When Shalini Chandra married her husband and moved to the U.S., she didn’t realize how cold the Minnesota weather was in December. But the warmth of friendships she made through a Jazzercise class allowed her to learn about American culture and to share her love of saris and Indian culture.
We Belong is a visual series highlighting different experiences of South Asian and Indian identity. This series was produced by India Currents in collaboration with CatchLight as part of the CatchLight Local CA Visual Desk. Photographs and interviews by CatchLight Fellow Sree Sripathy.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
How old were you when you arrived in the US and where did you come from?
I was 22 when I came and that was in 1999. I left Delhi. I arrived in Minnesota and went to the University of Minnesota for my master’s in structural engineering.
What was it like living in Minnesota?
When I got here, it was December. Everything was gray and white. And my husband told me that it’s all gonna be green. And I’m like, nope, I don’t believe you. And then, of course, spring came and everything was green, and that spirit of renewal and that stark, natural setting kind of propelled the rest of my outlook toward life from there on.
It was the very first time that I had to create a community around me without an implicit reason for it. Before that, there was college, work, or family connections. But this was the one time when I was starting socially. One of the very first group of friends that I found was in a Jazzercise class. They were like my grandmother’s age, or my older aunts, much older than my mom, even. They kind of took me under their wing.
Shalini remembers inviting her friends from Jazzercise class over for a meal after she and her husband bought their first home in Minnesota. She made Aloo Puri. The women were impressed that she fried the puri right in front of them – fresh and hot – instead of having it sit in an oven.
After eating the home-cooked Indian meal, Shalini invited the women to look at the colorful clothes in her closet. They tried on some saris and took photos. As Shalini watched her friends try on her Indian clothes, she realized that while she had gotten to know Minnesotan culture during her Jazzercise classes, excursions, coffee mornings, and happy hours, they did not understand her Indian culture.
This was the first time that I invited them into my life. And it kind of opened a window that to belong, I need to share; I need to bring them into my life for me to belong to them. Those were some relationships that I still treasure.
They taught me so much about how American thinking is very different from how an Indian thinks. And that kind of shaped everything. From there on, I met folks in my college, in my job, in my new neighborhood. I kept that same mindset that I have to bring people in, I have to let them into my life, so I can belong to them. And that’s how the settlement started. There’s a saying in Minnesota, that whatever the harsh weather there is outside, it’s compensated by the warm hearts of the people. And I truly believe that, the Midwest warmth.
How did you find this Jazzercise class to begin with? Was it in the newspaper or on a bulletin board?
One thing that fascinated me about America was the library system. Even in winter, I would just go there and spend hours and hours just looking at books and reading. It was on one of their bulletin boards that the new session would be starting soon. And it was very close to the library.
You came to the U.S. because of your marriage. Was it arranged or love?
It was a combination. I met my husband through my friend. So I kind of knew him before that seed of “Hey, you’ll fit well in our family” was planted. So I would say it was a blend of arranged and love marriage.
Shalini met her husband through her friend, who thought her brother, Devesh, and Shalini would get along well. The friend mentioned separately to both of them that when Devesh was visiting from the US, the two should meet.
When we first met, the seeds were already planted in our heads, like this could be a good match. We met at a family picnic, so everybody was present. We kind of talked, and it was very comfortable talking. At one point, we just wandered around and just were talking. Somebody had to come looking for us like, “Hey, it’s been two and a half hours you guys have been talking. I mean, are you not done yet? Don’t you want to come back to the family picnic?”
We dated for about three weeks. And then he returned to the States. It was decided that we’d formalize this friendship and so we got engaged. About eight months after that, we got married.
Devesh [while we were engaged] would call me every morning. It was my morning, and it was his evening. He would come back from work and call me. And we would talk for hours. These are the days when long-distance calling was so expensive. I had no idea living in India that it would be that expensive. So he would call and we would talk every day.
He was like ‘This is my paycheck. This is my bank account.’ And I’m like ‘Oh, my gosh, how much would you spend on telephones? And why did you not tell me how expensive it was to call every day on those hour-long phone calls?
My husband told me -I think MCI was the phone company - they offered him a load plan just because of his usage.
I would wake up to his phone call and we would talk and sometimes we fought. It was just like a regular relationship. It’s just that we were not in front of each other. One time, we were discussing his tux, and the cost of his tux. He said “Oh, that’s going to be $1,500. I think it’s too much for a tux for a wedding.” And I’m like, “What do you mean? You told me the telephone bill is like 2200 or 2000. This is less than your monthly telephone bill. So why would you not just spend it?”
You have two daughters. What is the main way that you pass on culture and heritage to them? How do you live it yourself regularly?
In everyday life, it would be food. Even if we cook something that’s not traditional Indian, there will always be a bit of an Indian touch. We had their grandparents visit us every other year, one set of grandparents each summer.
They would watch the [Indian shows on] TV and some of those Rani Lakshmi Bai shows and stuff with their Nani or Dadi and they would sit and soak it up. That was our way of making them know that we are not a nuclear family, that we are an extended family. And when grandparents come, they are part of the family.
When we go back [to India], they are [my daughters] surrounded by cousins and extended family. They just love that. And we visited frequently. Every other year we would make a trip. So the kids would have a connection with their friends there. Sometimes it’s the neighborhood kids they would form the connection with, the neighborhood where their grandparents live along with their cousins.
On special occasions, I like to celebrate, I just need a reason to celebrate. They’ve always celebrated all the festivals. I would dress [myself] up in a sari when they were younger.
I would hand sew their little ghagras or make a kid’s sari for them to wear. I think it was the last Diwali that they just walked into my closet.
My daughters know that the sari is for festivals and they are comfortable coming over, browsing through my closet, and saying, “Hey, this is what I want to wear” rather than saying, “Oh, it’s cumbersome” or, “Oh I don’t want to wear it.” I didn’t have to convince them. They just took to it.
We have the entire [Amar Chitra Katha comics] collection. We grew up reading those. We got Enid Blyton, who is not a very popular [author] in America, but was popular when we were growing up because of course, India has a stronger influence from the British culture than American culture. So all those books, The Famous Five, Nancy Drew, the ones that we, my husband and I grew up reading. We bought all those books for our kids too. So that was how we gave them that connection to back home.
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This series was produced by India Currents in collaboration with CatchLight as part of the CatchLight Local CA Visual Desk. Contributors include Vandana Kumar, Meera Kymal, Mabel Jimenez, and Jenny Jacklin-Stratton. Learn more about CatchLight Local’s collaborative model for local visual journalism at https://www.catchlight.io/local
This series was made possible in part by funding provided by the State of California, administered by the California State Library in partnership with the California Department of Social Services and the California Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs as part of the Stop the Hate program.
