Father's Day: What does it mean to be a Dad

I am not into celebrating days like Father's day. It always felt corny. There are so many generations that have been parents and went on with their lives without celebrating this day. It just feels like another day for marketing and selling products. This year is however different and cant help but think what I could done differently last year on this day.

This is the first Father's day without my Dad. It is hard to believe that months have passed since he is gone and in couple more it will be an year. As time passes, memories fade and wounds heal they say. I am not sure if either of them will happen, but I wish they do. I know one thing for sure, that he wanted me and my family to move on.

He was very devotional and philosophical man. He believed in karma and doing good. He never failed to visit an orphange and make donation on my grandma's death anniversary. He wanted to give back to the society by donating to the school and temple in the village he was born and grew up. He did his prayer every day without a fail in the morning. He never gave up this habit even when he became weak and lost a lot of weight from his CKD. I think his faith and belief in God gave him the strength to handle the pressures of life and his bad health.

My Dad was a very humble man. People took advantage of his soft spokenness. He brushed them aside by saying 'paddavadu yeppudu cheddavadu kadu'. I felt rage at those people and more at my Dad for tolerating the idiots. I had expressed my anger to him about the way people would take his help and not even convey their gratitufe. He would just say 'edaina asinchi manchi cheyyakoodadu. manchini gurthanichani vadide tappu kani manchi chese vadidi kadu'. I never understood his philosophy.

One thing, he never told us how much he loved us. It is typical of his generation and mine to grow up and know that there was love and effection but no mention was ever made of it. Sadly, I never said the same to him. That is my only regret, I wish I had that one extra moment to tell him how much he meant to me. How much we as a family still needed him, may be he would have had a reason to fight longer. But that is just wishful thinking, I know.

He was great with money. He put to good use of it, with the limited income he had. He got us educated and built a house for the family. Unfortunately, he also gave away money as loans to people who asked for help. He trusted people to be good just like him. Hopefully, the world will not break the trust he had.


He was very uncomfortable when it involved matters dealing with the public office. There is a lot of haggling, nagging, repetitive visits and under the table dealings that one has to be involved. He hated it. I did not understand that growing up. Now I understand after dealing with these people. It plays with your conscience and there is a certain kind that can live with it and some that accept it. He could do neither, but did the chores when necessary and go more and more uncomfortable as grew older.

He was persistant and never gave up hope, be it his career, personal life, health. He never expressed his anger at his superiors for bypassing him . He hoped one day he would get to be an Accounts Officer. Inexperienced, young kids got promoted way ahead of him. He would move on. The only way he knew was to put in his time and earn every penny of his salary. He was content knowing that his livelihood came from his hardwork. Playing hard was the only way he know and playing 'smart'. Just about a month before his official retirement, he did get the promotion to become an Accounts Officer. I could feel the happiness and contentment in his voice that day.

I had rarely seen him cry. I had heard from my Mom once about it. It was the time when he was about to undergo his first angioplasty. Apparently he had a tear in his eyes, when the doctors told that his heart condition is hereditory. He shed his tears not for himself, but over a concern he had for his kids and their future.
Growing up, I did not understand why he did certain things the way he did. Now a little older and having a daughter of my own, I understand him better. He would deliberate on things and I understand that deliberation is not all that bad. Most times in life, a thoughtful inaction is better than a hasty action. Hopefully I can keep learning from his memories and lead a fulfilling life as he did.

I dont know why but I am reminded of a poem 'Stopping by Woods On a Snowy Evening' by Robert Frost that I learnt in my childhood in school

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queerTo stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

I am sure my Dad would want me to go miles and miles longer.

Exploring the success of Indians at the Spelling Bee?

Yet again an Indian wins the spelling bee. Give it up to Sukanya Roy from Wilkes-Barre, PA. 7out the 13 finalists in 2011 contest were of Indian origin. It has become astereotype of sorts for a kid of Indian ancestry to win the US National Spelling Bee championship. About a year ago, in an article titled Indian Buzz at the Spelling Bee, I pondered on the success of Indians at this competition. In this post, I will explore the possible causes of the success.This post however is not an attempt to explore the why of the success, rather the how of it, may be? Before we begin analyzing the success, I want to take a small detour into the history of the Spelling Bee winners who are of Indian Ancestry.

The first Indian kid to win the championship was Balu Natarajan in the year 1985. He did it by spelling the word milieu. He went on to become a Physician in Internal and Sports Medicine with a fellowship in Sports medicine. He practices in Chicago. This breakthrough was followed shortly in 1988 by Rageshree Ramachandran. She earned a joint MD-PhD at UPenn and is currently pursuing a gastrointestinal fellowship at UCSF in 2008. This succession of wins was followed by a drought of 11 year until 1999 when Nupur Lala won the championship. It was the year the documentary Spellbound was made that followed 8 spelling bee contestants. This documentary film was nominated for Academy Award in the Best Documentary category in 2003. Nupur become a celebrity of sorts since the documentary was released. She graduated from Univ. Michigan Ann Arbor majoring Brain and Cognitive Sciences. She is currently pursuing research in neuroimaging at MIT. George Tampy, who was mentioned several times but was not one of the contestants that were followed regulary in the documentary, went on to win the bee the next year (2000). After graduating from Harvard in 2010, George is a Finance Analyst in Chicago.

