“What does Mr. Bedi have then?” asked the judge.
“He has a learner’s permit, your Honor,” said the officer.
The judge looked at me. “Can you speak English?” he asked.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said nervously. I met his eyes and then glanced over at Ravi, who gave me a reassuring nod.
“What do you have?” he asked.
I stood up and said, “I have my driver’s license.” I pulled it out of my wallet and showed it to him.
The judge looked at the officer. “Mr. Bedi has a driver’s license,” he said.
Clearing his throat, the judge looked around the room where a few other people were sitting. “Are the ladies involved in this accident present?”
There was no response. The two women were not there. Neither was the owner of the other car I’d hit before driving away.
“Judge, I am so sorry all this has happened,” I said, showing him my driver’s license again.
He exchanged a look with the officer and said to me, “Do not do this again. Case dismissed.”
Ravi Aggarwal and I returned to my apartment, laughing in relief at the quick trial and my good fortune that they had not made me pay a fine or thrown me in jail.
One day, Ravi Sood told me about Dr. Cheema, a professor at Knoxville College who had grown up in Pakistan and knew about Punjabi culture. I contacted Dr. Cheema, and he invited me to his house for dinner. I was surprised when I met his wife and discovered that we were distant cousins. Bilques, or Billo as everyone called her, was happy to meet me. She fixed a variety of foods, including several Indian dishes, and afterward we drank tea and reminisced about our families and the past.
After dinner, I explained my circumstances to Dr. Cheema and Billo. Starting January 1963, I would have no source of income, and to make matters worse, I was failing all of my courses at UT. If I did not maintain a 2.0 GPA, I would be thrown out of the university. At that point, my GPA was 1.0.
“Would you like to attend Knoxville College?” Dr. Cheema asked. “I can see if the president would grant you free room and board along with some pocket money.”
“I can help you apply for admission and financial assistance,” Billo offered.
I couldn’t say no, and a few weeks later, I received admission. The college granted me financial assistance to cover tuition and room and board, but they denied the pocket money on the grounds that the college had exhausted its cash fund. Knoxville College, a school attended mostly by black students, was glad to have one more student to add to its small community of foreigners. The other students could learn more about Indian culture, and it was considered prestigious for a smaller school to have foreign students on campus.
At first, I worried about what my friends and family would think if I went there. Knoxville College was not as prestigious as UT. After some serious thought, I knew it was the best choice for me at the time. Since the college did not offer civil engineering, I chose to pursue a bachelor’s in math instead. While part of me felt embarrassed at this change in my circumstances, it was the only door open for me.
The third week of January 1963, I moved into a dormitory at Knoxville College. In addition to Saran Bhagta and me, the only Indians, there were three students from Cuba and three from Africa. I did my best to fit in, observing how the black students dressed, how they walked, what beer they drank (Colt 45), where they took girls on dates, but most of all, the way they talked, perhaps because that was the easiest thing to catch on to.
“Hey man,” they said to each other in the hallways.
“Hey, you black ass,” they hollered while crossing campus.
“What’s up, my niggah?”
“Hey Mo Fo. Come here.”
Usually, I would see the same people ten to fifteen times a day, and in these instances, the students would point their thumb and index finger at me, a simple way to acknowledge the other person without saying anything. At other times, they’d say, “My main man.”
In an attempt to blend in, I tried talking like them.
“Hey, you blackie,” I’d say, or, “Hey, you niggah.”
They roared with laughter at this. “Did you hear what the foreigner just said? Did you hear?”
A tall black guy, a basketball player from my dorm, slapped me on the back, his teeth flashing white as he laughed. “Kris, you ain’t nothin’ but a yellow niggah!”
So far, taking showers at the dorm was the most difficult adjustment I faced. In India, we bathed from a bucket filled with water from the hand pump, always keeping our underwear on. The guys in the dorm shower room undressed completely in front of each other. It was embarrassing and uncomfortable for me to even think about stripping down in front of a bunch of strangers, so for the first week, I kept my underwear on. The guys looked at me strangely, but they didn’t ask questions.
One day, my roommate asked me why I took showers with my underwear on. I shrugged and tried to explain that’s how we bathed in India. He raised an eyebrow and laughed, unable to fathom such a practice. The next day, I decided to do as “the Romans do,” and I began undressing completely for showers, still feeling self-conscious. However, I would not walk naked down the hallway back to my room with
