Chaat cafés, Asia maps, Hindu deities and Ram Gopal Varma’s latest, Bhoot, can all be found in the bustling streets of Fremont for a heady whiff of India

More than 300,000 Indians call the San Francisco Bay Area home. Indo-Americans who were born and raised abroad, like myself, settle throughout the Bay Area. Many of us opt to live in San Francisco proper, feeling no particular pull to the area south of San Francisco known as the South Bay. But most of the Indians from India whom I know, gravitate to South Bay cities like Fremont. And there, they put down roots.

One such person is Priya, a charming woman in her late twenties. Priya and I became fast friends after our paths crossed through a local Indian professional group. She came to the United States in 1998 to pursue a Masters degree at the University of Cincinnati. Priya has no immediate plans to go back to India. “Fremont feels like home,” she explained. “The way people dress is similar. You can walk around in a salwar kameez and no one is going to say anything. And at Daana Bazaar, you can even stand and eat chaat like you do in India.”

I drove into Fremont on a quintessential sunny California afternoon from Pleasanton, a predominantly white, upper crust city approximately twenty minutes away. I entered Fremont through the Irvington District, a lower middle class area dotted with tattoo parlours, liquor stores, auto body shops and palm trees. At first glance, this could be Anycity, U.S.A. But within five minutes of being in Fremont, I was greeted with throbbing Bollywood music coming from the Volkswagen behind me. I smiled at the Indian couple in my rear-view mirror as I turned the corner onto Mowry, Fremont’s Indian ‘drag.’

My first stop was Chaat Café, nestled between Starbucks Café and Noah’s New York Bagels. I last visited Chaat Café half a year back with some friends, after a Network of Indian Professionals picnic at nearby Lake Elizabeth. For $3.99, customers can enjoy the most popular item, the Chicken Wrap, even as Dev Anand smiles benignly from above their table. Photographs of Bollywood movie stars, the bustling kitchen and a vibrant map of Asia on the wall create a casual, lively environment, perfect for an afternoon with friends and family. The clientele is mostly young professionals from India, many of them with children.

Daana Bazaar is especially evocative of memories of India. From the outside, the store is nondescript, sandwiched between a chiropractic office and H&R Block. But inside, the bazaar is pure eye candy – the latest Bollywood blockbusters, silver jewellery beckoning from the shelves and shiny brass cookware. Although the chaat stand in the back of the store looks unassuming, locals swear by its tangy lure. As I walked through the aisles, many of the food items brought back memories of my childhood vacations in India – Parle G biscuits, yellow-green mangoes, gooey jalebis. A woman, dressed in a bright red salwar kameez with a thick braid trailing down her back, picked in a leisurely manner, through the mangoes. I left with two of them for my parents, who try fruitlessly to find mangoes as delicious as the ones they ate in India.

Naz8 Cinema is a must-see, in Fremont. One can catch the latest flicks there, like Hollywood Bollywood and munch happily on namkeen and sweets. Located in Fremont’s Gateway Plaza, the plain-looking exterior belies the energy inside. Movie posters of Mr & Mrs Iyer and Bhoot adorn the foyer, illuminated by ostentatious chandeliers and strings of lights across the walls. Bollywood music adds to the festive ambience. When I was still in high school, both my family and my aunt’s family piled into two cars and drove to Naz8 Cinema to see Hum Aapke Hain Koun. Hailing from the mostly white suburb of Pleasanton, I found the experience of eating samosas in an Indian movie theatre surreal.

For many Indians who live abroad, a house of worship transforms a place into a home. Fremont has houses of worship for Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims, located primarily in residential areas. Sikhs dressed in turbans and kurtas roamed the grounds around the gurdwara, a striking, white sanctuary. Outside the prayer hall, flyers such as the one which proudly proclaimed: ‘First Sikh doctor to arrive in NYC World Trade Center’, decorate the billboards. Some of the women praying in the hall wore American clothes, yet covered their heads with chunnis.

The mosque shares the same parking lot as St Paul’s Methodist Church. Two stately palm trees greeted me at the main entrance of the reddish building. A man noticed me walking cluelessly around the first floor, introduced himself as Mohammed Ali and offered to take me on a tour. As we rode the elevator, he explained that the prayer hall, school and reading room are all located on the second floor.

At the Hindu temple, I was overcome with a sense of familiarity. Seeing the church-like structure and beautiful, life-size statues bedecked in gold and red brought back memories. I discovered a tiny reading room which included religious texts and more obscure finds like Zen and Buddhism Psychoanalysis.

Putting down roots, even in a multicultural city like Fremont, can be a struggle. In 2002, the City of Fremont initially denied a permit to hold the annual Festival of India event, citing crowd and noise control problems. Because organisers negotiated a one-day event that went off well, the city has now granted them a permit to hold the festival for two days in mid August of this year. Over 100,000 people typically attend the mela, which features cultural booths, a health fair, entertainment and a parade. I took my Czech-American boyfriend to the festival in 2001 for a glimpse of traditional Indian culture. We relished pani puri, watched camel rides, listened to bhangra music and strolled from booth to booth, picking up literature on a variety of Bay Area organisations, like Silicon Valley Indian Professional Association and Bay Area Tamil Manram.

Living in the ethnic enclave of Fremont makes life easier for those who yearn for a little bit of home. And even for people like me who are born and raised outside of India, Fremont feels familiar and comforting. I never fully appreciated all the city has to offer until I left California to live in Texas for half a year. On one unforgettable night in Austin, I snuck some bhangra music in, to my American friend’s party and danced feverishly with the one other Indo-American in the room while others looked on, puzzled.

On another night, I felt all eyes upon me as I walked into a lily-white, Texan joint called Donn’s Depot to meet some friends for a birthday get-together. When I returned to the Bay Area two months ago, I walked along Fremont’s streets, soaked up the diversity and sighed happily, “Thank God, I’m back in California!”