A Letter to My Newborn Indian-American Son

Which story to you want to believe? The Light or the Dark

Rohan Siddhanti
7 min readJan 15, 2025

Dear Son,

At the end of move Life of Pi, Pi recounts two versions of his survival story: one fantastical, involving animals, and another harshly realistic, with humans replacing the animals in a tale of brutality and survival. When asked which version is true, Pi responds that it doesn’t matter, as both lead to the same outcome. He concludes with, “So it goes with God,” implying that belief often comes down to choosing the more beautiful or meaningful story, whether or not it is literally true.

So it goes with the Indian-American Community, and your Opportunity within it.

Which story do you want to believe? The story of Dark or the story of Light. Do you believe that the Indian-American community has peaked, or that instead we stand on the cusp of generational greatness? That you’ll be part of another great wave of success, or a slow decline?

This letter is mostly the Light Version. At the end I present to you the Dark. It’s up to you to decide which one you want to believe.

You enter this world at a wonderful time to be alive. While we are in a period of great global uncertainty, time and again uncertainty has breed opportunity. Indian-Americans are beautifully positioned to continue to succeed — you can build on what your grandparents and parents created.

Let’s debunk the myth: Your grandparents’ success wasn’t promised, it was earned.

Your grandparents came to America in the 80s completely unsure of themselves. While yes they were the best and brightest from India, that was never guaranteed to translate to American success.

Take your Nani for example. She graduated from Delhi University as one of the top students including in English. When she got off the plane in American for the first time, she saw a billboard and started crying. It said “Big Apple Goes Bananas over Kent Too”. Her language master was for naught. Little did she know the slang meant “New York City also loves this cigarette brand”. Multiply that by a thousand little moments, and you have but one year in her immigrant life.

Where Indian-Americans stand today — with our Kamalas, Satyas, Sanjays and Indras — one would think that this success was a foregone conclusion. From from it. For your Nani and Nana, Dida and Dadu, America was the land of opportunity but they never had a formula for achieving it. They made a tremendous amount of mistakes, took financial risks, lost friendships, and gumshoed the system to their advantage.

The home environment with kids was even more confusing. Should the Friday night movie be Titanic or Taal? Do they enroll Raj in Kumon or Karate? What their kids wore, ate, who they hung out with, what drugs they potentially did — it was all up for grabs. All they could control was the home environment.

Your grandparents struggled with career decisions, cultural preservation, assimilation into society, family values and so much more.

Each generation will struggle with something different. But each also had to compete to achieve. So will you.

Your grandparent’s Great Struggle was survival. Even ordering at Dunkin’ Donuts was stressful. Why are they asking me if I want milk, doesn’t all coffee have milk?

Your parent’s Great Struggle was assimilation. Will my White friends accept me? Will they notice that I have no clue what I’m doing here?

We don’t know what your Great Struggle will be yet, and thats ok. Because at the end of the day, the only formula for success is to out-compete. Your mom and I had the luxury of being born into zip codes of opportunity with families that supported us and pushed us. But we still had to perform. The same will be true for you.

Enter you: Born at a time of global re-arrangement. Worldwide, in America and specifically for Indian-Americans.

The period from 1950–2020 was the greatest period of peace, prosperity and GDP growth the world had ever seen. Since 2020 the world has been re-arranging. History is repeating itself as new Cold Wars emerge and super-powers battle — a pattern that inevitably leads to growth in the long run. We were born into the Age of the Internet and you into the Age of AI. The opportunities are boundless.

My generation earns more money then our parents generation and has higher rates of college attendance. The generation below us, Z, has more work-life balance and sees family and societal change as a good thing. Women are making equality gains to men. Yours is likely to continue many of those trends.

But that’s all just at a macro-level. Let’s drill down to Indian-American specific issues.

The US is opening up in a way that will only help Indian-Americans compete. You benefit from two generations of brain-brand equity: When you walk into a room, people generally assume you’re smart. Legacy and race-based college admissions are on the decline. The era of DEI is ending.

