SAADA creates a more inclusive society by giving voice to South Asian Americans through documenting, preserving, and sharing stories that represent their unique and diverse experiences.Learn more.
"It was a mixture of feeling of a lot of sadness and anxiety from coming to a new country and sadness from leaving my family and friends back in Bangladesh. And uh, I have to say that I left behind my two year old son who was very close to me, and that was my biggest anxiety of how he would take it."
"What were strangers became friends, and now I consider them my family. So these are the most important people in my life, and I’m so thankful to God for bringing us all together."
"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."
"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."
"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]"
"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."
"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."
"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. "
"My cousin told me, ‘You will make a lot of friends one day. Everyone is very social and friendly.’ He told me that he had zero friends when he came to Chicago on his day one."
"And, we went and I remember we didn’t have pillows, and we were sleeping on the floor. And my dad just took a lot of different clothing from the suitcase and he just put it in a sack or something. And he was like, 'Alright, this is your pillow for today.'"
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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!"
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
