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[JITESH JAGGI]: This is Jitesh Jaggi for the National Indo-American Museum’s Oral History Project today at Happie Datt’s residence for our seventh interview. Can you please state and spell your name for us?
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[HARPREET DATT]: My name’s Harpreet Taunque Datt. That’s h a r p r e e t. Taunque is t a u n q u e. Last name is d a t t. But, I'm also known as Happie.
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[JJ]: So, when and where were you born?
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[HD]: I was born in the military hospital in New Delhi, in January, January 6th 1951.
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[JJ]: And what languages did you speak growing up?
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[HD]: My mother and father spoke to us in Punjabi, but once we started school, they spoke to us in English. So, I think my English is more my native tongue, because I learned to read and write in English. I did not learn to read and write in Punjabi, or Hindi, or Sanskrit. Those were all subjects at school.
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[JJ]: What was the reason for the shift between Punjabi to English in your household?
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[HD]: I have no idea. My father and mother were fairly progressive, they were liberal. My dad, we can talk an hour about his story, and so about my mother. But she had studied in English, she majored in, at the university level, in English and subjects in English. And my dad had gone for training to England, when he joined the Airforce. And that, they just spoke to us in English. But, my dad could speak and write in Urdu, and my mom could speak and write in Punjabi.
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[JJ]: And was there a certain religion that your family practiced?
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[HD]: Growing up, I always thought dad was sort of a religious, but mom was very, very much a Sikh. So, I am sort of a religious. When we were young, of course, mom used to take us to the gurudwaras. I learned to do what we call sewa. It’s, I think, baked into my DNA, service work. So, I do a lot of service work, I do a lot of volunteer work, and service work, which is sort of comes naturally. But, when we were really young, and I can’t tell you what age, but I remember we used to be runners at in the langar hall. Langar is the main lunch meal that is served free to anyone who comes to a gurudwara anywhere in the world, including Chicago. And you always need runners from the kitchen to where the people are seated. And everybody is seated on the floor, it doesn't matter what, where you are in any economic hierarchy or class hierarchy. Everybody is seated on the floor, so it’s not easy to get up and serve yourself. So you have the runners come with the food. They bring the roti, they bring the daal, they bring all the different things and serve to you on the plate. So, you start as runners.
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[JJ]: Yeah, especially in Sikhi volunteer work is pretty interwoven into the--
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[HD]: Yeah, has been baked in to the DNA **laughs** yes.
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[JJ]: So, how would you describe your experiences growing up in New Delhi and especially in military sort of a household? What were your, some experiences?
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[HD]: I didn't grow up in Delhi simply because my dad was in the Air Force. So, we did get transferred. But, when we were in Delhi, I was born right after partition. So, we lived in some of the really nice housing. We lived in some flats in Pandara Road, which I still remember because it's right next to India Gate. And then, we moved to Lodi estate. Those houses are now reserved only for like ministers and stuff of the state, but we were, I guess we were the elite, because I had educated parents. They had, my dad was sort of in a service to the nation. So, we lucked out. I was about 6 or 7 when we move to Air Force Station in Tambaram which is a suburb of Madras, now known as Chennai. We got transferred from there, we went to Kanpur. Kanpur was not the best place because we never stayed on base, we were off base, we lived in the city. So, we didn't have that kind of freedom we had when we were in Tambaram.
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And then, we moved to a suburb of Pune called Dapodi, it’s a college of military engineering. My dad was an instructor at that time. We were back on the base. It was around my late middle school, high school years. And we had all the freedom, no one was watching you. You did what you wanted, you could participate in everything. It was a--I always thought my parents were very progressive because of that. When he got his, when he was posted away from that base, he went to Jammu, and I ended up in boarding school in Pune itself. So I graduated in Pune in ’66. My dad had built a house in Chandigarh, which was supposed to be the capital of the new state. So was a nice house, big plot of land. I moved there after I graduated. I did my undergraduate. And in India, if you went through the senior Cambridge in high school, you only had 3 years of college. So I finished college and pretty much left and came to the U. S.
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[JJ]: And was this, a lot of moving around as a child, was it exciting? Was it stressful? What did that make you feel?
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[HD]: I loved it. It has given me the skills that I think are present today. I make friends easily, but I don't have very deep friendships. Most of my very deep friendships are forever friendships. And that's partly because you end up, when you're on base, you go from base to base, you end up meeting some of the same people. So, you reconnect. I have friends from Tambaram who I reconnected through Facebook, I love Facebook. And it's fun talking about those experiences and sharing photographs of the past. It didn't bother me. I know some people don’t react well to moving, but, my personality, I was the youngest of three siblings. We were all a year apart. So, we were like triplets. But I have never felt the moving, a problem with moving and settling down and making new friends.
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[JJ]: Tell us a little more about your siblings. Like what was the relationship like.
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[HD]: My brother was the oldest. First boy, first born. I did, I think earlier on, say my parents were progressive, but in this case they were not. It was my brother and he was everything to them. He got the best of everything. He got served the meals first. My sister came second. She was definitely the middle child, and I was the youngest. Growing up was funny, because my mom really pampered my brother. I laugh because, my sister and I are strong in many ways than he was, simply because we had to learn to fend for ourselves. And he was pampered a little bit. But we were only a year apart. My brother and sister, they seem to be a little bit of separation. Because when they started going to school, they used to go to--in Delhi it was Columbus, in St. Columbus or Jesus and Mary, or one of--and I was at home, ‘cause I was not preschool age.
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And then, when we moved to Tambaram, they were enrolled at Sacred Heart in Madras, proper. They had to take a school bus. And I went to the neighborhood school. So that little gap, I always felt they were closer to each other than I was to them. My brother loves to talk and I may appear very talkative now, but when we are three siblings sitting together, guess who talks? He talks. It's like that, I just fall into that role very easily. He is the only one who remained in India, he joined the army, he’s the only one who remained in India. And he comes and visits almost every year. My sister, the physician, is a resident of Australia. So, we are, we don't live in the same place.
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[JJ]: So, when did you come to the United States and what brought you here?
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[HD]: I came in 1970, in August of 1970. That would make me 19 years. When I was--you know, I finished off my high school in Pune, and then in boarding school. I was very good at math. And I was very enamored with the NASA space program. So, I thought, I will become an engineer. But then, I was also third child so I didn’t really protest a lot. When I arrived in Chandigarh, my sister, who wanted to be a doctor, really struggled with my dad who, again, very liberal man suddenly became very conservative about certain things. Ultimately, my mother, behind his back, because he was still stationed in Jammu, and she was living alone in Chandigarh with my sister, she enrolled her in medical school. So, when I came along, and I said I want to be in engineering school, my father said, No. He had already struggled with my sister in whichever way dads struggle in their mind, I don't know. So, I just sort of floated along those three years.
