RJ Sudha met her husband at work in Chennai. They liked each other, and they kept in touch through letters. He proposed to her over the phone. After marrying, they flew to the U.S.. in 1993. RJ Sudha hadn’t even shared a cup of coffee with her husband before her wedding. Since then, she has raised a daughter while working as an engineer before transitioning into one of the Bay Area’s most popular Tamil radio hosts.
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.
Portraits were made in Milpitas, Calif. on Feb. 24, 2023 and the interview took place on June 3, 2023 via Zoom. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
So good to talk to you, Sudha. You know, I initially thought the RJ in your name referred to a city in India but it means Radio Jockey!
It’s also an abbreviated form of my father’s name, Rajagopalan. I still hold on to that last name. I’m also holding on to my newly acquired title, Radio Jockey.
Tell me about where you were born and raised?
I was born in Gujarat, specifically in the Rann of Kutch. I spent the first three months of my life there and then moved to Chennai. My entire schooling was in Chennai, K-12. I went on to my undergrad in math and then a post grad in computer science at the University of Madras.
What happened next? Did you get married?
I didn’t get married right away. I worked for a company called HCL, Hindustan Computers Limited. That was probably the number one company in India that offered decent work for software engineers fresh out of college. My first posting was in New Delhi. I lived in New Delhi, but my workplace was in a city called Noida. Now Noida is a big, big place. But in those days, Noida was an evolving city. It was just factories and hardware companies. There were just one or two restaurants there. People used to commute from New Delhi to Noida on office buses. I worked for HCL for about two years, and then they transferred me back to Chennai for about a year. So, totally for two years, I worked as a software engineer.
What brought you to the US?
I was interning during my MCA program, a Master of Computer Applications, at the University of Madras. I met my husband there. He was already an employee. We got interested in each other. We continued to keep in touch even while I was in Delhi and he was in Chennai. Later on he moved to the U.S.. I was in Chennai, so we never actually spent much time, but we kept in touch with each other. Finally, we broke the ice, and he proposed to me over the phone. Our parents met. And one fine day in May 1993 we got married. In June 1993 I moved to the United States of America on an H-4 visa. He was on a H-1B visa.
The wedding was in Tirupati. I left from the Chennai International Airport and landed in California, San Francisco airport.
So you never really had a chance to date your husband ?
Never. Never ever. We never even had a cup of coffee together.
People would see me and look at me. “Oh you’re very forward for those days!” I tried to tell them it was not really forward. We still didn’t do all the things that people in love marriages were supposed to be doing, hanging out in coffee shops or beaches or cinema theaters. We just spoke over the phone, wrote letters, not even emails. In those days emails were not very common. We just kept in touch in those old fashioned ways and kept it going. We believed in each other and the long distance relationship kept blossoming over the days and months and years.
Did you ever think about how you connected to Indian culture when you were growing up in India?
The Kendriya Vidyalaya system taught us how being an Indian was so important. I recently wrote in one of the articles on Facebook as well as LinkedIn, the unity of India lies in its diversity and diversity is the beauty of India, “Sare Jahan Se Achha Hindustan Humara.” The Kendriya Vidyalaya system that I grew up in was filled with children with classmates and students and teachers of so many different cultures, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Jains, Parsis. The kind of diverse classmates that we had were not only from Tamil Nadu but from so many other states.
The Kendriya Vidyalaya system used to host only students whose parents, or one of the parents, were in a transferable position, army officers, navy officers. So they are the ones that have been to different parts of the country. They are the ones who can talk multiple languages, who have absorbed different cultures. They would come and spend a few years in Chennai, and I would learn a few languages, learn their culture. It was like imbibing the entire Indian culture while sitting inside the school. Staying in the school for 12 years taught me so many things about understanding the culture of India through my friends, through my teachers, and of course, through the textbooks.
