I never realized I had. I wanted our relationship to be about playing catch or riding bikes together. I wanted Shyamal to know my friends and teach me how to shave. I wanted someone to talk to about girls and tell me where babies came from. That was America, I thought, especially considering the experience my white childhood friends were having. Where I wanted less from my mother in many ways—less pressure, less interference—I badly wanted more from Shyamal.
The cultural gap was widened further by my father’s pride in being an immigrant. I saw his pride as a burden, especially in middle school and high school, where feeling like an outsider was a constant. Hardly anyone in class looked like me. If they did, I bet I would have spent time with other parents similar to Shyamal, and my assumptions about race and parenting would have been different. These feelings, specifically the ones I had equating whiteness with being American, weren’t justified or rational. With the benefit of time, I can say they were wrong.
The truth is that I’m not sure that my relationship with Shyamal ever had a chance. Even if my parents had had a stable, healthy marriage, the gap between my father and me may have been insurmountable. He didn’t understand what it meant to be an American child growing up in the 1990s. I didn’t understand what it meant to be a child in India. Most important, I didn’t understand what it meant to be a father from India to a millennial son here in the United States.
He certainly made a good faith effort, but the execution was iffy and boy, did I resent him for it. Year after year, my dad showed up to my Little League games without understanding the rules. I struck out early and often. One time, I swear I saw him standing up and cheering for me after I struck out. I am fairly positive that he thought that’s what was supposed to happen. (My son doesn’t have to endure the punishment of running the bases!)
But my career didn’t make much sense to an electrical engineer from India. He knows that I am a journalist and a writer for the New York Times—but what that means has always been something foreign to him.
Bishakha understood a bit more, but not too much. Growing up, the television she approved of me watching, outside of 7th Heaven of course, was the news. She didn’t understand what went into a broadcast, but she loved Peter Jennings, the ABC anchor. She liked 20/20 and 60 Minutes. She was a news consumer in a way my father wasn’t. This probably wasn’t Bishakha’s intent, but her appreciation for the news probably nudged me toward being a reporter.
When I first started at Boston University, my goal was to become a sports broadcaster. I wanted to be the next Bob Costas and call NBA Finals games on television. I was never any good at sports, so this was the next best thing. When I watched games on television, I would mute the television and broadcast the games myself. I would do the same when playing a video game, say NHL 94 on Sega Genesis.
Eventually, I became a bit bored by sports and shifted to hard news. I was the sports director of the college radio station at BU and found myself disillusioned by just how regular athletes are. They sometimes want to show up late for work and act cranky. Look, Ma! They’re just like us.
After college, my career took several detours—let’s call them forced detours—including stops at the Boston Globe (didn’t renew my contract), NBC (layoff), Al Jazeera (layoff), and Major League Baseball (this was fine). And then I landed the job of a lifetime in 2015: I was tapped to be a campaign reporter for CBS News.
One of the candidates I was initially assigned? Donald J. Trump. My initial reaction? I won’t have to cover that guy at all.
Woooo, boy. Was I wrong.
I was part of a small group of about five to ten reporters that followed the Trump campaign from start to finish—“embeds,” in industry parlance. We went to more than forty states and hundreds of rallies. Trump even sent some angry tweets my way once, calling me and my friend Katy Tur, an NBC reporter, “3rd rate” and “dishonest,” adding that we should be fired. I’m sure he was just joking.
Shyamal didn’t know what it meant to be a campaign embed for a national television network.