The
Gupta Family
Story
Indira's Journey
Indira's Experiences & Insights
Click here to read Indira's full transcript. Please scroll down to read her story
My mother, Indira Gupta, never thought she would leave her home state of Uttar Pradesh, India, let alone move to a different country. She simply had no reason to. In the religious capital city of Varanasi, my mother lived in a two-story flat with her parents, her five siblings, her aunt and uncle, and their two children. While money and food were at times scarce, having her family around at all times helped my mother, Indira, become the woman she is today: nurturing, compassionate, and kind. Family is everything to her. When her father, a railroad engineer, had to leave for months at a time for work and took my grandmother with him, my mother’s aunt and uncle would step in and raise her and her siblings as their own. Her uncle and aunt were her second parents. My mother often tells me stories of how when she was younger, her grandfather would spend hours helping her revise her multiplication tables until they were etched in memory. Her grandfather’s dedication to education is what fostered a love for learning and an eventual career for my mother in teaching. She pursued her masters in psychology and later became a government public school teacher in economics, history, and math. Family and education is all my mother ever knew. And that’s all she ever wanted surrounding her in life.
At the age of 26, Indira had an arranged marriage to my father, Kewal Kishore, a 29-year-old computer engineer from the city of Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India. Together, they became the best of friends in their journey navigating married life. In the early years after their marriage, my sister was born. However, they weren’t alone. Both my mother’s and father’s families were a phone call away for babysitting help. Life was full.
In October 1996, my father got a job offer from Ace Technology Inc., based in the United States. An opportunity for a job abroad meant career advancement, better healthcare, and a chance to see more of the world. My parents didn’t think too much of it at the time, and my dad accepted the job offer, ready for his United States adventure. My mother figured this job was going to be for a short while and decided to stay behind at her teaching post that she loved and take care of my sister. Fast forward, after a few months of my parents living on opposite sides of the world, when my mother and sister decided to visit my dad in the United States. After seeing the life my dad had built for himself there, Indira followed the advice of everyone around her: keep your family together. So, she sacrificed her family’s support, India, her love for education, her successful career, and moved our family to the United States. All for the sake of our nuclear family.
Indira Gupta
County of Origin: India
Picture a typical Indian street: the sound of street vendors selling their tomatoes, the blaring of car horns as drivers maneuver the populated streets, and the tinkering of bike bells on rickshaws. To someone who’s used to the lively hustle and bustle of the Indian lifestyle, the quiet suburbia of the Bay Area in California was lonely and depressing. My mother hated it here.
She tried to get a substitute teaching job, but failed the English section of the teaching certification exam twice. She took night school English classes to help her pass, but even after passing the class and exam, her fears that people would make fun of her accent combined with her limited grasp of English lowered her confidence. She ended up becoming a housewife for a while, and later got a job as a fast food cook when my dad got laid off. As life continued, my mother grew to find small bouts of beauty within her suburbia. She continued to work at her position as a cook and ventured to working customer service positions as the years went by, even after my father was able to find steady employment. As the years went by, and waves of unemployment continued to be a looming issue for my father, my mother remained strong and did it all. She raised both my sister and I (born later in 1999), managed to continue working, and supported my dad through all the ups and downs of life.
To this day, my mother feels the loss of family celebrations and connection to the people and the profession she loved. Though she tries to replicate it here, she feels it is simply not possible to the extent it was in her youth. She has channeled all her energy into providing her children, my sister and me, with the opportunities that she felt were taken away from her. Her sacrifice never goes a day unnoticed in my eyes. And while I inherited her height, her loud laugh, and her nurturing spirit, it is her strength to endure the most difficult of times that remains the best inheritance of all.