Missed Translations by Sopan Deb

Author:Sopan Deb
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2020-02-24T16:00:00+00:00

Ten

“That country was calling me.”

He arrived in windy Rochester, New York, the night of December 1, 1975. It was about nine thirty. The cabdriver who picked him up at the airport was also an engineer but moonlighted as a cabbie to help make ends meet. Shyamal, wearing only a thin overcoat, had never seen snow before. He said he had eight dollars in his pocket. (On this, I’ll quote Hasan Minhaj, one of the most prominent comedians of Indian descent in the United States, who said on his Netflix show, Patriot Act: “Every immigrant uncle has some insane story about how they came to America with an inexplicably small amount of money.” And my father had one too.) America was in a turbulent place: Richard Nixon had resigned the previous year, the Vietnam War had recently ended, and high inflation persisted. Also Jaws had created a nationwide fear of mechanical sharks.

My father had a place to stay: an Indian acquaintance who had also come to the United States and happened to live in Rochester. Shyamal rested for the next twenty-four hours, then started looking for work immediately thereafter. About a month later, having not an ounce of luck nor money, he moved to Queens, where another friend took him in. In early 1976, he got his first job in America as a design engineer for Lorch (now called Smiths Interconnect), an electronics company in Englewood, New Jersey. Shyamal moved to nearby Paterson and lived in the first residence of his own.

Here he settled down and began his pursuit of the American Dream(™), hoping to follow the path of so many other immigrants. A year later, he went to work for the now-defunct Engelmann Microwave Company. He had worked with microwaves back in Kolkata and had some familiarity with the product. (In retrospect, this makes the pinewood derby tragedy even more confusing.) Professionally, Shyamal was finding some comfort, but there was a hole: He was lonely. While he had always seemed to live a life of solitude, at least in India he was surrounded by people who looked like him and shared his culture.

“In America that’s not the case,” my father said as we sat again at his kitchen table. We had spent some time decompressing from the morning’s visit with Siddhartha, and now Shyamal was loudly sipping his coffee.

My father was never supposed to be in America; the fact he had even made it there was an accomplishment. His family had other plans for him. And given Shyamal’s upbringing, plans weren’t suggestions.

The first phase of the plan was school, and the instructions were made clear by his father and then, after his father died, by his brother:

Attend school. Finish at the top of the class. Go to school for engineering. Finish a master’s degree.

From a young age, Shyamal didn’t have many friends. It wasn’t important to him. He was a loner, and an arrogant one at that, by his own admission. He did dress well and took part in group events: Shyamal was good at sports and often performed music in public.

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