S. Mitra Kalita’s Suburban Sahibs: Three Immigrant Families and Their Passage From India to America (Rutgers, 2003) has a misleading subtitle: True, it is about three immigrant Indian families. But this story is an American story. It presents snapshots of a cyclical pattern in our history: the story of waves of immigrants and their simultaneous struggles to assimilate and retain their culture. This story is about America, a nation of immigrants and their descendants, in pursuit of the sometimes fleeting American Dream.
Kalita argues that “immigration has altered the American suburb, and the suburb in turn has altered the immigrant.” Immigration has not only altered the American suburb but it also has built America. In turn, America continues to alter its new waves of immigrants. Suburban Sahibs shows us three disparate Indian families—their values, assimilation and socioeconomic status. We get a sense of their culture and the structure of their communities. Yet the non-Indian American can relate. Their struggles are our struggles. Either we have experienced them ourselves or our ancestors have. It is our story.
The three families whose lives we follow for a year are the Kotharis, the Patels and the Sarmas. Kalita strategically chooses families that exhibit both the contrasts and the less striking similarities of the Indian immigrant experience in suburban New Jersey.
Pradip Kothari has been in the States for more than 20 years. He has raised his young adult daughters here. He is a local business owner, the president of the Indo-American Cultural Society and an aspiring local politician. In his Indianized suburb, he is a celebrity in his own right. The Kotharis retain many aspects of their culture, but they are comfortable in both the worlds of business suits and saris. Pradip, better known as Peter, organizes a Hindu festival each year called Navratri. It is a commemoration of good conquering evil. All members of the family participate in their own way, but they always get together to pray as a family.
Harish Patel, his wife, Kapila, and their youngest daughter live in a one-bedroom apartment. They struggle to make ends meet through layoff after layoff. Harish came to the United States following his brothers, who both found relative success. Harish has still not realized the American dream despite more than 10 years of struggle. Harish desperately wants his two daughters to go to college and make the lives for themselves that he is still not able to provide for them. The younger daughter, Kajal, seems to be on her way. She has agreed to return to India and have an arranged marriage as her father wants after she completes college. The eldest, Zankhana, on the other hand, incurs her father’s disapproval when she drops out of college to marry a Sikh Indian (the Patels are Hindu) who doesn’t even have a high school diploma. Harish dreams of returning to India but holds out for his family, who unwaveringly look ahead.
Lipi and Sanku Sarma, the most recent immigrants, are here on a temporary visa. In the United States for only five years, they encounter homesickness and unfamiliar American culture. They struggle with uncertain jobs and with raising a young child, Chiku, in their new home without the family support that they are used to.
The time frame that Kalita chose was ideal. Not only does it encompass 9/11 and the infamous 2000 election, but it also includes the earthquake that hit Gujarat, India, that year. Through these events and the impact on the characters, readers get a sense of how India and the United States are home to these families.
Kalita admits that she is “a product of the very subject I write about.” Her bias is welcome, as she speaks with a familiarity that a non-Indian would not have been able to accomplish. At times that familiarity may bewilder the reader. After sometimes too brief a definition, new multisyllabic terms are quickly inserted into the text. It might be necessary to go back and remind yourself what a word means. On the bright side, when you’ve finished reading the book, you will certainly have added a few Hindi words to your vocabulary.
Suburban Sahibs is centered in Edison, a suburban town in central New Jersey. Its Indian population is growing exponentially, and it features Oak Tree Road, a strip known to Indian-Americans for its abundance of shops specializing in Indian products. Although Kalita’s focus is on that area, she reinforces the Indian immigrant experience throughout the state of New Jersey and nationwide.
Suburban Sahibs is informative, and it reads like a novel. A yummy combination of entertainment and education, it will be enjoyed by both teenagers and senior citizens alike—no matter where their ancestors hail from.
Raida Abd-Allah is a journalism and media studies major and an Honors College student at Rutgers-Newark. Posted January 2006.
