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Brown in America

Keep on walking - Lankan Story

By: Sambol :+: Under: Brown in America, The Lankan Diaries
On: ⋅ June 16, 2007 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment
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It is common for anybody to look at the desi community and spot your usual doctors, lawyers and other well to do folks. And it is common to see the regular desi driving the BM or a brand new Mercedes. However the reality on the street especially in the North East United States is very different. We do see the well off desi walking in his Calvin Klein suite. However this is not about that South Asian. This story has to do with the struggle majority of the Sri Lankans in DC metro area go through on a daily basis. The sacrifices they make to be here, and the never-ending question “is this all worth it”.

Monday evening at dinner in my mothers friends house, the usual ritual begins with auntie Sudha talking on the phone to Lanka at exactly 8 p.m. After the conversation she is sad. She has not been to Sri Lanka in 17 years and the last time she saw her daughter was 17 years ago. The kid she left in Lanka is now a woman. And the mother only communicates and knows her daughter through a phone line. She cannot go home, because she will not be able to come back and her daughter cannot get a visa to come here, because the mother is in the U.S. There is always hope that some day an amnesty bill will pass so she can travel outside the country. She works as a maid cleaning wealthy peoples houses and lives in a bedroom rented to her by another Lankan family.

Next day I come across young girl just graduating from high school. She graduated in the top 5% of her class in the state of Maryland. She has applied for college, but nobody is willing to give her a scholarship. The state schools cannot give her any money because she does not have the proper paperwork. She is depressed, all her peers are going to college on full scholarships, but she cannot afford to go to any college with her mother’s minimum salary.

Naoshan has a severe pain in his stomach. He does not know what’s going on but he has not gone to the doctor because there is no medical insurance. There is no way he can pay for the doctor’s visit. I ask him to visit the emergency room. He said he did, but they gave him Tylenol and turned him away. He lives with his pain and he is only 22 years old.

These are not made up stories. This is what I see in the DC area on a daily basis. They are people who struggle, who are not seen or written about. They are fighters living in this country, hoping to have something we take for granted on a daily basis. I wake up and see these people, with all the suffering, still smiling and still walking with their heads held high. It gives me a reason to move through the day and never complain. And make me realize that even in this great nation called the United States of America. No path was ever made of gold. It was made from sweat and tears of people who made sacrifices so that our generations can have a better life. After all at the end of the day, to the aunties and uncles, Naoshan’s and the new graduates, the sacrifice must be worth the end result.

I was proud to look an Indian Student delivering a speech at a conversation at a university three weeks ago. He was standing shoulder to shoulder with the president of two prestigious universities and he was representing all the graduate students in the institution. I realized that all the sacrifices are worth it at the end of the day. For if the roads were paved in gold, which is there to really appreciate the true.

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