• PAGE ONE
• INDEX
• HOME

Conquest of Mt Kailash in San Jose

Janaki Murali

Recently in San Jose

IF you are on Ranganathan Street in Chennai and find yourself elbowed out by shoppers at Saravana's stainless steel bazaar, don't be surprised if you find that they are NRIs from San Jose, shopping for those special dinner plates or those quaint nei kinn ams that only the South can offer.

And if you find the sparkle dulled even during daytime at Panagal Park and Usman Road, it could again be those San Joseans, investing their ESOP millions in the glittering metal.

Call it nostalgia or their Hindustani dil looking for that special `Made in India' tag.

For the Indian-Americans who have made a home away from home at the Silicon Valley, Navarathri and every other Indian festival is party time, when it is time to display their new silks, the latest designs in gold and diamond jewellery and that stainless steel dinner set -- acquired during their annual sojourn in India.

Navarathri is that time of the year, when the San Josean housewives vie with one another to host the biggest Kolu of the valley, complete with the park and the zoo. ``You should see the take-home gifts some of the families give, there is a competition as to who gives the costliest gift,'' says one San Josean.

``I get about 40 invitations during Navarathri, and that is only because I do not belong to the inner circle. Those in the inner circle get nearly 100 invites during Navarathri,'' says a software engineer.

Says another software engineer, ``When I came here, I brought only trousers and skirts, but I find there are so many social functions to attend and I have only a couple of silk saris from India.''

For the girls, the topic of conversation could well be the latest ghagra choli that a relative sent from India, while the boys would be rehearsing to the music of Taal, for the weekend's presentation at the Indian Sabha.

The scene at the Indian bazaar is familiar: blaring Bollywood music, rotting Indian vegetables, chunky gold jewellery, the latest Hindi film VCDs, the overpowering smell of Indian spices. This is where fellow San Joseans meet and exchange gossip about pe ople back home. The dress code here is Indian, of course.

Out here, if you are a housewife and a Bharatanatyam exponent, you may end up earning more than the software engineer husband, for there are any number of Indian students wanting to master the mudras.

For an Indian software engineer, the ultimate measure of success in the Silicon Valley is when he buys a house on the hill. So what if the nearest motorable mall is an hour or two away, almost every average Indian home here has four cars, one for every m ember of the family.

As for the hill, no San Josean cares to remember what it was once called. To them it is -- what else -- Mount Kailash!