Q&A
Indian Traveler Mira Kamdar

BY SUSAM WICKSTROM
243-2122

She's as cosmopolitan as they come. As a child, Mira Kamdar spent months at a time with her father's family in India. Her
current job as a World Policy Institute fellow in New York allows her to influence powerful people around the world. Yet Kamdar has deep roots here in Oregon. Her Danish-American mother was raised on a farm near Junction City, and Kamdar graduated from Reed College. So it was only natural for her to hear the Douglas fir calling when she grew weary of the New York City rat race. Now she divides her time between a Manhattan loft and five acres in rural Vancouver, Wash.

Kamdar may have inherited
her migratory lifestyle from her roaming Indian ancestors. Her book, Motiba's Tattoos: A Grand-daughter's Journey into Her Indian Family's Past, chronicles the circuitous route that took her Gujarati merchant family across India to Burma, back to India
and finally to the United States.

Indian culture has folded effortlessly into the American mainstream--chai, yoga, henna, tattoos--yet we tend to stereotype people from South Asia as either spiritual gurus or impoverished beggars. India is actually the most ethnically diverse country in the world.

Last week Kamdar sat down
for lunch in a Vancouver Thai restaurant to talk about how Indian immigrants are changing American culture.

Willamette Week: Why did you move back to the Northwest?

Mira Kamdar: I was buying beer for a party a couple of years ago in the East Village. I reached into the refrigerator and pulled out this six-pack of Oregon brand India Pale Ale. Here's this Central Oregon scene with Mount Jeff and deer...it was my Proustian moment, I could smell the evergreen.

How does someone get a job in a think tank like the World Policy Institute?

Most people get jobs in foreign-policy political think tanks because they have PhDs in political science, they went to the Fletcher School of Diplomacy, they worked for the state department or held a job in a political administration. Lots of people are about to hit the think tank job applications in the coming weeks.

What kind of reception did you get there?

I was the first woman; there were only white men. I started to work on things like women's human rights and the global AIDS epidemic. They were smart enough
to know that it was good that I was doing this stuff. Then I started focusing on India because of my family history.

Does Portland have a large Indian community?

The South Asian community in Portland numbers about 10,000, which is very small; the New York metropolitan area has about a million. That includes people from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and other parts of South Asia. There's a large portion of people involved in high tech, especially software engineers working for Intel. There's even a local expression, the "Intel Indians." There are a few local business owners, a few restaurants, a certain number of doctors, a couple of gas stations, I've noted.

What about the women I see in my neighborhood who wear the traditional garb--what are they going through?

It's particularly hard for the wives of some of these engineers, because often they don't have strong English language skills, their husband is the one who has the visa, and they can end up being very isolated. If they have their head covered in a sari, they're probably coming from a traditional background and they're recent immigrants. In most traditional Indian settings, women are very cloistered at home. They have all the power in the home, but when they go out the front door, they are fairly disempowered.

How do traditional Indian women view American women?

Partly mystery and partly every American woman stereotype: aggressive, masculine, disrespectful, loose. There's probably a lot of curiosity. One of the great fears of many immigrant Indian parents is that their daughter will be too American--she won't be marriageable, because who wants a bride like that?

Do Indian immigrants have a
better life here?

Certainly from a material standpoint, and that's why people want to come. If you're an engineer or doctor or anybody who's highly educated, you can make more money than you can make in India. My cousin and his wife live in a pleasant, clean Seattle suburb with sidewalks and trees and good schools. When their parents come to visit from India, my aunt just wants to look out at the green belt out back. Even though they live in a very nice apartment in New Delhi, it's the Third World. No matter how rich you are, you're still confronted with that stuff around you all the time: the pollution, the noise, the dirt, the poverty.

Do you think Americans co-opting Indian culture elevates it or diminishes it?

I think it makes it feel less strange or foreign, but I don't think it really helps people understand or know the other culture because it's always appropriated. Teenage girls who are doing temporary henna tattooing--mendhi--at a sleepover don't even know it comes from India; it's just the latest thing to do. The things that are more long-lasting are the more subtle ways that Indian culture is penetrating. You can go to the supermarket freezer section and find Indian food. People from India are doing mainstream cultural things. Look at all the hit movies by Indian directors, like The Sixth Sense or The Cell. There are more appearances by Indian characters on television shows like ER. It used to be just the 24-hour market guy on The Simpsons. Indians are starting to be part of the visible American landscape.