Thirty years ago on this day, I migrated to the US. At New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport, I boarded a British Airlines flight to London Heathrow from where I would board a connection to New York City, and set off. My mother and my best friend dropped me off at the airport; my grandmotherContinue reading “Thirty Years After: Reflections On Migration”
Tag Archives: immigrant
A Grandmother’s Gift: A Curiously Significant Number
I’m a numbers nerd; in all probability, this stems from being a sports fan. I calculate sports statistics in my head; I can effortlessly multiply any pair of two-digit numbers in that same location; I retain an astonishing number of odd numerical markers in my cranium. As such, some numbers acquire a significance that goesContinue reading “A Grandmother’s Gift: A Curiously Significant Number”
Of Cricket Fans And Memoirs
Last week, I sent in the draft manuscript for my next book–“a memoirish examination of the politics of cricket fandom”–to the editors at Temple University Press. The book, whose description, not title, I have indicated above, will now be reviewed, revised and then finally rolled off the presses as part of the series Sporting, editedContinue reading “Of Cricket Fans And Memoirs”
On Not Failing the Soccer Tebbit Test
A few days ago in a post on the US men’s soccer team, I wrote: I find myself cheering for the US when it goes up against a European soccer powerhouse. When they play South American, Asian, or African countries, my underdog sympathies kick in. Well, on Sunday night, the US was most certainly upContinue reading “On Not Failing the Soccer Tebbit Test”
Relativity and the Immigrant
As a postscript to an essay explicating the theory of special relativity–written at the request of the The Times (London), Albert Einstein wrote: Here is yet another application of the principle of relativity…today I am described in Germany as a “German savant” and in England as a “Swiss Jew.” Should it ever be my fateContinue reading “Relativity and the Immigrant”
Losing and Gaining Citizenships
I became an American citizen more than fourteen years ago. Ironically, my decision to do so was prompted by my leaving the US–for what was supposed to be a two-year stint as a post-doctoral fellow in Australia. I was then a permanent resident of the US, equipped with the famed ‘green card.’ Subject to certainContinue reading “Losing and Gaining Citizenships”
An Independence Day of Sorts: Beginning a Migration
15 August 1947 is Independence Day in India. It is also my father-in-law’s birthday, a midnight’s child. And it is the day I left India–in 1987, forty years later–to migrate to the US. My ‘migration’–such as it was–consists of pretty standard fare: I began as a graduate student, armed with an admission letter to aContinue reading “An Independence Day of Sorts: Beginning a Migration”
No Matter Where You Go, There’s Home: Robert Viscusi’s Astoria
This morning, while out for a errand-laden walk–visiting the pediatrician’s office, shopping, and getting an influenza vaccine shot–in this bizarrely gorgeous East Coast January weather, I ran into my friend and Brooklyn College colleague, the poet Robert Viscusi, with whom I work at the Wolfe Institute for the Humanities. I admire Bob for his erudition, wit,Continue reading “No Matter Where You Go, There’s Home: Robert Viscusi’s Astoria”
Samir Chopra 