Mr. Ashok Patel (Masala Chat Project)

Description

Ashok Patel is a retired physician who was Chief of Hematology at Cook County Hospital for more than thirty years. The interview includes discussion of his young life in India and Fiji and life as a foreign medical graduate student in the US with is wife Daksha. The couple fell in love in medical school in India, but struggled to have a wedding during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971-1972. Ashok also discusses his father's position as Fiji's Speaker of the House and his work as a freedom fighter against the British. Other topics discussed include: raising children, American holidays, the difficulty of being a vegetarian in the US.