Trails and travails of being an Indian immigrant in the US

In his charming and insightful book, Deepak Singh chronicles his journey as an Indian immigrant in the United States of America. Deepak falls in love with an American visiting India as an exchange student. The young couple gets married and leaves the country to live the American dream.

Unfortunately for Deepak, he soon realises that reality is completely different. After quitting a comfortable job with the BBC, once in the US, despite an MBA from a good B-school, all Deepak is able to get is a minimum-wage job in an electronics store. Every day, he confronts an unfamiliar American culture. He experiences the deeply entrenched racism and observes first-hand the crushing reality of being poor in America. How May I Help You?, An Immigrant’s Journey from MBA to Minimum Wage, published by Penguin Random House India, is a moving story of love, empathy, vulnerability and hope that will keep the reader hooked till the last page.

Speaking about his book, Singh, a writer, radio producer, and journalist, and frequent contributor to The New York Times, National Public Radio, The Boston Globe, and The Atlantic, says, “I decided to write the book when I quit my job (in the electronics store) and moved back to India for a year. Back in my hometown, Lucknow,

I started thinking about my time on the sales floor in Virginia. I wondered how different it was to be selling electronics, as a newly arrived immigrant, to Americans who spoke English with a heavy southern drawl. How it was to be exposed to a culture totally different from mine and products I knew very little about.”

Recalling those moments must have been quite emotionally demanding.

“Indeed, the biggest challenge in the book was reliving the difficult moments I encountered at the store. At times, I just wanted to quit the job and come back to India.

But I didn’t,” adds Singh who is now a freelance writer. However, Singh is quick to add that the whole experience has been quite an eye-opener.

“My time in the electronics store was a learning experience. It was a full immersion in American culture.

I had to interact with at least 50 customers every day. Not only did I have to understand exactly what they were looking for, but I also had to convince them to buy things they didn’t want. I was also earning less than what I made in Lucknow. The biggest lesson I learnt was that no matter what country you live and work in, there’s one thing that’s common — the human aspect. People are people at the end of the day, irrespective of whether they are black, white, Asians or Hispanics,” muses Singh.

Singh, whose book had been in the making for the past six years, also notes that things have changed for immigrants since Donald Trump came to power.

“The hostility towards immigrants has increased. People of colour seem to have come under attack often. If I had to do the same job today, I’ll think more than once about it. It’s not the same place anymore,” he muses.

At the end of the day, for all those Indians harbouring the big American dream, he says, “Most Indians who live and work in the United States have to go through a certain amount of struggle, have to take menial jobs in the beginning, suffer humiliation, which they rarely admit. I have opened my heart about what I went through in the first two years of my life in the US. America is no doubt a great place, but I want everyone to know that the grass is not always greener on the other side.”