On top of that, Indian-American are branching out from traditional paths. It’s not just about the Viveks of the world, it’s about the Mindys. Why focus just on Amar Bose when we also have Manu Raju, Rachel Roy and Zarna Garg? Yours can be the path of passionate pursuit.

Indian American culture is strong. Your parents are carrying forward what your grandparents did, but in a different way.

The foundation for Indian-American success lies in its strong family and community culture — a pattern your parents will continue. Family dinners 5x nights/week through age 18 was common, as they will be in our household. What we can’t do ourselves, we’ll outsource.

While your mom and I have not memorized many prayers or sabzi recipes, we’ll hire a Poojari and purchase ready-made Daals from Whole Foods. We’ll send you to Hindi school on Sundays, even if its a rented room at the Jewish Community Center.

As first-generation Americans, your parents constantly struggled with dual-identity: were we Indian or American? As the second generation, your struggle won’t be nearly as acute. You’ll see Indian activities as tradition whereas we saw them as a choice. Diwali will be your Christmas, and you won’t feel weird telling your school friends. When we watch Devi’s mainstream role in Never Have I Ever, you’ll know it has nothing to do with her being Indian. Its her just being.

The Dark Version: Indian-American progress has likely peaked. Your life will be much tougher.

You enter this world at its greatest time of tumult in 75 years. Politically, economically and culturally our nation and our world is breaking. Your parents and grandparents had it far easier. While you will also be born on third base, that’s where the set path ends for you.

Your Nani and Nana entered a world full of clear promise with reasonable housing prices and a market consistently returning 8%+ per year. Your parents benefitted from this tremendously. There was a set path — excel in school, get into a good college, compete for that first killer job thats set us on the right career trajectory. Millennial Indian-Americans have our flaws, but career success isn’t one of them.

College is harder to get into than ever, white-collar jobs are at risk of offshoring and AI, and graduate school doesn’t have the ROI it used to. Gen Z has the lowest rates of friendships, highest depression rates and lowest likelihood of starting a family. Why would Gen Beta be any different?

The US is much less welcoming to immigrants than it once was. It doesn’t idolize the wealthy it rejects them. You are both.

Immigrants are less welcome than anytime in recent history. Do not think you’re exempt even as a third-generation citizen of this country. Now that our community has achieved the success it has, the groundswell of hate against us is just beginning. H1-B Indians and citizen Indian-American are all lumped together in one big curry-smelling pot.

Indian American culture is fractured. Your parents’ generation are adrift with few roots. What will that mean for you?

Your parent’s generation is rejecting the Indian-family friend group, our cultural cornerstone. We hardly speak our Mother Tongues or attend temple. We rarely cook the food unless our moms sent it to us.

We’re ok with you being “fully American” but cringe at the idea that you might forget your Indian roots. Outside of major holidays and some vague plans on how to raise you, we’re not sure how we will preserve your Indian identity. You’ll live more of your life online than we ever did, a forum largely devoid of the values we’ll seek to instill in you.

Worst of all: we will spoil you. Passing on the Immigrant Mentality will be damn near impossible.

The greatest gift our parents gave us was the immigrant mentality. This is the daily habit of acting as if nothing is given for free and everything is earned. We were ingrained with the ideas that money was precious, competition was everything and feelings were optional.

We still save the Taco Bell hot sauce packets from the drive through. Think you’ll do the same?

You are born into the coastal elite. A bubble within a bubble. Try as we might to be tough on you, our desire to give you everything will eclipse our ability to teach you resilience. We live in the age of the coddled American mind and you’ll be no exception.

No culture can sustain this type of performance.

Inevitably culture erodes. And with it, the performance of a community. We can’t continue to be the highest earners and have the highest grad-degree rates. Another group will replace us. Hell, we don’t even marry within our own community at the same rates that we used to. The Great Cultural Erosion is upon us, try as we might.

Ultimately what happens in your life is in your hands, but what happens to the Indian-American community is not. The Community will do what its going to do. And you are part of that story.

I know which story I believe. What about you?

So it goes with God,

Dad

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Rohan Siddhanti
Rohan Siddhanti

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