Our Krishnas and curries are now public property to be sampled, remixed, chewed up and spat out as millions of cookie-cutter lunch boxes. (Probably Made in China)

I remember the age of the underwear-smugglers.
 
When I left India almost two decades ago to come to America, my mother folded every spice I could possibly need into my underwear. Turmeric, cumin, little green pods of cardamom—all packed carefully between layers of underwear, socks and computer science textbooks. I wasn’t the only one. I’ve met Indians who smuggled in mangos, homemade pickles and ready-to-fry puris stuffed with peas. In those days before 9/11, customs officials were not very interested in me—a young, single, brown man from a turbulent part of the world. They (and their sniffing dogs) were much more preoccupied with middle-aged Indian women visiting their sons. They were rifling through their luggage, searching for contraband mangos and gourds.

Fast-forward 20 years.

My friends and I wander out of an Indian movie theater in Fremont on a mellow California evening. The latest Bollywood release opened here the same day it did in Mumbai. At intermission (for Bollywood films must have an intermission), you can get samosas and chaat along with your popcorn and soda. We go shopping at an Indian market off the main drag. It’s Sunday evening. All the shops in the strip mall are closed except for this one. Lit by unflattering fluorescent lights, its shelves are piled high with all kinds of things—lentils, ready-to-cook packages of saag paneer, ayurvedic hair ointments, even the chocolate Bourbon biscuits (no real bourbon in them) that I remember from my childhood in India. Then we squabble over which Indian restaurant to go to for dinner.  Do we want North Indian? South Indian? We settle for a buffet with both.

What happened?

Well, we did. There are now 2.57 million Indians in the United States, according to the American Community Survey of the U.S. Census Bureau. That makes it one of the fastest-growing ethnic groups. Indians are well-off, generally. Median family income is over $69,000. Indians are educated, for the most part. Seventy-six percent have at least a college degree. The post-1965 immigrant boom, which resulted from a drastic change in U.S. laws about who could come into the country, was followed by the dot-com boom. In her novel The Tree Bride, Bharati Mukherjee describes how “an immigrant fog of South Asians crept into America.” When the chronicle of Silicon Valley is written by some 21st century F. Scott Fitzgerald, it might well be called, she writes, “The Great Gupta.”

India is everywhere. It’s in Booker Prize lists, spelling bees and specially-for-you nuclear deals. It’s in Sukhi’s homecooked chicken tikka masala paste at Whole Foods. It’s in Bhangra aerobics classes and Britney remixes. Newsweek called South Asians the “new American masala.” Five hundred years after Christopher Columbus thought he had discovered Indians, we are truly found.

And I am not sure how I feel about that.

When I first came to the U.S., Americans asked me about that “dot on the forehead.” Now, Madonna wears a bindi. Bollywood borrows Hollywood plotlines (well, two or three for one three-hour film). Now, the Kronos Quartet reinterprets Bollywood composer R.D. Burman. Birthday cards are reproducing old kitschy Indian matchbox covers. Body-hugging T-shirts worn by gay guys in the Castro say “San Francisco” in Devnagari script. There are even Bollywood appreciation classes at universities. My kitsch has become their cool.

Of course, not everything has been alchemized into cool. My big, fat Indian wedding might be hot (“I want one,” a gay man with a Southern accent told me at my neighborhood lesbian bar while sipping a sweet cocktail), but it doesn’t mean the Indian cabdriver, the 7/11 clerk or the Gujarati storeowner are any more acceptable.

Our Krishnas and curries are now public property to be sampled, remixed, chewed up and spat out as millions of cookie-cutter lunch boxes. (Probably Made in China)

It almost makes me nostalgic for the old days when people came up to me and said, “You are from Calcutta? My doctor is Indian. Dr. Harry Patel. I think he’s from that other big city—Bombay?” And they would pause expectantly, as if waiting for me to recognize Dr. Patel. Now, they want to know what restaurant I would recommend in the Bay Area for “authentic Indian food, you know, a hole-in-the-wall place where Indians go, not your white-people-Maharaja-Thali stuff.”