She's Brave Podcast - Kristina Driscoll
She's Brave Podcast - Kristina Driscoll
Golden Handcuffs: An Immigrant's Pursuit of Happiness with Author Varuni Sinha Part 1
In this special episode of She's Brave Podcast Kristina interviews Varuni Sinha, author of "Golden Handcuffs: An Immigrant's Pursuit of Happiness." This episode is the first of a three-part series where Varuni shares her journey of hitting rock bottom, regaining her identity, and finding happiness.
Varuni begins by discussing her privileged yet chaotic upbringing in India. She talks about her parents, who were university professors from different caste backgrounds, and the liberal and evolved household they maintained. Despite this, Varuni faced familial challenges, often acting as the glue that held her family together.
The conversation transitions to her complicated courtship and marriage to her husband, a stroke surgeon. Varuni’s unique matchmaking experience involved a traditional mountain prophecy which accurately described the man she would marry. Her eventual marriage led her to move from India to Detroit, where she encountered severe cultural changes and social isolation as she adapted to a new life.
Varuni explains the complexities of the immigration system, particularly the limitations and struggles arising from her spousal visa, which initially barred her from working. Despite these challenges, she pursued a career in journalism and succeeded in obtaining jobs, though faced a hostile work environment that deeply affected her mental health and self-esteem.
The episode concludes with a cliff hanger. We hope you'll join us Thursday for the second installment of this 3-part series. Join Kristina and Varuni as they delve into these raw and inspiring stories of overcoming tremendous obstacles, navigating immigration, and finding personal strength.
Varuni Sinha Bio:
Varuni Sinha is a New York City-based writer and multimedia producer. She has written for The Post and Courier, Time Out New York, and created 360-degree campaigns for global brands such as Yamaha and Panasonic. A former guest lecturer at the University of Delhi, she taught “Race and Politics Through Literature” and wrote a dissertation on the history of Indian comic superheroes, tracing their origin story to Hindu gods and their American cousins. Her paintings have been displayed in solo and group exhibitions in galleries across India.
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Episode 98 - Golden Handcuffs: An Immingrant's Pursuit of Happiness
Kristina: Welcome, welcome Varuni.
Varuni: Thank you. Hi, I'm so happy to be here.
Kristina: So glad to have you. I adored your book. It's so well written. I feel like I know you. You have had a very interesting life. And let me tell you, everyone listening out there, Varuni doesn't sugarcoat anything. In this book, it's all out there.
So Varuni, the book starts out so happy, right? Like you paint this. Beautiful picture of your childhood, in New Delhi and you're both, your parents were university professors. Your mother was a Brahmin. Is that how you say it? The highest cast and your father was a couple cast below. So that was unconventional.
They were not an arranged marriage as a lot of marriages aren't arranged in India anymore. And even if they are, they're arranged and, they're just introduced and if it doesn't, they don't feel comfortable. Then they move on to the next one. So arranged marriages aren't what they used to be, but they were both professors, they both were, these highly evolved people. And you led this beautiful life, you had this beautiful life. I know your parents argued a lot that was challenging.
You were the glue that held you, your mom, your dad, your brother together. Cause your parents were always arguing. A lot of that may have had to do with the cast. They came from different backgrounds and all that stuff. But, I want to just tell us a little bit maybe about what that was like for your childhood, was like, and if you want, you could share a little bit about your mom too.
Varuni: Sure. Yeah. I think it was definitely like paradise right in the beginning. It was very rare for kids in any part of the world to grow up with parents who allow them to completely be fully independent, even as little children. And that is what both my parents were like.
My dad is a social scientist. He's worked for the tribes and the people who are on the margins of India. He's quite an incredible man. And he brought me up like a feminist who, and I still am that woman that he, I think, is. I think he's proud of me today. And my mother, she came from a very tiny village in the Himalayas.
So the Himalayas, they're in the Northern part of India. And in this village, mostly women, they are, they were married off by the age of 14 or 15. And that's what their life was. They were just supposed to marry a guy and that's it and take care of their kids. She basically wanted to be more and she was brought to the big city by her elder brother, who was a journalist.
And he did not want that fate for his sisters. At least he did not want that for my mother. But when she came in, she was treated literally like a Cinderella. When he was away at work, she was treated very badly as house help. And she had to also go to the school and get all the right grades.
But when she was at home, she was beaten badly. By her, by your older brother's wife. Yes. Yes. But she still managed to become a professor of Japanese language and literature, which is a big feat. I don't think that's easy even now. And so both my parents, yeah, they were, they met each other at the university where I grew up.
And they gave me and my brother the best childhood. The first couple of years were amazing. We could be anyone we wanted to be. And we could, we didn't have any restrictions when people think of India, they think of kids who are forced to become doctors and engineers and made to study a certain way.
No, we could do whatever we wanted. We could, once we became teenagers, we could date whoever we wanted. Yeah, it was a very liberal evolved household. And that's why a lot of my friends would just come over and they jus, they would just stay at my place for weeks sometimes.
Kristina: Makes me want to go to New Delhi because the way you paint it, just like the university campus and the campus life and just living in that environment just sounded super. Amazing to me and I'm thinking, okay, like what's going to go wrong her. So it was so fascinating to me that you did do some dating your parents just asked to meet the guys that you were dating. But there's this common problem that is big time problem in America, but it sounds like it's a problem in India too, where a lot of people just don't want to commit.
And you got to a place where you thought, I don't want to do this dating thing anymore. I want to get married. So in India. Usually that could be remedied by going to your parents and saying, can you help me find somebody, do some matchmaking, pick out a few guys and let me go on some dates with them.
