{"id":123,"date":"2009-04-09T13:41:50","date_gmt":"2009-04-09T17:41:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mosaics.dickinson.edu\/southasian2009\/?p=123"},"modified":"2009-04-09T13:41:50","modified_gmt":"2009-04-09T17:41:50","slug":"community-profile-lakshmi-shirkantia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mosaics.dickinson.edu\/southasian2009\/2009\/04\/09\/community-profile-lakshmi-shirkantia\/","title":{"rendered":"Lakshmi Shrikantia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lakshmi Shrikantia
\nInterview and Profile by Sunnie Ko
\nAudio Recording by Sunnie Ko
\nInterview conducted on 3\/31\/09, Hummlestown, PA<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lakshmi Shrikantia is an Indian-American born in the city of Hyderabad, India. After dreaming of immigrating to the United States, she and her husband packed their entire life and started a new life in the year 1988. Since then, they have established a comfortable life in the United States, have raised a family, and have embraced a new identity while maintaining their Indian culture.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"HARI<\/strong><\/strong>

Lakshmi Shrikantia<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/strong> Education was the initial reason Lakshmi wanted to immigrate. Her studies in computational linguistics were not readily or easily available in India at the time. Thus, she saw more opportunity to flourish as a student and person in the United States. After completing her undergraduate and graduate work in India, Lakshmi\u00a0decided she wanted to\u00a0earn her\u00a0PHD in the US. Conveniently enough, her husband shared the same\u00a0dream.\u00a0\u00a0The couple\u00a0moved from India to England where he\u00a0pursued his masters\u00a0 and after completion moved to Canada and finally to the United States where they have since lived.
\nBecause she had family within the U.S, Lakshmi had a good understanding of what life was going to be like prior to her immigration. However, her brother-in-law’s letters could not have explained exactly what to expect or\u00a0the difficulty of incorporating Indian culture into day to day life here.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026the difficulties would be from the culture. How do we incorporate the culture and the same values that we were raised with in [my sons.] And for me, the other difficulty was I guess, just trying to see how can I adapt the way of life that we were raised with here in this part of the world? How do I make the best of both worlds work?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Perceptions<\/a> <\/strong>
\nAudio: “Perceptions”-<\/em><\/strong> Lakshmi shares her thoughts of the United States before immigrating and then the reality.
\n<\/em>
\nRegardless of the struggles, Lakshmi has found her own way of living and balancing the two cultures. The Shrikantias are Hindu but still practice the general festivities of Christmas, a Christian holiday. However, this does not take away from their Hindu roots.
\n\u201cWe are not Christians but we do celebrate Christmas with the trees and gifts, but at the same time celebrating all the festivals that we used to celebrate in India and explain to [her sons] the significance and meaning of them and although it\u2019s a school day you wake them up at 4:00 in the morning so that we finish praying together as a family and do all the traditional ceremonies before they are off to school.\u201d
\n<\/em>Since moving to Central Pennsylvania, Lakshmi has become involved in the Hindu American Religious Institute (HARI)\u00a0in New Cumberland, Pennsylvania. One of\u00a0 her motivation\u00a0to do this\u00a0derives from\u00a0a\u00a0realization she had while living in Toronto, Canada. She observed that there were many types of people coming from different ethinicities, races and religion. This diverse community made her children question why they were not going to church as the other children around them were. Lakshmi had a small temple in her own home and had always thought that to be sufficient means to help her young children understand their religion. However, the reality of it became clear. Her children needed a place to go where they could understand their religion and relate to other children of the Hindu religion.
\n“I\u2019m like \u2018OK, I need to put in more effort and take them… That\u2019s when I need to get involved, I need to make sure that my boys when they grow up they know where they are coming from and they know what their culture and religion is.”
\n<\/em><\/span>She is now the Sunday School director and also conducts religion discussion groups for adults. Her involvement also stems from her desire to help other Indian children in America understand their religion. She also refers to the HARI temple as a “community center” which acts a place for small weddings, baby showers and group discussions. Temples in India, by contrast,\u00a0are solely used for religious practices.
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Lakshmi<\/a>

Lakshmi (on left) explains speaks to the Lived Religion class from Dickinson College about the HARI Temple<\/p><\/div>\n

Although Lakshmi is involved with the temple, she is not consumed by it. Going\u00a0only every Sunday, she finds that she mostly interacts with neighbors and other friends. Lakshmi stresses the importance of being open to people\u00a0from all different types of backgrounds.\u00a0\u00a0Even when living in India, she learned about various other religions in order to \u201chave a better understanding of the people [she] was interacting with.\u201d<\/em> When growing up, she had friends who were Muslim and Christians, and she often asked questions about their religious practices.
\n\u201cI would always go to their house and wish them on their, it\u2019s called \u2018Ramadan and Eid.\u2019 I would go to their houses and learn more about their traditions and how they\u00a0 handled it…\u201d
\n<\/em>This practice of accepting those different than her began during her childhood in India and has translated to her life in the United States.
\nLakshmi Shrikantia identifies herself as an Indian-American and continues to encompass her Indian values and share her knowledge with her own children as well as the Indian community at the HARI Temple. She enjoys life in the US and looks forward to visiting her home country every other summer. For her, the US is a fast moving country where anything is possible. \u201cThe sky is the limit, actually.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

american-dream2<\/a>
\nAudio: “American Dream”<\/em><\/strong> -Lakshmi\u00a0discusses her belief in the\u00a0said American Dream.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lakshmi Shrikantia Interview and Profile by Sunnie Ko Audio Recording by Sunnie Ko Interview conducted on 3\/31\/09, Hummlestown, PA Lakshmi Shrikantia is an Indian-American born in the city of Hyderabad, India. After dreaming of immigrating to the United States, she and her husband packed their entire life and started a new life in the year […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-shirkantia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mosaics.dickinson.edu\/southasian2009\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mosaics.dickinson.edu\/southasian2009\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mosaics.dickinson.edu\/southasian2009\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mosaics.dickinson.edu\/southasian2009\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mosaics.dickinson.edu\/southasian2009\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mosaics.dickinson.edu\/southasian2009\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mosaics.dickinson.edu\/southasian2009\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mosaics.dickinson.edu\/southasian2009\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mosaics.dickinson.edu\/southasian2009\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}