The remarkable citizens and numerous pathbreaking scholars who have been a part of our community – such as abolitionist Frederick Douglas, women’s rights activist Susan B. Anthony, and philanthropist Joseph C. Wilson – lead us to appreciate the importance of bringing together students from diverse backgrounds and origins. Describe aspects of your personal history that help you understand and appreciate diversity.

I was born a first generation American of Indian parentage in Baton Rouge, right on the edge of Cajun country. Raised on gumbo and the American public school gifted program, I saw myself as American and proud to be one. On an uncharacteristically cold day in fall, when our backyard was thickly carpeted with fallen pine cones, my parents informed me that our family would be moving to India at the end of the academic year.

I was from an ethnically diverse class in the US. Since pre-school, my class typically had a smattering of Asians amidst students of other races. My friends were people who inadvertently taught me world culture through everyday interactions. Six years later, my circle of friends remains as diverse as it ever was. Tara, Vasudha and Aditi together constitute the saambar (a popular tamil rice gravy) mafia. Though they live in Bangalore, their roots lie in Madras, the heart of Tamil country. Tamil phrases and euphemisms weave in and out of their conversation as melodiously as the crass cacophony of the crows that plague Madras. Pranav, Raghav, Avinash and Srinivas are the class’s resident Digs. They make it a matter of honour never to make a joke in any language but Kannada. Their staple diet is oopma (the deliciously spicy South Indian version of….grits!!) from the school canteen. Aishwarya, known otherwise as Lolakutti, hails from the beaches of Kerala. She was the one who introduced Kerala boat-racing music to me. All of my friends and classmates, who come from different states in India, each with a very distinctive culture, add their own unique flavor to our classroom, though they remain, without exception, jacketed in a thin layer of cosmopolitan suave.

I would be lying if I said that before moving to India I had never been exposed to Indian culture. My family made weekly visits to the temple and we had dinner parties with our other Indian friends. However, it was not until I came to Bangalore that I realized that what I had experienced was just a poor imitation of desi culture; a mere shadow of the original, cast against a backdrop of Americanism. More importantly, I realized that the Indian way of life in itself is infinitely more diverse than the Punjabi pop culture that it is largely perceived to be. Experiencing India first hand gave me the desire to learn more about different people and world culture.

I have, since my junior year, run a basketball camp for underprivileged children. I volunteered with Vikasana (a student-run social service organization), with the intention of teaching these children the skills that I was fortunate enough to have learnt. I ended up learning more from them than they could from me; lessons that extended well beyond the boundaries of the basketball court.

For the first time, I understood what a life of poverty in a third-world country is like. It doesn’t simply imply fewer meals and second-hand clothes. It means back-breaking manual labor at the age of ten to support one’s family. It means receiving an education at one of the government’s poorly run state board schools, provided one is not married off by one’s parents at a young age. It means living with ten other people in a ramshackle house in the city slums. The experience helped me gain perspective of my life. I realized how fortunate I was to have been born to educated parents and to have been provided with numerous opportunities to develop as an individual, many of which the children in my camp would never get. It taught me to stop taking things for granted and to make the most of the opportunities that present themselves.


Not only has my move from America to India exposed me to demographic diversity, but to a widely different approach to study. The American approach to learning is, I feel, more flexible. It gives one room for creativity. For example, in America, after reading Macbeth in class, an American teacher might assign an essay like this; “You are planning to murder the captain of your school’s football team. Explain why you chose to do so and how you would go about the deed with reference to the play you have read.” An Indian teacher would probably assign an essay like this; “Explain why and how Macbeth murdered Duncan.”

The Indian approach is rigid; answers must be written in the same format as taught in class. Any deviation in thought or expression is awarded no marks. Moreover, instead of the periodic quizzes I was used to in the US, the Indian system throws a great deal of information at you in a short period of time, on which you are tested at the end of the term. Therefore, students learn how to manage their time and study effectively; eliminating everything but the essential elements of their syllabi.

Exposure to both of these educational systems gave me useful skills. On the one hand, my years in an American school gave me my foundation in writing and taught me how to think out of the box. On the other, India taught me how to manage my time, and study efficiently.

I see myself as an amalgam of two widely different cultural elements. If their properties were to be plotted on an x-y-graph, then the x-axis would represent creativity, uniqueness and extra-curricular achievement and the y-axis, academic rigor, and ethnic diversity and understanding. In my opinion, an outstanding Indian student would lie at a point, say, (40,100) while an outstanding American student would lie at a point say (100,40). I would lie at the point (80,70); a balance between extra-curricular achievement and academics, a synthesis of the east and west.