Your parents would have nothing to do with that. Tell us more about that conversation in the book with your dad. Yeah. My dad was actually very angry at me. I had dated a couple of people and the relationship sadly always ended with a heartbreak.
Varuni: I think when you have so much freedom, then I think what happens is that you do get to experience the toxicity of the dating world. And so this could be the case anywhere, not only just America, but also India. anywhere. So you're just trying things out, right? And so I'd got burnt and I did not want to go out there and meet other boys. At the same time, there was this very strong desire in me to want to meet somebody and fall in love. I think that's very natural when you're in your early 20s. But also I was in spite of the fact that my family was so amazing, they did come from different backgrounds, both my parents and they had started, like arguing with each other over over my brother's situation where he had issues with substance abuse.
And as a result of that, our family was pretty amazing to begin with devolved into complete madness and chaos as soon as like we were both in our teams. So every single day it was crazy. You were the glue. You were the glue. Everybody was turning to you for everyone.
Turning to me, like I was taking care of my brother. There was a time where I actually was working and then I took permission from my advertising agency that I was at that, Can I just go and help my brother out? So I would take him to his university and stand outside his classroom until he finished.
I became the therapist for my mom who, as soon as I would get back at 11 o'clock at night after working 14 hours, she just wanted to dump all her emotions into me. Same with my dad. So I think I reached a point of, I was emotionally hollowed out and I really wanted somebody who could take care of me the way I was taking care of everybody else around me. That's a natural human emotion. But when I walked up to my dad and I was like, Hey, My friends are getting married. Could you find someone for me?
He flipped out and he was like What is that even supposed to mean? And it took him a while to understand that I'm asking him to arrange a marriage for me. And the way he brought me up, he was like, That is an absolute abuse of the liberty that I provided you with. We had a shouting match, so to say, and my father was very hurt that this is what it comes to in the end. That when you give your children everything, all the freedom, they don't actually understand it. And so he felt that I was very entitled and that I'd filled my brain with garbage and that if I choose to be married, a married woman is all that I will ever be. And those words did haunt me. Later when I came to America.
Kristina: Wow. Yep. I remember that scene in the book.
So you guys listening, the story just keeps getting more and more interesting as we go. Veruni decides to go on a marriage dating app. And that journey was unconventional. And spoiler alert: I just, I have to tell everybody, your husband is an amazing human. You and I were talking before I hit ‘record’. We both started tearing up. I did too. But it wasn't easy and it was very unconventional. Tell us about your courtship, because it's so unusual.
Varuni: Sure.
And there's another story, which is very fascinating link to this. So my mother, she's from the mountains. And the people in the mountains, they have a very different way of worship They worship who they believe are mountain gods. And these are people who descend upon human beings like you and me, they go into a state of trance and they can see the future. They don't take any money or just like 10 rupees from you, which is hardly anything. So yeah, my mother, when she was very small, went to this mountain God. This really old man who predicted that my mother's life is going to be pretty big.
Kristina: And he was right.
Varuni: And he was right. And he was still alive at that point in time. And so my mother when I brought up this entire question about that, I want to get married, she's the only person I'm going to trust is that man. So if he says that this is something which is an alternative path for you, then maybe your brain is coming up with questions, which, you need answers to. It's like a fork in the road and you're going to probably take that path whether we want it or not for you. So we went back and we went to that guy and he did point out that, something like this is going to happen to me.
He had made this prediction about me earlier before I had started working in advertising. And that's when I was like, okay I think that this is something that I should do. So I, when I created this profile on a matrimonial website, I was very embarrassed of it because I was seen by my friends as a girl who was very if I liked a guy, I would just walk up to him and I would tell him that I like you. And I think we should date. That's exactly who I was back then. I think that's exactly the personality you probably read in my book.
If I feel a certain way, I'll say it as is, I don't know how to sugarcoat things. So for that girl to secretly create this dating app, because then my friends would think, Oh, wow, what a loser, right? She's so desperate to get married, but I did do that. And the guy who predicted my relationship, he had described the boy in certain details.
And it just so happened that around that time, there were all these proposals that started. So my entire so if you create say a profile on Tinder, I guess any woman, it will attract a lot of attention, right? Because that tends to happen. You don't know who's good. You don't know who's a creep. You don't know who's lying. And so that's what happened to me. I got really freaked out. And so I just put it away until one specific profile stood out to me because my mom saw it on my laptop and she just believed that's going to be the person who the mountain God that she's spoken to.
Because the mountain God said that you were going to marry a man who lived abroad, and yeah, who lived far away from home, and he’s younger son. That's right. The younger son.And he was that, and he was that, and beyond that, there weren't too many details, so she just had a hunch and she just replied to that one guy and set up like a, sort of a date between us.
But it could have been all false. It's just a chance that we took. And she did have that ultimate belief in the mountain gods,.
Kristina: I want you to share a little bit about that first date because he flew over and just tell us a little bit more about that day. I feel like the way your courtship went was so unusual and I really want to share that with my audience today because it just shows that there's so many different ways to meet somebody.
Varuni: The first thing which I noticed about him was how cute he was. He's very good looking and he is five years older than me. And the first thing he noticed about me was how young I was. So he was, I think he was 27 and a half and I was 23, 23 is young for a guy who's lived independently, who's figured out a lot for himself in a completely different country, right? What was going on in my head that I was an academic. I'd worked as a writer. Yes, I was a painter too. I had exhibited some of my works. But this guy, he was a doctor and he was in the United States. So at that point, 1 day before, I didn't know that the guy was actually in America. I just knew that he lived away from his family. And I had just browsed like I put his name into Google and then I stumbled upon his blog and he wrote so beautifully. I fell in love with his writing.