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He enrolled me in Home Science college. It was not intellectually very challenging. I was the top student, I was a top student in high school, I was a valedictorian at my college in Punjab University. I was in sports, I had learned to swim very early when I was in Tambaram, because there were no rules, you used to just go to the swimming pool and learn how to swim. So, I got actively involved in the sports. And I had no real idea of what I wanted to do with life. I just knew I didn't want to do what I was doing. I didn't want to just sort of follow whatever path was being, seem to be set out for me. And I used to tangle with my dad more than necessary. I consider myself his favorite child. My brother and sister hear this, they may not like that. But I did, he did indulge in me a little more.
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He used to say, You know, when I first moved to Chandigarh, people used to look up at me and say, Oh, Commander Taunque’s daughter, we saw her. He says, Now everybody says, Oh, that’s Harpreet’s dad. ‘Cause I was very active in that way, in sports, just, I was little rebellious. And I went to a few national swim meets as representing Punjab. And I remember at the train my dad said, You can’t go. There were bunch of guys and girls sitting in the same compartment, I think we were going to Banaras or Calcutta. We went to meet in Banaras, one in Jaipur, one in Calcutta. And I went anyway, because my mom always said, Let her go, you know, this is her day. And that speaks to my mom’s early experience. And I always say the fruit never falls far from the tree. See, I’m wandering. So, the question was--
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[JJ]: What brought you here?
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[HD]: What brought me here. So, in that sense, I wanted to do something. I was doing something, I got by on without a lot of work. And many of the girls, or at least couple of my girlfriends in college, their parents decided to get them married before they graduate. So, in those last few months of graduation, there were some weddings. And there was one wedding in Delhi. So I knew my dad would say, You can’t go. So I just went. I went and got the bus, my sister was still in medical school in Delhi, she went to Maulana Azad. I went for the wedding, and I went to the hostel to stay with my sister. She was most surprised that I showed up. But, of course, she’s my sister, right? So, she made space for me. And during the day, I wandered around, I ended up in what was then called U. S. Information Service. Today, they call it American Corners.
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In my sight-seeing, I ended up at that place and I walked around the library and there were all these catalogues about all these universities and I said, Oh, maybe I can go to America. That will put distance between my parents and me. They won't know anybody there. That’s why I came to the U. S. I didn’t tell my parents. I wrote down the names of some universities. I wrote to them, they asked me to do a exam called Test of English as a Foreign Language. It was easy peasy. I did it without telling anybody. I got admission. I got my I-20. I was in late June, early July, and I--my dad was getting worried because he had enrolled me for a master’s program at Punjab University and I never attended classes. So, I went to him and I said, I need a plane ticket to go to America. Ultimately, he yielded because of my mother. I love to tell her story on this. And I showed up. I had got admission at three different universities, one in the East Coast, one on the West, one in the South. In the south, it was University of Florida in Gainesville. In the west, it was Berkley, University of Berkley. And on the east was Cornell. Cornell has a big agricultural school which our principal had talked about.
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I decided to go to Florida because they said they'll give me an assistantship after one semester, one quarter. Whereas the other schools, it’ll be after a year, and I know I didn’t have that kind of money to enroll in school for a whole year. So, I decided I’d go to Florida. I got a ticket. This is very interesting, because I had told Mrs. Laurie, the graduate student international student advisor. I showed up at the airport in Jacksonville around late evening, dusk. And I was just going to catch a Greyhound bus and go to Gainesville. I had made no arrangements of where I’d stay. I had read enough that I figured I could find a room somewhere and stay. Well, Mrs. Laurie was smarter than I was. She sent a student to pick me up at Jacksonville. She had made arrangements with one of the other Indian students for the night. And that's how I arrived in Florida. I knew nobody. I didn't have family, I had nobody pulling strings or anything. I just showed up. That's what brought me to America, really. There was no, I’m going to, you know I need to, I need a career, there was nothing. It was just, there was like, it just sort of happened, because of the way I lived my life at that time. I think I still live it that way.
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[JJ]: Before you came here, what were like the expectations in your mind? Were there some visions of America? Was there--what did you think America was like? And did that meet your expectations?
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[HD]: Well, the expectation was I could go to school on my own. I could depend on myself. I don't need a family. You could get around with Greyhound, because that's how I was going to get around. Everything that I read and learned about America--my mami, that’s my mother's younger brother's wife, had some relatives who lived in Rochester, and before leaving he had come to visit her and she had invited me. All I remember him saying, Don't be afraid to ask. If you don't understand something, if you don't know where you are, just ask. It has been a piece of advice that I have given my children when they went overseas. Piece of advice, I’ve given anyone who has asked me. I said, Don’t be afraid to ask. If you don’t know, just say, you don’t know. You’ll find out. That's what I remember. And I’m sure he may have given me some other tidbits which helped me.
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I was not the first in my family to leave because my cousin, I left in ’70, I had a cousin, my same mami’s oldest son, who went to UK in ’68. He had to get married to somebody to get a visa to get in. I don't like, I’m not an anglophile, I was not going to UK. I had another cousin who now lives in Canada, who had been married. And there was some, the Punjabi word is khich vich, between his mother and his wife. He was working in Calcutta. Not sure if he had already had his first child or not, but he loved--no, he was the first one who left. He left in ’65, he came to Montreal. Then this cousin who went to UK. So, I was going to go to America. Because I didn’t want to be anywhere close to family. I wanted to find out who I was, what I was, what I wanted to do with myself, without being given advice, do this and do that. That is one of the reasons I chose America.
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Expectations were that that I could actually do anything I want, on my own, I didn't need somebody's help. And it was very modern. They put a man on the moon. President Kennedy had started this organization called Peace Corps. I was in Kanpur when he did that. And I thought, Gee, I’d love to be a Peace Corps volunteer. Ultimately, when I was 60 years old, I because a Peace Corps volunteer.
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[JJ]: What were the, some of the challenges when you first arrived here? Some of the struggles that you had to go through, that you remember.
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[HD]: Well, I would have to say, the struggle would be understanding my three undergraduate roommates. I was assigned to a dorm called Towers. It had two rooms, they were brand new, and they were not built old style. So when you--highrise, so when you entered the space. You entered into what is the common area on one side, there was your kitchenette kind of thing, table in the center, the other side was bathroom, and then two doors opened up. You had two rooms, they were designed for two people but they had two people in each room. So that, four students in each room. Because I was only 19, even though I was a graduate student, I was put with undergraduates. And they asked me questions that, which to this day I have found unbelievable what, there is such a lack of information about the rest of the world in the curriculums of our schools.
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The biggest challenge was answering questions. I got questions like, Did you ride to school on an elephant? Now, it’s like, you know, I didn't come from the jungle. I came from a civilized country. I never asked people, I never to this day ask people, Where are you from? You will not believe this, but last Saturday, I was at the volunteer beach clean-up. And this professional woman, young woman, young compared to me, came up to me and asked me, Where are you from in India? I’ve never met you. What difference does it make where I am from India? Yeah, I look like an Indian, but I could also be a Pakistani, I could be a Brazilian, I could be Southeast Asian, I could be from anywhere in the world. Anyway, so that question still troubles me. I am an American, I’ve lived here so long that I can’t think of any other way than how most Americans think. Yeah, I have a heritage. I don’t lose my heritage. In fact, I learned a lot about my heritage through the Indo-American Museum. Because I had to answer some questions, so I did a lot of reading to find out.
