Two years ago I ran into a friend of mine at an event. There he revealed something about his past that made me realize that he went thru a very different childhood than mine.
We are both Indian. Though an outsider cannot tell us apart, our birth designated both of us to very different experiences. As an oppressive system, the Indian caste system is just as brutal as American Racism. My friend belonged to the bottom of this system and I to the top.
Listening to his story I understood the difference between my theoretical understanding of the system vs his lived reality. I later learnt from him that because of my ignorance about this system I was a beneficiary, a participant and a promoter of this system. This drove me mad with anger and guilt.
When sanity returned I saw the reasons for my ignorance. I saw parallels of that in the new society I had moved into. One of the reason that caught my attention was unintentional segregation.
I saw people choosing to spend most of their time, emotions and money on small set of familiar and hence comfortable people.
There is nothing wrong in that, but I feel that when this is practiced at a large scale it leads to a situation where people are ignorant about each other’s challenges and their own privileges. Just like in the case of my friend and I.
I am an engineer. I see a problem I want to solve it, so I took upon myself to re-engineer the society around me. I am kidding, I just did what any other sane person will do. I tried to look for people working on the same problem.
Last year a few friends and I started a small group that aims to achieve inter-identity unity in East side. It is called Network for Unity. Our goal is to create more social bonds between people across various identities.
When I say identities, I mean it in every possible way. Ages, genders, races, ethnicities, abilities, sexual orientations...everything that can potentially separates us.
This is how I ended up here to talk to concerned and committed people like you. So everyone in this room is part of my re-engineering project now.
Still not satisfied I kept wondering if there was something else I could do. After all you cannot organize peace marches and community picnic every day.
I realized that if one honest discussion could teach me so much what would several of them do to me? That’s it, I said. I am going to have many such conversations. This meant talking to strangers. No wait, it meant getting the strangers to talk to me!!
So one morning I am thinking to myself about where I could meet strangers willing to talk to me. I needed strangers and I needed diversity. So bars were out of question.
I had recently read somewhere that people who frequently visit public parks were more likely to be extroverts.
Bingo, I said to myself. If there is a safe place to run this experiment it must be in the park. Now, I guess you all know the lovely park we have down at the Crossroads. Yeah, my family has been a regular at that park in the summers and it has amazing diversity. So I decided to hangout there and treat it as the lab for my social experiment.
My next challenge was to find ways get these extrovert parkers to talk. I saw people who had dogs made friends really quickly. I didn’t have a dog, but I have a son. So I used my son as an icebreaker. When a stranger sees me at park, their limbic system probably sees “large sized, middle aged, Indian Male”. But when I follow with my son the stranger sees “Dad”. It helps to switch identity at times.
A few days into my experiments I faced a little motivational problem. I still I wasn’t able to initiate the conversation with too many people. There was a friendly Chinese guy Tungda who tried to talk to me but he spoke no English. Then one day I saw him hanging out with bunch of Indians who had come to visit their children from India. I was shocked!!
It wasn't common for Indians to know Chinese (even though we are neighbors). I caught up with them and asked the Indian person if he could speak Chinese? He said “No”. I asked “Then how the hell are you guys talking?”
"Somehow", he replied and Tungda nodded in agreement. Both smiled mischievously. It was an “Aha” moment. We later ended up using Microsoft and Google translators and they both learnt a lot about each other. As for me, what I learnt was that human relationships can percolate thru many impossibilities.
Then there was one episode where once we took help of a Chinese lady who was married to a White american to talk to Tungda. During the course he said something to her which we felt was quite rude. She said that it was not uncommon for older Chinese people to be uncomfortable interracial marriages. We had grown fond of Tungda and were a bit shocked.
But that day I learnt that in this experiment I will meet many people who will, because of their own biases, say or do things that will make me cringe. I have to find ways to focus on commonalities and to be able to ignore differences that can be overlooked. I was here to learn, not teach.
The other thing I learnt was that I need to be interesting enough for the conversations. Now I don't have too many skills so it makes it a bit difficult, but if you know some arts - music,dance, sports, painting.. All of these things can help pull people.
Needless to say the experiment will break down at some point, there will be conflicts. I have to be prepared for handling them or moving on from such point.
There is one episode that comes to my mind where my wife had some trouble with a particular boy misbehaving in the park. She started to walk towards his mom, ready to complain. I was petrified of their argument causing a breakdown in my experiment. I could almost read the Bellevue Reporter mentioning a cultural war.
Thankfully it didn't end that way and when I caught up with them I realized that they were engaged in very mundane discussion. The mom had already agreed about her son’s behavior. I learnt that there will be times when some respectful confrontation will be necessary, especially when it comes to children.
I can go on and on and on.. But it's time to wrap up. I want to tell you that no matter where this experiment goes this summer it has already immensely rewarded me. My social circle has expanded now and I it only makes me more receptive to new people, ideas and thoughts. People who know of my experiments also feel very comfortable sharing their own experiences. The radius of my experiment has also expanded to be beyond the park. It now includes coworkers, uber drivers and even facebook contacts. Each has a unique story to tell.
One of the gentlemen at the park shared an interesting secret with me. Apparently he used to smuggle watches in 70s.
Then there was this Uber driver from The Gambia who told me that Amitabh Bachchan, my childhood favourite Bollywood star was his childhood favourite too!!
Another Iraqi friend told me about losing his father and brother in a bomb explosion and his journey to America.
Even my friends from India now tell me about challenges they face as a minority there.
These rewarding and touching stories just keep coming.
( Ngina's analogy of different kinds of elephants and elephants with stripes is used here)
The most important lesson I want you leave with tonight is actually a paradox in itself. What I have learnt is that if you pretend to not see the stripes.. If you pretend “We are all just elephants”, then subconsciously you end up not believing that because you cannot explain why we act different. On the other hand if you learn to see, appreciate and recognize the stripes you are more likely to understand that deep down there we are the same. It is no brainer actually.
Here is an example. Another friend of mine from Gambia worries about the experiences his son will go thru in America. Because of the color of his skin, you see. He is definitely going to act differently than me. But deep down we both love our children and care for their future.
This is why I want everyone here to understand why Ngina wants her stripes to be seen.
Last but not the least, my family has been very supportive. It is a big deal to tag along a mad scientist in a park. But I am sure they are also reaping the benefits of this new social awakening.
I’ll end with a two very small appeal. One, If you happen to be at Crossroads Roads Park this summer, please be my guinea pig . My second appeal is to the people who run this city. Please continue to support the park. We love it out there. Perhaps in future a new comer Ngina will meet an old timer Prashant here, ready to see her stripes and to welcome her into this community.
