Narayan

=Badri Narayan=

Podcast
media type="custom" key="12457458"

BIOGRAPHICAL/GEOGRAPHICAL NOTE
India is a very large country, with wet plains to the south, and the Himalayas to the north. It is a big peninsula sticking out into the Indian Ocean. It is a democracy with an elected parliament. The capital city is New Delhi. My Immigrant’s name is Badri Narayan. He is from Bangalore, India, and he immigrated to America. He isn’t a citizen yet, but he is still working on becoming one. He is a mechanical engineer that graduated from Netter Technical Foundation.

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=Creative Writing=

By: Jacob Penick
The monster, big and black came rolling down, closer, closer, until you could feel the steam, the steam from the top of the big black steam engine.

Those trains would bring such joy to us, like an American child on his birthday.

I have always been fascinated by the hulking machinery. Sometimes they seem to say, “Come look at me, I am the most interesting thing ever.”

When they roll by, the air tastes moist, chock full of steam emitted by the locomotives.

We could hear the sounds, even when the train was a good distance away. We would run out of the house to see the spectacle that was about to roll by.

We ask many questions, about how they work, and what their purpose is.

When I came to America, I was surprised by the sleek and efficient electric trains that rolled by all the time. those are much different than the Indian steam engines.

But I still loved the black bodies and the clouds of steam telling us that the big black monster was on approach.

