‘Avoid speaking in your mother tongue’

“Don’t talk to each other in Hindi or any other Indian language when you are at a public place in the US. It might land you in deep trouble.” This is one of the suggestions doing rounds among Indians in the US on social media groups.

That sums up the fear psychosis among Indians, especially Telugus, after a Hyderabad-origin techie was killed in a shooting at a Kansas City bar on Wednesday.

Stating that life is more precious than anything, Vikram Jangam, general secretary of the Telangana American Telugu Association (TATA), has suggested a few dos and don’ts .

Echoing the view, A Venkat Reddy, a Telugu techie who returned to India after spending more than a decade in the US couple of years ago and is still a regular US visitor, said it was always better to avoid confrontation with unknown Americans on streets. “The best way is to leave the place without any argument,” he said.

Surprisingly, Telugu NRIs residing in California, Washington DC and New York are not very much worried of hate-crime incidents, such as that of Kansas shooting. “These are the areas where there is a large number of Indians. And Americans are also very friendly with us. So far, we have not faced such bad experiences here. There could be one or two such isolated incidents,” Sharath Devulapalli, an engineer from Bay Area, told HT.

He, however, said they often hear about such hate crimes in central and southern parts of America, where locals are very conservative. “These are areas where Donald Trump got the majority. Maybe, the people there are influenced by Trump’s decisions,” Sharath said.