Just last night, I was talking to my physics teacher from my high school, who’s now retired in Kerala. He was asking me “How do you spend your time?” I told him I was just listening to one of the Bhagavatam recitals in one of the local temples, and how much I was drawn towards it. But then, although he was my teacher, I told him that “But Sir, I am in a very responsible position in this community. I cannot show my bias towards a specific religion.” I’ve been taught throughout my Kendriya Vidyalaya studies that, “Don’t show your favoritism to a specific religion or specific political party. Be impartial. Show your love to all your countrymen.'”And so whenever I post to my Facebook page or LinkedIn page, I try not to incline towards a specific leader or specific religion or whatever it is because of just the way I was brought up, and just the way I studied with my classmates and just with how my school taught me.
When you came to the US did your connection to Indian culture change? If so, how?
The Indian in me still stayed. But within four months of living here, after enjoying my initial honeymoon period, I started working, and I got to know a lot. It was the year 1993 when I moved into the US. My husband was probably one of the few (Indians) working in his company. I was probably one of few Indians working in my company.
So when I moved here, the closest friends I had were either Chinese or American, Israeli or Russian. They were very, very close and as I interacted with them I realized that the human blood and feelings, emotions, the taste and everything else is the same no matter which country you belong to. The love for the culture, the love for the country, it’s all the same, it’s just the country that’s different. The Chinese love their food, they love their family, they take care of their children, just the way Indians do. We take care of the children, we take care of parents, and we love our food.
The Indian-ness in us doesn’t change. I’ve been here for 30 years. The Chinese do not change, the Russians do not change. So every person who has lived here, I feel the longer they have stayed here, the love for the country, the love for the culture hasn’t changed much. I think it really gets stronger.
Do you feel you’re the same person now as when you left India?
I feel more Indian than while I was in India! I still cling to my culture and my Indian friends. I go to many events, Indian events, that are part of the Bay Area culture. I visit Bay Area temples. At home I have my own mandir. I worship everyday, just like my mother used to do her everyday prayers. My mother-in-law is a culturally rich person. I have learned a lot from her. We belong to two different sects of the Tamil community so I have learned the best parts of both and am trying my best to pass it on to my daughter. I don’t feel that I’m exaggerating my Indian-ness. I’m just being the way I am. I do my Indian rangoli everyday in the morning and in fact every morning I feed the crows! In the South Indian culture, we assume that the crows are our ancestors. I’m in touch with my non-Indian friends who are very much a part of my life.
How did you become a Radio Jockey?
I worked as a software engineer for 25 years. It gave me a good, comfortable life. But then there’s a point in this life where I thought “Okay, where is this all leading to? What am I contributing to the community?” As I was driving around, I was seeing homelessness, seeing so many problems that I wanted to solve – girls were not enthusiastic about STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), global warming was so predominant.
It’s not that I was going to be solving it as a single person. But I didn’t think being a software engineer could solve any of those problems. There was this constant worry that I wasn’t contributing enough to solve the world’s problems.
In parallel, I realized that the job I had, there was a glass ceiling that I could not break. There was a point where the women would not be promoted and being an Indian woman was a double whammy. I thought, okay if you guys don’t want to promote me, don’t want to celebrate my skin color, I would rather go to a place where my skin color and my femininity is being celebrated.
So I told my boss, “You know what? I’m done with this place. I want to go out and do something of my own, where both my gender and my skin color will be celebrated. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I am passionate about STEM, I will probably start teaching children math or computer science. And if it doesn’t work out, I’ll come back to you in one year and I’ll ask you if you can give me a job. I’ll take whatever job you give me.” He said, “I know you will survive. You will not come back. You will be successful wherever you go.” I left the job end of 2017, early 2018.
I had my undergrad in math. I spoke to this Mathnasium chain of companies. I was very proactive. I was so passionate and very determined to do that. They said “You will need about $500,000 investment. You can get a center about 50-60 miles from your home.” It was impossible for me to take up that responsibility.
