Signs of India – Some Unexpected – All Over New England

By Jawahar Malhotra

HANOVER, NH: If you follow the road less traveled, don’t be surprised to see things that might amaze you. On a casual drive around the tightly-bound campus of Dartmouth College on a cloudless, sunny Fall afternoon, the streets and lawns were ablaze with trees turning colors of reddish brown to ochre, as if they may shed all at once any minute if someone were to give them a fright.     

Dartmouth College is a private Ivy League research university that was established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, and is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Nestled in a valley of the Connecticut River, it is an hour east of the skiing resorts at Killington, Vermont, four-and-a-half hours northwest of New York City and an hour-and-a-half south of the Canadian border. Even with annual tuition and boarding costs of nearly $70,000, there was no lack of Indian faces among the 6,350 students that go there.

And then, catty-corner from the Black Family Visual Arts Center, in a white two-story house with a dining patio in the back stood “The Jewel of India, Fine authentic Indian cuisine” proclaimed by signs on two sides. A quick loop through the small commercial district on Main Street, by the Green and just east of the tall clock tower of Baker Library is the Romanesque Rollins Chapel, where the glass-encased sign out front reads at the bottom, “Hindu Pujas Daily at 7pm”.

Indian restaurants are almost ubiquitous in many parts of the world; a testimony to the widespread South Asian diaspora and the popularity of the cuisine. A friend returning from Reykjavik, Iceland spoke about the five Indian restaurants there and there is even one near Interlaken in the Swiss Alps. So, it was not completely surprising to see the “Salt & Pepper Indian-Pakistani-Halal Restaurant” in a ramshackle house painted in colored stripes, in the shadow of the power plant and the University of Bridgeport, Connecticut, by the Seaside Park. The rundown place had obviously been closed for sometime in the mostly economically blighted and depressed city with a mixed Haitian, East Asian and Hispanic population mix.

Not far away in Shelton, Connecticut, in the Red Lotus Asian restaurant, a surprisingly good find, a middle-aged couple walked in from the slight chill to dine. The young waiter who took our order was a 24 year-old South Indian who was about to finish two years of his Master’s degree in Computer Technology at the local college that he found admission in after coming from India. He was anxious about his prospects for the future. “Its way too cold here,” he says “and few chances for a Green Card” and he hoped to move to Dallas for better prospects and to be with his brother.

Further north, in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, the Norman Rockwell Museum features most of the iconic illustrator and painter’s works in a white building on a sprawling estate strewn with sculptor pieces that reflect Rockwell’s quirky curiosity and humorous view of life. Every cover he made for the Saturday Evening Post is exhibited in a huge hall; including the portrait he made of India’s first Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru from January 19, 1953 At the bookstore, the cheerful lady at the checkout register was South Indian – “we’ve lived in the area for 10 years,” she said – who reciprocated to my Diwali greeting.

Further south in New York City, signs of South Asians are everywhere, and to be expected, especially in restaurants, taxis, little convenience item kiosks and of course food trucks and street food stalls.

What was a surprise was to run across – no pun intended – was an 18-wheeler with the name “Shah” emblazoned all across the sides in a rest stop in New Jersey on I-78. It was intriguing to say the least, and I wondered if it was an Iranian company or indeed Indian. A quick web search revealed that Shah Trucking was launched in 2014 by Guru Shah. The Baylor and Vanderbilt graduate and entrepreneur saw an opportunity for building an asset-based trucking company located in Chattanooga, Tennessee and now has 10 trucks, 12 trailers and a box truck. Just another off-the-beaten-path business for a desi to be in!