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opportunity,” my father said disgustedly. “It is an eyewash, a joke.”
    â€œYou have opportunities that your father and I did not have. You’re a smart kid. You do well in school—”
    â€œHe says medicine is cookbook,” my father interrupted. “He says he wants a challenge.”
    â€œHe can do research, if that is what pleases him,” the vet reminded.
    â€œAt least there is some surety in medicine,” my mother echoed from the kitchen. She was a typical Indian mother, loving, caring, committed, but small-minded, too, in that only-concerned-with-my-own-backyard way. She had struggled alongside my father, raising the three of us kids, working full-time as a lab tech, making do with much lessthan she was accustomed to having, sacrificing so my father could write his academic textbooks, which sold a few dozen copies a year. (She always said that nothing good or substantial would come of writing books.) We lived hand to mouth in a house sparsely furnished with lawn furniture, kitsch, little tchotchkes and cheap knickknacks my parents picked up from garage sales. My parents took us everywhere with them, not because we were an extraordinarily close-knit family, but because we couldn’t afford a babysitter. There was a time after my father lost his job that we were forced to live on my mother’s lab technician salary of $11,000 a year. We couldn’t tell anyone; we had to keep up appearances that my father was still working. “We have to live in society,” my mother would explain.
    â€œYou will get a good job as a doctor,” my mother said, bringing in a platter of sweets. “You will get
izzat
, respect. When you walk into the room, people will stand. At the university you may get nothing for your hard work.”
    â€œThey never let you rise,” my father said, shaking his head. “They preach human rights. They talk democracy. What human rights! Where are the human rights in this country? It doesn’t matter if you are a citizen or not a citizen; it is the color of your skin. They will always hire a white American if they can. You have to be three times as good as them to get the same recognition. If I could start a practice, I would kick them. I would tell them to go to hell.”
    The irony of all this was that my father hated doctors. He thought they were all crooks. (He always said scientists like him, Ph.D.’s, were the
real
doctors.) I had heard the stories growing up: the urologist who told him he had testicular cancer when he had a simple fluid-filled cyst; the dentist who botched a filling and wanted to charge him to get it done over again; the rheumatologist who overtreated him with steroids; the pulmonologist who recommended surgery after a marginally abnormal chest X-ray. Dr. Gokhale, our family doctor, had bungled the stitches I needed after a dirt-biking accident, incorrectly diagnosed my brother with water on the knee, and almost killed my grandmotherby giving her a drug for a blood disorder she did not have. My parents had a running joke between them about how much Rajiv was going to charge them for medical care in their old age. The clear if unintended message was that doctors were money-grubbers, distinguished from shopkeepers only by their higher education.
    I too resented doctors for their money, their airs. At Indian social functions, the doctors would drive up in their fancy cars as we were getting out of our dilapidated old Buick. Their kids wore the best designer clothes: Le Tigre, Polo, Ocean Pacific, Vans. I hated how they looked down on us, on our shoes from Kmart and our jeans from Sears. One of them invented a rhyme about our shoes: “Buddies, they make your feet feel fine, Buddies, they cost a dollar ninety-nine, Buddies, I’ll never show you mine . . .” I hated their spoiled daintiness, their self-appointed privilege. I fancied myself a champion of the underdog.
    â€œUncle, it is not for