I Represent India but I was raised out in Queens
Queens, New York, 1991
Memories of growing up in Queens in the early 90s. The following took place primarily between 1991–1995. These are personal memories of growing up in one of the best boroughs of New York City.
Update: Queens has been named the top place to visit in 2015 by Lonely Planet.
A cherubic blonde boy walked down Vietor Avenue in Elmhurst, Queens (one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the United States). He unwrapped a Hershey’s candy bar revealing the perfectly rectangular pieces of milk chocolate and bit into it. Even then the little filmmaker inside me wanted to film this moment on Vietor Avenue (Elmhurst hospital two blocks down). The American dream was now a reality for me. Having just landed with my mother and sister, we’d arrived in New York, a city which was altogether unfamiliar and exhilarating. Peering out the window from JFK airport I had noticed bright bubbly forms of art, “that’s graffiti” my uncle told me in the yellow cab. To a nine year old me, it was beautiful and alluring. Many questions, lots of discoveries to be made and a positively cheerful outlook on everything. This was it.
We went up to the studio apartment in which six of us stayed for a period of three months. The studio apartment was my cubicle of life lessons. I’d seen thieves jump down from the floors above and run away carrying objects of all sorts. I’d ensured to never answer the door as my sister and I would be home alone in the afternoons. America was expensive and we had very little. Whether or not to purchase a quarter water turned into a mathematical equation of counting how many rupees it was. No matter how pretty that sugary beverage looked, I remember gladly putting it back.
The First Day
I wore a traditional Indian “Safari” suit on the first day of school. I left home the faux pas pearl necklace which my mom had though to be a cute idea and become the laughing stock of the flight attendants on the Pan Am flight over to my new country. What’s so funny about me wearing a pearl necklace to a bunch of “air hostesses”, I had thought. But the embarrassment was felt enough to have taken them off that instant.
Like a young Indian prince on a mission to impress, I strutted into the classroom and the first time I went into computer classes. Someone asked me, “are you going to dress like that every day?” To which, the teacher thankfully responded, “No, he’s only wearing it for picture day, aren’t you sweetie?” Did she know? I have no idea, but boy was I glad that it was picture day and so the next day, my attire became much more “normal”. We had pants with cartoons on them, which to me were cool, but definitely not the norm in daily wear for Americans.
School was fascinating. I sat across Elisa who was a sweet mannered Chinese American with a thick New York accent. Her best friend was Melissa who also had a twin sister. Instead of memorization, a new world of reading, literary comparisons and *gasp* computer games and even typing were introduced. We were to enter in a single classroom where a coffee and cigarette fueled Ms. Prowler, my fifth grade teacher, would introduce us to social studies, geography and of course my favorite, English. We read “The Trumpet of the Swan” and she held a party to celebrate the culmination. We read “From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler” and I’ll never forget the lesson on the word “coincidence.” She asked us what it meant and no one could give a proper answer. This infuriated Ms. Prowler, so we all took guesses in a time without the Internet, without instant “define coincidence” on Google. Everyone was wrong. The next day Roseanne got the answer, she’d understood the meaning and explained it to everyone in class. Ms. Prowler was satisfied.
Like Cotton Balls of the Sky
One afternoon late in December, a bright sunny day was upon us. Suddenly, I saw someone throwing stuff out the window. My attention veered towards the window and I was in shock. Littering was a crime and it should not be done and why was whoever was doing it throwing cotton balls out the window? It was insane.
*Raises Hand*
Mrs. Prowler: Yes, TheVAAL
Me: Mrs. Prowler, someone is throwing cotton balls outside the window.
Suddenly the entire class says something altogether in wonderment and they all rush towards the window.
Mrs. Prowler: Alright, alright, everyone back to their seats. Only Dhaval hasn’t seen snow, the rest of you need to sit down.
This was snow? A big smile came upon my face! A small flurry had dropped from the heavens and it was entirely too beautiful and magical to hold it in. A smile on my face when I found very little accumulation upon leaving school. I held the cold, soft, moldable powder and watched it turn into water in my hands.
In the Intermediary School (bigger school) we would go down to lunch and vegetarian food was ensured to me. No one thought it was an issue. Everyone in Elmhurst came from different cultures; World Food Day brought together many good, bad and quite frankly confusing aromas into large classrooms. Everyone would take a sampling of something or the other but we’d always have to ask, “does this contain meat, fish, chicken or eggs.” Meat meant different things to different people.
Mom: My son is a vegetarian and we want to ensure he gets only vegetarian food
Counselor: But he can eat chicken right?
Mom: No, that is meat!
As we went down to the cafeteria, the counselor showed me around and introduced me to the cafeteria usher who would accept minimal amount of cash or check students’ names on a list to see whether they had reduced, full price or free lunch. I had free lunch.
