Devon Avenue between Western and California Avenues is a half-mile stretch of New Delhi or Bombay transported to Chicago’s North Side.
The seductive scents of cardamom and tamarind waft out of spice shops onto crowded sidewalks and mingle with the distinctive rhythms of Indian music pouring from loudspeakers outside electronics dealers.
Restaurants along the street offer a taste of cuisines from many parts of the Indian subcontinent and attract not just residents of this immigrant neighborhood, but devotees of complex, spicy cooking from all over the city and suburbs.
Once a month or so, Anil Sharma, 43, drives in from southwest suburban Lockport, taking his family to the Devon Avenue neighborhood for an outing. Even though he was born in Kampur, an industrial city south of New Delhi, he is a tourist when he comes to Devon.
Sharma is one of a growing number of new arrivals to this country who are skipping some of the traditional early chapters in the nation’s 100-year-old immigrant story. For them, suburbia is an immediate gateway to America.
At the turn of the century, immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe turned Chicago’s inner city neighborhoods into miniature outposts of their native lands. Speaking the language they imported, honoring Old Country customs and rarely venturing beyond their communities, they lived on the fringe of American society. It was only in their children’s or grandchildren’s generations that such families entered the mainstream. Today, many of their descendants are suburbanites, indistinguishible from their neighbors.
That pattern continues. In recent decades, certain inner city neighborhoods again are serving as ports of entry for great numbers of immigrants, many speaking languages seldom before heard on Chicago’s streets. For most such newcomers, a ranch house on a big lot is still a long way off.
Yet, since his first days in America, Sharma has resided in just such a setting. He lives now on Chippewa Trail, just around the corner from Choctaw, in a Lockport subdivision marked by a wooden sign that depicts a stereotypical Native American seen in profile. The irony isn’t lost on him.
“Columbus thought he’d reached India,” Sharma said relaxing on a couch in his comfortable, cedar-sided ranch home. “He called the people he found Indians, so they and we have the same name.”
As an Asian Indian, he is not alone in the suburbs. Substantial populations exist in such near northwest suburbs as Des Plaines and Mt. Prospect and southwest suburbs such as Oak Brook, Downers Grove and Westmont. There, small Indian grocery stores are beginning to appear in the franchised world of the strip mall. The 1990 census found that 72 percent of Asian Indians in this area live outside the city. Community leaders estimate the Indian population of the Chicago metropolitan area at more than 100,000, three quarters of them foreign-born. A study based on Immigration and Naturalization Service data shows that Asian Indians are the third largest group of current immigrants to this area, after Mexicans and Poles.
There are pockets of other first-generation immigrants in suburbia–Thais in Bridgeview, Mexicans in Aurora and Elgin, an enclave of Ethiopians in Wheaton, clusters of Philippino health workers near suburban hospitals.
But the Asian Indians are unique in having made it to both the suburbs and the upper middle class in the first generation. Theirs is the traditional immigrant story, but greatly speeded up. Among Indian immigrants, an individual can enjoy material rewards and experience cultural conflicts that traditionally take several generations to play out.
In 1982, Sharma came to this country, moving in with his older brother in Burr Ridge in the southwest suburbs. He made two quick discoveries about the cuisine and geography of his adopted homeland.
“American food had no taste,” he recalled. “I was served some chicken and rice, and I just couldn’t eat it.”
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“We’ve learned to ask to have Tabasco sauce put on the table,” said Sumita Sharma, 34, Anil’s wife.
His second discovery was that he needed a car. Homesick in his early days in America before he and Sumita were married, Sharma sought out other Indians but found they were scattered throughout the suburbs. He found that for socializing, shopping, everything, he needed a car. His brother, a doctor, gave him a Honda Prelude that he had.
“I was barely here,” Sharma said, “and I was driving around in a sporty car.”
Now, asked how many cars he and Sumita drive, Sharma proudly holds up three fingers. “A van and two cars,” he said, “an extra in case one breaks down.”
One hundred years ago, America needed immigrants for their brawn. In the midst of an industrial revolution, the nation’s factories required more laborers than could be found among the native-born. Accordingly, their agents recruited European peasants for whom the factories of a Chicago or Cleveland held the promise of a move up the economic ladder. The work, though physically exhausting, required little training or education.
Today, with many of those smokestack factories closed and rusting, the nation welcomes many immigrants for their brains. Without highly educated immigrants, America would be hard pressed to treat its sick and design its computer chips, as more and more students here opt not to take the tough courses that would prepare them for careers in engineering, science and medicine. Indeed, half of all students of technology and science in the nation’s universities are foreign-born.
A special H-1B category of immigration visa was designed to give preference to the highly skilled. This year’s allotment of 65,000 H-1B visas were used up by the end of May. Championed by corporate executives of high-tech industries, a bill to increase the number of such visas to 115,000 has been introduced in Congress.
Many of those visas will go to Asian Indians. Doctors and engineers also come to America from Eastern Europe but often are unable to restart their professional lives here because of language barriers. That limitation impinges less on Indian professionals who have been trained in universities in their homeland where English is the language of instruction.
“Go into any hospital in the United States,” said Dr. Pradeep Thapar, “and you’ll find Indian doctors on the staff.”
A psychiatrist in Flossmoor with a specialty in child psychiatry, Thapar observed that he is the only doctor in the immediate area practicing that specialty.
As a legacy of Britain’s former rule of his native land. Thapar learned English in grade school. “My accent may be a little different,” he said of his linguistic switch to American English, “but I never make a mistake in grammar. My punctuation is perfect.”
Thapar came here in 1984 with a medical degree from a university in India, quickly passed his board exams and was certified to practice in the United States. He won a residency in a prestigious program in Michigan but he and his wife found few people from their homeland there. They wanted to raise their two sons in an environment where there would be enough Indian families that the boys would hear the language of their ancestors. They live now in Orland Park.
