Dev

 In an episode of Aziz Ansari's Netflix show, Master of None (Season 1; Episode 2), Ansari's Indian American character, Dev, strolls with his Korean American friend Brian along New York streets, navigating Asian folks doing Tai Chi in an inner street. They have just come out after having tea with Dev's dad and his friend Dr. Ramaswami who arrived from India the same day. During the tea conversation, Dr. Ramaswami discloses that Dev's father was working at a zipper factory at Dev's age. For two years, he worked at a zipper factory to earn enough money for medical school costs. Dev appears touched by that revelation about his father's past and fiddles with that information through the stroll with his pal. Brian tells of his own parent's hardship. "Isn't that the gist of every immigrant story, that it was hard?" says Dev. And he persists, "It's pretty crazy. All of us first generation kids, we have these amazing lives. And it's all 'cause our parents made these crazy sacrifices."

This banter, in my mind, highlights some of the pervasive and dominant narratives involving immigrants and immigrant kids. One is that, immigrants come to this country searching for a better life, escaping hardships in their countries. Implicit in this is a story of struggle back home. Some form of heroic struggle to escape that hardship. And then genuine interminable hard work in this country to nurture a better life for themselves and their families. Another one is that it is a privilege to be living in this country for all forms of mightiest reasons you can conjure. Dominant economy, superpower, melting pot of myriad cultures, most innovative, most free....choose your inebriety. 

While there may be some truths in each of these narratives, I suspect it is oversimplification at best. Even if we were to look at just this specific conversation and context, these artists have made a significant leap to come up with this dramatized conversation for an entertainment medium. In reality, Dev's father is more likely to be a brahmin from a relatively well to do family, perhaps living in a city, or a landlord in a village with a dominant social status. He was very likely sent to a private school with much more rigorous didactics and resources than dilapidated public schools that majority of others went to. That very likely gave him an edge to compete in exams to secure position at a reputed high school. And that, in turn, prepared him well to ace the medical school entrance exam and secure full scholarship. He likely had relatives or acquaintances who were living in America or had traveled or studied in America to guide him through the process of immigration. 

Someone securing medical school spot by working at a zipper factory that very likely pays sub-substinence pay even by Indian living standards? Fantastical, in my mind. But, I surmise, these are precisely the types of stories that motivate many kind-hearted individuals to be open about welcoming strangers to their country. And the distinct contrast in material prosperity that exists between these countries makes it easier for someone in America to assume that everyday life is a struggle for the whole masses of lives populating these resource-poor countries. Ordinary affairs of daily living can be interpreted as unendurable struggle. The narrative needs, therefore, can be easily fed and satiated with a variety of these fantastic and often embellished examples. 

Dev's pride about this country and gratitude for existence in this segment of the world is a more complicated matter for me to discern. American children of immigrants are in many ways equally foreign entities for immigrants. But we also likely have a very distinct set of relationship with this segment of American population. Being an immigrant father of two children born in this country, there is almost a reflex trepidation for matters that may adversely affect this group. But very little understanding of their internal lives. And many questions. When Dev bloviates about "amazing lives," I dearly hope that it is what he feels in quietude. Not a learned response to justifying his existence at this place. While as an immigrant I do not have much qualms in identifying myself as foreign, and no real issue with others treating me as a foreign individual, as long as it is not borne of malice, I see no moral justification for any form of identification as a foreign entity for children born in this country, whatever the circumstances. Gratitude should not be a contingency for their citizenship. One's relationship to their nation of birth, I suspect, is not neat, rather complicated. And one should be entitled to a full assortment of emotions. Gratitude is the best among those, and if indeed that is what Dev feels, this immigrant father of two America born children is truly hopeful!