Surbhi Wadhwa is an Accounts Manager with Royal Bank of Canada; however her passion rests with dancing. She considers classical dances like Kathak and Bharatnatyum “the most beautiful and entertaining expressions of the body.”  She has been a choreographer with a modeling agency and loves dancing more than acting or modeling, “which,” she says “comes with the package.”

Surbhi has been fortunate enough to be employed by RBC at a time when recession had just about hit the global economy. For her, there has been no better time to make a comparison with. No wonder, her manager tells Surbhi that “you’ve joined us at a very interesting time” of credit crunch, a lot of pressure to deliver and to accomplish goals.

She laughed when I asked her when the recession will be over. Her reply was “Won’t we all be very rich if we knew that?” On a serious note, however, like many she recounted that we have hit the bottom of the bottom; there is nothing lower than what we have dipped into in the global markets. She predicts, though, that “the things would be a lot brighter next year” in June – July.

Given the fact that Surbhi has lived in Canada for about five years only, she has achieved quite a lot. She came from Muscat to Montreal to study Finance and Entrepreneurship at McGill University. Frosch made her transition from Muscat to Montreal comfortable.

Fluent in both English and Hindi, Surbhi feels that South Asians in Canada celebrate festivals like Diwali much more lavishly than Indians do in India. She feels that there is a conflict between parents who have immigrated to Canada and their children who have been born and raised here. Parents wish to preserve the same values that they brought to North America a decade or two ago, however the kids wish to conform to Canadian value system to certain extent. The conflict, then, is “who they [youths] are and what they [youths] want to be.” In addition to this, parents’ value system has already become archaic even in South Asia.  

For herself, Surbhi is not sure what it would be for her: love or arranged marriage. Somewhat sarcastically, she told me that “I will let you know that once I start planning for my marriage.” The intention; however was not to invade into her privacy.  

Being a dancer, I had to ask her what fashion is for her. It did not need a lot of thinking from Surbhi to come with the response that “fashion is your own style.” She describes her style as “simple but chic.” A style “that goes with my body type..and in which I look decent and elegant,” she adds.

In this time and age, when fashion for men has become equally important, Surbhi believes that with media exposure “men have equal pressure to present themselves in a certain manner if not more. With media exposure, men face similar kinds of pressures as women do.”

Many South Asian elders have an impression that accomplished women such as Surbhi Wadhwa are not good with household chores such as cooking. This is usually not the case with talented young women like Surbhi. She cooks and cleans, reads and has more all-time favourite Bollywood movies than Hollywood movies; dil wale dulhaniya le jaein ge being her favourite.