But when my parents told me that he was a doctor and he was a stroke surgeon, I got very intimidated and I tried to sabotage that meeting because I thought that doctors might be very arrogant or he might be very dismissive of me or what I did.
And at that point, my brother was like, listen, I think you're pretty, you're a pretty solid person and pretty solid human being and you should be who you are. And what you should focus on is how he treats you. If he's kind. If he listens to you, and so I got the confidence from my younger brother, and because of that, I went the next day, and we decided to just meet casually at This place called India habitat center, which is a place where there are lots of exhibitions and, there's art and culture. So you can just walk by, see different things.
Kristina: That's such a fantastic idea for a first date, especially for someone who's flown halfway across the planet to visit you. It gives you a lot of talking material. Yeah. And it keeps it light. There's not a lot of pressure on you. That was brilliant.
Varuni: Yeah. During that time things were just, I felt very easy. Sometimes when we're trying to make things happen and force things to happen we can become like tight asses and be like, oh no, I'm going to do this and I'm going to do it this way.
Even though the clothes that I wore were the clothes that I felt most relaxed in. I think I wore like a. A white kurta pajama, which is, you talk about it in the book. It was nice and flowy. I used to back then in India, I used to wear a different set of earrings in one ear and different set of earrings on the other. So I was just really casual. I was myself. I felt beautiful. I felt that it's going to work out. Something told me that it's going to work out and that is going to be a fun day. And so we, when we met it, the conversations just flowed beautifully, very like we, he just, it was like meeting a friend. It was like, I knew him and he knew me.
Kristina: I just interject something here. Like I -Wow. There's some parallels here because I was 30 years old. I was like, no more messing around. It's time for me to get married. And I went on a hike on Mount Rainier mountain outside of Seattle. And the hike leader was with a group, was a man who was 24 years older than me.
And he asked me out. We both worked in finance and he said, let's get together and have dinner and talk about finance. So I didn't know if it was a date or not, but it was the same thing. Like he was 24 years older than me. He had been very successful. I felt intimidated. And yet the conversation was just effortless. Four hours went by in the blink of an eye and there was this deep inner knowing that I was going to marry this man. Like it was so interesting to me.
Varuni: Yes. That's surprisingly exactly how I felt. I didn't, I had never, because I had unfortunately dated guys who were very toxic and I didn't know what it was like to meet a genuinely nice human being. And this is something which I guess would help people these days who find themselves stuck in love is it doesn't have to be hard. In fact, it's the opposite of hard. It's, it just feels I know it sounds very hippie, but it's like a soul to soul connection. And that you just know. the other person. And there was this trust, there was this absolute trust I could tell him anything and he would understand. But yeah he was, however, still concerned. And I was still a little unsure because his life sounded like it was really busy. And he was always at work or he was doing things, or on call all the time. And I was like, okay, if I am trying to, meet somebody to get married, it sounds like this guy is never at home.
What would my relationship even look like? But then at that point, he confided more about himself and this is something which he said he never does. And he told me about his family. So yeah his father met with an accident. He was in a scooter and he was going to pick up his mother who was already admitted at the hospital and his Elder brother was on the scooter just riding behind the dad and there was a truck, which was coming straight at them and it hit the father.
The father tried to save his son. And as a result his brain bled so bad that he had a stroke, but you would imagine he was right at the hospital, and they would be able to intervene, but they weren't able to intervene. And he would have died as a result, but he became like a pre teenage child.
Kristina: Yeah. You talk about that in the book. Yeah.
Varuni: He just talks. The same thing like it's like a parrot who repeats the same things and his mother at the time didn't have those many resources to begin with. It was very tough survival and she had to now take care of her husband who was in this situation and 2 teenage boys and my husband. I think on that day, he took the decision that he's going to be a stroke doctor because his thought is, he would have died of a stroke. Yes.
Kristina: Yes.Your husband is, you describe him so well in the book and he's so unique and he's so different and amazing. Like his personality, how he handles things, who he is, the essence of him, he's very unusual.
So you had three weeks together where you went on some dates and you had, did some activities and then he went back to Detroit.
Varuni: Yeah.
Kristina: For over two years at that point you were Skyping all the time. You guys were writing all the time. I love this. This is like an old fashioned 1800s Victorian era romance. Finally, you had enough. So tell us about what happened.
Varuni: When he went back and because he's such a rational guy, he belongs to the world of medicine. It's the, it's a completely different brain from my brain. So he was started actually thinking about how much my life would be changed if, we really got serious and the age was still a consideration. So he kept thinking that I'm 23 that was playing havoc with his decision making. So he did not respond for a while and I was getting really pissed because when he was leaving we just mutually just trusted each other and we were like, okay, we'll take this ahead.
And he goes back and I don't hear anything from him. And then I decided to sit down and write a letter. So I actually sit still. I sat and wrote a letter, took a photograph, emailed it to him. And the next day he called me and that's how we started dating each other. He would call me.
Kristina: Over the internet though. And this one, you guys didn't see each other for two years and then you were Okay. I want to get married. So tell us about that and how you dealt with that.
Varuni: I think so I didn't even see him because we didn't, he didn't have the time to sit in front of Skype. So he would always call me when he was driving from one hospital to the other.
So the conversations are what, like, just yoked our worlds together. And like the time difference in India and America, it's like, When I'm going to sleep, he's waking up and vice versa. So we just got to know each other so intimately and we kept talking for close to about two or two and a half years, during which he kept trying to convince me that if you come here, and we never said anything like in terms of big romantic declarations, because We are both very headstrong and stubborn, and we don't want to admit that we are in love with the other person before the other.