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But, I don't think of India as my home. It’s one of the places I lived in. The other challenge was, most of it evolved with identity. ‘Cause people always want to know. And I just say, Look, I’m from India. No, where are you from in India? So, it's not just non-Indians who ask me that question, Indians always ask me the question. Oh, in Punjab they do that. I don’t think of myself as totally Punjabi, because I lived in Chennai, and Pune, and Kanpur, I lived three years of my life in Punjab. My dad’s family is in the village. I’ve actually, we used to visit them in the summers. I know what Indian villages look like. Getting up at 5 o’ clock in the morning with something called a lota, which is a mug of water. And you went to the fields somewhere, some pokey fields, we used to hate that when we were young. But as we grew up, they moved from that into regular toilets. They moved from candlelight into incandescent light. They moved from no roads in the villages to sort of a brick pathway. Many of the older homes got demolished--I have a picture of the old home, I’ll find it and show it to you before we go.
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So, that’s progress. And it happens in every country, it’s not westernizing. Everybody, every human being, is moving forward in time. And they’re all moving in their own ways. So, that, I guess that’s my most troubling thing. The challenge at the university was, I was enrolled in Department of Food Science and Technology. And it was more to do with the processes to--sometimes, I tend to say, we are the problem in the world today. Food technologists, because they created all these fast foods. You learn how to dehydrate them, you learn how to put these things in, increase their shelf life. And we went, instead of going from farm to the table, we went from farm to agribusiness to the table, and this agribusinesses, that’s really what it was. And my graduate advisor, Steven Appledore, he says, We're going to have a seminar session, so you prepare a paper, any topic. And I remember asking him, Any topic? He says, Yeah, any topic. So, I decided to do the oil spill for the Exxon Valdez. And then he says, That’s got nothing to do with food science. I said, You said any topic. So, I did any topic. Was a good topic.
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After deliverance, he's sitting in the back of the seminar hall and he says, What's the last letter of the alphabet? I said, Z (zed). He says, I didn’t understand what you were saying. I didn’t know at that time, but I had a very strong British accent. So, I worked on that. Those are my early experiences. Wonderful experiences.
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[JJ]: Otherwise, college was fun. Was it--
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[HD]: College was fun. Two students in my department, was a very small department, they were Black. They were from Savannah. I arrived in August, they invited me for Christmas, for Thanksgiving I went to Chipley, which was the gal who eventually became my roommate. In December, I was invited to go to Savannah with Rufus and Lillian, you know, I remember these names, it’s funny. You know, there were time a didn’t remember them. They invited me to their house for Christmas, so I said, Okay. I was going to catch Greyhound bus and go to Savannah and they’d meet me. And my Indian student friends were aghast that I was going to take a bus and go and stay with these people.
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I learned a lot about people's psyche and inbuilt biases. I have a lot of biases. So, I remember that and I say, my parents were truly progressive, because we absorb any of these things. So, when I do say, you know, My father (inaudible), we all have some of those Achilles heels, we all react to something differently than everything else. But overall, I think that I was lucky. I had no problem with food. I was used to what, your cornflakes, toast, jam, egg, Dutch oats type of breakfast. That’s what we had for breakfast my whole life. For lunch, my mom used to pack tomato sandwiches, tomato khira sandwiches, tomato cucumber sandwiches. They are, to this day, they’re one of my favorite sandwiches. That’s what I ate for lunch. In the evenings we had, what I used to say Indian food, but most likely it was Punjabi Indian food.
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But when we used to live in Chennai, we used to eat with the servants sometimes, because we were little enough so we used to eat their type of food. When we were in the different parts of the world, different parts of India, we are whatever they ate. But at home, most likely, it was Punjabi food. And ultimately, when dad retired, and they moved to Chandigarh, they lived there the longest. My mom died in 2008, my dad died 2001. They became more and more and more Punjabi, because they had lived there for 30, 40 years.
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[JJ]: And how would you describe your first job in the U. S.? What was the experience working here?
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[HD]: My first job was a graduate assistant. I was not given a teaching position that first semester, but since I was in food science and we talked of shelf life of food, I spent that semester isolating flavors. From mangoes and fish. It meant hours shelling the fish, and then you went to the laboratory, and you put it all (inaudible) chemistry equipment and then you end up with this volatile acid, which comes into a teeny little bit of a box. There was a professor there who--in Florida they had just started growing guavas. He was working on guava flavors. So, I have that understanding. I don't remember really a teaching assistant, but in summer, I took a job as a waitress at, it was a fairly, I think for a college town, it was a very fairly upscale waitressing position. Because the tips used to be good.
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And I made a friend there, this goes back to how easily I make friends, with one of the patrons who’d come. He said he had been in Burma, I said, So had my dad in the war. He said, Oh, I was there in the war too. So, we became friends. He was a dentist. He invited me to his house, really nice family. They had a pool in their backyard. I enjoyed that. At some other point at some exhibition at one of the small museums there, I met a professor by the last name Chism. And I said, Oh, I know a Chism. When we were in Chennai, when we were in Madras, the council was named was Chism. That was him. He and his wife became friends with me and they invited me to their house. They had a lake house, lake property, and and once I invited them for dinner to my place. And my roommate said, You can’t have them here, you have no furniture. I said, It’s okay, we can sit cross-legged. They (inaudible) in India. And I’d invited all my Indian friends and they had come. So, I made friends easily.
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So those were the kind of jobs I did. I worked waitressing. Then that winter, one of the students was looking for a keypunch operator. At the time, computers were big mainframe computers, and you had to punch these cards, these chads that we heard of, in Florida election. And then you carry these boxes to the computer center. He was in construction. And the whole Gantt chart, the whole laying it all out--to this day, I know how to do a Gantt chart because of that job. We used to work at night and then in the morning, carry the boxes to the computer center (inaudible). I ended up taking a course in computer science learning how to do Fortran and programming. And I found I was good at all those things. Which meant I really would have been an engineer if I was been allowed to be an engineer at the right time. But skills are transferrable, they don’t get lost. You learn something, they become part of you. And my friend said, You know, you should get your status changed to Green Card. I said, Why? I'm going to go home.
