The Dream: How I Learned the Risks and Rewards of Entrepreneurship and Made Millions Read Free Page A

and relax a little,but he was never less than vigilant. And we could expect to see him tense up at least two or three more times in the course of the film. “Where’s the remote? Who is hiding the remote?”
    Poor Kamal always got a little nervous at these junctures. Some years earlier, my father had attempted to fast-forward through a racy scene, and the remote had gone dead in his hands. He had become quite upset, and had turned to look at Kamal. “You are the eldest child,” he said, unable to hide his displeasure. “You will make sure that nothing like this ever happens again.”
    Every Sunday, we would go back to the store to return the video, and to find another one, less racy, perhaps, and my father always let the poor clerk have it. “I said I was looking for a
family
movie! What is wrong with you! They almost
kissed!”
    In 1992, the years of frugality finally paid off. My parents felt secure enough to take their savings and buy a small house on Gridley Street, on the east side of San Jose. We were still in the heart of the projects, but this was an actual home, and it even had a small yard.
    It was almost directly across the street from the McCollam Elementary School, and one afternoon—thinking I should try to start losing some of that Twinkie-fueledweight—I went over to the school’s rundown basketball courts, empty at that hour, and started shooting hoops. Before long, I noticed a pair of Hispanic teenagers watching me. I tried to ignore them.
    “Hey!” one of them said.
    I kept shooting.
    “Hey! Towel-head! I’m talking to you! What the hell are you doing, man?”
    “Excuse me?” I said.
    “You heard me,” he said.
    “I’m shooting baskets,” I said.
    They came closer. “Take that thing off your head,” the guy said. The other one said nothing, and for a moment I wondered whether he was mute.
    “I can’t,” I said. “It’s part of my religion.”
    “You don’t listen too good, do you?” he said, and he took a knife out of his pocket. “Take that shit off right now!”
    I dropped the basketball and began the slow, laborious process of removing the many hooks that were holding my turban together. I was on the verge of tears, but I forced myself not to cry. When I was done, I handed him the turban, hardly breathing, and he and his friend called me an ugly name and walked away. As soon as they were out of sight, I picked up the basketball and ran home, and I was sobbing by the time I came through the front door. My grandmotherhurried out to see what was wrong and was shocked to find me standing there in tears, without my turban.
    I told her what had happened, crying even harder now, and she took me in her arms and held me close. “But it’s not your fault, Gurbaksh,” she said. “You did nothing wrong.”
    “I know,” I said.
    “Even so,” she continued. “I don’t want you going over there by yourself anymore. Do you understand?”
    “Yes,” I said. But I didn’t. Not really.
    When my father came home, I repeated the story.
    “And you just gave them your turban?” he asked.
    “One of them had a knife,” I said. “I thought he was going to cut me.”
    “Well, I’m glad that nothing happened, but next time you need to be stronger. You need to stand up to people like that.”
    I had gone to my father to be comforted, but his response only made me feel worse. And it was doubly painful because I wished I
had
stood up to those two boys. I had wanted to tell them, just as I’d wanted to tell everyone who had ever taunted me, that I was proud of my family, proud of my heritage, and proud to be a Sikh—but I was just a kid, and I didn’t know where to begin. Instead, I began to long for another kind of existence, one where I was in charge.
    That same year, my brother Taj turned thirteen, and he had a formal turban ceremony at our home, with a Sikh priestin attendance. I was ten at the time, and both Taj and I were wearing
keski-
or
patka
-style turbans, the turban of