But I knew what it was. And I think he knew what it was, what I meant to him. So there was this day after two and a half years where I was like, enough is enough. I'm not playing games because that is what I had decided when I decided to meet him. And one of the first few things I told him was that, Hey, if you're interested in me, there shouldn't be any like wishy-washy business.
This means that we're going to, like, eventually marry. So I called him up at his hospital. I knew that he was getting over from his stroke call in an hour. I think it was three o'clock in the morning for him. And I was like, you have to tell me what this is, because I figured out how much time it takes to get like a court marriage done in India.
So if you were to technically come like on this and this date, we could get married by this and this date. And I could fly back with you. And he thought it was a joke, but I was very serious. And I'm like, if you don't give me an answer as to what we're doing out here, I think it's over.
Kristina: You are so freaking strong, Varuni! And one of the many messages that I want to get out from your book to tell women, Hey, it's okay to call a guy out! You just basically said, this is what I need. Take it or leave it.
Varuni: Yeah, because it, we just think that we have to play these roles and I had never been that person. Even when I was dating, I would just walk up to people. If I really liked somebody, I would walk up to the guy and tell him that I'm interested. Many of my friends tried to coach me into believing that is not what proper women did. And I was like, I don't give a damn. I don't know how to play games.
I seriously would do what you're doing, but I think that's all, that's deceptive. So I, with him too. I was like, I think you're trying to wiggle out of this situation. And he tried to, tell me that, Hey, why don't you apply to universities here? I'm like, I'm sorry, if this is something real, then we're getting married and then we can figure everything else out after that. And I think it was definitely a leap of faith because I only know as much as he's told me, even as I 100 percent honest guy, there are plenty of women out there who have taken this chance and they've gone to find out.
And there are these women from India who had done this and who had come to America only to find out that the guy was already married or the guy had another girlfriend on the side. And so it was in some ways scary to do that. But I took that decision. I asked him out and he said yes but he did say we'll have to do it the proper way, which means it will have to be a big fat Indian wedding.
Kristina: Yeah, it was over a thousand people you said.
Varuni: Yes, that was the fun part.
Kristina: Let's fast forward from there. You get on a plane and you move to from India from this like, really nice paradise lifestyle, university kind of style, where you're very comfortable and you land in Detroit in November and sweaters that you brought from India are not even warm enough.
Varuni: Nope. Yeah, any parents anywhere would want to do they would want to do something. They would want to fill their daughter's suitcase with everything that she might need. And so they had gone through. Yeah. Like, huge sort of like shopping sprees and they bought so much and my friends had told me it's going to be all useless, which it was when I went outside.
It was freezing and it did not look like the America, which you imagine America to be when you're in any other part of the world, you think everything is New York city. So there, you don't see any skyscrapers. In fact, Detroit looks pretty. And by then the leaves have already fallen off and you just have these huge ass like freeways and these big cars. Hardly anyone's outside. And I was just stuck at home because he was like, always at work.
And that kind of blew my mind too. You literally. He got off the plane, got to his place, both your places now, and boom, he gets called into the hospital. Yes. Yeah, his boss knew that he's coming back and it's pretty aggressive for physicians.
And which is, and it's pretty aggressive for immigrant physicians. And he was. Employed by another immigrant from his own country, by the way, and this is something which a lot of people do not know, and which is why a lot of guys who might be in these high powered jobs get really exploited.
So he doesn't have a choice. His, if his boss calls him, he has to go because if he starts acting out, he could lose his job. If he loses his job, he loses his right. to be in the United States. And now he couldn't take any of those chances because I was there completely dependent on him. So yeah as soon as he landed and his boss knew that he's back in town he got called in and he just had to go.
I was just at home. He gave me his credit card and I was just there waiting for him. And all my friends back home in India, they'd already slept. It just was. Very isolating.
And I think this is very similar to the experience of other South Asian immigrant women. They come here with a certain picture, right? It's going to be like America, and it's going to be like parties, but the reality is in many cases they go into the suburbs and suburbs are all like, they're so spread out.
So even if you are in a so called house with a beautiful picket fence and all of those things, you don't have a soul to talk to, and even if you were to come to a city like New York. New York can be a lot more isolating, which I came to learn years later, but it's not what you think it is.
And also you have a perception of yourself when you come as an immigrant, there's a way that people see you, like, when I would go out, even to the local grocery store people would talk slowly because they thought I couldn't speak English. Or, they would ask me questions about what are Indians like?
Or why don't you wear a bindi? So you just keep getting asked certain questions, which in the beginning, you think, Oh, wow. It's interesting that they're so curious about me. But then you just realize that it's the same questions all the time. Even after you've been in in America for I've been here for 10 years.
No matter who you are and where you go, human beings will always see people who are different from them and try to put them in a category which they want to understand. There's nothing bad about it. It's just the way human beings try to disseminate or understand. Yeah. That's how I see it now. Yeah. But that's also what my experience was.
Kristina: I remember also reading that it was really hard in the beginning in Detroit because of that huge time difference, right? So it's early morning for you is late night for all your friends and family back in India.
So you weren't hearing from them very much. So you felt very isolated. And that's where I want to step into is this next. Topic of, talking about two things. Number one, the visa issue, because I want you to break that down for us, because this book taught me so much, so many things I didn't know.
Also, I felt like I was living my life through your eyes just your everyday experiences, some things that happened to you in New York city. Just. With you being a woman from India, like it was things that would never occur to me, the things that you experienced. And so you really had some challenges along the way.
Eventually you ended up in New York City and, back in India you had been teaching at a university, right? At university level. Okay. And so tell us more about what happened, after Detroit.
