Indian in Ohio

As a consultant in the pre-COVID era, it was a fairly common experience to find myself 33,000 feet above ground, hurtling through the atmosphere on a red-eye flight, heading to a destination that would never quite feature on anyone’s travel bucket list.

During my time in the U.S., I had the privilege of visiting dozens of such cities and towns, discovering new things about America, her culture, and about myself too through the process. One year, I was consumed by an inexplicable gravitational pull to Ohio, the heart of it all, home to great lakes, greater Midwestern values, and apparently the greatest per capita density of insurance companies you’ve never heard of.

On one particular trip, our team was dispatched to a place called Westfield Center — a town with a population of just 1,100 (about the same number of people residing in my apartment complex back in Bangalore). To add to the charm, it also shared its name with a shopping mall I used to frequent in San Francisco, though any resemblance swiftly ended there.

Like any responsible brown person, I conduct a decent amount of due diligence before traveling to pocket-sized towns in the middle of nowhere, especially in the States. A part of this is driven by genuine curiosity. A part is mild paranoia. A large part of it is understanding how likely I am to get murdered while on work. My wholly scientific approach involves scouring the internet, triangulating Instagram geotags, and skimming the local subreddits (if they exist) to gauge a town’s… vibe. Let’s just say Westfield Center’s 98% white demographic didn’t exactly scream “melting pot.” 2% of 1,100 means that there were 22 non-white folks roaming around this town. To be the 23rd melanated person to descend on this small patch of Midwestern suburbia felt like a badge of honour as well as an unspoken plea for help to my team.

But like most work trips, the promise of accrued airline miles and client-sponsored steak dinners was enough to set aside any reservations I had.

Upon arrival, our client greeted us at their headquarters: a sprawling, beige monolith of a building that radiated the same charisma as our budget hotel complimentary breakfast from earlier that morning. Insurance offices rarely aim to dazzle, and this was no exception. Unlike the Silicon Valley tech campuses I was surrounded by in SF — with their kombucha on tap and populace representing every shape, size, and colour of human being possible — this was a workplace that could only be described as… bland.

A campus tour involved our client walking us through the building, casually pointing out the various departments that made up their workforce. In the basement, we walked past a series of uninspired cubicles. “And here’s IT,” she announced, gesturing toward a corner where six bespectacled Indian men huddled around their monitors like they were plotting the next Chandrayaan mission. Ah, yes — the IT department, bastion of diversity in corporate America. The IT department, a small band of Indian software bros, hailing from small villages in Andhra Pradesh, now making their mark in even smaller villages in Ohio. The American dream is poetic, if anything.

For the rest of the tour, the only thing I could think about was whether I’d encounter the 16 other people of colour from Westfield Center during my trip, and what other stereotypes they would neatly fall into.

Back in the boardroom, after an unremarkable presentation about innovation, and hunger-inducing chatter about low-hanging fruit, one of our clients — a rosy-cheeked, linebacker of a man — made his way towards me. Draped in a suit that looked like it had been tailored during the early years of the Nixon administration, he extended a handshake akin to a medieval punishment.

“Hey, George! Did someone give you the tour already?”

“Yep. Great place you’ve got here,” I lied, with the casual confidence consultants are known for.

“Yeah, lots of history,” he said, with the pride of someone whose town was definitely not featured on a Wikipedia page with over 500 words.

What followed is a bit of a blur. I believe he initiated some inane small talk about Ohio’s weather or the history of the insurance industry. I couldn’t tell you for sure. I nodded politely, spacing out, admiring how profoundly beige everything in this office was: the walls, the carpet, even the coffee mugs.

Then came a bombshell of a question that yanked me by the collar, and focused all my attention on the blubbering lips in front of me.

“Say, you a fan of the Indians?”

My brain short-circuited. My eyes rolled back into my skull.

Am I a fan of the Indians?

What kind of question was that? What kind of racist person was I dealing with here?

Am I a fan of the Indians?

