The Weekly Vine Edition 38: America-Born Confident Desis

Hello, and welcome to another edition of the Weekly Vine. This week, we have the rise of the American-Born Confident Desis in the US, the world’s “coolest dictator”, Harvard’s clash with the Trump administration, a glam trip to space, and Business-Class revelations.

American-Born Confident Desis

In Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, which is less a stoner comedy and more a philosophical treatise on the Asian experience in America, there’s a beautiful line when Harold Lee is ready to throw in the towel after spending all night evading Mountain Dew-chugging racist thugs just to get a bite of those elusive sliders. That’s when Kumar, unexpectedly profound and entirely lucid, delivers the kind of monologue that deserves a place in the Library of Congress.

“Our parents escaped poverty and hunger to come to America. They wanted a land that treated them as equals, a land filled with hamburger stands. This is about achieving what our parents set out for. Tonight is about the American dream!”

It was the most beautiful speech given by an Indian in America since a saffron-clad monk, who believed football was the key to reaching God, spoke against intolerance in a stadium in Chicago in 1893. And somewhere between Swami Vivekananda’s rousing welcome and Kumar Patel’s call for cheeseburgers, something magical happened: Indian Americans stopped being extras in someone else’s story and became central characters in America’s epic.

From Apu in The Simpsons, to now—they’re everywhere: at the helm of trillion-dollar tech firms, in Congress writing bills, in suburban Dunkin’ Donuts franchises, in the FBI, and, in a shocking but somehow inevitable twist, even in the mob.

Take Anand Shah, the New Jersey councilman and fast-food franchisee who was recently arrested in a multi-million-dollar gambling ring linked to the Lucchese crime family. It’s a plotline that sounds like rejected Sopranos fan fiction: Gujarati politician by day, poker room fixer by night. Somewhere, a white-collar mob accountant is learning how to spell “Patel”.

But Shah is not the exception. He’s just the weirdest entry on a very long list. Indian Americans have taken over boardrooms—Sundar Pichai at Google, Satya Nadella at Microsoft, Shantanu Narayen at Adobe. They’ve got a foothold in every alphabet agency—Kash Patel, now Director of the FBI, once helped orchestrate the most dramatic reshuffling of the Pentagon in decades. And they’ve entered the very heart of the White House—not as guests, but as family.

Usha Vance, wife of Vice President J.D. Vance, Yale Law alumna, daughter of immigrants, and quiet queen of the MAGA inner circle, now finds herself in a position no Indian has ever occupied: Second Lady of the United States. There are photos of her lighting diyas at Diwali events, calmly ignoring alt-right trolls on social media, and navigating Washington’s power corridors with more poise than most seasoned operatives. If Vivekananda was America’s first Indian icon of the soul, Usha is its most fascinating cipher of power.

Desis have done the improbable. They’ve mastered the codes of Silicon Valley, D.C., suburban capitalism, and even organised crime. They’ve gone from “model minority” to modular majority—able to blend into any institution, any script. Today, the desi is no longer confused. He’s confident. She’s commanding. And they both have a decent shot at becoming your next senator, surgeon general—or capo.

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