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And then, I wasn’t going to go home and it was too late **laughs** Then I had to, I spent six months looking for a job during the OPEC oil crisis, the first one. When the cartel clumped together and gas was now available either odd or even days. Prices were from 10, 15, 12 cents, they were skyrocketing. The immigration was going after the foreign students. The scenario repeats itself with one prices and the other, and I see it repeating itself. So, I go and interview and they would ask me for my status. I say, Well, I have a student status. If I get a job, immigration tells me then they will give me what they call at that time, labor certification. And they would give me the concession to work, because I'm allowed to work after graduating. Jobs never materialized. I spoke at length to immigration saying, You have to first give this document to me so those people can make an offer. I had a school friend in Philadelphia, I had gone to Philadelphia, New York, gone through all those companies. And finally, it was getting close to--I graduated in December, not in May. So, I had those few extra months. So, sometime in May, June, I'm going to have to go home or re-enroll in school and keep my visa status current.
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I thought I should do a PhD, but then I--food science was not my forte, to start with. So, I thought, Oh, I will do a business degree and then I’ll create my own business. So, I re-enrolled in business school, I went to Oregon State on the West Coast. Got a graduate assistantship in logistics, I was doing computer programming, cause I had done Fortran. And I do remember my Indian friend saying, Oh that’s so far away. I said, it’s less than four thousand miles away. I just came across the world. I went to Oregon with one of Prem’s roommate--I met my husband in Florida at the University. One of his roommates had a VW bus and his sister, they always wanted to go out to the West Coast. And this became an opportunity. I had a lot of possessions, I had about 20 boxes of books and nothing else, and one suitcase of clothes. So, Calvin and Laurie were their names, Calvin offered to drive us, drive me all the way there. And we’d sightsee on the way. We ended up in Alabama, his engine broke down and he was really scared. We ended up getting holed up in a motel while he got a new engine on his bus. When we reached the West Coast--Calvin has a very, very strong Florida accent. And people would look at me to ask what is he saying to them. And it used to really bug him. He says, I’m an American. You are not. I said, Well, I learned to modulate my voice, but you have not **laughs** so, I understand that. Anyway, I went there.
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And while I was in school, I had to get permission to change colleges from immigration. So, they interviewed me, they signed off, and while I was enrolled, I applied for change of status, so that when I graduated, I had a green card. I did not finish in Oregon. I ended up transferring to Northern Illinois in DeKalb, because we decided at that time, when I was in Oregon, we decided that, maybe we'll make a couple, Prem and myself. I was not going back to Florida. He was not going to come to the Northeast Coast, because there were no jobs. Boeing, the only big employer in Seattle was laying people off. And he was an engineer, mechanical engineer. He had a relative in the Chicago area, so we thought we'd go to the Midwest. It’s sort of halfway. So, we ended up in Chicago. And I transferred to DeKalb, I finished in Dekalb. When I graduated, I had the right papers. I graduated in ‘75 and I got a job with an export management firm.
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So, this is a very long way of answering that story--that was my first professional job was with an export management firm selling American products overseas. Lot of household appliances to Saudi Arabia, a lot of food products to West Africa, and lot of semiconductor chips to Israel. I eventually was assigned to West Africa and had to learn French. So, I enrolled in Niles high school to learn French, so I could write those business letters. And I was being paid dirt wages. It was a time of, sometimes I think it was time of affirmative action. AT&T was looking to expand and I was still sending my resume out. And I got a call for an interview. I joined them. I was assigned to this new gadget that AT&T was going to introduce called the cellular phone. They built some cell towers, they were doing a trial in Illinois called Amps of Illinois, so I was-- my business cards had Amps of Illinois, a m p s of Illinois.
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We were located in the western suburbs the Wheaton, Lyle area. And our job was to find customers who would buy this cell phone, which was not, at that time, separate from the car. You had to put a transformer in the car, you make holes in the car and wired it and this was the winter of ’78, which was a really cold winter in Chicago. And I had a cellphone in my car. Anyway, that's how I ended up with AT&T.
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[JJ]: And over the years, in your professional career, like how were you treated as far as like opportunities, advancement, recognition for work?
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[HD]: I think like any other good employee, I had trouble with my first boss in that export management firm. The name of that firm was JD Marshall, it’s still around, located in Skokie. And my first boss, his name was Chuck Okell, he was he was an older gentleman. And when you’re 20-something, 40-something seems old, so I don't know how old he was. But he was that, what I call, the sleazy kind of old man. You know, look over you and touch your shoulder when he’s talking. And he used to treat me like I don't know anything. And I react, I really overreact when people treat me like that. So, one day, I think it was barely two months, three months--I'm also not one who says, Well, we’ll go along and see what happens next year. I went to his boss who was, there were only, there wasn’t that many layers, ‘cause it was a small office. And his name was Hank Samuel. And he said, We've had a lot of problem with people working for Chuck. I don’t want to hear any complaints. Tell me a solution. How do I solve this problem?
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So I went and I wrote a paper, a white paper, of how to solve it. So he moved (inaudible) gave me a title, not lot of money, gave me a title, gave me a thousand dollar bonus, and they restructured the, that little office. I was then shunted off to West Africa doing all the documentation, bill of lading, line of credit, and all that. So, I learned another life lesson, you don't complain, you find a solution and tell them, This is the problem, here’s the solution. Here’s what I think the solution is and that helps you move along. So, that was one where, how I was treated. So I think I was treated like any other employee, except by Chuck. But his problem was not me alone, his problem was overarching me personally. I don't think at the time, I was in the AT&T Illinois Ameritech order of things. And that was a time NCI had filed lawsuit and they were breaking up the Bell System. I was assigned to product management.
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And then I was moved to--I had my first child at that time. And I was pregnant with number two, and they move me into, what they call, the Antitrust Department where we had to separate what the books, the counting books, what will stay with AT&T, what’ll move to Bell. Very, very complicated. Arthur Andersen was the accounting firm. I was good with numbers so I ended up in that department. A very nice boss who, at that time, was very generous with me, because I, after the birth of my second child, I took six months leave of absence. And that's a lot. And when I went back, it was very hard juggling kids. And I negotiated at the time, but flex time was unknown, I negotiated flex time. I came in late and I went late. Or I came in very early and went early.
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And he said, You know, some people, employees don’t like that, ‘cause you're not there when they come in, you come late. They don't know you’re staying late. If you come early, then you are leaving before they’re leaving, and it’s upsetting. But, he let me do that and that's the second lesson I learned. Whatever you do, you have to put everything in it to do it right. So that, whoever’s working with you appreciates your work and will be willing to make concessions.
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[JJ]: And during these years of your education and your work, were you homesick during these years? Describe how did you like, keep in touch with friends or family, maybe back home. Was there correspondence? Did you feel like a tug that was pulling you back in India?
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[HD]: I hadn’t gone home in seven years. No, I think my time as a boarding student gave me the thing of not feeling homesick. I remember when my best friend was getting married, I booked a call, it used to take three days for a call to come through. And when it came through, it was when the baraat was coming. So, a little, maybe an hour or two before the baraat was going to arrive there. And everyone in that household was so excited, because they got a call from America. **laughs** I just wanted to wish her. Another friend, I’m still friends with her, another friend when she had a baby--she used to have a brother who used to, who went to Oklahoma as a student and then back to India. She wanted some baby supplies, so I purchased them and I shipped them to her.
