Cricket, Bullies, and Workplace Discrimination: Dad’s Story
Note: In the midst of a pandemic, I began having an identity crisis. The rise of hate crimes against AAPI brothers and sisters left me feeling heartbroken and powerless. I turned to the writing community for a sense of comfort, and to help me take my power back. Writing has always reminded me that I still have a duty to document and tell our stories. I will be publishing excerpts from my unpublished memoir throughout the month. Happy Asian Pacific American Heritage Month! #APAHM. (Excerpt 4)
As a kid, my dad would enjoy playing cricket with his younger siblings and some of the neighborhood kids in Tanzania, East Africa.
Sometimes he’d dart out into the dirt road without slippers on. He’d look up at the sky, spreading out his arms while letting the sunshine reenergize his brown skin.
My dad would play until the sun would go down while going over a few game strategies with his teammates in Swahili — my dad’s first language before learning Gujarati and English.
My dad even made a secret fort out of wood scraps, aluminum sheets, tree branches, and other materials he and the neighborhood kids found on the side of the road.
“The only language I knew was Swahili when I was going to school in Africa. I couldn’t speak English fluently, or my native tongue — Gujarati,” my dad said in an interview.
Growing up in East Africa, my dad always aspired to be a pilot. He was fascinated by the engineering and science behind airplanes and wanted to learn more.
“I wondered how the plane flew by itself like a bird, and I always wanted to be a pilot. That was my dream. I thought one day I’d get the opportunity to be a pilot, but I guess it never happened,” my dad recalled in our interview.
Even today, I always catch my dad pausing and looking up at the sky whenever an airplane buzzes by. He still has the same childlike curiosity.
For dad, life in East Africa was good. He never imagined he’d have to leave the place he felt most at home.
My dad was around 12 years old when he found out his dad was not able to extend his work permit in Tanzania as an accountant clerk working for a major newspaper.
My dad found it difficult to leave Tanzania because he had forged many friendships over the years and had even noticed how much more fulfilled and happy his dad was in East Africa. Dad wasn’t sure if he was ready for a drastic change moving to London, England — a city he knew very little about or had a deep connection with.
My dad eventually came to understand that it was time for a change, and was ready for the drastic change. He had been used to moving around a lot because of all of the odd jobs his dad had worked in East Africa.
Despite the culture shock and the inevitable changes to his routine, my dad tried to be optimistic. Maybe London, England, would open up more opportunities for him and his family, he often thought.
Attending elementary and then high school in London was a huge adjustment. Dad often felt as though he never fit in with his classmates. When he’d get dropped off school by his parents, he’d pretend he didn’t know them. He’d look away whenever his mom, who wore a bright yellow sari, waved goodbye.
Dad shared in an interview that when he got bullied in school, he often questioned his Indian culture and admitted that he felt embarrassed by his family’s traditions, and felt ashamed by his skin color. He was tired of being bullied and harassed by his white peers so he tried to adapt to customs and the new way of life.
One day, in an attempt to “fit in,” dad mustered the courage to buy lunch in the school cafeteria, where he was served meat. He didn’t want to eat leftovers his mom had prepared for him that day. In an attempt to fit in, dad tried to eat the non-vegetarian meal, but felt a pang of nausea as his stomach started churning and rejecting it. He immediately vomited the food because he had never tried meat before in his life.
All he wanted to do was fit in at school like the rest of his peers.
“I never ate meat in Africa. Being Indian, we are Hindus. We never cooked meat or eggs in the house either,” said dad.
Dad instantly felt guilty after consuming meat. He vowed to never do it again.
In our interview, dad recalled that during recess, he would often get kicked around or verbally harassed by bullies. Some kids would even ask for the little money he carried with him. Dad would cave in and give the bullies some of the pocket change his dad had given him to avoid further physical altercations at school.
“I was kind of skinny and I wasn’t going to put up a fight. Whatever they did…I took it — as well as the verbal abuse.”
In an interview, dad said he recalls that his peers would make racist remarks to him like, “Paki, Paki, go home,” or “Go back to your country, Paki.” But dad wouldn’t say anything back.
Of course, my dad didn’t tell his parents about the bullies because he didn’t want to worry them or have them come down to the school to discuss the situation or make matters worse.
Dad missed the friendships he had made during his time living in East Africa and wondered why he had to put up with the incessant verbal abuse and taunts from school bullies in London.
One time, a yard duty teacher came up to my dad and proceeded to tell the bullies to stop calling my dad names. The teacher told the students not to harass or use racial slurs, but other than that, nothing substantial was done about the issue, according to my dad.
Dad would often stay in close proximity to the yard duty teacher because he was afraid of getting bullied again or worse — beaten up.
My dad eventually realized that he couldn’t live in fear. He ended up befriending a teacher named Mr. Heath, who welcomed him into his classroom during recess and lunchtime. The teacher agreed to teach and play a game of chess with him.
Mr. Heath stood 6 feet-something tall, with hair reminiscent of Einstein’s famous hairdo, dad explained. He quickly became dad’s role model.
“Today, I’m 60 years old, but I can still picture what Mr. Heath looked like. I felt like he protected me and shielded me from the harsh truth, and improved my chess game,” dad said in his interview.