Counselor: This is The-VAAL (they couldn’t pronounce Dhaval and so I figured my new country had also given me a new name.) He is vegetarian so please ensure he gets only vegetarian meals.
Usher: But he eats chicken right?
Counselor: No chicken.
A few friendly giggles and laughter. Soon, I became more involved with the cafeteria than ever imagined. Seeing me sitting along with another friend, Mr. Sansiveri, for whom the school is now named asked if I’d like to become a breakfast monitor. Of course! Authority over the entire room of kids, I’d love it. Really, we just asked everyone to throw out the trash and stack their styrofoam plates neatly on a table.
A sweet old woman on staff with a penchant for tinned Christmas popcorn took an immediate liking to me and would frequently give me treats and even an official badge to rule over the masses.
My Amazing Teachers
Handball, comic books, and of course the engaging course work defined my academic interests.
Mr. Sosis, a practicing lawyer who left school a year later, taught me everything there was to know about American history and law. He also taught me the importance of paying attention. His tests were never straightforward. He also tried to set me up with a student from his wife’s school — also a teacher. I was recorded. She was too. It never panned out — we never even met.
Mr. Wachs who explained to me how slowly, New York would become an earthquake heavy city.
Ms. Coomer who was . . . a fortune teller, tarot reader, believer in El Chupacabra and later even a one-time houseguest. She adored me too, for some reason and the teacher’s pet syndrome continued. I enjoyed her sweet and fun ways, she would make everyone laugh and always had a story to tell. We made hilarious haikus and learned a lot. I had gifted her a box of chocolates and this was the time when Forrest Gump was popular. She stuck the chocolate box, backside front, revealing all the chocolate names and types and wrote “Mrs. Gump was wrong!” Witty. She is currently still as lively as ever before and has performed on several Moth storytelling nights in her native Kentucky.
Mr. Suraci made us into creative writers with voices bigger than I’d imagined. He’d read aloud our stories and make us sound like future novelists.
Mrs. Vecchio noticed when we’d been to Disney World for a school trip when she called me up after Winter Break and asked where I’d gotten so tan. I didn’t know brown people could tan? But she made me aware of this fact.
Mr. Feiler loved that we were excited about Earth Science and put me in his special class. We made a fake seismometer by adding in some lines. It sucked as a project, but we were ambitious. He also took us to an overnight trip where we, for the first time, walked for maybe quarter of a mile in the dark, pitch black dark, with sounds of forest creatures looming, alone. He gave me bravery and a memorable weekend. He also gave me a ride for our project. He passed away a few years later, he will be really missed.
Mrs. Hogan taught us to always read the fine print before getting into any BMG music CD plan and she also gave me a 93 on my science experiment in which I took a plastic box, rubbed it against my hair and then put it on a student’s head — the magic of static electricity. She taught Home Science and regular science. Mrs. Hogan was cool.
We had Mrs. Tannenbaum, who never revealed to my parents during “Teacher’s Conference” that once some girl had slipped me a note during class about whether I liked her or not. She also was the one who said “These are good kids, I’m sure it’s nothing bad” when my name was announced to our school of over 3,000 kids to report to the Dean’s office. It wasn’t bad, they wanted to upgrade me to a Special Class. Said Mr. Mifsud, “Will you be able to handle all the extra homework?” Gleefully, knowing that all my other friends were already in those classes, I accepted.
Trips to Great Adventure, Halloween dances, Marvel action cards, bus rides to and from school, visits to Queens Center mall, Loew’s Cineplex, memorizing Snow’s Informer and showing it off to anyone who’d listen.
One day in the 7th grade (‘94) I was walking down the hall and I saw the coincidence girl from P.S. 13.
Me: Hi Roseanne!
Roseanne: Dhaval!
She walked away and made a sudden turn.
Roseanne: What happened to your accent?!
Me: Shrugs, I don’t know, I guess it’s gone!
Roseanne: Wow!
This was I.S. 73.
What We Did at Home
At home, we’d create carnivals where orange juice would be mixed with cranberry and Sprite to create a magic fizz. The chair would be turned into a rollercoaster for my sister to ride or a haunted house, whatever we felt like that day. We’d watch the Dinsey afternoon all the way through to the evening re-runs of Full House. That meant, as soon as we came back from school, my sister and I would eat the food our mom had lovingly cooked for us. We’d check in with her at work by calling the office.
Me: May I speak with Devi please?
Operator: Who is this?
Me: Her son.