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I remember sending my mom a set of Corning Ware. She got a letter from customs that she has to come to Delhi to collect them, and she has to pay customs duty. I was so mad. I wrote a letter to the president of India. People said, Why you’re writing to him? He has nothing to do with it. I gave him a piece of mind. I said, I’m a student, I came here on my own. I’m earning and I’m sending my mother a gift. You need to let her have it. What is this about customs, duty, and import and stuff? My mom said, somebody contacted her six months after that first. Customs, they shipped her the three little Corning Ware bowls. That's who I am.
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I did go to India in ’72, because this good friend of ours in Florida, he was married, getting married to a French girl who was also in Florida. And she was a Catholic, and his parents couldn’t come here, so they decided to go to Mumbai to get married. So, I went to attend the wedding. Two weeks off, I spent a weekend in Mumbai. My parents were in Chandigarh. After Mumbai, I went to Chandigarh, my dad, mom were little upset that I didn’t come home. But, I did come home, right? I stayed there for five days. After that, it was seven years before went. When I got married. That was another thing, we were going to get married locally and our friend said, This marriage is not for you, it’s for your parents. That was July of 1977. I sent a telegram to my dad and said, Arrange wedding, we arriving together on such and such day, for two weeks. We got married in July 31st.
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When I see brides fussing about wedding venues and dresses and flowers, I think, What nonsense. I went there with no clothes, didn’t want a dowry. My dad arranged for a wedding. My cousin said he spent 40,000 on your lehenga. I had no idea he spent 40,000 rupees, that was a lot of money for him at that time. He was a retired air force officer. And I never asked him to do that, but, he did it. I still have the lehenga. And that’s it. That was the sum total of, and I wore whatever I wore. That is why I had to leave India. ‘Cause I would do what my parents would tell me if I stayed there **laughs** So, I hope that comes through.
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[JJ]: So, the connection is very apparent here, for you and this independence you found here in the U. S. But, what prompted you to become a U. S. citizen?
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[HD]: Oh, when I got the green card. I think it was few years before we got married. Yeah, because I got my green card in ’75, we got married in ’77. And we were going to be settled here, and my children were going to be real Americans. So, applied for citizenship. But, they didn’t count my early years. They counted the years after I got my green card towards my citizenship. So, when my kids were born, they were born to American citizens. My husband was not citizen when the kids were born, he got citizenship after we moved here. ‘Cause he was always a little dual mind and he got his citizenship, and then India did the OCI. So, he got his dual citizenship.
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Yeah, I believe in doing in Rome as the Romans do. You never lose who you are. I'm solidly grounded in who I am, but I chose to be here. For whatever reasons, I don't have a specific reason why I chose to be here, and I don't have any strong bond with the home country where I was born. I have a bond, but it’s not like, no, it doesn't tie me down. And this may all go back to the fact that we used to travel when we were young. It’s all connected. Life is connected. You see your path going and then when you look back--my Peace Corps buddy was 21 years old when I was 60. She says, You’re a ruminator. I said, What’s that? She says, You just think about everything. Yeah, when you think about these things, say, yeah, maybe this is why I’m like, because of that. That happened hundreds of years ago.
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[JJ]: I wonder if that gives you good perspective on, what do you see are the contrasts between these two countries, India and the U. S.?
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[HD]: I've seen both countries grow rapidly. I remember when I first walked into JFK, or walked out of JFK to get a cab to go to the domestic terminal, the doors would open themselves. And I was overawed. In India, you have to push the door. I have seen this country go down and I have seen India go up. This country was building infrastructure when I came, there was so much energy. There was this can-do philosophy. That was me, you want to do something, you think about it, and you do it. You don’t think, Oh I have to ask this hierarchy and that hierarchy. In India, you have to ask 4,000 people. Because they were used to the centralized system, and they're opening that up. Here, they never did anything with that infrastructure. So, it’s all falling apart.
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We went to China in 2013, people say, But Chinese are like this. I looked, I went to China, I felt exactly like I felt when I walked into New York in 1970. China is blossoming. They have a billion people. And they have pulled half the population out of poverty in 20 years, in such a short time. The roads--we went to 16 different countries. The roads, the highways, the airports, they’re all, the amount of activity, the energy, the pride the people have in the accomplishments. Because, they are accomplishing a lot. You see that in pockets of India too. People are more proud of what they are doing, they’re centered, and the country is going somewhere. They’re not waiting for somebody to tell you what to do. Here? Everybody’s waiting for somebody to tell you what to do now. You know? It has to be in the budget, the government has to decide. Why does the government have to decide? So, I’ve seen that change in this 50 odd years of my life. Fortunately I spent two years in Macedonia, and they were coming out of a centralized economy. They wanted to be like America, no, they really want to be like China.
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[JJ]: I see. And did you, maintain connections with the Indian heritage part of your life? That part of you, do you still maintain connection and if yes, how do you do that?
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[HD]: I think I'm more attuned to Indian heritage because it was something, when I was growing up, it was just around you. So you didn't think about it. And when I talk of heritage, I don’t talk of rituals, and customs that way. I think of heritage as the basis that gives meaning to that whole subcontinent. So, that heritage--I’m a museum person. I work at the Field Museum now. I got there because of Indo-American Museum. I found a niche in my life, and to understand that heritage, I always see it from not a Punjabi point of view, or a Hindu point of view, or a Muslim point of view. To me, that heritage is common to that land. You see things like the henna ceremony, it's common to the land, it's got nothing to do with being a Hindu, or a Muslim, or a Punjabi, or a Sikh. When you think of the foods, how they've adapted themselves to the culture, to the climatic conditions, that’s how I see heritage.
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And India is fascinating, because it is the first melting pot of civilizations. You had the Chinese, who were all Chinese. You had the Egyptians, who were sort of Balkans and Egyptians were mixed up a little bit. But, the Indian civilization, much like in the Middle East, in Israeli, Palestine area, this Indian heritage is been going on for 3,000 years. It’s so powerfully, it's so rich, and we need to see it for what it is. When I discovered, when I was doing some research for Beyond Bollywood, the exhibition at the Field Museum, and I discovered these stone caves in Madhya Pradesh. We had an exhibition of the caves of Lascaux that’s in France. They’re the same age, they’re 40,000 years old. Fascinating. I took my Peace Corps buddies, four of them for a trip in 2019 November, boy, we were lucky. Right before this thing hit. And we went to Ajanta and Ellora, and you look at those carvings. And then they were built under what circumstances those stones were carved, one big block of stone, which turned into a temple. That’s heritage. That’s artisanship, this is nothing to do with religion.
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[JJ]: And were you involved, have you been involved, with the Indian community here and are there certain organizations or community center you’re affiliated with, you want to talk about?