The list of all Indian Spelling Bee Winners is below
1985 Balu Natarajan
1988 Rageshree Ramachandran
1999 Nupur Lala
2000 George Abraham Thampy
2002 Pratyush Buddiga
2003 Sai R. Gunturi
2005 Anurag Kashyap
2008 Sameer Mishra
2009 Kavya Shivashankar
2010 Anamika Veeramani
2011 Sukanya Roy

For a full list visit http://www.spellingbee.com/champions-and-their-winning-words.

Time, effort and hardwork each of the winner put into the preparation for the contest has to be the primary cause of their success. Proper encouragement and supportive environment at home and in school plays a part. Assuming every winner had these conditions, a candidate preparing for such an intensive high
competitive event needs a training and practicing ground. To the Indian Kids this came in the form of North South Foundation(NSF). NSF has over 60+ chapters in USA and was started in 1989. The educational contests including the spelling bee contests at the chapter level was started in 1993. These contests have kind of become a minor-league training ground for the major league level Scripps National Spelling Bee.

So far, we know that the Indian kids have been successful post 1999 thanks at some level to the intensive training grounds provided by NSF since 1993. What about the period prior to 1999? There were only two winners in the 80s and none prior to that. To that I would like to take one more detour and explore
the history of Immigration (legal) to US from India.
The immigration policy of US has been fairly restrictive prior to 1965. A policy change in 1965 could be termed a land mark for Immigrants from Non-Western countries to US. You can find details of the history of Indian immigration here. An excerpt from it that is relevant to the current topic is below. Italics are
mine.

The Immigration Act of 1965 liberalized immigration, increasing per country quota to 20,000 people irrespective of race, color or creed. The new legislation while ending the period of selective discriminatory immigration to the US, encouraged a new wave of Indian immigrants who were educated and skilled and have profited from their knowledge.

A further boost to the immigration from India came in the form of temporary work visa or H1B(cap of 65k per year). The Amendment that allowed this to happen came into effect in 1992. Here you can find more details of the change to immigration rules, an excerpt of which is below. Italics are mine.

After 1992, it was the relatively less noticeable route of temporary migration that started to become predominant. The 1990 Amendments, brought into effect in 1992, explicitly favored the building up of the human capital capabilities of America by fulfilling its current and future requirements of highly skilled knowledge workers, finally bringing to relevance the immigration of Indians to the American labour market needs.

The immigrant Indian population in US can be seen in the list and chart below. More details here.
Year     Indian born Immigrants
1960    12,296

1970    51,000

1980    206,087

1990    450,406

2000    1,022,552

2008    1,622,522

So the immigration rules mattered. It limited the number of Indians coming to USA prior to 1965 and 1992, thereby limiting the number of participants in the contests. With the issuance of temporary work permit visas, the number of immigrants from India to US has increased manifold since 1992. This led to the formation of Indian communities and they began to participate in the local events that symbolize something to them. Part of that is success in academic and knowledge pursuits. This has to be cultural as well as demand of the times. The 1980s and after were a period of knowledge driven societies. Service industries have grown that need well educated, high skilled work force. The lack of local workforce led to the immigrant work force from India filling the gaps. This work force came to US on the factor of skill set – good education, learning in science and technology. The immigrants from India who came to US did not have the luxury as the other western immigrant in the 17^th and 18^th century - vast frontier lands and hard work to till the land and make their dream come true. Instead all they had was their academic over achievement that led to their success in their home country and immigration to US. They impart the same spirit to their kids who went on to pursue academic success. This I believe is the reason for the kids’ success. The notion that Indian Parents are pushy and subject their kids to these contests by force and pressure is a farce.

In a follow-up to my first post on Spelling Bee, I attempted to find if there were a set of conditions that all communities, who attained success in certain specialized fields, have. The communities that succeeded, I observed, had
•Barrier Breaker
•Willing Takers/Followers
•Continuing Success
•Network for Practicing and Competing Opportunities
Apart from the above I had also wondered if the size of the community matters.

From what I can see so far, the success of Indian kids at the Spelling Bee meet all the above mentioned observations. The question to ask next is, with the change of times in India and USA, will Indian kids continue their success at the Spelling Bee and in the large context at the academic, professional levels. Also the success is largely achieved by the progeny of first generation immigrants from India. What happened to the kids from second and third generation? Why is their participation and success so limited at the spelling bee? The second generation is fairly successful. We are beginning to see a lot of the second Indians in the movies and TV, politics, leading corporations etc. The time has not elapsed enough and there is very limited data on the third generation. That’s a topic for another day.