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Mr. Lakshman Agadi (At Risk Stories)
Lakshman Agadi, 76, is a successful business owner in the field of women’s medical device distribution and sales.
Mr. Gyan Agarwal (At Risk Stories)
Gyan Agarwal, 81, is a retired professor of electrical engineering and one of the founding members of the Indian American community in Chicago. The interview includes discussion of his journey from a remote village to a professor of electrical engineering in Chicago.
Dr. Mallikarjuna Rao and Dr. Satyavathi Anne (At Risk Stories)
Mallikarjuna Rao, 80, and Satyavathi Anne, 79, are retired pathologists, both born and raised in villages in the Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh, but they did not meet until medical school when their marriage was...
Ms. Mekhala Banerjee (At Risk Stories)
Mekhala Banerjee, 73, is a retired cancer research lab technician and an author. The interview includes discussion of her childhood in Burdwan, outside of Calcutta, her arranged marriage, trouble learning English when she moved to...
Mr. Santimoy Banerjee (At Risk Stories)
Santimoy Banerjee, 80, is a philanthropist and retired biochemist. The interview includes discussion of his training in the 1960s in the growing field of biochemistry at the University of Calcutta Bose Institute and at Harvard...
Ms. Hena Banerjee (Masala Chat Project)
Hena Banerjee, 80, is an accountant and one of the first Indians to move to the United States in the late 1950s. The interview includes discussion of her early life in Mysore and Calcutta, traveling...
Ms. Ranjana Bhargava (Masala Chat Project)
Ranjana Bhargava, 70, is an experienced civic and non-profit professional with a background in social justice. In this interview, Ranjana highlights the moments of her past that helped shape her passions and later her career....
Mr. Vijay Bhargava (Masala Chat Project)
Vijay Bhargava, 75, is the son of a prominent lawyer and civic leader of his city. The interview includes discussion of growing up in a large joint family, dealing with class differences, and important figures in his life.
Ms. Krishna Chakrabarthy (At Risk Stories)
Krishna Chakrabarthy, 80, is a retired biochemist, college lecturer, and active member of the Bengali community in Chicago. The interview includes discussion of her youth in Gujarat, her father’s influence on her decision to study in the United States, her arranged marriage, and her and...
Ms. Shimmi Chandra (At Risk Stories)
Shimmi Chandra, 85, is a retired real estate agent and one of the pioneering members of the Indian American community in the United States. She arrived in 1959 with her husband and they founded Indian...
Ms. Padma Chandwaney (Masala Chat Project)
Padma Chandwaney, 73, is a proud Sindhi community leader, one of the first Indian Americans in Chicago, and an insurance professional. The interview includes discussion of how she had to raise her younger siblings at...
Dr. Kamal Chawla (At Risk Stories)
Kamal Chawla, 80, is a cardiologist and pioneer of the Indian community in Chicago. The interview includes discussion of his initial guilt over not returning to India but eventual acceptance by his family and feeling...
Ms. Urmilla Chawla (At Risk Stories)
Urmilla Chawla, 77, is a retired school teacher, journalist, and author. The Chawlas are a pioneer family in the Chicao Indo-American community. The interview includes discussion of memories of her family fleeing their home in...
Ms. Harpreet Datt (At Risk Stories)
Harpreet Datt, 70, is a product manager and active member of the Chicago Indo-American community. The interview includes discussion of her rebellious younger years and her appreciation for Indian culture.
Ms. Virbala Desai (Masala Chat Project)
Virbala Desai, 79, is a retired Montessori school teacher and one of the pioneer members of the Indian community in Chicago. The interview includes discussion of her first impressions of New York City as a...
Mr. Vidyasagar Dharmapuri (Masala Chat Project)
Vidyasagar Dharmapuri, 77, is a pediatric physician and was the first president of the Hindu Temple of Greater Chicago in 1977. His wife, Nagamani, joins for the end of the interview. The interview includes discussion...