The best of both worlds
“We returned from Michigan so the kids could learn the Hindi language,” he said. “Here, we have the best of both possible worlds.”
As Thapar and other Indian immigrants see it, the best includes both this nation’s material prosperity and its openess to newcomers. Although the assumption often is made that people choose to live in the suburbs to avoid associating with people of color, neither Thapar nor Sharma, who are dark-skinned, recall being discriminated against. In fact, their neighbors have been nothing but neighborly.
Yet there are aspects of American society that these newcomers are none too eager to let into their homes. Number one among them is the current state of American popular culture, and what it says about the nation’s mores.
“When you turn on the TV,” Thapar said, “you see kissing is rampant.”
In the India of his and Sharma’s youth, such displays of emotion would be screened from public view. Dating was unknown and marriages were arranged by families. In fact, Anil and Sumita are an example of an arranged marriage. When it was time for him to settle down, Sharma returned to India and was introduced to the daughter of a family with ties to his own.
“It is a good system,” Sharma said. “You have the same background, the same philosophy, the same values.”
It is small wonder that someone raised in such a tradition recoils at the daily news headlines shouting about sexual behavior.
“It starts with the biggest leader, the president, and goes right down the tubes from there,” Thapar said. “As a psychiatrist, I see a lot of stress in this society reflected in alcoholism, drug use, premarital sex.”
As an antidote to what they see as the downside of American society, Thapar and other Indian families are determined to maintain their native culture. Such maintenance is difficult under any circumstances but doubly difficult in suburbia, where ethnics traditionally shed their distinctiveness. Thapar can see that process up close. “The neighbors next door are second generation Italians,” he said. “They speak only a little Italian.”
Suburban Indians are able to bring a little of their homeland to their split-level houses thanks to the handful of Indian video stores and groceries within a few minutes drive, part of a cultural support system that is increasing in response to the growing community there. Asian Indians who live in the suburbs say that, though they may visit Devon Avenue for an outing or to buy spices in bulk, they no longer are dependent on it. On weekends they can watch six to seven hours of Indian network television on channel 23 — dance programs, classical Indian music, discussion of political issues back home. The Woodgrove Festival theater in southwest suburban Woodridge shows Indian films on Sunday mornings.
A prominent symbol
The most visible sign of Indian culture in suburbia is the Hindu Temple of Greater Chicago in Lemont. The largest such temple in the United States, its ornate, white spires rise from the north bank of the Des Plaines River. Worshipers previously met in private homes in Oak Park and Lombard, the closest Hindi temple then being in Pittsburgh. The Lemont temple was built in the 1980s with some $7 million in donations from the community.
The temple is a gathering place for the community and offers, in addition to worship services, traditional dance and music concerts, lessons in six Indian languages and history classes. And, reflecting the value the Indian community places on education, coaching sessions for the SAT college entrance exams.
Smaller temples since have been established in Wheeling, Bensenville and Aurora.
Many Indian families add to the cultural opportunities offered by formal institutions by staging get-togethers.
“Every weekend is booked,” Sharma said. “We go to lots of parties where 20 to 30 Indian families will gather to eat and talk. That’s what we do rather than going to a bar.”
Those gatherings are not just occasions for feasting and gossiping.They also provide a kind of cultural quorum where the American-born younger generation can be surrounded by the tastes and sounds of the Old Country. It’s a weekend version of the cultural immersion of a self-contained, big-city ethnic neighborhood.
“We try to do with our families here what our parents did back home,” Sumita said.
Anil recalled that his father used to sit with him and his brother every night after dinner as the boys did their homework. He and his wife try to provide the same guidance now, but they find they are fighting a potent foe, television.
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The Sharma children–two boys, Abhishek, 11, and Abishkar, 8, and a girl, Akansha, 3–look at first glance to be typical suburban children. They like rock, listen to radio stations Q101 and Windy 100. Abhishek, plays percussion and keyboard instruments and accompanies both rock CDs and traditional Indian music. Abishkar likes sports and lasagna.
But they have some qualities that are increasingly rare among children of affluence. They rise when an older person enters the room, and, in the presence of strangers, raise a hand for permission to talk.
“We were taught respect for our elders, and we pass that teaching along to our children,” Anil said. “It’s Indian teaching that the strong, middle-age generation takes care of the weaker (generations), the children and the elderly.”
The children show signs that Americanization and Indian tradition are battling for their psyches.
“When I grow up, I’m going to have lots of kids to help me with my work.” said Abishkar, echoing something his ancestors might have said when many hands were needed to work the land. “I want to be a basketball player or a soccer player,” Abishkar added, reflecting the dreams of most American boys. He also would choose different kinds of names for his children than his parents gave him and his siblings: “I’d give them names that Americans can say.”
Already, his cousins, children of his father’s younger brother, bear American names such as Robin.
On a recent gathering of families, the Sharmas made a new friend, Rahul Bhalla, 43, senior international controller at Andersen Consulting. Bhalla sees the slipping away of traditional culture as inevitable.
His children don’t watch videos from India, don’t listen to Indian music. They love American food, though their parents put Indian dishes on the dinner table most evenings.
“My wife, Ruby, and I speak Hindi and Punjabi at home,” he said. “But my son, who’s 11, and my 8-year-old daughter don’t. They are very much suburban American kids. After a point, trying to force another culture on them is going to do damage.”
Sharma insists that the battle for culture is a good fight, although he has to admit that, in the long run, it’s bound to be a losing struggle.
“We are able to give our children about 50 percent of Indian culture. They will give their children one half of that. And so, eventually, it will die out,” he said. “It’s the price of migrating to this country.”