East Indian young people in Sacramento adapt to dual cultures

Nikita Mehta felt so conflicted about her East Indian roots as a child in Orange County that she tried to turn herself white.

"You couldn't be in 'Swan Lake' and be brown. So when I was 7, I sat in the bathtub with bleach trying to scrub off the color," said Mehta, now a UC Davis sophomore. "My mom started crying."

Mehta, 22, is among a generation of South Asian Americans known as ABCDs – "American-Born Confused Desis" (a "desi" is any South Asian). The "confused" part comes from their struggle between Indian and American identity.

For years, ABCD was an insult leveled by South Asian cousins and friends against American-borns because they didn't speak Hindi, Urdu or other South Asian languages, and didn't understand the culture.

Now that globalization is Americanizing Indian culture, and Americans have embraced "Indochic" – Bollywood movies, yoga and Indian food, fashion and spirituality – the C is more likely to stand for "complicated," not "confused," said Sunaina Maira, associate professor of Asian American studies at the University of California, Davis.

ABCDs are coming of age, Maira said, making their mark in academia and cyberspace just as India is projecting the image of an economic and cultural superpower revered by Madonna and other American icons.

"The ABCD label suggests that the second generation of Indians, Pakistanis or Bangladeshis are psychologically confused and there's some identity conflict," said Maira, 38, who grew up near Mumbai. "They're not confused; they're just grappling with a mainstream culture that's not accepting them, and an Indian culture that's not fully accepting."

Along with the American popularity of Bikram yoga, "American Idol" contender Sanjaya Malakar – whose father is Bengali-Indian – and Bollywood beauty Aishwarya Rai, Maira said, "there's this whole phenomenon of ABCDs battling that confusion by going back to South Asia to make a difference. They're fighting poverty and inter-religious violence."

More than 24,800 Asian Indians live in Sacramento County, according to the U.S. census. They increased 82 percent from 2000 to 2006.

In the past decade, a new wave of Indian immigrants has come mostly from Hyderabad and Bangalore – the Silicon Valleys of India. Many work as engineers for Intel in Folsom and Hewlett-Packard in Roseville, or as IT experts for the state of California.

The newcomers often bring a more liberal attitude toward American ways, said Raghu Trichur, an anthropology professor at California State University, Sacramento.

"As things Indian get wider currency, there's more acceptance in the Indian community of things not typically Indian," Trichur said. "There's a loosening – not everybody needs to be an engineer or a doctor. A lot more students are pursuing sociology, anthropology, psychology."

Being called ABCDs motivated Mehta and her friends to prove to their parents – and immigrant cousins – that they could succeed on their own terms. "A huge number of us graduated at the top of our class and have excelled in startups and business," said Mehta, who balances her studies with an advertising job.

"The confusion's been a driving force, " she said. "I know a girl with a 3.8 GPA who broke off her arranged marriage for a guy she was dating at Davis."

The daughter of chemical engineers who are Hindus, Mehta remembers returning from India with henna art on her hands "and people thought I had a disease. My house always smelled like curry and a lot of kids didn't want to be my friend."

Mehta went to war with her Indian parents over lunch (she wanted PBJ), what she wore, how she wore her hair and when and whom she dated.

Every Saturday while her American friends played outside, Mehta would stay inside and take SAT practice tests, "and I'd have to write an essay about what I wanted to be when I grew up. An astronaut, an actress … I did hundreds of them. For Christmas, I got chemistry sets."

By the summer before her senior year, Mehta said she was in full-on rebellion and started using methamphetamine "to numb away all the things I'd beaten myself up about – I'm never going to be blond." On the night of her high school graduation, she went into rehab and has since turned her life around.

About the writer:

• Call The Bee's Stephen Magagnini, (916) 321-1072. Bee staff writer Phillip Reese and Bee researchers Sheila A. Kern and Pete Basofin contributed to this report.