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Jacob: Can you please introduce yourself? Badri: Alright my name is Badri, and I’m from Bangalore India, and I am personally a mechanical engineer, and I graduated from Netter Technical Training Foundation University, and made work in both Singapore and in India for about fourteen-fifteen years, and after which I moved to United States. Jacob: Okay, what attracted you to America? What prompted you to move? Badri: Uh, basically I like the free spirit and I also like the free way of living in the United States and one other thing I might add is the flexibility as an immigrant. I like how they provide a good support structure and whatnot. Jacob: Okay. How was life in your old country? What hobbies did you have? Badri: (sigh) As a young kid, we never had internet and video games and whatnot, and we used to have many different kinds of games that turned out to be hobbies. For example, model collections. We would build different types of models, and we had flat lee. I still love doing that today. That’s a stamp collection, and I have a good collection from across all continents and from almost one hundred, I would say, one hundred and 20 odd countries. Jacob: Wow. That’s awesome. That’s really cool. What was home like? Do you have any friends that you still speak to? Badri: Yeah I have a lot of friends. My childhood friends. In fact I have a few of them who are in the united states on and off, and sometimes we will meet and just sit and chat about this and that and whatnot. I have a lot of friends who are still in India who I am currently meeting and whatnot. So childhood, I would say, most of our childhood we would play in fields and play on farms and stuff, and we would have lots of live animals, not like horses, but flocks of oxen. We would chase them around, and we would do what you call bungee jumping. That’s what you call it here. We call it a different name out here. Yeah, generally speaking. That’s what we were used to doing. Jacob: That sounds like fun; do you remember what the government was like in your old country? Badri: The government, right from day one, they were quite independent, there is lots of democracy, and it has always been a democratic country, democratic meaning, I don’t mean republican democratic, that type of difference. When I say republican democratic I mean what we have in the United States. We have elected government, all members of parliament are elected, and the structure is similar to what you have in the United Kingdom. We follow that kind of structure, and we have a pretty stable government compared to other third world countries, I would say all our elected officials are pretty responsible, and they are people you could go to for your health and whatnot. Jacob: What was your favorite food? Badri: What can I say? Even from my childhood to today I like a lot of Indian favorites. Some of the names that I can ravel, up I’m not sure you can make sense of them, but I like what we call didli. I also would say I love to have dosas. Dosas are similar to the pancake you might have in the morning. So that is pretty close to what you might see out there. Jacob: What was the traditional clothing like? Badri: Traditional dress, okay, let’s see, that’s a hard question to answer, meaning we have at least a hundred different traditions, but in my tradition, we would have a wrap around, which is a single clothe. It doesn’t have a specific form or shape and we would actually wrap it around us. Men would wrap around with loose clothing on the top part of the body, and for your pant, per say, you would wrap around the cloth in circular form. I could send some pictures if you want it. It’s hard for me to describe. Like I said there are a hundred different traditions and it is hard for me to describe in one sitting. Generally speaking, it would be a very simple form of clothing. It is not a structured or stitched type of clothing that you might see out today in supermarkets. Jacob: You said you could email me some of those pictures? Badri: Yes I could. Jacob: That would be great, thank you very much. What were the major religions in your old country? Badri: Major religions? To begin with, we have Hinduism, and we also have Buddhism, which is kind of branched off of Hinduism. We have Christianity, and we have the Muslim religion, and of course we have a good number of Jews as well. So we might say we have a mix of all major religions in the world. Jacob: I really like to study Buddhism and sometimes I try the meditations before I go to bed and it is very interesting. Badri: That’s very nice. That’s very interesting. Jacob: Did most of the religions get along well? Did some of them fight? What was that like? Badri: Okay, we have always had some conflicts between different religions, and going to age old history of India. Hinduism to begin with, flourished in this country, and then a wave of Prussians who attacked us along with their culture came their religion. After that we had a wave of Europeans that attacked us. We had part of the European culture as well as Christianity that came here. So if you look at the conflict you might have it dates back to history. That’s when we might have had conflict, but day to day conflict… It’s pretty peaceful. Every religion coexists here, so we don’t necessarily have current day conflict here. Jacob: What was the main sport people played and watched in your country? Badri: To begin with, there were a lot of traditional sports, up until some of these new sports and games were introduced, by the foreigners, like I said, the people who invaded us, along with their cultures came their sports, and (INAUDIBLE 3 seconds) So going back to sports, we have traditionally what is called Copreti(?) a game where you want to kind of (INAUDIBLE 4 seconds) that is one of our traditional sports, and the second one is called Lagori(?) and it is too hard for me to describe. Right now, one sport that might dominate worldwide that India is associated with, is called cricket it is a European sport (INAUDIBLE 8 seconds mostly “ums”) and when English people came here they actually introduced the sport here and that’s very widely played here today. Jacob: What is your fondest memory about your old country? Badri: I would say… steam engines, I mean steam locomotives, as a young kid, we would have very nice looking trains that would come by and cause a lot of noise and whatnot. Even though it was an inefficient locomotive, just the sight and sound of those trains even brings good joy to me today. Jacob: What dominant languages were spoken in your old country? Badri: The dominant language would be Hindi, and second would be English. Of course, we have officially another twenty odd languages, and I would say, unofficially, we have more than two thousand dialects spoken in this country. Jacob: Wow. Is there a scent, a particular scent that reminds you of India? Badri: Sure, like I said in an earlier section of my young days and whatnot, I said I love hanging around farms, and of course one of them would be jasmine, see, we have a white flower called jasmine, I’m not sure if you have ever actually seen them- Jacob: Yeah we have some in our kitchen. Badri: That’s great, that makes this a lot easier now, and I love the Jasmine flavor. We have loads and loads of jasmine and roses, the people that farm here locally. Jacob: How did you come to America, like physically, did you come here by plane, boat, how did you physically get here? Badri: (Hint of humor in his voice) I actually plopped myself onto a raft and started paddling. No I’m just kidding I took a flight into, I actually landed in Chicago. That was my first port of entry. Jacob: Did you have any troubles