With its characteristic initial jolt, the No. 7 subway train lurched into movement. The train carriage I was in was surprisingly empty, so I took my favorite seat right next to the door and enjoyed the full view given by the opposite-side window. The train had just left 72nd Street Broadway, Jackson Heights – a well known South Asian community. I saw an ad for a Tag Heuer watch. I stared at it, not because I was particularly interested in Tag Heuer watches, but because the ad featured an Indian movie star in a suit wearing the advertised watch.
Although there are many things I have respected about Indian heritage and culture, the Indian film industry was not among them. I sneered at the ad, and deeply regretted the choice of celebrity. In my head, I criticized it again and again, until I realized I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The ad, despite my disgust, had a message for me as to the extent an immigrant group can place their mark on New York. As I thought over it, I realized that very few people outside South Asia would know of that particular celebrity, and the fact that he was in an advertisement in middle of Queens indicated the strong presence of Indian, Bangladeshi, and even Pakistani popular culture. In a flash, I took out my phone and managed to get a picture of the ad before it went out of sight.
But my destination was not Jackson Heights. I leaned back on my seat and found a comfortable position to contemplate ultimate reality (a.k.a. sleep) and woke myself up when the last stop on the 7 train arrived.
The last stop. My stop. Flushing.
Flushing has a completely different look to Jackson Heights. It has the crowded, dirty look of a third world industrial center. Everything is jam-packed together – small businesses in the midst of large shopping complexes, crowds of people jaywalking without shame in the midst of giant ten-wheelers squeezing their way out of small garages, a small park in the midst of the elevated LIRR tracks, and random, classy Asian restaurants in the midst of fast food. The majority of immigrants who lived and thrived here were East Asian, particularly Chinese and Korean. Yet, when I began to walk five blocks down Main Street, I see the famous Indian retail supermarket – Patel Brothers.
Patel Brothers had always been in Main Street, although ten years ago, it existed on the opposite side of Main Street. I remember how my mother used to take me there during elementary school and how I would have a craving for the Indian variant of Lays Chips. During middle school, my mother had developed a close relationship with one of the cashiers, who happened to have a bread-making business in her home. During that period of time, I was the errand-boy, picking up and carrying home Indian bread for my mom to use in her cooking.
On the other side of Main Street, further down the block, there is an STI phone card warehouse. I remember a time when our lives used to depend on their services. Ten years ago, before the advent of smart-phones and long-distance communication apps, my father and I used to buy phone cards – each card gave us a certain number of minutes to call long distance.
Buying these phone cards was a monthly ritual for my family. As I reminisced over about it ten years later, I realized how important connecting to family members back in India was to my parents. We weren’t seasoned immigrants yet, we needed some sort of connection to our past experiences in order to keep a portion of it when adapting to New York.
I walked past the phone card store and took a left at Elder Ave. Perpendicular to Elder Ave and parallel to Main St. was Colden St., the place very closely related to my schooling. I remembered during elementary school how all the immigrant parents would cooperate in organizing us, the kindergarteners, to get picked up by the school bus. All of us went to Bayside for elementary school, since all of the immigrant parents collectively thought that it was the better school district. Colden Street was the place where many South Asian children would run around and play tag with children of other ethnicities. There was a small gate which blocked a patch of grass. Kids who were brave enough to break rules would climb over the gate and run around in the grass. The South Asian community was very large during that time, which made it possible for all parents to come together in unity for the sake of their kids. A sense of lonely nostalgia swept over me, and held me fixed to that spot for a few seconds before I shook it off and moved on.
At Colden Street, I took a minute to face Elder Ave and thought of another great stamp of Indian culture, which was the Hindu Temple on Holly Ave and Bowne St. The Hindu Temple was originally small, around as big as two apartment buildings, but recently it has renovated considerably, which has made it very large and spacious for the devout. The Hindu Temple could be considered the epicenter of all things Hindu. The community outreach programs that I had participated in and the volunteer work it provided allowed me to meet many other people of similar backgrounds. However, it was festival celebrations that brought Hindus from all around New York to congregate. There were even times when we paraded along Bowne, Colden, Holly and Main Streets – an expression of culture which made its mark on Flushing.
Although all these things still existed in 2014, I felt that it didn’t have the same magic as it had several years ago. Maybe it is because I grew used to it. Maybe it is because many South Asians chose to move out of Flushing in favor of more suburban areas such as Long Island or New Jersey. Despite that, the shards of Indian culture that remain here are still very valuable to me. As I reminisced over the effects this neighborhood had on me, I turned left onto Colden St. and started to walk home.