Varuni: Yeah. My first career was in advertising where I had worked for like big brands like Panasonic, Yamaha, I worked as a copywriter. And it was doing really well, but I was doing too well or maybe I was overworked. So I switched tracks from, the agency world where I was putting in 16 hours on a daily basis, including weekends, on some cases to academia.
And that was mostly to impress my father. So I was teaching at the university. I taught race and politics through literature. I taught about the Harlem Renaissance. I taught about all the things which I would understand way more deeply once that would become my lived experience. But when I came to America, I came on something which is called a spousal visa, and there are different categories of spousal visas.
In my particular case it is called the H 4 or the H 4 spouse visa. And right now, if you want to just understand how it impacts the South Asian community, the South Asian community. Right now is 5.6 million people. And by the year 2065, there would be 46 million Asian Americans. A huge component of them would just be South Asians, the biggest immigrant conglomerate from any part of the world.
So it impacts Americans because if you have the biggest immigrant population from a certain part of the world, you not know about them. And. There was this huge section of immigrants which, who were imported by America in 1990. And these were extremely high skilled Indians. South Asians, but mostly Indians, and America needed to build their health industry, their IT industry, and also back research in space and aeronautics and other disciplines of science.
So these people, they were brought in on a visa, which is called the H 1B. Prior to that, there were other, H Visas, which existed. But those were just for temporary workers or agricultural workers. And these people, the H immigrants, H one B, yeah, so the H one B including H, so all the H categories. So you had, I think it was H one B was the latest, which was 1990.
But prior to that, there was this age category which existed. And they could not show any intent to want to stay or permanently reside in America, which basically means that they came for very limited periods of time, and they could not bring their spouses, they could not bring their children, they could not bring their parents.
And just to broadly just tell you that this was specifically something that the South Asians had experienced from 1770 when the first South Asians came. So you have probably, because you're in Seattle, you've seen a lot of Sikhs, the men who wear turbans, right? So those were the first Indians who came to America and they came as agricultural workers or they worked in lumber mills. And the same discrimination is what they had to face. They could not marry the local women, the local white women. They could not bring their own vibes. And they could not all they were allowed to do were these temporary jobs and go back, right?
Or even if they did the work that they had to do, all they were allowed to do was the work they were not allowed to be naturalized. They could not become citizens. So if you look at it from 1770 to the to right now, it's the same conditions which exist and that is what happened with the H1B. So you're bringing in these very intelligent guys.
Who are mostly doctors or engineers or scientists. You expect them to do this work, to build these industries, but they realized that they could not get this work done if they give, if they do not allow their spouses to come because the work involved constant stay, right? So it couldn't be a couple of months.
It had to be a couple of years. At that point, they introduced the spousal visa. With a clear declaration that these women can live in the United States of America, but they cannot work at all. So the way the law functioned in its initial, the initial, they couldn't work at all. And they could not have a social security number.
They could not. They could not open a bank account unless, it was a joint account or their husband let them. They could not learn how to drive or get a driver's license. And this is in the 90s, right? 1990 is when you have the H4, which is introduced it's, I think it's talked about in a very positive way as a family reunification visa, but in, in layman's terms, you understand what's happening.
You're letting these women come. And many of these women, they came in. Not knowing that they would be asked to essentially become housewives, because if you think about it, even if you look at doctors or some somebody like you, who's in finance, you would be attracted to a guy who's as smart or intelligent or, as you.
So the guys who were. Getting married to these women, they were married, they were attracted to other engineers or doctors or teachers or, like my husband was attracted to me because I guess we both say pure sexual. We are attracted to intelligence. So these women, they were working women back home in India.
And when they came here to America, many of them were shocked to realize that they did not have the legal right to work and they were forced because now the way India looks at a woman who gets married to a doctor and goes to America, her life is a fairy tale. It's like happily ever after in a Disney movie.
Kristina: One of the beautiful parts of your book is you get really real about the social isolation that happened to you and how it's not necessarily a fairytale.
Varuni: It isn't. And the reason why the isolation for me was so compounded was because all of my friends, they thought that my life is perfect.
They had always thought that my life was perfect because of how cool my parents were. That my friends did not have such liberal parents. I was just You know, I was just like lucky to be born to both of them, but most Indian parents can be very traditional. And now that they see that I'm, I'm married and I've gone to America, that's when they were like, they couldn't relate to who I was.
And they were like, she's got everything. From the day I got on that plane, I lost most of my friends.
Kristina: Wow. People could look at your story from the outside and say, okay, this was a person who had a, great parents, good childhood, marries a doctor, what's there to complain about?
But the deal is, you were a highly intelligent woman who needs the socialization, you need to be using your brain. Yes. You need to be working. So Your whole identity was wrapped up in academia. To have all of that pulled out from under you, your whole identity was stripped basically. And what you're saying is there's been a lot of women that this has happened to as well.
Varuni: Absolutely. And these are not women who have who have the talents that I have to write, to paint, to do something outside the structure of a stipulated job, right?
These are women who were nurses, who were doctors, who were in finance. Or scientists, or, yeah. And they came to America and the whole family celebrated their marriage. And, when somebody celebrates your marriage you want to believe in the myth as well. So in the first few years of any marriage, For any woman or man around the world, you want to hold on to that image that you show society that this is who I am, this is how far I've come, right?
And you then don't want to break that myth. And that is the reason why many of these women, they were like, how do we even talk about what we are going through behind closed doors? Okay. Because for them to tell their parents that, Hey, I cannot work here. Most Indian parents of South Asian parents would tell you, so what's so bad?
Your husband has a good job. You're getting enough money. Why don't you just have kids? So essentially what these women were up against was what women in the first wave of feminism were up against when they were just, in Victorian society, you were just. It was good enough to be taken care of to just sit in that estate, right?