My dad has always been an avid chess player, but I never quite understood the impact it had on my dad’s upbringing and early childhood until I sat down to interview him.
Dad explained to Mr. Heath that he learned about the game of chess from his dad when he was just 7 years old. He recalled to Mr. Heath that he would often watch his dad play chess with his friends.
Dad always aspired to become an advanced chess player and step up his game, so he took up Mr. Heath’s offer to play a game of chess with him every day during lunch. After all, it was better than being harassed by racist bullies on the school playground.
“I felt he was kind of shielding me. He protected me by accepting me. I was the only person during recess and lunchtime that I was inside the classroom with the teacher. I was an exception and he loved playing chess and I learned a few things from him,” dad recalled in the interview.
In school, dad struggled in English class but excelled in other subjects like mathematics and science. “Because English was a second or third language, I was not able to speak it as fluently as other kids.”
When it came time to write an essay, my dad did the best he could to answer the prompt. He often struggled to put ideas together in writing and didn’t feel comfortable enough to ask his English teacher for help because she often ignored him in the classroom and acted as if he didn’t exist, dad explained.
When he did attempt to raise his hands in class to ask the teacher a question, the teacher often picked on other white students, according to my dad’s experiences. (My dad also suspected it had something to do with the fact that he was British Indian and his parents had just taken over a beloved convenience store that was previously owned by a British couple).
A lot of times, he would get a D or an F on his essays. Dad recalled that one day, a white classmate compared his paper with his, and shared that he spent just a few hours on it and was surprised that he got an A. His classmate said that my dad should have at least received a B or C on his paper.
“I knew there was a lot of favoritism and the teacher was kind of putting me down, and I felt like dropping out of the class,” my dad said in an interview.
My dad often felt there were some stereotypes that some of his teachers and peers perpetuated. Dad felt like he wasn’t an equal to some of his other classmates, and that he constantly had to prove himself worthy.
Despite the setbacks and passive-aggressiveness from peers and teachers, my dad pushed through and focused more on his growing interest in the computer sciences.
He recalled that he had always been interested in computers ever since he was a young kid. His first exposure was playing videogame chess on the Atari when he was a teenager.
“It was so slow and only like 64 megabytes as you can understand that the CPU was so slow, but I was fascinated by that and believed that ‘this is the future.’”
After high school, dad attended the London Metropolitan University (formerly the University of North London and Polytechnic of North London), where he took a 4-year degree course and graduated with honors in computer science, mathematics, statistics, and operational research. Before graduating, he did a 12-month internship as a computer programmer trainee and received a small stipend for the year.
After graduating from college, my dad started looking for a job. He’d spend every day at the library, looking through job postings listed on the local newspaper as well as physical job boards.
“Back in those days, we didn’t have the Internet. I saw one ad at IBM through an agency so I applied through the agency and they forwarded my resume to IBM and the agency called me.”
Along with a grueling interview with senior management, HR, and technical managers — my dad had to also take a lengthy aptitude test so IBM could narrow down the candidates.
In a few weeks, dad received a call from IBM and they gave him a job offer at their headquarters in the outskirts of London. Dad couldn’t believe it. He was ecstatic about the news and the prospects of continuing to help and contribute some of his earnings to his dad, to help him run his shop in Finchley.
On his first day at the job, my dad was stationed at a desk overlooking a lake at IBM’s headquarters. He recalled closing his eyes and praying to god before starting his first workday. He put a framed picture of a Hindu god at his desk and realized he had been given an opportunity of a lifetime and couldn’t afford to disappoint his parents.
But that moment of solitude quickly evaporated as a white supervisor from another department came over to his desk and furiously asked, “Who hired you here?” That was not the first welcome introduction or question my dad assumed he’d get. But by now, he was used to the micromanaging and passive-aggressiveness by some white colleagues.
He didn’t imagine that people would undermine his skills or believe that he didn’t belong there. He belonged there just as much as the other person, my dad explained in the interview.
My dad looked the supervisor in the eyes, trying to hold back his frustration: “I got hired by the managers who interviewed me and HR.”
Dad didn’t want to say anything else to prove his worth or value to the company, so he kept it short.
“He looked down on me and I didn’t say anything after that and he walked away. Basically his point was I shouldn’t be sitting over there at the desk as a person of color.”
When it came time to a yearly performance appraisal, my dad would usually receive an average rating compared with others who started their positions at relatively the same time, he mentioned.
“Although I was a good programmer and completed all my program assignments on time or well ahead of time than others with no errors, I wouldn’t receive a stellar performance review.”
My dad believed he was decent at programming and would spend countless hours studying and mastering it. For my dad, getting a raise or receiving recognition for his work always seemed like a herculean task.
He felt he had to always prove his worth in the midst of rampant workplace discrimination at the time. He would often feel excluded from his work colleagues, or perceived as not a part of the team no matter how hard he tried to share his ideas, dad shared.
“There were times when I just didn’t feel like I belonged, but I still pushed through because I loved being a computer programmer.”
-Written by Monica Luhar (excerpt from my unpublished memoir. Currently seeking a lit agent.)
For previous excerpts, please read the following:
