was practically in tears."
"The wealth of information I could get from a library was amazing. The librarians were very helpful. So I think that was my first thing, the learning experience in so many areas, fending for myself, going and discovering new things, some things that we were not exposed to [in India]."
"My non-Indian teachers, colleagues, friends, neighbors, and even strangers found these Indian clothes curiously interesting. In fact, a local newspaper, called Fargo Forum ran a feature spread in their Sunday interest section, displaying photographs of me around campus in my Indian clothing. The feature was titled 'They like their saris!'"
"Yes, I'm glad I was able to come to this country, it’s the land of opportunity, and I have progressed in my profession, much higher and better than I thought."
" I don't remember what I ate but I remember in the airport I got a cup of tea, and that was the first time I drank a cup of tea from a tea bag. It tasted so bad, I couldn't drink it."
" I couldn’t carry my bags in Port Authority and was surprised when a man grabbed my bags and started walking – I thought he would steal my bags, but he gave them to me, told me to have a good day and left."
"I was married recently and I had just moved here without my wife. She couldn’t get a visa and being apart thousands of miles wasn't worth all that much to me."
"Having spent my life in India, where you could not imagine the absence of sounds or people, this almost-silent but quaint lamp-lit storybook street in Zurich for me became my emblem, my prototype, of this other world I had just entered."
"And I’m like “oh my god, snow!”. And at that point in my life, I’ve only been in snow, I think, only twice. So just to see it again, and to know that— it’ll now be a yearly part of my life— it was just so exciting..."
"I used to be a busy performer in Carnatic dancing, performing at least 50-60 performances each year. Nobody knew me here, and I struggled practicing on the fourth floor of my house, with neighbors who found it disturbing and annoying."
"That night, when I layed down to sleep- it all came to me. All this time I was excited thinking “I'm going to America, I'm going to America!” but that night I thought about my parents, my home, everything…"
"My parents were so called helicopter parents who took care of me for everything, and coming here, taking care of myself, paying the bills, studying for the exams, cooking for myself, it was a challenge."
"So that's the thing. I was surprised. I wasn't nervous, really? I was definitely kind of excited, but not like 'jumping with joy'. I was excited, but I think I was surprised, and I think it's related to where the country was at the time. "
"The streets were covered with graffiti, the drive home was filled with traffic, people were cursing at each other in the airport, and everything looked very unorganized."
"So, my friends and I actually came up with this concept called “Earlier Flight Syndrome”, which is for some reason people who had come “earlier” felt that they were, one way or another, superior to people who had come later."
"There was an inherent pressure all my life that to go to America was to be something more and to stay back in India was even some type indication that you were not "good enough"."
"Being an immigrant helped me grow hugely. I got to know people of so many different backgrounds and cultures. I learned so much from them. I learned the ethics of hard work and the dignity of labor. For my first year in the US, I was working to save money to go to graduate school. I was working minimum pay jobs, but I always felt good about the fact that I was working and saving and being independent."
"I think being American is a state of mind. I cannot put it in a box. These are the attributes of being an American – respect, tolerance of religion, race, language, culture, and bringing around the best of what humankind can do. I do believe this is the week we are celebrating 50 years of space. Neil Armstrong said 'One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.' That is an example of Americanism. Think mankind. It is not I."
"I didn’t talk to my parents, it was too expensive to make international calls. We didn’t have internet back then of course. I would send postcards and my father would write me back."
"The main obstacle to assimilation is people’s attitudes. If they are hostile towards you, then you feel like an outsider. I was shielded because my new husband’s friends, the people I met volunteering at the hospital, and strangers everywhere were nice to me. Thanks to this, I was able to make myself part of the American scene."
"They played 'Empire State of Mind' by Alicia Keys and Jay-Z on the radio. It felt surreal in a way, but in another way it made me more confident in my choice."
"For sure I didn’t go to the other side of the ocean to step back and wait for help. I wanted to get things done on my own, without the help of anybody else."
"She says that because of their words and actions, she was sometimes made to feel less important and felt like she was not allowed to cross certain boundaries."
"I remember looking around and thinking to myself, 'Oh my god there are so many foreigners here!' because there were so many white people. But then I realized that I was the foreigner."
"I had the best time of my life, frankly speaking. I went around to museums, I went on dates, I went alone around places and checked things out and I was doing this in the middle of the night, the middle of day, it didn’t matter."
"They would get up from wherever they were in the middle of the night and step on us. They would get mad because we were there and they’d ask if we wanted to fight them even though we'd been sleeping."
"Then age 10 I was took by force by army to go to war so I'm a child war soldier. I consider myself number one lucky guy because I see so many kids died in the war and the refugee’s camps."
"If I could share any piece of learning that I had from my family’s experience it would be the significance of finding connection, regardless of what community or ethnic group you find connection in, finding connection with other immigrant people."
"It wasn't fun. It wasn't fun simply because when we arrived in America, my brother got sick and we were thrown in this cheap motel full of roaches in New York with prostitutes all over."
"I really like here. I like America, but I still miss China because my family is over there, like my parents, siblings, my friends... they are all in China so I miss China too."
"So when I hear people complaining about undocumented aliens, I ask them, what does that look like? And when I confess to them, they are completely shocked because that’s not what they are talking about."
"I had grown up in Johannesburg in South Africa and in 1985, the country was at the height of the apartheid struggle... the South Africa I grew up in was essentially white colonial South Africa."
"But it was just hard because you don’t have anyone else who’s really -- worried, like genuinely worried about you, you know? It’s just… people don’t really ask you if you’re okay."
"No voices of dear ones, no crows cawing, no stunning greens of coconut trees and bushes and no pleasing smell of jasmine flowers. The reality hit me; I am far away from home."
"I was amazed by all the people. I’ve never seen people of color other than my own race. You know what I mean, so it was just shocking when I see this, Asians, Whites, whatever… I was stunned."
"It’s just a different feeling to be a tourist and knowing that you are going for a few days or a few weeks and then versus actually moving to the country with the expectation of being there for a couple of years at least."
"And the parks, and the freedom and security you guys have, and that feeling that you can be out late without having to go home with the fear that like, oh no it’s late, you know, people come out, you know."
"I remember being put in the ESL class even though we told them [the school administrators] that we were fluent in English since we were four years old."
"You know, times will be challenging and difficult, but you just have to believe that you can do it and you can get through it, and it’s worth it in the end."
"I thought, you know, it was nice and clean, and beautiful, and everything was like glamorous, but it’s not like that. That’s the impression everybody gives here."
"So what was very good about the United States is that I could find Brazilian neighborhoods where I could get Brazilian food, I could go to good restaurants, I could go to Brazilian fast foods too, to Brazilian church and meet a lot of Brazilian people."
"They used to talk to me and so I used to catch it and write it down. I used to write it down how it sounds, that word. So that's the way I learned how to speak English."
"My dad always encouraged us to not work like he did. He was a laborer. So he encouraged us to be educated. But obviously he didn’t know how to go about the process."
"So, it was a big week that January ’69. I was part of that. ’69. And then the moon landing came. We were just watching in a 19-inch black and white TV. That’s all we had."
"Seven years later I migrated to the US by myself, promising never to experience the geopolitical and economic hardships that my parents had to live through."
"But when you come here, very few folks can tell you that Nairobi has 4.4 million people, and they have skyscrapers, and working class jobs, and private schools. We’re not just all a village out there."
"I just wanted to see my dad. We are really close and it was the first time being without him for so long. He moved in September. My mom, sister, and I joined in December. I was only a kid; I just wanted my dad."
"As a student of literature and a lover of books I was familiar with New York stories and I had goosebumps when I saw the tall buildings of my favorite city."
"I remember just going to the riverside and walking to a giant Toys R Us…. But I didn't get any toys. I spent that month in Brooklyn just reading the Chinese fairy tale books I bought from China."
"I would actually sit down and compose what I wanted to tell them, paragraph by paragraph, or maybe point by point, and then make a 30-minute tape and mail the tape to them."
"It was a very easy decision to make because I knew that they had one thing here that we didn’t, which was freedom. And I wanted that really, really bad."
"It struck me as something absolutely surreal. Not possible even to imagine. I counted 83 beers… because it was so unnatural. We were drinking in Moscow just one brand of beer!"
"I used to be really in love with all the John Wayne movies, so I thought I'm coming to see horses. That was a little bit of a surprise. There were no cowboys. Not in New York."
