2/15/2006 - A Passage from India
Inspired by a newspaper advertisement, Vishakha Desai was so enthralled with the idea of spending a year in the United States that she convinced her best friend to sign up for an AFS exchange program along with her. Encouraged by her parents to apply for the opportunity, Desai says she was fortunate to have been chosen. “There were 3,500 kids who applied in India at the time, and there were maybe 30 of us who were selected,” she recalled. “It was highly, highly competitive.”
Dr. Desai spent her year—1967—living in Santa Barbara, California, in the midst of the counter cultural activity and social upheaval that surrounded the Vietnam War. “I had very similar values with my host family. My father was a journalist in India, and my American father was a writer and a journalist,” explained Desai. Both households were “intellectually oriented families—that was important. And I think it was the values that really mattered because they were very different people. But ultimately their values were very similar and that was the amazing thing that AFS had figured out.”
Vishakha Desai, left, during her AFS exchange in Santa Barbara.
Despite these similarities, she admitted to being surprised by some of the social differences she encountered during her year in Santa Barbara. “I remember seeing young couples making out on the beach, and it was a totally amazing experience for me,” said Vishakha Desai. “The amazing thing is that a month later it seemed so natural that I couldn’t believe this was such shock.” She was also surprised by the racial tension in California—when Mexican-American students at her high school mistakenly assumed she was of Mexican descent and berated her for befriending white classmates, Desai says that she had no idea how to respond. “They started shouting at me and I finally shouted back in Gujurati because I didn’t know what else to do,” she remembered with a laugh.
Ethnic strains aside, Santa Barbara students presented a united front in their opposition to the Vietnam War. Dr. Desai’s family had been involved in anti-colonialist activism in India, and she found herself drawn to a student-organized peace vigil at her American high school. The protest, reported in the local newspaper, almost brought an end to her exchange experience. AFS representatives, concerned about the possible ramifications for future exchange students, did not want her to participate in a controversial political event, but Desai says that she felt compelled to support the vigil. She struck a compromise that was acceptable to all—she would speak in support of the peace vigil inside the school, while the press focused its attention on the rally outside the school grounds. “That was one of my first steps in learning how to negotiate,” said Desai.
Dr. Desai earned a bachelors degree from Bombay University, but returned to the United States to earn both masters and doctorate degrees from the University of Michigan. Today, she is an internationally recognized scholar of classical and contemporary Asian arts, having taught at the University of Massachusetts, Boston University and Columbia University. She began her term as president of the Asia Society, a preeminent Asian cultural center in New York, in 2004 and credits AFS with instilling many of the leadership skills that she draws on daily. “What it trained you to do was to recognize that you can be comfortable anywhere and you can make friends with many different kinds of people,” said Vishakha. “That gives you a comfort level, no matter where you are, that you’re never afraid, you’re not ashamed and you’re not shy—you just introduce yourself and do what you have to do.”
Reprinted with permission from the P.S. Partnerships, AFS-USA, New York, USA, February, 2006.
To reprint the article, please contact Patti Davis at pdavis@afs.org
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