Kalita with husband Nitin Mukul on their wedding day

Her first effort in journalism was “producing” a newspaper at the age of 11 with craft paper and reporting on her parents. Sanghamitra Kalita had the instinct then, and she continued to hone it, working her way through university and ultimately landing a job in the upper crust of American journalism. Today she is the education reporter for the prestigious The Washington Post, reporting on trends and traumas of middle and high- school children. For a young woman to land a job in America’s leading newspaper and have a well-acclaimed non-fiction book under her belt are definite achievements.

As a minority within a minority, she treasures her Assamese roots, and is fluent in the language — no small achievement in an environment dominated by English. “We speak Assamese at home. My parents realised that language was very important for me to have a connection with my relatives in India,” she says. She learned to do the Bihu in her grandmother’s drawing room in Assam and even performed in America for community events to her mother’s choreography.

Kalita appears comfortable in her identity and feels at home both in the American and Indian cultures. She considers her parents “pretty cool,” and remembers no major cultural clashes. “We grew up with Hindu rituals and celebrated Indian festivals. My father later converted to Buddhism and now we also have Buddhist influence,” she says. Grounded well in her reality, Kalita is articulate and feels that her background helps her report on the “otherness” of people and situations.

Journalism is not a field Indian American families normally encourage their children to explore and Kalita couldn’t name a single Indian American in the profession when her parents grilled her about her choice. Why couldn’t she be a doctor or a computer engineer? But Kalita followed her dreams and armed herself with a degree from the top-notch Columbia School of Journalism.

Kalita began her career with Associated Press, the premier American news agency, in the Trenton, New Jersey bureau. She later joined Newsday, a major newspaper in the New York area, as a business reporter where she got noticed for writing a five-part series on the Indian economy as India was bursting onto the world stage. She also covered the south Asian diaspora and wrote about immigration issues. In the aftermath of terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, she reported extensively on the backlash against Arabs and South Asians in the New York area. She wrote a chapter for At Ground Zero: The Young Reporters Who Were There Tell Their Stories. Kalita has been recognised with awards and has been featured in the Best Business Stories of 2003. Over the years, she has lived in a variety of places in the US, including Puerto Rico, gaining a wider perspective on issues of immigration and racial intolerance.

But it’s her book, Suburban Sahibs, which made her a recognisable name. And Kalita is already pondering her next one, which might be set in Assam. Her father’s side of the family originally comes from a village about three hours from Guwahati. The family moved to Sadiya, a place Kalita visited every year until she was 12 years old, and finally settled in Guwahati.

So what is the secret behind her achievements? She attributes her success to simple things like hard work, long hours and being “nice” to people. Although being raised a Hindu may have something to do with it, she says she “really” believes in “karma”. Her karma is clearly working like a cola. Clearly, there is lots of hard work behind her achievements — working a full-time job and researching her book on the weekends was routine for Kalita. There was little time for friends or a vacation. Kalita’s husband Nitin Mukul is an artist and a part-time DJ and they have named their daughter Naya Meenakshi Kalita Mukul. Be sure the name will be shortened when she enters school here.

Some have spoken of Kalita in the same sentence as Jhumpa Lahiri, the acclaimed author of two bestselling books, a categorisation Kalita casually brings up albeit with a measure of modesty. She lets drop that Suketu Mehta, the bestselling author of Maximum City, is her friend. Her sign-off message in her e-mail invites, rather directs people to buy her book. “Order your copy of my book, Suburban Sahibs, today! Details at www.desiwriter.com,” she says in true-blue American style. No awkward shyness in plugging yourself — a virtue in this society that young Indian Americans have embraced and for good reason. The humility, the self-effasiveness of the old country are a one-way ride to “loser-dom,” a space no one wants to occupy in America.

The book is an account of three immigrant families — the Kotharis, the Patels and the Sarmas — as they go follow their dreams in the new country. They live in and around Edison, New Jersey, a suburb named after the famous American inventor of the light bulb and scores of other necessities. Each family represents a different class of immigrants and faces different struggles and preoccupations. But together they are an integral part of the American fabric and an increasingly powerful voice in local politics. Just three decades ago, there were no Indians in Edison, no sari shops or spice stores. Today Indians are 20 per cent of the population and a significant voting bloc for any politician running for office.

If the Kotharis left India in the 1970s, Kalita’s other family, incidentally from Assam, are Sankumani and Shravani Sarma, who arrived more recently on the H-1B visa. If Pradip Kothari, who calls himself Peter in the favoured tradition of Indians changing their names to make them easier for the American tongue, is dabbling in politics, Sankumani has secured his future enough that he can indulge in his real vocation of performing Indian classical music. The third family is of the Patels, a last name synonymous with motel ownership across this vast country. The story of Harish and Kapila Patel is one of struggling in low-wage jobs. When the eldest daughter marries a Sikh taxi driver, the family is shattered.

In some ways Kalita blends the American and the Indian which can’t always be expressed by the casual term Indian American because children of first-generation Indians born and brought up in the United States are more than the sum total of their parents and their American experience. They are a new breed altogether. They seem more rooted than Americans, more focused than some other ethnic groups and more rounded in their worldview. And Kalita is a good example.

Seema Sirohi / Washington

A hit in a tight-knit community

March 3, 1999, was a cold, rainy day. As they left the airport, the sun was beginning to set, and the instant cold shocked them. Lipi tried to let her mind go blank, almost as if to allow her surroundings and impressions to seep into her. …Soon afterward, Lipi came off the bench into a job at AT&T. She marvelled at the number of Indians like her on staff. At lunch, the ethnic groups dined separately in the company cafeteria. Why, there was more intermingling in India!

In April 1999, they attended Bohag Bihu, a spring holiday celebrated widely throughout Assam to commemorate the new year. Sanku’s voice made him an instant hit in the tight-knit Assamese community in New Jersey. Lipi and Sanku felt as if they had more Assamese friends here than in Bombay. Quickly, Lipi and Sanku settled into life in America, never ceasing to marvel at the speed of their adjustment. Lipi occasionally thought about how she never had to wash dishes or work as a cashier like some of the older immigrants they were friends with. But she felt she and Sanku made sacrifices of a different kind.

In June 2000, one editorial writer summarised the predicament of H-1B’s: “They are not full Americans, and they never can be.”

Sanku and Lipi asked themselves and often. Could they ever be Americans? And did they even want to be?

(Excerpted from: Suburban Sahibs by S. Mitra Kalita. Price: Rs 250. With permission from Penguin Books India)