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ACDC - You shook me all night long |
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Note: The term Indian as used in this post refers to a person from the Indian subcontinent or India and does not stand for Native/American/Red Indian as is commonly used in U.S English.
A game of cricket in the village green maybe a common sight in some other parts of the world. But what does it signify if the aforementioned green is located only a few degrees south of the Arctic circle in the American continent? Are the British trying to recolonize the Americas? Haven't British abandoned cricket in favor of a more interesting game called soccer hooliganism? This cricket match which took place last week at a park strip here in Anchorage just signifies that the Indians have arrived! People of India play cricket like it is their sole responsibility to pass on and propagate this colonial leftover of a game wherever they go.
So when did Indians really find out about Alaska? Like all newbies, 3+ years ago when we arrived here, both of us (me & N) had a distinctively exhilarating feeling that we were indeed pioneers (that was before we were told all cheechakos* get this same feeling). But first we had to find a category which'd make us look like true trailblazers. Could we be the first East Indians in Alaska? It'd be too presumptuous to assume that we'd beat Panjus* and Gujjus* to Alaska. Panjus came to California in the late 1800s to build the railroad when most of our great-grandparents hadn't even seen a road, forget a railroad. And you cannot fool me if you say that not even one enterprising Gujju bhai worth his thepla* had not devised a failsafe business plan to sell ice to the Eskimos, I am sure there might have been more than a couple. We were definitely not the first East-Indians in Alaska.
What about being the first Keralites* in Alaska? The competition for Pioneer title in this category was worth finding out. But being the procrastinators we are, it took us three years to determine the stats.
The first ever person from the subcontinent I struck up an acquaintance with after coming here was a Bangladeshi girl. A couple of years younger than me, she had phone numbers of the entire Indian community in Alaska in her little black book, which she insisted I too should copy down for my own good.
After the cultural stratification of Bay Area India community (or for that matter NJ or other east coast suburbs) it was good to see that in this sparsely populated arctic corner of the world Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Srilankans and Indians identified under one label – as "Indians".
But the question was, was I ready to socialize? If the Indian parties I had attended in San Francisco was anything to go by I was not cut out to be a social butterfly and I failed miserably at small talk. And if kitty parties with Indian ladies was my cup of tea, the place to be was Surya Nagari (a.k.a Sunnyvale, CA), there was no need to move all the way up here. I said thanks, but no thanks for the phone numbers, maybe some other time. If I run across another Indian, well and good, we might invite him/her over, but I was not going to call to strangers' homes and chat away, it just didn't work that way for me.
During the last three years we had occasionally ran in to people who'd look convincingly Indian, but such sightings were few and far between, maybe once or twice a year at the most. Most of these Indians were far older than us, possibly belonged to an earlier wave of Indian immigration of the seventies.
The situation started changing in the last half year. An Indian grocery store opened. Indian sightings increased to one per month from one or two a year, majority of these fell in the 25-30 age range. We had heard rumors about an Indian temple being there, which served the purposes of congregation than of religion. But after our usual Saturday nights that ended somewhere around 3 or 4am next morning, an 11:30 puja* at the Indian temple often failed to entice us. And of course, one month ago when I met my countrymen on my one and only visit to the Indian temple in Anchorage to date, I offered what many considered a flimsy excuse, "I do not believe in organized religion of any kind."
It was some desi youngmen whom we met in our apartment complex who persuaded us to pay a visit to this temple. The temple was a hall on the rear side of one of the strip malls in town. We met about 8-9 families - Kannadigas, Tamilians, Sindhis, Punjabis, Telugus* and a few single guys and surprisingly enough, one Keralite! The Keralite turned out to be the nephew a famous Malayali poet and he told us he was a recent arrival to Alaska, having been here only for the past few months. Three out of every four we met at the temple told us that they had moved to Alaska sometime during the last six months. Wonder what's making Alaska such a hot property these days? Global Warming?
The Indian community leaders assured us that we were the first Keralites they have met in Alaska, so we could rightfully claim the Malayali Pioneer title for the time being, that is, till someone comes up with a Malayali uncle who had owned a tea-shack on the way to Arctic circle and had served tea to Robert Peary.
Cheechako – Native Alaskan term for alien or foreigner, usually used in context of a greenhorn in Alaska.
Panjus or Punjabis - People from Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent.
Gujjus or Gujaratis – People from Gujarat, India
Thepla – a gujrati flatbread. made of wheat
Keralite – A Person from Kerala state in India.
Puja - Worship of deities.
Desi – A person of Indian(or subcontinental) origin living abroad
Kannadigas, Tamilians, Sindhis, Punjabis, Telugus – Five of the twenty-two main language/cultural groups of India.
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