Dr. Nagamani Beligere Dharmapuri (Masala Chat Project)
Nagamani Beligere Dharmapuri, 82, is a pioneering pediatric physician who came to the US on her own in the early 1960s. The interview includes discussion of her fight throughout her life to defy expectations of...
Mr. Kanti Gandhi (Masala Chat Project)
Kanti Gandi, 76, is the owner of a successful global chemical coatings company. The interview includes discussion of the fact that he among the earliest members of the Indian community in the United States, having...
Ms. Renu Gandhi (Masala Chat Project)
Renu Gandhi, 68, is a devoted wife and mother who works alongside her husband and children in the family business, the Gandhi Corporation. The interview includes discussion of how she built a hybrid identity as...
Ms. Shamiya Ghogha (Masala Chat Project)
Shamiya Ghogha, 20, is a newlywed who is adapting to life in America. The interview includes discussion about her recent move to Chicago from India and her efforts to learn English at the Indo-American Center...
Mr. Dial Gidwani (Masala Chat Project)
Dial Gidwani, 80, is a community educator, author, and retired airline security professional. The interview includes discussion of his multi-pronged efforts to teach Americans about the tradition of nonviolence which stems from India.
Swami Ishatmananda (Broadening Narratives)
Swami Ishatmananda, 71, is a monk and the spiritual leader of the Vivekananda Vedanta Society of Chicago. In this interview, he reflects on his childhood in Kolkata and the philosophical influence of his father, whose spiritual outlook inspired his early interest in the Vedanta tradition....
Mr. Punit Jasuja (Broadening Narratives)
Punit Jasuja, 51, is a designer and special events producer who lives between Oak Brook, New York and New Delhi. The interview focuses on his family’s background in India, their immigration from Multan, Pakistan, to Chicago and his childhood in Oak Brook, Illinois. The discussion...
Ms. Shruthi Kannan (Broadening Narratives)
Shruthi Kannan, 36, is a trans Chicago-based labor organizer in SEIU Healthcare’s childcare division, a vocalist, and a former early-childhood teacher. The interview includes discussion of her birth in Bhilai and upbringing in a joint Brahmin family in Chennai, immigration to the Northwest Suburbs at age...
Mr. Muhammed Khatri (Broadening Narratives)
Muhammed Khatri, 57, is a cheerful Muslim limo driver living in Chicago’s West Ridge neighborhood. Mr. Khatri is enthusiastic about the opportunities available in the United States for anyone willing to work hard, an economic reality he experienced in sharp contrast to his difficult life...
Mr. Michael Kuruvilla (Broadening Narratives)
Michael Kuruvilla, 42, is the Chief of Police of Brookfield, Illinois, a social worker by training, and a longtime member of Chicago’s Malayali Christian community. The interview includes discussion of his Chicago birth and Buffalo Grove upbringing, his parents’ immigration from Kerala (and his mother’s...
Ms. Triptha Malhotra (Broadening Narratives)
Triptha Malhotra, 77, is a retired teacher currently living in Sugar Grove, Illinois. In this interview, she reflects on her childhood in New Delhi, her early education, and her life with her father and siblings following the early death of her mother. She...
Dr. Arvind Menon (At Risk Stories)
Arvind Menon is one of the pioneers of the Indian community in Chicago; being a very successful physician who came to the US when there was high demand for doctors from abroad in the late...
Ms. Lakshmi Menon (At Risk Stories)
Lakshmi Menon, 75, is a pioneer in the Indian American cultural heritage sphere who has been a part of countless efforts to build bridges between her community and others.
Ms. Eshara Mondal (Broadening Narratives)
Eshara Mondal, 32, is a cloud engineering manager for a nonprofit and has a background in neuroscience and education policy. Born in Adena, Minnesota, and raised in Palatine, Illinois, she grew up balancing her Bengali heritage with American life. She participated in the Bengali Association...