Kristina: Be happy that you are being taken care of. Why aren't you being grateful?
Varuni: In fact, I made a comparison between the women of the Victorian age and what these spouses go through, because back in the Victorian age, the man has complete control over the finances in which includes not only the property, but also the kids.
The woman, if suppose wants to divorce she cannot obtain a divorce easily, right? If she obtains divorce, which happened at a later stage, the children would still not belong to her because they were the property of the husband. And if she still tried to protest, the husband could say that she is she's hysterical or she's mad and she could be turned into an institution, right?
This is exactly what these women went through on the spousal visa, because by definition, they could only be allowed to stay in the United States of America if they're married to the H 1B employee, right? So the husband, he owns the paperwork for your existence in this country. God forbid, that guy is abusive.
He could totally wreck your life, right? If you even want to get medicine for yourself or tampons for yourself, right? Now you have to ask your husband for an allowance for an educated woman that is very demeaning. It's almost an insult to her education, but also her sense of self.
It infantilizes you because it starts with asking for money and then slowly you start asking permission on everything. And that's what also happened to me. I really, I started asking, can I go there? Do you think I can spend this much money? Do you think? Because. Because initially when I came in, I was on the spousal visa and our accounts were completely, financial accounts were connected.
So he would tell me that, why are you asking me for permission? You never asked me these questions. So that happens because the whole structure, the whole paradigms like that. Now imagine if such, if this woman has a child, right? This, the woman, the on the spouse of Visa, her kids would be American citizens.
She, even if she wants to separate. Is going to be like, should I really walk away from my kids because her kids are not, her kids have no idea what it's like to be in India. India is a completely foreign land or idea to these kids. So they would, so therefore it complicates the decision.
Also, we saw this happen to one of our friends, where the guy was cheating on the woman that he chose to marry. And I don't, do not want to take names, but she basically found out when she came here. And this was not when I was here. This happened to my husband's friend. The woman was very intelligent.
She got a job in New York city. This was just during the financial crisis of 2008 when she found out that he was having affairs, and her marriage broke down because she had got married to this doctor in India. The rules of marriage laws existed per India, right? So, she was not entitled to half of his income. She went back with nothing, zero. Because she lost her job after the 2008 financial crisis, she even lost that. And she had to just go back, and the guy remarried.
Kristina: Yeah. That was actually in the book. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just very briefly mentioned. There's so much to this book. You guys.
Yeah. But tell us more about your situation because you were able to eventually work. And your husband, when I first started reading the book, I was going in with the assumption that your husband was going to be turned out to be a bad guy. And that was never the case at all. So tell us more about that whole journey.
Varuni: Yes. So as soon as I came to America. My husband told me as soon as I landed that, we are on, you're in a time crunch. You need to figure out what you have to do in terms of your career. Right now you're on a spousal visa, but I'm not going to let you be on a spousal visa. And then he like broke down everything for me the way I just explained it to you.
So he said back then it was 2013. Of November all the laws that I told you about existed and applied to me. I would not have been allowed to work, but in 2015, when there was a change in the law and that allowed certain spouses. Who were allowed to work as long as the husband had fulfilled certain steps in the green card application.
In that case, a very small number of the whole population, which is barred from working would be allowed to work. And that is what eventually happened for me before that. However, my husband was like, you need to be on an independent track. So figure out what you have to do. Apply to colleges, universities.
You can apply to 50 universities if you want. money, there is no problem with money. So you just need to have a plan to get into the best university for you. And the reason why I had decided to come to America. apart from being, with this guy who had fallen far, was also that I wanted to give writing a real chance.
I was in academics, but writing is where my heart was. I believe that I was a good writer when I was in an advertising agency and I still craved my little creative cabin where I used to sit and write clever lines. So I decided that if I go to America, I'm going to give that a chance. And yeah as soon as I was there in Detroit, I was applying to yeah, universities within the first week of my arrival, first couple of weeks of my arrival and just sending out applications and trying to get into the best program and I was able to get into.
Close to about 12 universities that offer journalism. I opted to go for Newhouse which is in upstate New York and it's ranked pretty high close to Columbia and sometimes, yeah. So I decided to be become an arts journalist. So somebody who would write and report on cinema, art, culture and those things.
And I was very lucky because Newhouse places you in some of the best magazines because of their connections. And also I was very hardworking and my husband told me that as an immigrant woman of color, never take anything for granted. So you should always try to work.
Five times harder than your classmate, so I went in with that attitude. As soon as I graduated, I was able to get an internship at Time Out New York, and then at Guggenheim Museum, and I had a job at a publishing house before, any of my classmates were able to land any opportunities for themselves.
Kristina: Yeah. So thank God things changed in 2015 where, you could actually get a job. So you took this job in this small publishing house and things did not go well. This is a very important part of your story to share with my listeners, because there were things that you learned that you wish you would have done differently looking back on it.
Varuni: Yeah. This was, A small trade publishing house. It was it was a group of writers who almost worked like a close knit family circle. It was, it had some really good editors. I had a very good relationship with the CEO as well as the editor. of the publishing house, I worked really hard because you have to understand that in India, we speak a different kind of English.
We speak British English. And in America, when I went to journalism school, I had to learn that even though I was speaking English, people around me were speaking differently and writing differently. So American English, just to explain it very simply is To the point, short sentences and very direct and immediate.
So because I had this sort of foundation in advertising, that's exactly what I had learned, because there's an economy of words with advertising. You can not like waste real estate on rambling, going around the point, right? Because words are money. So I had that advantage, but I also had some really good teachers at Newhouse and they would constantly mentor me even after I had, landed a job. But I started doing pretty well in in this publishing house. And it wasn't that difficult because all we had to do was review product and it was toys and things like that. And it was fun and it was writing up small I was put in charge of writing news pieces as well.