There was a Mathnasium shop next to my house, walking distance. I walked up to it and knocked on the door. When I tried to open the door it wouldn’t open. Next door to it was Radio Mirchi 1310. When God closes one door he opens another. I kind of did the reverse thing. I was just casually talking to a person. I didn’t know he was the CEO. His name is SP Singh. He started asking me many questions. He said, “ You seem to know a lot about everything around you. I want you to run a Tamil radio show. I will give you free airtime for about four weeks.”
I’m not the kind to run the radio show, I said. I ran away from there thinking, he’s not going to come after me.
I discussed it with my brother, my husband, my daughter and everybody else in the family. And they all said, “We support you. Go for it!” It was a Punjabi radio station, but they wanted a Tamil spin to it.
A radio jockey from India, a very well known celebrity by the name RJ Balaji, had come to town and he was hosting a stand up comedy show at the India Community Center (ICC). I wanted to promote my radio show. I set up a stall and they said, whoever sets up a stall can get a VIP ticket to stand with RJ Balaji. I told him about my show. He wanted to talk on my show. So he was my first celebrity guest.
Things moved so fast and I instantly became famous. I had absolutely no idea about Facebook or Instagram or anything like that. I had a lot of friends who helped create a Facebook page and all that. Day by day, I started creating, adding new friends and requesting friends and sponsors to come onto my show. Now we have about 5000 people following me. I still have a long way to go.
I’m at a comfortable position where anything Tamil that goes on in the Bay Area, anywhere in the world, people come to me saying can you promote our show? Can you interview this person on your show? The interviews have been very, very effective. They are recorded on the Zoom call, uploaded on my YouTube channel, and then I upload it on Facebook or Instagram or wherever you want. The power of these interviews have just crossed all boundaries. If you look at the kind of feedback I’ve been getting, it’s just amazing and it’s very humbling.
When we spoke a few weeks ago you mentioned you found yourself being more Indian once you started the radio show. Can you talk about that?
When I was in the corporate America world, I had to juggle between an American half and an Indian half. Because at home, I was very much an Indian. And then I take off my Indian hat and go and become an American, or an Indian looking American. Once I put on this whole hat of RJ Sudha, things transformed completely. I don’t have to have this pretense of an American, I’m just myself, RJ Sudha. You accept me or not. I’m just the host and anchor of commercial radio. That’s how I introduce myself. And that feels damn good. I’ll introduce myself to even Americans and tell them “My name is RJ Sudha. I am the radio show host of a Tamil radio show which connects the Tamil diaspora all over the world.” Now people know what is Tamil, what is the Tamil culture, what is the Tamil language. It’s the oldest living language in the world. And every other language is like the descendant of the Tamil language. So now people respect the language and the people know what it takes to be an RJ (Radio Jockey) for such a language.
When you are in American mode do you sound different?
I’m very comfortable talking in Punjabi, Hindi, in Tamil, a little bit of Malayalam. As I’ve spent more years growing up in the US, I think that American English has had a big influence in the way I speak and the way I present myself.
How do you connect your daughter to Indian culture?
I didn’t want to impose any rules on her. I wanted her to pick and choose her own cultural, points. I put her in a Carnatic music class, which she tried for a few years. She didn’t seem to like it, so I pulled her out. I wanted to raise her in a way she wanted to be raised. I was a very easy mother on her. I didn’t want to be too pushy.
She was interested in Western classical music. She spent about 10 years on it and she still likes it. Lately she simply loves Tamil music and Hindi music, Bollywood music, etc. So I have just given her a completely free hand on how she wants to grow herself without imposing my own rules. I don’t want to be a helicopter mom.
Just like how my mother raised me, I would just do my own things. I will do my morning prayers, my rangoli outside, feeding the crows, cook Indian food at home. Let her observe what I’m doing and then let her pick and choose what she wants to do. That’s the way I want to see her grow up.
She is not certified in Bharatanatyam. She’s not certified in Carnatic music. But she’s very good at Western classical. She loves Bollywood music. She can sing Bollywood music and Tamil music and dance to Tamil music like nobody else in Tamil Nadu. She’s very strong and talks extremely well, is very well behaved overall. I don’t put any rules on her.
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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.