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[HD]: Well, the first one was, I came in 1970, 1971, we went to war in what was East Pakistan, Bangladesh. So this one says, getting a check and aide for refugees in, they don't say East Pakistan, Bangladesh. There was a Indian Students Association, and there was this guy, there were only like three single women at that time. Myself, there was was Jyoti, Jyoti’s mother was living with her, or she was living with her mother. Her mother turned out to be more progressive than Jyoti. There was Rekha. Rekha was in the good life. I was, oh we were four. And that young woman, she left within the first year. She was in a relationship with a guy, and she left, and she came to Chicago and I lost track of her, forgot her name.
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This is what my mother advises, she used to say, you should always be aware of what’s happening around you, always. But it is best to be a couple steps behind, when you can see everything. So that sort of defined me, so as part of that Indian association, I was never at the cutting edge. So, I tended to be more on the progressive side, but I never went to the edge like Rekha did. She was living with a guy at that time. I would not go there, but not because I have some Victorian complex. But I was going to not go there, because I don't know the consequences of that life, right? That was my mother's advice. So, I got involved with Shiram who came and he says, You know, we need somebody to be a secretary. That's a stereotype, but I was a secretary of the Indian Association. At that time, I didn't know it. So, in ‘71 December, I was in New York. Went to the United Nations to see the journalists when they meet. And it was talk about this, so I came back. We talked through the club, we talked to the radio station. So, they interviewed me about Bangladesh. (inaudible) or East Pakistan, but I learned.
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And then we said, we should do something about it. So we asked for aide. And we got--people always said, No, you not going to get this. We always got it. And I learned this other lesson. Ask, that first lesson, ask. All people can do is say, No. But if you don't ask, they don't even know you're thinking about it. So, you should ask. It doesn’t hurt to ask. They asked me to be in some fashion shows. So, they got me all dressed up.
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[JJ]: In a sari (inaudible)
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[HD]: Yes **laughs** the hair (inaudible)
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[JJ]: It’s a very nice photo.primary education is starting from Montessori to first standard, we had several vernacular groups, classes, in between. So, for four years after Montessori, I was at a local Gujarati school, local Parsi school, primarily for girls. And, so they would that take boys until they were about 8 or 9 years of age and then we moved on to a boy’s school. And so, I was there at the Parsi school, our community school, close to where we lived, for four years till I was age of 8 or so. And then moved on to another same kind of school, missionary school, called the Don Bosco High School. St. John Don Bosco. And they had a school that was newly opened, when I first started there. And that's where I graduated from high school, we call that secondary school certificate, SSC, at that time. So, that is my earlier scholastic life. inaudible
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[HD]: Yeah, but that's not me. This is me.
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[JJ]: **laughs** I see.
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[HD]: I did wear saris once in a while. This sari was probably loaned to me by one of the married Indian ladies. Definitely not mine. But, that was me. I didn’t have to braid my long hair, I just leave it open. That was freedom. I wish I could sit cross-legged again. That really defined me. I was involved, that family--there was a picnic, Diwali picnic, the first year I was there. Prem had come in, I think, January. He always says that’s the first time we met. I said, Yeah, I met a lot of people, I also met you. So, technically that was the first day we met, but it doesn't mean really the first time we met. It’s like Nirvana. That’s Prem. Prem, I’m in the middle of--OTHER SPEAKER: (inaudible)
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[HD]: So, this young man came up with this funny looking ball. And he says, You want to play football? I said, That’s not a football. Football is round. ‘Cause I was an athlete. And I continued being an athlete. And he says, Let me show you, this is call American football. And I learned about American football. I enjoyed going to games. I did everything, gained as many experiences as I could, while I was there. The nice thing about those early students who came in those early years, it didn’t matter from where you came in India. You never asked each other where are you from India. It didn’t matter, you were Indian. You look like me, maybe you ate something slightly different, but we all look like each other. We share the same culture, we share the same heritage. That’s what heritage is about.
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So, that’s a long way of answering your question about heritage. I’m more connected to it now. When our son was going to get married, he was getting married to a girl from Andhra Pradesh. Her mother was very concerned about what I, as the mother of the groom, how I wanted the wedding, whether I wanted Punjabi style, or this style. She was very nervous. She wanted some things, and I said, It’s fine with me. I mean, you’re Indian, I’m Indian. It’s important to you, we’ll do whatever you want us to do. And whatever I could do, I did. Thinking, Oh, we should have some Punjabi things in it too. So, I had arranged to do something with the haldi ceremony. And I knew nothing about the haldi ceremony. So, I asked a cousin to do it. Unfortunately, cousin's mother, she's from England, was hospitalized and ended up dying. So, they never showed up.
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I had another Punjabi friend who came. She says, So, do you want to do this? You want to do that? I said, I have no idea, do whatever you want to do. But, I did sit them down, the boy and the girl, and I asked them, these are what I remember from my childhood. I don't remember anything like we do sangeet here. I said, Sangeet used to be a bunch of women. That’s my idea of sangeet. The wedding took place always before 12 o’ clock during the day, a Sikh wedding. Never took place at night. Hindu weddings take place at night. So, the few things I could remember at that time, which I don't remember now. I told them, But, it is your choice how you want to do it. Because this is your life. I have half of, one foot there, one foot here, maybe half of foot there, one and a half foot here. But, these kids have both their feet here. You can choose whatever you want to do. Which they did. Spent too much money in my, I would never, I would put it in real estate. But, then they bought a big house.
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[JJ]: So, tell me something more about your involvement with these community centers, or museums, or--
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[HD]: I guess, it's sort of like I said, it’s baked into my DNA, the volunteer work. When I was in Kanpur, Rajmohan Gandhi, the guy who came to Chicago recently, he had come. He had talked to starting a youth organization, which eventually became Himmat. So, I joined that. Not when I was in Kanpur, because I was still in middle school. But when I was in college, I joined it. It is in a way, those days of mom taking me to the gurudwara and doing seva, it’s sort of built into whatever you did. You always watched out for somebody else, if you could help them. In a party, if there was somebody sitting on the side, feeling like they don’t know anybody, I just go up to them and say, and talk to them. So that they feel comfortable. I was involved in Florida in these little India Association.
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When I was in Oregon, I didn’t hang out with any Indian students, I hung out with everybody but the Indian students. They also had fewer Indian students. So, I have a smattering of friends across the world from my Oregon days. But, I was pretty self-centered, ‘til I quit my job. At that time, we had four children, three children. Yeah, three. Quit my job after Angelie, I took a one year leave of absence. And I went back to try to bridge my service. I went back for one month and I said, This is ridiculous. Who am I kidding? I can’t juggle this. But, I told everybody, I can’t sit at home 24/7. I loved being a mother, but not 24/7, 365 days a year. I’d go bonkers. And not only did I get involved in the construction work, but I joined the local Association of American University Women, because I found like-minded women. And I joined the League of Women Voters, because that was this plot of land, we lived in Libertyville at that time, pristine land where I used to take my kids, we used to go adventure hunting in this pristine area, was private property, right? But that didn't stop me from taking my kids there. But they wanted to develop it. So, I got involved with the League of Women Voters. And that opened my eyes to a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes. Around that time, many of the Indian women that I met, who came here after their husbands had come here, gone home, got married, and came here, saw America through the eyes of their husband. In some cases, there was little bit of abuse going on, so then I created with the help of a friend who was then working for Catholic charities, an organization called India Women's Forum.
