About me....
I have lived in the United States since the late 1980s. Let me begin a bit earlier.
I was born in India, in a small impoverished Bhojpuri language-speaking village called Seergoberdhanpur. It is the birthplace of the 15th-century poet-saint Ravidass (an untouchable, well known in Sikhism and Hinduism). Like Ravidass' family, my ancestors belonged among the poorest... it was the village of farmers, herdsmen, those dealing in milk and animal-products. Sociologists these days classify my villagers as the shudras and the dalits (untouchables).
Seergoberdhanpur is now urbanized. A national highway was built close to the village in the 2000s. Economic prosperity and rest of the infrastructure followed. No farming anymore, it is now a suburb of expanded Varanasi (Kashi). For almost all of the 20th-century, it was a neglected rural part with no electricity, no piped water, no sanitation, no basic facilities. A major drain pipe from Benares Hindu Uuniversity (BHU) would pour next to my village creating a big dirty smelly pond with huge weeds. We lived in a mud house midst many mud houses. The village access road and streets were unpaved, potholed.
My father were four brothers – he an electrician, one of my uncles pulled a rickshaw and was prone to injured muscles (rickshaw pulling is hard work). Another was a night guard at BHU, and the fourth was a handyman with bouts of joblessness with alcoholism. The brothers had several very small plots of land here and there. The extended family would farm it with the help of bullocks. They argued over how to split the harvest. There were a few months every year when the food supply was short. I remember nights from my childhood when we had little to nothing to eat. You simply go hungry to bed, accepting it as a matter of fact of life. I remember days in my pre-teen years when I would sit in hot sun for hours, while a cow and a few buffaloes would graze in a field between my village and Ganges river. As years passed, the extended family broke up, split the tiny property they had. Extreme poverty is a complicated state of human existence, but it is no different than lower, middle or upper class wealthier families.
I was instinctively attracted to studies, curious about knowledge. So were my two lovely sisters. My loving family encouraged us to pursue our talents, given the limited resources we had. One day, around age 9, my dad surprised me and took me on his bicycle to an exam center (me sitting on the frame between the seat and the handle). I gave the exam. Apparently I was one of those who aced it, and Sainik School – a boarding school offered me a spot to study. I spent six years in a boarding school near Nainital, a town in Himalayan foothills. Then two years in a Kendriya Vidyalaya in Ghaziabad (near Delhi) while my dad temporarily worked.
Early 1980s were difficult times. My dad quit his job and my family had moved back to the village. Despite doing well at school, I had no idea what to do. I had heard about medical colleges and IITs. I was aware of medical profession, as many in my poor village had health issues. But I did not know what engineers do, or what other career options are. Back in the early 1980s, medical and engineering college entrance process in India required many competitive exams, travel to exam centers and preparing for these exams. We were broke, and had no electricity or light bulbs or even basic living facilities in mud (katchcha) thatch homes. Instead of feeling sorry and hopeless, I decided to figure out a way to study. So, I found a bicycle, fixed it. Then I found a museum, few halls in BHU buildings and street corners with lights. I would borrow books from BHU library on the five cards of my village folks who worked there as sanitation workers, guard and gardeners. I studied these books under those streetlights and the empty corners of the halls of BHU. My lovely younger sisters would do their school homework under kerosene lamps. In 1983, gave both MBBS and IIT entrance exams. Got admission offers from both.
I joined IIT Delhi, though medical profession is what I had wanted and more prepared for. I could not afford medical college expenses, IIT projected expenses were cheaper. My family was broke. I worked all four years off campus in petty jobs, and paid my expenses while studying at IIT Delhi. Any small surplus I had, I gave to my sisters, whose struggles in the poor village were dear to my heart. My father found a job with ONGC – the oil driller for India. Our economic condition began to improve. We slowly built a brick home.
During my college and post-college years, as a hobby, I studied many books on individualism, socialism, capitalism, marxism, free markets, atheism, upanishads, bible, quran, pali canons, philosophy books. I would reflect on them, sometimes reread them as their different translations could be interpreted in different ways. These I felt are part of the context of our world, our social memories, and the diverse cultural frameworks. I also took courses on history, music, finance and tangential subjects, driven by curiosity about science, and the science behind science. I was deeply moved by the founders of American democracy, Austrian school of economics, the potential and issues with free markets, Gandhi–MLK ideas on nonviolence, and the writings of entrepreneurs such as Henry Ford and post-World War Japan.
After MIT, I pursued an entrepreneurial career. It was a mixed experience, periods of frustration and periods of fun, many 80+ hour work weeks. I was awarded many product and process US patents. I became a US citizen by choice. Travelled widely to about 130 countries. It has generally been a happy life for me, so far.
Some social notes..... given my background and the context above, in my experience, India, Indians and Hindus such as me are generally the target of prejudice and stereotyping everywhere outside India, and among more urban elites in India. I rarely felt discriminated or shunned by anyone inside India, Japan or Asia in general. But, I have felt discriminated, shunned and victimized by racism in the US, North and South America, and Europe. It does not matter if you are an American citizen. People see the color of your skin and hear your accent... and then come some variation of prejudice-filled presumptions and stereotyping. Hardly any meaningful discovery of the character, sharing of real stories and meaningful ideas. It typically starts with "where are you from?", then presses on to "you are obviously not an American, where are you really from?" and then moves on to "some silly remarks about India or Indians or Hindus!" In a few cases, it has been far worse.
But then this mistreatment and abuse is not universal. You also meet lovely, wonderful people from very different backgrounds. I have experienced kindness and love, in US, Europe and elsewhere that I cherish as fond memories, one I can never forget. Let me save that and other topics for future blogs.
– Tapesh Yadav, October 2021
