East from India: The New Immigrants Part II

With careers in the tech industry, an Asian Indian family hopscotches across the country, settling in Bellevue

The chalk outline of a flower decorates the front porch of Karuna and Prabhu Ram’s Bellevue home, and fresh flower petals are sprinkled carefully inside its borders. The flower is a traditional Indian symbol, placed here in honor of the recent 50th-anniversary party for his parents, Prabhu says, a celebration that included a sister who flew over from India to surprise the couple.

Another sister lives in Bellevue, and other family members are also in the U.S., many with jobs in the high-tech industry. The Rams, both 41, and their 11-year-old daughter, Amrita, and 13-year-old son, Avinash, have lived in their view home in the Somerset neighborhood for seven years, which on this day is bustling with numerous relatives all getting ready for a four-day trip to a Northwest beach resort.

The house is large enough that one set or the other of their parents can come for extended visits from India, along with other relatives who might want to stay awhile. “We always have family visiting,” says Karuna, a warm, elegant woman wearing a richly colored tunic accented by sparkling beads.

Prabhu, who is a manager at GE in downtown Seattle, and Karuna, who works on Mercer Island in a healthcare IT job, love the Northwest, especially after living elsewhere in the country.

Their U.S. immigration story is a familiar one to the large local population of Asian Indians, the bulk of whom have settled on the Eastside to work for companies like Microsoft or Google, which prize computer and engineering skills. The Rams, who met in college, both excelled in school growing up, eventually attending college programs in India that took only the top 2 percent of applicants. The only question to answer about college, says Prabhu, a cheerful, quick-to-laugh-man, was whether he should study engineering and computers or medicine. Given the cultural pressure from both family and society to succeed, it was inconceivable he should pick a subject area with poorer job prospects, such as art or literature.

It was no secret that higher-paying jobs could be found the United States. In 1988, Prabhu came to study at North Dakota State University, while Karuna came to attend graduate school in New Jersey in 1989. (Along the way, the couple went home to marry in India.)