But a lot of it was based on writing. Which was very similar to the world of advertising where I was reviewing products that they needed to sell. And as a person who is in a very different country you may understand how to work and work really well, but what I could not understand was how to read the room in terms of the politics that was being played around me.
Because it's not that I was not a great culture fit, but because I did. everything. In fact, what tends to happen with immigrants is that we work more, longer, and harder. And so my performance was was actually pretty good and spectacular. I just didn't know that I was threatening certain people around me and that my, the person that I reported to perhaps did not like that.
And she did not like my relationship with the editor in chief. And these are things that which you can easily figure out if it's your second job or third job, you just understand that you have to like, you have to talk to people differently or you don't have to call out too much attention to yourself.
It's pretty much like that. And in New York city, it is pretty ruthless. And I've seen this now across the board, whether you're in media or whether you're in medicine even in finance, if you're good or whether you're bad, you're always watching your back, even on the streets of New York.
That's how the city is. And nobody like questions that. What essentially happened was I got a bonus. I was doing really well. The CEO gave me a bonus and then I needed to go back home to India because my brother had a episode because related to his substance abuse and my parents were not being able to get through to him.
And they had never. Disturbed me, at all, ever since I've come to America. And this was the first time that my mother called me in the middle of the night, and she was like, we really want you to be here, even if you can come for a couple of days, just talk to him. And at that point, I realized that he had just locked himself inside and he wasn't going to work.
He quit working and all of that. So I was like, maybe I should go back. And that was probably a mistake because you don't do that in your first job in the city. And I was only six months in. Surprisingly, however, my boss. Was very supportive and she said that you can go because I just wanted to go for two and a half weeks and had already done what I needed to do.
And so I was like, you can go and it was coinciding with a marriage in my husband's family. So I gave that as the reason why I needed to go. By the time I came back, however, the entire room, had changed, the entire office had changed. Like it just, it was like a devil's bear's parada. It was like what the protagonist faces early on when she joins the office.
From the day I was back the person who I reported to started announcing my mistakes almost to the entire room. So it started off with her just Marching over to my desk and pointing out, like just by her body language and gesture that she was that she's so frustrated. And then it actually led to her stomping in my direction, physically stomping.
And then like circling things in red, telling people that, Oh my God, she has to work so hard. And Because, not only does she have to do her work, she has to also work on my writing. And that Varunee's writing, yeah, she tries so hard. She just knows how to put in all these hours, but I have to work so much harder on her writing.
Kristina: Now you can't prove these things, right? When you, it's all subjective. You also said that she yelled at you. Yes.
Varuni: Yes. Then it led to yelling. It led to actual yelling and shouting where after two months of that abuse, I think somewhere in the middle of that, I think there was a day where she was alone in the office and I was alone in the office and my body started shaking.
I think what I had that evening was a panic attack and I could feel cold sweat and I could feel my breathing just very erratic. I didn't know that it was a panic attack. I just knew that I was so scared of being in that office just with her that I just ran out. And after that I started actually making mistakes, which I've never made before.
So I did by the end of three months of this, kind of what I would only describe as harassment or yeah, it was definitely harassment, which I could have called out attention to sooner, but when you're..
Kristina: Yeah. This is the part where I really wanted to share this with my listeners is, it took me a long time to understand this too.
One time I was about 40 years old. I kid you not, and a. quote, friend called me up and yelled at me. And thank goodness I was in therapy at the time because my husband had been diagnosed with Early Onset Alzheimer's.
And I went to my therapist and I said, I'm just upset. My friend yelled at me. And he said Whoa. Nobody's ever allowed to yell at you. If if somebody calls you up on the phone or, and then in your case and they start yelling, you get to hang up the phone, you get to walk away, you get to leave the situation because that's not okay.
And it's just interesting how, in particular as women, I think we have a hard time setting boundaries and what's so tragic.
Varuni: Yeah.
Kristina: I can. And yet such a valuable lesson in this part of your story in your book is that you allowed this person to bully you. To yell at you for several months and had you, and you've said that, had you stopped it sooner, you would have had, you wouldn't have developed serious self esteem issues.
You also came to find out that the guy that trained you basically went through the same thing and he was also an immigrant. Wasn't he an Asian immigrant as well?
Varuni: I think he grew up in America though.
Kristina: It was basically the same thing where she felt threatened by him. She got rid of him. He was humiliated. He had to train you, you were clueless and then basically went through the same thing. And so, by the time. You actually went above her head to complain, you were a shell of a person.
Varuni: Yes. And I had, I think I had made, I was now sounding like a completely different person.
I would go back home and I would tell my husband that I cannot write because I was not being able to even construct a sentence because as a writer, you need to be able to have the confidence in your voice. You need to believe in your voice. And if you lose that, trust me, you can't write even a word.
And that is what started happening to me. The other problem was I was on an independent visa track from him, which means as a student now I just had an extension of one year, and I was running out of time, which so in as an immigrant you're always thinking, how much time do I have on my okay, just so that the audience understands so you basically had a, what, quote, Independent visa from him.
Kristina: So you were no longer, attached to his visa, but you basically had to secure and keep a job for a year.
Varuni: Yes. Yes. And so after my internship, I had one year and now it was just six months in, which means after six months, I wouldn't have that independent track unless I got somebody to sponsor my visa the way my husband had got somebody to sponsor his visa.
That's a big ask for somebody who's, trying to know you.
Kristina: Yeah.
Varuni: Doesn't know me. If you at that point, I did consider trying to go to other, companies about other publishing houses. But the biggest question mark was they would look at my work authorization and they would say, what would we do after a couple of months?
