Global trade puts kids astride 2 cultures

BANGALORE, India — When 15-year-old Tara Kola talks about life in her new home, she sounds like an exile.

Two years after the pull of global economic opportunities lured her family from Saratoga, Calif., the teen feels trapped in a foreign land. To take one example, her school requires students to address instructors as "Sir" or "Miss," wear uniforms with ties (even the girls) — and a name tag.

"How many California schools make you wear a dog tag?" she asks.

Scores of young people like Tara find their lives upended by the global careers of their parents. As a result, they are trying to cope with new school social orders and vastly different cultures in countries such as India and China, where profound poverty is often found just outside the walls of their comfortable expatriate subdivisions.

Parents and others believe the experience is sure to create a new generation of global citizens who seamlessly move between East and West.

"China and India will play on the world's center stage in 20, 30 years," said Tara's mother, Vani Kola, a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur-turned-venture capitalist. "Yet the cultures of China and India are very different from the United States. These kids have an ability to morph — like chameleons — in a blink of an eye."

How this experience will affect these young people is unclear. But many speak favorably of their time in India, despite a few rebellious moments. Even Tara.

"I'm glad I'm getting this global exposure. It has already changed me," she admitted.

Tough for kids

Not everyone is convinced that moving young people across the globe is best for them, particularly when they are elementary-school age. Sowmyanarayanan Sadagopan, founding director of the prestigious Indian Institute of Information Technology, has visited with young people at international schools in India and found some to be culturally unmoored.

"In some cases, they turn out to be confused kids," Sadagopan said.

No one knows how many teens and preteens find themselves straddling two worlds. In India, the National Association of Software Service Companies, or NASSCOM, estimates that at least 20,000 returnees — known here as nonresident Indians — and their children have come back to the South Asian country. A large number of them are in the tech industry and from Silicon Valley, said Rajdeep Sahrawat, NASSCOM vice president. He and others expect the number of California expatriates to rapidly increase in India as economic opportunities grow.

For nonresident Indians, it is a way to introduce their children to Indian culture and multigenerational families. "They get to see how I grew up," said Sridevi Koneru. The Cisco Systems executive recently brought her two children to India from Mountain View, Calif.

Break-in period

In Bangalore, India's capital of tech, numerous high-end subdivisions have been built for these returnees and other expatriates — and they are populated with young people who still call Silicon Valley communities home. The area is the largest U.S. region represented at Tara's school, the International School of Bangalore, said Principal Matthew Sullivan.

"Coming here breaks through your mental block of America being everything," said 15-year-old Krishna Sucharita, a former resident of San Jose, Calif., who has lived in Bangalore for more than four years. "You realize there is so much more in the world going on. It's been a wonderful experience."

It's easy to see, though, how students like Tara have some issues with their adopted home.

Students at her school must "stand up any time an adult enters the classroom," Sullivan explained.

When they first arrive, he gives each a talk — particularly the Americans — about how they aren't in California anymore. Sullivan, an American himself, believes their ability to adapt to his school's rigid rules, as well as to the rest of India, will set them on a course for their own global careers.

"I am almost certain that every student in this school will have an international career," he said. "They will have no fear of the unknown. They will know how to adjust."

Growing up biculturally, added Sridhar Mitta, a leading tech figure in Bangalore who was an early executive of Indian software-services giant Wipro, enables one to "be open to more things than I was" and avoid the "cultural shocks" many adults experience in global business.

A new perspective

That said, U.S. culture is at once ubiquitous and distant in India.

At school, Tara is teased by her Indian friends about her American accent. At home, she goes online to chat with her friends in the U.S. During the summer, she and her sister return to Silicon Valley for summer school and other activities. And, like most of the other expat kids, Tara plans to return to the United States for college.

Though she bucks against the strict school order — girls are not allowed to wear makeup or even let their hair down, Tara said, rolling her eyes — the teen enjoys other cultural aspects of India.

A much more community-oriented life exists in Bangalore than in the United States, she and others say. The made-for-expat subdivisions provide a safe and close-knit neighborhood where children spend time socializing. There are no high-school proms, and group activities replace dating. Peer pressure, parents say, is far less prevalent.

"Kids grow up slower here," Tara said.

To be sure, the young people have an elevated standard of life with maids, cooks and drivers. They have clean streets and security — a universe away from the chaos just outside their subdivision gates. But they also witness a side of life their peers in the Bay Area don't: begging children who crowd around traffic-locked vehicles, making hand-to-mouth gestures.

"It changes your perspective on life," said Katya Elfrink, who along with her two sons came to Bangalore about two years ago with her husband, Cisco Executive Vice President Wim Elfrink.

For his last two birthdays, 12-year-old Max Elfrink asked his friends to take the money they would otherwise spend on presents and instead give it to charity.

"In the U.S., you don't see so much poverty," he said. "It's also hard to communicate with some people. So you have to learn to listen very carefully."

Still, the family's old home in Saratoga doesn't seem that far from Bangalore.

"Your old life doesn't go away," Max said. "You just grow an extra one."