From India to America, thanks to WHDD

SHARON — The differences couldn’t have been more stark, striking and, in fact, delightful, for Arjun Singh Bhati, a 34-year-old native of the city of Jaisalmer in the state of Rajasthan in India.

He had never before left his country and had never before traveled in an airplane. Of the entire vast Indian nation, he has only visited one other state, Jodhpur, where he attended college and earned a master’s degree in English (his thesis paper was on American literature).

But in August he left his remote desert town, famous for its architecture and scenic beauty, and came to America. New York City was  his first stop. His second: Sharon, Conn.

The road he traveled was a winding one. Not literally, of course. On the literal level, the trip was quite easy. In fact, Bhati had anticipated he would have problems at the airports here, that he would be stopped or even harassed by security personnel because of his dark skin and foreign name.

In fact, he reported happily in a conversation last Friday, he breezed right through security and was treated with kindness and respect.

The road that led to his visit was more complex. He had tried many times to obtain a visa from his government to come to this country, but he was never granted one. He didn’t give up his dream, however, and continued practicing his English language pronounciation in front of a mirror and with tourists who came to his home town.

One such visitor was art dealer Susan Seidel from New York, who is a longtime friend of Jill Goodman, a co-founder of Sharon-based NPR radio station WHDD (online at robinhoodradio.com). Goodman had been trying to convince her friend to do a radio talk show that would take WHDD listeners on virtual trips around the world. After her visit to India, Seidel called Goodman and suggested that she do a series of radio chats via Skype, an Internet telephone system, with Bhati.

The show, called Around The World with Arjun Singh, now airs weekly at WHDD and can be heard on demand at robinhoodradio.com.

“When we started, Arjun thought we would just be doing one or two broadcasts and that would be it,†Goodman said. “But we knew we wanted to keep it going.â€

So far there have been 24 broadcasts, and it was the radio show that finally enabled Bhati to get his visa to come to this country. He is here on a cultural visa.

Bhati teaches English to elementary school children, acts as an unofficial tour guide to visitors to his home town and writes short stories. A conversation with him is an engaging mix of facts and figures — and poetic observations. When asked about his family and background, for example, he says his grandparents were farmers in this extremely arid part of India. “There was only about an inch and a half of rain each year so my grandparents spent their lives staring at the sky,†and watching for rain clouds.

Some day, Bhati hopes to publish a collection of short stories. For now, however, he is a school teacher and so, on Friday (three days before the opening of the 2009 school session) he visited Sharon Center School and Housatonic Valley Regional High School.

“Wow,†he said.

He was most impressed by the cleanliness of the classrooms, by how well equipped each school was, and by the friendliness of the faculties at the elementary school and the high school.

“Sharon is a heaven,†he said. “The people of Sharon are angels to me.â€

He said he was also impressed by “the civic sense†of the people he met.

“You can see the monuments in pictures and on television,†he said. But you don’t get the same sense of how much people care and the “brightness of the citizens.†People here take care of their homes, he said, their schools and their country, and “that’s very special. People are very patriotic here, I see flags on every home. You don’t see that in India. It’s because of the people that America is what it is, and the reason it is so popular in the world.â€