And I did start fielding applications right then, and I did not get get too many answers. And the few interviews that I was able to secure early on, yes. The employment was a question mark because they were like, what would you do after this date? So I knew that the only option that I had was in some ways just put on blinkers, let her do what she's doing and just focus on your work.
Maybe this problem will just go away. And so I was acting like an ostrich. What I did start doing was I started maintaining a directory of all the changes that she was asking me to do. And I was able to see that she was asking different things at different times. So if she asked me to write the headline a certain way, now she wanted the whole sentence structured a different way.
So I started tracking all of that. I tracked that for a couple of weeks. I walked up to my editor in chief at that point and I was like, hey, I need to have a conversation with you. This was over the phone because she'd already left and I'd never called her at her house. She herself said that she understood why I needed to talk to her and that she, I shouldn't feel so sensitive or defensive if people were trying to only introduce certain edits or recommendations on my work.
So in a way, I experienced what it feels like to be gaslighted and cornered. And had been completely played and painted as a person who was incompetent. So she was not going to believe me at all. And she anyway had a certain perception that I was not up to the task. That evening I just told her that, yeah, I would just like to, I would like to sit down with you and discuss what you would like me to improve.
And she said, don't be sensitive. Nobody's trying to make your life difficult, which means that everybody around me knew, was quite aware of the shouting and everything else that was happening. However, the next day when I went to work, my CEO just fired me. No questions. So I was called in the office was very quiet.
I was called in the afternoon and she said that she's really sorry, but she has to let me go. And it was the kindest way somebody has been fired because she had like a box of napkins ready. Like she knew I was going to cry and then she said I, I actually really like you. I started crying and she was like, if there was anyone else in your shoes, I would ask that person to just get out.
But I actually admire you and respect you. And you tell me what you want to do. So I said, I really don't want to stay here anymore, but I can tell you what I want to do tomorrow. Is that okay? And she said, yeah, that's perfectly fine.
I walked around like a lunatic on New York on the streets of Manhattan, because I was in shock. I was like what the hell am I going to do? Because if I lose my job, I only now have three months on my visa to find another job. If I don't find a job, I have to go back to India. Which means I have to leave my husband and then he'll have to try and figure out how he'll get me back to America.
That's way more complicated. And we, me and my husband have this rule till now, because he's a surgeon. Whenever somebody gets a stroke, he has to be in the operate on the operating table within 35 to 40 minutes, unless it's absolutely necessary. I do not call him. And if it's on that day, because I was still bound by that rule, I first texted him and then I texted him again and then I called him after that.
And he'd never seen this sort of response from me and he's what the hell is going on? And I told him that I've got fired and he dropped everything and he's I'm coming to you. Back in my college days, I had smoked cigarettes for a year. So I went to a deli, I got a packet of cigarettes and I started smoking. This is a person who has not smoked in ages, which is that's because I didn't like I was completely unraveling and yeah
Kristina: This whole thing is so tragic and I just want to point out one more time you guys that this had.
This was not anything to do with Varuni being a bad employee. Basically what happened was her boss felt threatened by her boss bullied her, got her self confidence so low that she couldn't even defend herself. Yeah. By the time she went to get help from her boss's boss, she couldn't even defend herself.
And like what you said, you even lost your ability to write. Yes. It's important to know just because, we all have jobs. We all have, we all this could happen to any of us where, a boss starts bullying us. This is what can happen.
Varuni: It can. In fact, the person who's worked I worked with two editors on my book the second person who's worked on my book when he read this entire chapter, the chapters on the firing episode, he had written in the margins.
This is a guy who's who's really good at his craft. He's got 40 books out. My coach, Amanda Turner, gets her books edited by him. So he wrote in the margin saying, I have walked these exact same shoes as you. Really? Yes. That these scenes give me the goosebumps because we don't understand what what gaslighting can do, what corporate politics can do. It can completely it can completely ruin your sense of self or your ability, which is what it did to you.
What happened that evening, by the time my husband got to me and found me, I was smoking cigarettes there. So the first thing he urged me to do was, please do not harm yourself. I know this, I got really angry at him and I was like, why you, I just want to smoke a cigarette. So he's I don't care what's happened to you. And I know what's happened to you. It's not fair, but life is not fair. And that's all there is to it. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. You're right now, you need your wits about yourself. And we only have this evening to figure out a game plan. Please do not harm yourself. If somebody's already harmed you, you don't have to pull yourself lower. So he said can you go and throw the packet of cigarettes? So I was really angry at him still, but I threw the packet of cigarettes.
He's okay, I want you to call our lawyer and explain what happened. And we'll try to figure it out. So then we figured out that the only solution for me was that I would have to somehow go back and convince my CEO to let me work for them for the next three months. Otherwise I would have to leave for India, and to tell her what I had experienced, to try and convince them meant that I had to tell her that I was not convinced that my, that being fired was fair. And that I should at least get a chance to figure it out. Otherwise I would have to literally go back. The second solution was now my independent track would be lost and I would be forced to go on the spousal visa.
So that's the point at which I go on the spousal visa and I don't really still know what that means. But the next day I was really scared, but all that my husband told me was, Being scared is not going to help you because just imagine what it would be like sitting on a plane back to India, where we are separated for years. If you can't figure this out, just imagine that for a second. So, feeling sorry for yourself or feeling scared is not going to help.
OUTRO:
Hey, Brave Friends. Thanks so much for taking time out of your busy life to listen to today's episode. I love learning about what makes you brave. I'm here with you. I see you, I hear you, and I want to hear from you. I want to know how you are showing up as brave and resilient and authentic.
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