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That came, I think, a couple of years after Indira Gandhi was assassinated. And there was a split between the Hindus and Sikhs in the community. And I used to go to the gurdwara, and those stupid priests used to say stupid things. And I remember one time, getting up and saying, You're not speaking for me, I don't think that way. And everybody’s whispering, She's a spy or something. Because, I was wearing a mangalsutra, which is a Hindu custom, I’m married to Hindu boy. So, I got involved with a group of people, Vitrodha, Rajiv Gandhis, Tanju, all those rich guys, to create a forum of conversation. We did it in Hillside, so that would post ’85, right? About ’85, ’86. So, in ’87 we started this Indian Women’s Forum, and I think, Ah, I know all these people now, I know these psychologists. In Lake County, very rigid. They were starting Apna Ghar at the same time. And I was not going domestic abuse, I was going to, giving women, teaching, not patronizing, but helping them know what the laws are, where they stand, who they can reach. So, we used to meet monthly in Libertyville, we ended up being about 15, 30 people showed up. Have a series of talks with professionals, psychologists, the county clerk, State Attorney, having them.
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Then, the Libertyville parade, we did two parades. So, you could see us, and see who we were. (inaudible) That’s my community work. I’ve always stayed in community, when we moved this house, my children were going to the day school. And I used to shuttle them from--we were visited by the cops, wanted to see our driver’s license, my diver’s license, because I was always out on the front complaining about the dog barking. And in that first 10 days that I was here, this house has been remodeled since. I left the garage door open and gone to the grocery store, used to be, I think, Treasure Island. Corner of 176th. I came home and our son said, Mom, the cops were in my bedroom. I said, How dare they, they can’t enter your house, where’s the warrant? So, I marched off to the chief of police, made an appointment, and I said, You know, I can sue the city. You had no warrant. The chief of police said he talked to the officers, they said the door was open. I said, So what if the door was open? I can open all the doors in my house, doesn’t mean you can walk in.
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It turned out, one neighbor was complaining because a brown family moved into this neighborhood. This is ’97. I pretty much belong to all the community organizations in Lake Forest. I joined the caucus, I went to this wellness thing, Partners for Progress, then I joined a lot of other local things. It just, I always feel that, even when I joined the Rotary Club, I invite people to my house, I open the doors, because if you go to someone's house you understand them better than if you meet them only in a business environment.
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[JJ]: So, what kind of impact do you think Indian Americans have had on the U. S. and maybe Chicago in particular?
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[HD]: A lot. For such a recently arrived community, involved in every level. Aldermen all the way to the top. It’s April, it’s almost the last day of April. April is Sikh Awareness and Appreciation month, did you know that?
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[JJ]: No, I--
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[HD]: There was a proclamation that was signed by Pritzker last year. So, our city has signed that proclamation and I approached them, but they wanted to mail it to me, and I said, No, we need a photo op. I know it’s the end of April, I don’t care if it’s May. But, it’s signed April, we want a photo op. I wrote to the county. And I know these people simply because of my involvement with the League of Women Voters. All the women leaders come out of this organization, which is funny. Most of them do. I wrote to Sandy, she says, You know, missed the deadline, but we can mail it to this Sikh religious society. This was in March, this is the end of April, we’re still looking for that photo op. And we have one with the county next Tuesday at 3 o’ clock. So I can then put it in on my Facebook page, so it can be sent to the other Sikhs.
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I’m more of a Sikh after losing Uday. When he died in the war, it was a Sikh community across the U. S. that reached out. People I had no idea who they were, they reached out. I feel a sense of, I don't think of it as religious, but I feel community is a sense of connection where, when you are in trouble, the people who reach out, you never forget them. You know, I have a nephew, one of Prem’s older sister's son, I’m very close to him. But when Uday died, he never called me. In that few weeks and months, it seemed, I couldn’t think clearly, anyway. But, in reflection, I said, you know, he never called me. So, picked up the phone to call him. So, when people don’t reach out when you’re in trouble, even if you call, or write, and say, I'm sorry, I'm here. It’s very important to do that. Because, even if you think you don’t need somebody, you do. You do need people around you.
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[JJ]: Sorry for your loss, are you comfortable talking about your kids for a minute?
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[HD]: I could, his birthday was on the 23rd and I had breakfast with somebody and I said, Uday’s favorite, whenever he came home, his favorite was my kind, I used to make him buttered, scrambled eggs, loved it. So I said, Today is my buttered, scrambled eggs breakfast. He was the oldest, he was my brother’s son. He had two children, he was one year older than my son. So, in the hierarchy of the three siblings, he was the oldest, then our son, not my son, our daughter, then my sister's older son, second son, our youngest, and his youngest sister. It's funny how this side of the family became close, I think it was because of the frequent visits. They came and visited us here, they came here often. Because we don’t go that often to India. From Prem’s side, he has a family in UK, they have three daughters. And they came when I invited them. And the children are close to them. Because, when you don’t expose cousins to cousins, there’s nothing to go upon. So, I like that relationship. What else about my kids?
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[JJ]: And, about Uday specifically, what were the circumstances around it? And how was the new broken to you?
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[HD]: It was because of his, our families and being in the military, and when he came here, he was going to start with the high school, I’d enrolled him at the high school. He changed his mind, he went home. He says, No, I’ll finish high school in India. He was in India when his grandfather died. So, it was like he had that pull of wanting to go back, there may be something in that. He came back, he enrolled at the UIUC. And my brother, an army officer, they were working on how to fund him. Even though he has green card, he was not considered an in-state, because he had graduated from an out-of-state high school, as opposed to from an in-state high school. And when he was there, he met some people in the ROTC, and they told him, You know, the Army will pay for your education. So, in that time frame, that year, it might have been ’98, ’99, I don’t remember exactly now, when they were here, they went to the U. S. Army recruiting center in Libertyville and he signed up.
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Two years, he was in Fort Riley. And he says--he had done one tour with Kuwait. And he said, after those two years, he says, I think I’m going to enroll again. He started the college in Kansas. And he says, I’ll finish up over there. And he found his--wherever you are, you make friends locally, right? You find that comfort zone, you’re with these buddies for two years, of course you’re friends with them. That was the year our daughter, Sheena, had gone to Australia for study abroad. It was August, mid or late August, and Gita and I were going to go and visit her. I never in my dreams, at that time--I think my sister hadn't migrated to Australia at that time. And I thought, What an opportunity, I’ll go down under. I’ve never seen Australia. So, Gita and I were going to go camping, we were getting ready, we were going to leave that week. And Uday called, he says, We’ve been mobilized, I don’t know when, but we’ll be leaving any time. When you train soldiers for war, they want to go to war. So, they were waiting to go. It was a Friday that he called me. Rahul was still at the university, I was leaving the next week, and I said, Uday, you can’t go, I haven't seen you for months.
