South Asian Awareness Week continued last night with a tale of economic advancement from Anmol Mahal, current president of the California Medical Association.

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Mehmet Inonu

The president of the California Medical Association Dr. Anmol Mahal speaks at an event during South Asian Awareness Week at 6pm in Pigott Hall

The theme of South Asian Awareness Week this year is “South Asian Success Stories,” and Mahal opened his speech with a pontification on the meaning of success.

“Success comes to all of us in different proportions,” he said. “It depends on what you recognize as success. It’s a funny thing — when you’re young, success means a lot of different things to different people. When you get to my age the perception of what is success changes a little bit.”

The pursuit of success was a constant motivator for Mahal. The son of a psychiatry professor, he grew up amid humble surroundings in New Delhi. He remembers his mother pointing out the rickshaw drivers that transported his family around town, warning that only studying would allow him to escape their fate.

“We were driven to education as an economic necessity to get to the next level,” he said.

He worked hard enough to graduate from an Indian medical school at age 23 and secured himself an intern slot at a New Jersey medical school. The culture shock, he said, was a challenge.

“They allow you to bring two suitcases [into the country],” he said. “I only could bring one book. You put your whole life in two suitcases, get on a plane, and you land in a strange place. Everything is moving around a lot faster — certainly the cars are moving a lot faster. Everything is a lot bigger, and everything is a lot faster. Even the human beings are a lot bigger than you. It’s a unique experience, and pretty soon the few dollars you brought with you, you run out of.”

The Watergate scandal rolled on as Mahal continued his studies in New Jersey, and he and the other interns found themselves sneaking peeks at hospital televisions to catch the hearings on their breaks. During one particularly tense hearing, he found himself starting a sentence by saying, “We Americans ought to...” No one looked at him strangely for his declaration.

“This is one incredible society that accepts everyone,” he said.

Now after decades in the country, he spoke with authority on the experience of being an immigrant.

“It’s a fulfilling experience, and it’s a tensing experience,” he said. “Simply, it’s not one of the easiest things to do, because there are so many things to learn. One of the things I have most trouble with is local humor.”

Yet Mahal’s own sense of humor was in full swing last night. After mentioning a free health clinic he is helping to organize at an Indian Community Center in Milpitas, he cracked, “Milpitas — sounds like a pediatric disease when you say it.”

Mahal is organizing the Milpitas project in his current capacity as president of the California Medical Association, an organization for which he long served as an advocate for minority and immigrant doctors. When elections rolled around, Mahal’s work put him at the top of the candidates’ field.

“Being a minority can be a disadvantage, but in this case, being a minority was an advantage,” he said. “They wanted a minority to be president.”

Mahal ended his prepared speech with a list of his reasons for being optimistic about beginning a career in medicine, which included the aging baby boomer population and breakthroughs in human genome studies.