A promise to keep!

It starts around 1 am.

First, A couple of people show up, perhaps, right after the last movie showtime. Then a few more arrive. Slowly, the crowd builds — one at a time, a group here, a couple there — soon you have a long line of people against the wall. The homeless and the beggars on the street watch the people lining up with quizzical faces.

Why are all these people lining up so early in the morning with folders in hand? Who would be crazy enough to line up on the main thoroughfare of a large city at 2 am? (Equivalent to lining up on the 101 in SF)

Rock concert? Religious gathering? Free stuff?

None of the above.

This is the crowd lining up for the chance to enter the US embassy in Chennai (then Madras). You start lining up early in the morning with papers in your hand and hope in your heart so that you will make it through the security guards at 8 am in the morning. This being India, the security guards who probably could not spell “democracy” or “due process” have absolute power to reject your entry into the embassy. If you make it through them, then you will have the joy of a high stress 10 minute interview where a consular officer will decide if you are entitled to a study/visit visa to the US.

One wrong answer, you will be rejected.

Two rejections, you are done. You cannot get a visa to come to the US after two rejections.

How do I know this? I was in that line on June 1990.

Yes, I was standing behind a really big wall in line to legally enter this country.

Now there is nothing unique about this. This story is repeated in capital cities across Asia, Africa and South America. People line up early in the morning, jump across incredible bureaucratic hoops, suffer a number of indignities so that they could have a chance to come to America.

Because in America — regardless of the circumstance of your birth, the chromosomes you have, the color of your skin, or the coarseness of your accent, you knew if you worked hard and gave it your all, you could make it.

In America, the only limits to your success was your ability and your capacity to work hard.

In America, everyone had a chance.

That’s the promise America made to you.

Its the promise I felt America made to me — the American Dream.

Until I came to America, I had never met or spoken with an American. All I knew of America was through TV or movies. I remember distinctly one of the first Hollywood movies I saw — it was a western called High Noon — sitting on the dusty ground, watching that big white screen, the movie mesmerized me.

Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly, a sheriff who has decided to give up violence but protecting the town one last time even though everyone in the town has turned their back on him. I still remember the last scene, when Gary Cooper after shooting the bad guys, drops his sheriff badge and rides away into the sunset with Grace Kelly.

America, to me, was a country like that. A place where people did the right thing, stood for principles even when it was inconvenient or unpopular, and moved on without caring for acknowledgment or reward.

Yes, I know its a movie. Yes, its meant to be idealistic.

But words matter, images matter and the stories we tell to each other matter.

For too many Americans today, the words, images and stories being told are dire. They don’t believe in the promise of a better future. They don’t believe they have an equal opportunity to succeed. Rather they believe that the whole system is rigged. That all politicians are corrupt, that the financial system is stacked against them.

It might not be true but it does not matter. This is what they believe.

They are angry because they are fearful of the future they and their children face. Technology frightens them as it automates their jobs, global trade eats into their wages and feminism threatens their sense of masculinity.

There are many ideas on how we can fix this. I do not have anything smarter to offer than what’s already put on the table with the caveat that we need Americans to believe in the promise again. We need them to believe that the American Dream is possible for them.

As the famous American poet, Robert Frost wrote:

The woods are lovely dark and deep

But I have many promises to keep

and miles to go before I sleep

We have One Big promise to keep and miles to go before we sleep.