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So, I told Prem, I’m going to go and meet him before I leave for Australia. 900 miles to Fort Riley from here. I was going to go via Champaign. So, I left on Saturday early morning, I told Rahul, I’ll need a driver, can you help me drive? So I picked him up, we drove there, got there like 1, 2, 3 a.m. I think the two boys were awake the whole night. We spent about 4, 5 hours with him. And, around 10 o’ clock, I turned around and we came back. The next day, we flew off to Australia. He got shipped out. He was riding, but I never saw him again. My brother said, and I’ll tell my story afterwards, he says, He was out of the house in India, in Chandigarh and when he got home, he saw these two U. S. Army soldiers. It's very hard for me even today. You know what the news is. So, he called my sister, my brother-in-law called me. You know the pain goes away, so the hurt goes away, but the emotions don’t. I got a letter from him, two weeks after that. ‘Cause letters don’t come overnight. He was so excited, he said he was approved for a promotion. He was coming in, I think, February or March. He was going to turn 21 in April, April 23rd, so he was 20 years old. At that time, you know, I called Durbin’s office, I called the military attaché, got a lot of information on how to deal with whatever, however we need to deal with this. And they asked me where we would like his last resting place to be. I conveyed it to my brother, and my brother said I want him here in Chandigarh. ‘Cause mom is here. And I said, But, he gave his life for this country, I want him here.
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So, the decision was that he will be cremated in in India and part of his ashes will remain there, and part of his ashes will come back. So, that was the final arrangement. So, they sent his remains to India and then, we had a formal ceremony at Arlington in January. And my mother did travel to Arlington Heights, Arlington Heights I’m saying, Arlington National Cemetery. Like I said, that was the time, out of the woodwork, all the Sikhs came out. It was very interesting. Of course, that evening, the morning I got the call, and that evening, the Department of Defense now posts it on there. So, in the evening we were sitting here, and someone said, there’s these cable trucks outside, news trucks outside. Sure, the local news was here. Local Chicago news trucks, two or three of them. (inaudible) They did come in, we let them in, they did talk to us. We talked to them. There was lot of hoopla. When I see people on TV with the news people interviewing them, I think that’s a setup. ‘Cause those people are usually dressed properly, so they've given them time. We just talked, I mean, whatever we were wearing. So glad they never put us on TV.
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It's very, very difficult to process information in your mind. The local American Legion came, now I’m friends with one of the Legionnaires who used to be our banker for the houses. Tom and Bud, they came. They gave him a salute. It was rough. Susan Garrett stopped by, I know Susan Garrett from the league, and then she became the legislator. She stopped by, she gave me some proclamation, I don't remember. Just checking stacks and stacks of stuff. It’s still very hard to process. It’s very, very hard to process, how easily you don't know where you're going to be tomorrow. You don't know. It's going to happen and you don't know about it. And so, you have to live your day, and that was one of the reasons, at that time, I was still working at our family business. And I couldn't do that anymore.
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So, the following year, I left. I think I went hiking to Machu Picchu with one of the daughters, we climbed up. The next year, I went with one of my German friends from Oregon State who lives in Germany, we went doing the pilgrimage in Northern, the Camino de Santiago in Spain. Then I did a round-the-world trip. I came back and I thought, I want to join the Peace Corps. ‘Cause I was listening to Rahul talking about it, the children's friends talking about it, and I said, You know, I wanted to do that once upon a time. And I’m going to do it now. Because, who knows when I'll be able to do it--I remember writing a family letter at that time. I express myself better in writing than in speech, so I had written this and I shared it with the family, then I shared it with the extended family, and there were, this one call, I remember, from this niece was grateful that I wrote it. Because she says, You know, when you look at elderly relatives, they just, you don’t know anything about them. So, this helps, this gives us the courage to know when we are doing whatever we're doing that there is life. There is more to life than what, you know, like when you’re in high school, exams are everything. But ten years later, you say, really? **laughs** So that kind of thing.
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That's one of, that's the trigger point, I would not say the reason I ended up in Peace Corps at that time, but that was a trigger point. Since doing that service, I now, I don't take anything personally. It's easy to put it in context, put it outside of yourself and see why you do what you do. You do what you have to do because that is what you have to do in life. That’s life. Be proud of what you’re doing, whatever it is. Because, ultimately that’s what comes back. I think that’s answered the question.
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[JJ]: Just a final question, so what do you you like to do in your leisure time?
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[HD]: I read a lot. I like gardening a lot. I have problems with my knees and it’s such a problem with gardening, now. But, I’ll be out there. In the more recent years, with the the grandchildren. I love being with the grandchildren. For a couple of hours, ‘cause I get tired. I love my daughter-in-law, I sometimes think girl after my own heart. She calls us occasionally, she calls me to watch the babies occasionally, only for an hour, two hours. She’s very, we never talk about it, but she’s never pushed me over the edge where it’s like, I can't do this anymore. I want to take the kids out to the museum, I take them to the museum, Prem takes them for golf. So, she’ll find the day, give us the date, she’ll prepare them. I will take them. I love doing that. It’s just such fun.
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I have circles of friends, I have my Peace Corps buddies, we do reunions every other year. We have our gator family, our University of Florida friends. We do reunions, we go to each other’s sons’ and daughters’ weddings. We had to go to one funeral. Then, you know, I have this, they’re these circles of friendship. I have the Field Museum family, family of docents. We do things together. I had them over for, last year, I had them over for an outdoor dinner. And, I put lights, and we got those heater and stuff, because we could only be outside. Not seeing them for a year was so difficult. I like that, enjoy that.
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[JJ]: Well, that concludes our interview. Thank-you, so much.
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[HD]: Thank-you for listening to me, I don't know who all are going to listen.
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[JJ]: Absolutely, it’s my pleasure.
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[HD]: But, you know, that’s really my story, it's not earth-shaking, never told anybody that I was a single woman who came here when there were no single women, but, at one point, that used to be very interesting. Later on, my father said one of the things he had a problem with was, what will his friends say. I did eventually end up marrying somebody here, because when you go at a certain age, it doesn't matter whether you’re there or here, that’s the age you’re going to meet someone. That’s when you’re going to fall in love, that’s when you’re going to go and move forward. So, it doesn’t matter where you put yourself. It’s good to be old and see everything in hindsight.
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[JJ]: I’m glad you could share it today. Alright, that concludes our interview with Happie Datt at her residence in Lake Forest. This is Jitesh Jaggi for National Indo-American Museum’s Oral History Grant.