Was he asking if I liked my own people? My motherland? Was I exuding some kind of diasporic desi guilt for not actively campaigning for India’s cricket team while gallivanting around the American Midwest? Was he gauging if I secretly missed spontaneous Bollywood dances, the promise of mangos, and being scolded by my grandmother?

Am I a fan of the Indians?

Was this some sort of test? A reverse code-switch? Did he want me to declare my allegiance to my country, despite the fact that I was standing in Ohio wearing Cole Haan shoes and a Brooks Brothers jacket? Maybe he thought I would be caught out as one of those self-loathing Indians who pretended that gulab jamuns are way too sweet in the company of white people.

Am I a fan of the Indians?

No, no, no — he must mean the basement guys. The IT department! Was he mocking them? Or me? Was he asking if I was a fan of them? Was I subjected to a weird, bureaucratic safari where consultants passed through Westfield Center to observe the exotic foreigners held captive in the IT department? Did I enjoy this twisted experience? The plight of these Indians? Was he expecting me to do some sort of secret handshake with them next time I walked past their cubicles?

Am I a fan of the Indians?

Perhaps… this was a deeper insult. Was he implying I didn’t look Indian enough? That I’d betrayed my culture by calling myself George and not something properly subcontinental, like Brijesh or Rajagopalan? Or worse — was this a trap? Was he checking to see if I was a foreign spy?

Oh my god. He thinks I’m Pakistani.

I spiraled deeper. Was this a bait-and-switch attempt to get me to say something politically fraught? Something disparaging to the Modi government? Like a verbal landmine, waiting to explode into a full-blown diplomatic incident? Would this end with a CNN segment called Brown Man’s Breakdown in Boardroom Brings Business to go Bust?

Am I a fan of the Indians?

Maybe — just maybe — he meant Native Americans. But what the hell kind of question is that? Was this a subtle way to gauge if I’d studied Native American history, or if my cultural education stopped with Kevin Costner in Dances with Wolves?

Am I a fan of the Indians?

For two whole seconds — though it felt like an eternity — I stood there, stunned, a cacophony of outrage, psychosis, and existential dread ricocheting through my mind. I felt like I was hallucinating. The beige walls of the conference room seemed to close in on me as my internal monologue reached its fever pitch. My heart raced, my palms were sweaty, knees weak, arms heavy (mom’s biryani) and I was one split second away from giving this brute a piece of my mind.

But with the self-control of a seasoned consultant who’d heard one too many tone-deaf client questions, I finally managed to hold my tongue and say the only thing that felt safe.

“Uh… yeah. I guess I’m a fan.”

I had no idea what I just pledged my allegiance to, though it seemed like the most uncontroversial response in the moment. Imagine asking my Japanese colleague, “Are you a fan of the Japanese?” during a work meeting. I had never dealt with such preposterousness before.

He grinned from ear to ear, slapped me on the back like we were long-lost brothers, or comrades who had survived a tour of duty in the trenches together.

“Not sure if you’re heading back up to Cleveland tonight, but the game’s on at the bar if you wanna join us later!”

Another short-circuit. I smiled weakly, suppressing the urge to laugh, cry, or curl up on the carpet in a fetal position. I nodded along, slowly piecing together what had just happened.

In Westfield Center, Ohio — a town of 1,100 people with six Indians ITing in the basement below me — I learned that sometimes, the most exhausting part of life isn’t other people’s questions, but rather my ability to overthink them into oblivion.

I also learned that Ohio, land of Wright Brothers and rock and roll fame, is also home to a baseball team called the Cleveland Indians. Not my ancestors, not the spectacled software dudes plotting world domination downstairs — a baseball team, engaged in the world’s most boring sport.

For all my attempts to navigate identity in America with grace, I constantly found myself tangled in the complexities of being an Indian abroad — oscillating between over-asserting the fact and laughing it off, questioning others’ intentions and confronting my own insecurities.

The real curveballs are the ones we throw at ourselves.

How’s that for a baseball reference?