Sayville's changing face

Indian immigrants and the way they are making this country their own too. They are keeping parts of their own culture and taking on some of the surrounding culture. Exactly the way it should be done! DP

A growing number of Indians settle in a once homogeneous community, calling it their own

BY BART JONES, Newsday Staff Writer

Newsday.com: Varsha Kinariwalla's parents introduced her to the young man one afternoon at his family's home in India. They spoke alone for an hour or two, got engaged two days later and were married 10 days after that.

It was a traditional arranged Indian marriage, although Kinariwalla had the option of turning him down and had done so with four previous suitors. "I think it was the biggest gamble of my life," she said recently, nearly a quarter-century later and happily married.

Holding tightly onto her heritage and its traditions, Kinariwalla is part of a growing community of immigrants from India that has sprouted up in, of all places, Sayville. For decades, Sayville was a quintessentially homogeneous Long Island community set hard on the Great South Bay. It was known for its clammers, its Victorian homes in South Sayville and the "Flying Dutchmen" of neighboring West Sayville's fire department.

But starting in the 1980s and accelerating in the past decade, the number of Indians has steadily grown. The community has expanded from only four people in 1980 to 205 in 2000, according to U.S. Census figures. While they make up just 1.2 percent of Sayville's total population, their presence underscores how Long Island's changing demographics are leaving no corner untouched.
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