Twenty years and counting in Tennessee

• Saritha Prabhu of Clarksville is a Tennessean columnist.
• Reflections of an immigrant's journey from India to rural America.

Recently, I remembered that this January, it’ll be 21 years since my family moved to Tennessee. The circumstances of our serendipitous move might interest some readers.

In 1996, we (my husband, our 10-month-old and I) moved from Dallas, Texas, to Erin, Tenn. (population, 2000). We didn’t move voluntarily; immigration authorities had a hard-to-resist offer: they promised green cards (permanent residency) to us both if my husband, a primary care physician, would go practice in a rural area for three years. Apparently this is how the feds partly staff doctor shortages in rural areas.

At first glance, it might not seem the best idea to send immigrant doctors with the last names, Patel, Ahmed, Chen, etc. to provincial towns. But it usually works out because of the necessity on both sides: medically underserved towns need doctors, and immigrant doctors need visas.

So there we were, the first Asian immigrants to live in picturesque little Erin with Irish roots. What followed was a different experience: We lived up on a hill next to a field across the road from a creek (watching the seasons change was sublime). One of our neighbors was a huge bull across the fence on our driveway.

I have good memories of our time there.  People were kind and welcoming for the most part, and we became friendly with folks from different walks of life. Prejudice, if any, was few and far between, and certainly not debilitating.

There were moments too of irony and hilarity.  Early on, the hospital administrator suggested my husband should change his first name to Sam to attract more patients. He declined; the patients came eventually.

One time, we clueless city people stepped into a field to look at something, got chased by a herd of cows, only to be rescued later, cowering behind a fence, by a chuckling farmer.

Something I’ll never forget: before I had my second child a year later, two nurses, native Erinites, threw me a nice baby shower.

We got our green cards after three years and eventually became naturalized citizens, but we didn’t notice the time flying and ended up staying five years in Erin. Meanwhile, our little sons were turning into regular hillbillies (I use the term affectionately).

Eventually we moved to the neighboring bigger town, Clarksville. I almost wrote a thank you note to the immigration authorities; thanks to them, we experienced a part of America we wouldn’t have on our own.

Living there did inform my views when talk of America’s rural-urban divide surfaced during the 2016 election.

I’m not trying to romanticize my experience – Rural America is idyllic, but its underbelly shows some socio-economic malaise: joblessness/dead-end jobs, teen pregnancies, drug addiction and more.

And one downside of living there, of course, was having to drive 30 miles each way to the nearest town for most everyday things: Walmart, the mall, restaurants, the boys’ swim lessons and more.

But living there taught me to look beyond caricatures, and reaffirmed some things:  that people anywhere are usually better individually than collectively, that when you meet people half-way, they usually meet you half-way too.

Something I’ve noticed in general anywhere is that people may have prejudices (who doesn’t?) but many try to rise above them, their faith compelling them to be kind to the “stranger” in their midst. That I find inspiring.

High up on my list of things I like about Tennessee is its natural splendor.  As one who prefers walking outdoors to exercising in a gym, I’ve spent countless hours walking in the outdoor “cathedrals” here – the rolling hills, woods, trees, birds, lakes soothe the soul and are a great antidote to the information-and-entertainment glut of our lives.

My Erin years also turned me into an accidental writer. I was looking for something to do, but with few avenues in a little town, I turned inward and began doing something closely related to my love of reading.

Happy New Year to all.

Saritha Prabhu of Clarksville is a Tennessean columnist.  Reach her at sprabhu43@gmail.com.