becoming a citizen? Badri: Oh, by the way, I am not yet a citizen of the United States, I’m going through the process of getting that. So, I’m still in the process, and I’m about halfway through the process. When an immigrant comes to the United States, he or she has to acquire what is called a green card, and once the green card is acquired, you have to live in the country for about five years before you are eligible to apply for a U.S. citizenship. I’m still not to the point where I can apply for a citizenship. Jacob: If you could change the process of becoming a U.S. citizen, what would you change, if you would? Badri: How would I change it… What I have noticed so far, there is a lot of unnecessary redundant processes, of the exact same thing, we have to do it multiple times. What I would do, I would actually merge two or three different departments who are actually scrutinizing our paperwork, so that each department talks to each other in a more efficient way, so that would mean cutting down the process by, I would say, more than half. Jacob: I could understand that. What is different about America, like about lifestyle, transportation, music, civil rights, how is all of that different in the U.S.? Badri: As far as the mode of transportation, the mode of transportation is different, the public transportation is really, really poor in the United States, when you compare it to the other countries I have lived in, when I say public transportation, I mean within a city or town, commuting between different cities, the options are very limited. What are the next points that you require? Jacob: How are the lifestyle and civil rights different? Badri: The civil rights! One thing that I am always amazed with the United States is the power of the civil rights movement, with Dr. King and whatnot. That certainly moved my opinion, and certainly, it is very inspirational, and that is almost in par with Mahatma Gandhi, who led one similar movement here, during our independence struggle here. So that’s in par, if you ever read a little about this person, you might find a lot of similarities between Dr. King and (Phone problems for one-fourth of a second) whatnot. That was pretty similar to what I have learned, what I have seen, during my schooling days. Jacob: What do you think the American character is, and the American dream? Badri: What do I think about the American dream… To me it sounds very materialistic; people measure their, in America, if they have a kind of acquired, nice home, and if they have a nice job, is always pretty important for any immigrant, or any citizen, or anybody, for instance, people always measure their successes if they manage to build a nice home, and whatnot, so, yeah. So I think that it’s a little bit more of a materialistic approach, as opposed to, trying to provide a, a good life for their family. Jacob: Do you feel that immigrating to America was a good decision? Badri: I would still believe and say yes. Jacob: When you were still here… Since you are there you can answer this question really well, how does the weather compare between the U.S. and your home country? Badri: In my country, it varies quite a bit, but in my hometown, the average temperatures, even in winter, never drop below, I would say, forty degrees, and during the summer it kind of peaks at about, one hundred, one hundred and ten tops, during very few summer days, we did not get to see the kind of wild storm that you see in the United Sates, and even tornadoes and whatnot, but generally speaking, the weather pattern here is much more conducive(?) and not as violent, and what I like about the United States and its weather pattern is that you have nice, distinct changing seasons and changing patterns, and that you might not get to see here in India, where I come from, and we also have some pretty severe weather going on up north in the Himalayas, but for down south, its pretty close to the equator, and it is more tropical kind of climate. Jacob: (Apologizing for background noise from a windstorm) Did you know English before coming over? Like you said, it was pretty dominant in your old country, but did you know it fluently before you came here? Badri: Yeah, the school system that I actually went through actually taught English, and we learned English as our first language, and that’s why we are able to communicate, read, and write in English fairly easy, and I would say, this is about thirty percent of the children being educated in this country, a bulk of our children do not go to urban schools and they are probably not taught English as a first language, which is why it was a lot easier for me, and for example, Vidur’s dad and whatnot. Jacob: I understand that you told me that your port of entry was Chicago? Badri: Yup. Jacob: What was the first thing, when you got to America, what was, like, the first big landmark kind of thing that you saw that really interested you? Badri: Yeah we certainly saw the downtown from up in the air, so that was pretty eye catching, at that point we were not… We didn’t take a ride into downtown, and we actually got our next flight into Dayton, Ohio, so we didn’t necessarily see the Chicago downtown, but eye catching, I would say, after, we started visiting a few places, one of the first places we went to was Niagara, yes, Niagara Waterfalls were really eye catching, and I am always amazed by the amount of water that actually drops down every single second, so, Niagara and the Grand Canyon. Jacob: Oh yeah. That is one of my most favorite places ever. Badri: Have you ever been to the Grand Canyon? Jacob: Oh yeah, last year we took a big trip out west we went to Las Vegas, we went to Utah, and we saw the Grand Canyon, yeah, that is definitely one of my most favorite places I have ever been to. Badri: Sweet. Jacob: One final question, do you think that it is better here in America than in your old country? Can you compare the two? Badri: The comparison is pretty subjective, and currently, I would say there is a lot of opportunities, and by opportunities, I mean job opportunities, and career opportunities are opening up back in India, and currently I would say, it’s in par, both countries are in par, as far as the job opportunities, that is one thing that might drive a person to decide which way to go. The jobs are one of the prime factors that might lead a person’s life. From that perspective, I would say that both countries are equally attractive today. Jacob: Okay, thank you very much for your time, this is a really big help and we really, really appreciate it. Like you said, if you could get those pictures to me by email that would be fantastic. So thank you very, very much.

The immigrant I interviewed had a very similar experience to what we talked about in class. He was from Bangalore, India, a very wet and rainy part of the country. As a young boy, he was fascinated by the steam engines that would roll past. He came to the United States of America to pursue his education dreams, to become a mechanical engineer. He now supports a family, and he sometimes takes long trips back home to India. In class, we talked about how immigrants usually immigrate for work, education, or family, and Mr. Narayan came for education. He didn’t say anything about people making fun of him because of his race, so he wasn’t introduced to American society as rudely as some of the people we talked about have been. People made fun of immigrants by putting an animal face on their head, making drawings of Americans standing superior to immigrants, and wrote about them being "brutes". His story is similar in some ways, but when it is different, it is positively different. His immigration experience was most likely positive.
 * ANALYSIS**