STARKVILLE, Miss. (AP) - Nagadarshan Rao had been speaking English for years when he arrived in the United States last year, but he wasn’t completely fluent.
Adjusting to the fast pace of native English speakers and the slang of the South was difficult at times, he said, but he has become more comfortable with the language over the past year and can give the Maroon Volunteer Center some of the credit for it.
“I’ve met a lot of people who come from other states and I’ve shared memorable moments with them,” said Rao, an aerospace engineering graduate student at Mississippi State University and a native of Bangalore in southern India.
Maroon Volunteer Center coordinates service projects in the Starkville area and participates in the city’s annual Day of Service on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Rao was brand new to MSU, Starkville and the United States when he participated in last year’s Day of Service, and this year he served as a site leader, having accrued more than 150 service hours since then.
He and another site leader led a group of 25 students in cleaning the Oktoc/District 5 Volunteer Fire Station on Oktoc Road in southeastern Oktibbeha County on Jan. 20.
Rao said he chose MSU to specialize in flight test engineering during his graduate studies. He received his bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering at MVJ College of Engineering in his hometown.
He may not have arrived in Mississippi with full English fluency, but he did arrive with plenty of volunteering experience from his undergraduate years. He coordinated several athletic and cultural events at MJVCE, and he also helped serve food to thousands of devotees at Hindu temples every August, he said.
Through Maroon Volunteer Center, Rao has facilitated events including the 2019 Frostbite Half Marathon, the Salvation Army’s supply drive for Starkville schools, a field day at Henderson Ward Stewart Elementary School and “Popcorn, Plarn (plastic yarn) and Professionalism,” a professional skills seminar the center hosts every summer.
Serving as vice president of the Indian Student Association has also helped him improve his English-speaking skills and develop a social network, he said. Conducting cultural events has connected him with a variety of people curious about Indian culture.
“I tell them what the event is about and what we celebrate back in our country,” Rao said. “That’s how I’ve gained communication skills as a public speaker. That’s where I’ve learned some things (about English), apart from the academics.”
ISA held a celebration Sunday (Jan. 26) morning to celebrate an Indian national holiday, Republic Day, in honor of the day India’s constitution was adopted in 1950.
After a year, Starkville is his second home, he said, and his family was curious about his life here when he flew back to Bangalore for two weeks in December.
“They wanted to know more and more about the culture over here,” Rao said. “It was a very short period (to) share a lot of memories of what I did the entire year. They were very interested in the people and the places as well as the food.”
He told them all about Thanksgiving, which a professor invited him to participate in, he said. He wishes Mississippi had more options for his vegetarian diet, but he said one of his favorite Southern dishes is okra, or “lady’s finger” as he calls it in India.
Rao is set to finish his master’s in May, a semester early, since he took a few classes last summer, he said. His goal is to find an internship or a job in the United States, and he will find one in India if he can’t find one here, he said.
In the meantime, he will keep volunteering and deriving fulfillment from it.
“If you help other people, you get that smile on their face,” he said. “That makes me very happy.”
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