Thoroughly weirded out by having to call my mom by her first name, we had to do it daily, anyway. We’d make mixtapes where we’d play DJs. We’d wait for our songs like “Little Pig, Little Pig, let me in” come on the radio and time it just perfectly to avoid any of the ads or drops the radio station put on. I don’t remember the countless hours we’d leave the radio on just so that one particular song would come on. And the moment I heard it, I’d leap to the room with the boombox and hit record. Mission accomplished. This would serve well as I’d be able to listen to the music on my brand new yellow Sony walkman. Whether on the bus ride from school or to longer field trips to Old Bethlehem or the Cloisters.
- Duck Tales (if our bus reached home on time)
- Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers
- Tale Spin
- Darkwing Duck (this show sucked so we didn’t really watch it)
Then we’d do our homework, eat snacks and wait for Growing Pains, Saved by the Bell and Full House.
The Food and the fun
We’d frequent the McDonald’s on Queens Boulevard to use their Play Zone and eat fries. We would eat perfectly created pies of pizza from Singa’s Famous then Elmhurst’s Famous, then again Singa’s and then again Elmhurst. If you see the McDowell’s in “Coming to America” it is actually a Wendy’s which our school bus would pass daily on the way from Maspeth going up to Grand Avenue. But we hardly ate there, instead we’d frequent Gino’s right above the Grand Avenue subway stop with its amazing slices of pizza.
In ‘91 there was an amazing vegetarian Indian restaurant called “Jhupdi”, decorated like a straw hut that served authentic food, next to Dan’s Supreme (taken over by Key Food, a supermarket giant). It burned down and along with it so did Singa’s Famous Pizza. Rumors of foul play were amiss the Indian crowd, but I have no idea what eventually happened. They collected the insurance money supposedly.
Jackson Heights was great for Indian shopping. You’d even have the paan and red spit marks of Pan Parag speckled along the dirty sidewalks. A primarily South American neighborhood, one block in Jackson Heights had all the Indian sweets, cuisine and food you craved. Udipi, which became Anand Bhavan had excellent sheera with mango ice cream and amazing dosas. Jackson Diner served perfectly cured Paneer Pasanda (a dish to date, which I’ve not even had in India). We’d either walk all the way there or take a subway. Cabs were expensive. So if we went grocery shopping, it was usually me and my mom carrying bags of groceries back. It took a year but we eventually got a big red shopping cart (a significant investment at the time) and we’d walk with our mother twenty to thirty minutes each way to buy the week’s goodies for the family.
Jackson Triplex was always a triple feature when going with friends and maybe a two-feature for the price of one if going with my mom who was adventurous enough to sneak into the movies.
Some movies I remember watching here:
Batman Returns
Home Alone 2
Hellraiser
Batman and Robin (we made fun of it)
Congo
The other theater was Lowes Cineplex right across Queens Center mall. For whatever reason, I preferred this theater much more and Douglaston’s near Bayside was the ultimate!
A few friends
We lived near the Jain temple on Ithaca street. The temple was walkable from our apartment. Religion to us was a ritual in India. In America, it became a way of life and our social connect.
Each Sunday we’d go to Patshala, where we learned, in detail the Jain philosophy from Susmita auntie. She related karma to a movie projector so that it made sense. We learned prayers like the Bhaktamara Stotra and also listened fondly to stories of equanimity and soulcentric grandness of the Tirthankaras and those who follow the Enlightened Ones. The kids from the Patshala became good friends. We’d go over to each other’s houses, play NBA Live, NBA Jam and go into the park and play actual basketball. If it was cold, we’d get the Nerf football and have people argue about who’d be “official QB”.
Pizza, Mexican Pizza and junk food. We’d sneak in Combos to the movies and love every minute of it. Birthdays would be celebrated together as would sleepovers and many other fun events.
Slowly the crew grew apart, by the time we were in college, there were some meetings, but all of us can still look back at those years and fondly recall the good times.
All of this happened in Queens. We lived in Elmhurst, our friends were in Bayside and Forest Hills. In high school, I went to the Bronx, which was another giant chapter, but not as interesting nor as fun as the times I had in Queens.
I moved back to India in 2009 with no plans actually before of ever doing so. But life is too beautiful to contain us in one place and when a Higher calling arrives, it helps us to move forward and discover new adventures and with it new goals to achieve. I will always cherish my time in NYC, in fact all parts of New York, from the melting pot that was Elmhurst to the majorly white college of SUNY Geneseo where I discovered my true calling: filmmaking, communication and radio. In my later years, I lived in Floral Park, which was on the border of Queens and Long Island, which lacked a lot of character. But I loved the drives to and from work in Bellmore or the late night drives to the Lower East Side where I discovered some of the best Jain and vegan food on the planet.
Dhaval Mehta is Mayor of Community at DPM*Social, a social media and digital marketing firm that believes in, very much like the Growing Pains theme song, sharing in the laughter and love.