"For me, my strength was that for two years I was in the military in Iran. That helped me a lot. It made my skin thicker because, say, worst-case scenario, I can sleep on the street."
"Five days after my arrival, the tragedy of 9/11 occurred. Since I was still so young, I wondered if such chaos and destruction…happened frequently in the US."
"So it was a really really difficult transition to make, because when I saw my parents at the airport, I will never forget it, I didn't know who they were."
"As a teenager I think one of the most important things in the universe is the friends that you have and family may not seem as important at that point."
"You never think that people with those kinds of qualifications can be refugees. But, when the war broke down, it could reach anybody. Refugees can be anybody."
"When I first met my parents I was really happy and excited. I didn’t really know how to say anything to them, so I just hugged them at the orphanage."
"On the August 25, 1949 morning, as the American coastline appeared on the horizon, I and hundreds of others went up on the deck to survey the first glimpse of America."
"My expectations were actually that America is pretty small compared to say, Russia. So everything would be smaller size and like not so many open spaces."
"The idea was you come here, you stay here for four years, or five years, whatever, and then go back, you know, to your country, and to live there, serve, whatever."
"Everything was just so odd, all the teachers and the principals, ‘welcome to the new school, we are so happy you are here,’ and I was like why do you care so much, you are all so weird."
"On the night of 27th August 1968 my father's friend dropped me at Bombay airport and I took the Air India flight to London via Beirut, Frankfurt, Paris and I had to change the plane for the next part of the journey to the USA."
"I remember that I wore a tie-and-dye cotton Kurti with jeans pants. I also remember groggily overhearing a couple looking at me and using the word "Gypsy" several times."
"When the plane flew above Labrador the skipper again came and pleasantly advised me to survive on fish if the plane crashed on the snow covered ground."
"But what I can tell you is my parents actually moved back to India when I was 10 because my dad said "I was just here to study. I'm moving back. Degrees will help my country." He was very patriotic, so we all moved back."
"I kind of understood the term ‘thundering silence’ for the first time. ‘Cause, where I grew up, I used to hear rickshaws ting-tinging outside and prostitutes fighting and things, you know? And now, nothing. Just quiet!"
"We had not much money, we had only eight bucks in our pocket, we didn't have a scholarship, but we never thought about "hey, what happens if things don't work out?""
"So I stayed at the hotel all night without eating anything, completely tired and hungry, because of the fact that I didn't know where I was and they had told me not to go out at night."
"In my first semester, I finished the money given to me for the year. I was not extravagant. So I worked in a Chinese restaurant two nights a week to make pocket money for extras such as personal items and clothing/shoes."
"There happened to be one other Pakistani student who was the closest in culture at that time to me and we made a bond that I'll never forget, even though we came from countries where traditionally they were rivals."
"In the fresh optimism of our arrival, it seemed like the landscape was reaching out to welcome us to America, full of opportunities to follow our dreams."
"Landing in New York was something totally different – the huge skyscrapers, the ‘hustle and bustle,’ the speed of life was like a totally different world opening up to us when compared to London or pre-partition India."
"Unfortunately, the shuttle bus company said that all those items were gone, they couldn’t find it, so it was a pretty miserable experience there to start off with."
"And when we exited the airport, I looked all around and saw rows upon rows of cars! I couldn't figure out where were all the people - there wasn't a soul in sight!"
"I had was thinking about the future that what can I do? And I was very happy because I knew that I will find new friends with different ideas and I will see new places."
"I saw in our car a new thing, a GPS. The GPS was announcing where and when to turn right or left and how far away our home was. It wasn't necessary to ask any person."
"It was not a very happy day for me, because I had wanted to remain in the UK and attend Guy’s Hospital Medical School, which was a place I had wanted to go to ever since I was ten – I wanted to be a doctor like my dad."
"My entire childhood was spent in one of the seven UN camps for Bhutanese refugees. We came here because we are Bhutanese Nepalis and the Nepali government didn’t give us citizenship, so we came to the U.S.A. to work, get an education and have citizenship for the first time in our lives."
"It reminded me of a scene from some Hollywood movie where a newcomer in New York is gaping at advertisements covering the whole length of a building."
