End of mom-dad's American dream
Radio host, novelist and commentator Sandip Roy is the author of Don't Let Him Know. However, his columns are all about letting people know his myriad opinions.
Decades ago I went to a modest university in the United States. It wasn't an Ivy League school but it offered a teaching assistantship and a tuition waiver. My proud mother called all the aunts. My father called travel agents. Not just the immediate family, but aunts and uncles and friends, all trooped to the airport to see me off. It was a momentous occasion. Sociologists would call it brain drain but I was living out the professional Bengali dream.
I remember being both excited and nervous. It was the first time I, a sheltered Bengali boy, would live far away from home. I barely knew how to boil an egg. My mother later said the enormity only sunk in after the plane doors shut. Later that night she lay awake in bed and told my father 'How will he manage all alone so far away?' My father told her 'He will grow up.'
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