The Bronx Ink

The alarm rings and it is time for Pandit Vyaas Sukul to prepare to leave for the Bronx on an early Sunday morning. He showers, puts on his kurta (cotton tunic) and an upavita (sacred thread) and tends to his two-month-old baby. The Pandit has no time to eat breakfast. He gets in his car and drives over 45 minutes to his family’s 26-year-old temple.

When Sukul is not working as a finance executive in an office, he is the officiating priest at the family-run Hindu temple, Vishnu Mandir in Soundview. He took on the role in 2019, shortly after his father passed. This is a regular Sunday for Sukul, traveling almost 15 miles from Long Island to the Bronx to host the Sunday youth service for the two hours a week the temple is open to the public. 

Along with his brother Pandit Krishna Sukul, who travels from Brooklyn, they both take off their shoes, take their place by the deities, and commence the rituals for the worshippers. Situated on Noble Avenue, the Vishnu Mandir serves the general neighborhood — community members, that at times include bishops and imams from neighboring centers of worship. The temple observes all the major festivals of the Hindu calendar. 

The family, who are preparing to host Diwali, one of the biggest festivities in the Hindu calendar, are disappointed that the occasion is not recognized as a federal or state holiday. The festival is not mentioned in NYC’s Financial Information Services Agency (FISA) 2022 list of holidays and is also not listed as a Department of Education holiday.

As a matter of fact, the Hindu community remains to be one of the many religious communities in New York City and state without any recognized holidays, according to Bharati Kemraj, daughter of the late-priest Pandit Vishnu Sukul. 

“There isn’t much for us. While there are many groups that are pushing (for) it, it has yet to happen and the Mayor Eric Adams did promise that in his first 100 days that he was going to change that,” she said. “It’s past 100 days and the community is still waiting.” 

The festival this year is celebrated on Monday, October 24. People of various religions — including Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, and Buddhists — celebrate Diwali, also known as the festival of lights. According to a 2020 community survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, there are almost 21,000 residents who identify as Asian Indians in the Bronx county, many of whom are likely to practice Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism, or Buddhism.

In May 2021, Assemblywoman Jenifer Rajkumar (D-Queens), the first South Asian woman to be elected to a state office in New York, introduced a bill (A07062) to make Diwali a holiday for schools in the state. Kemraj hopes the bill advances past the Senate, who have the power for the bill to be written into the city. She adds that there is a short window of opportunity to do this, and so authoritative members, like the mayor, must review the bill and not wait until Diwali comes, working year round to ensure the community has a holiday.

“I think the leaders in our community need to recognize that the Hindu community is a very large community and we’re from all over. People could be from Africa and be a Hindu worshiper. New York City has to do a better job at talking about diversity and inclusion in 2022. All we get is alternate side parking for Diwali, but nothing is on the calendar,” Kemraj added.

Former mayor, Bill de Blasio, avoided answering whether Diwali would be recognized as a school holiday in October 2021, but that Eid and the Lunar New Year were. In the 2021-2022 school year, schools were closed for both the Lunar New Year and Eid while they were open for Diwali.

Continued efforts, like Rajkumar’s, are still in the works. In 2021, the city council issued a resolution requesting that the New York City Department of Education declare Diwali a holiday.

“Mayor Adams fully supports making Diwali a state and school holiday and has met with community leaders, including Assemblymember Rajkumar, to discuss strategies to ensure this happens,” a city hall spokesperson said via email.

“Diwali becoming a holiday is one of our legislative priorities for next year,” they added. 

On October 20, Mayor Eric Adams, state assemblywoman Jenifer Rajkumar, and Department of Education chancellor David Banks announced at a morning conference, that if Rajkumar’s bill passes the legislature, Diwali will become a Department of Education holiday in the 2023 public school calendar. It will replace Anniversary Day, which is typically observed on the first Thursday in June.

The Department of Education told The Bronx Ink that “state regulations around the duration and the length of the school year create limitations to any additional school holidays to the school calendar.” Nonetheless, they added that they are providing teachers with a resource called “Learning About Diwali” that has model lessons for all grade levels K–12 as well as ideas for activities, books, and websites.

Most recently on various evenings, public officials attended Vishnu Mandir during the temple’s nine day Navratri festivities, which celebrates the divine feminine with rituals and offerings made to many goddesses. Among the crowd were Soundview native and Councilmember Amanda Farías (D-Bronx), along with District Leader Ramdat Singh of Riverdale (D-Bronx).

“I love Navrtatri. I think it’s one of the few times in any religion but particularly in Hinduism, where we get to celebrate feminine figures and it’s super empowering,” Farías said. 

Farías took office in January of this year, serving as a council member for District 18 which includes Soundview.  

“Whether it’s in a school, or in a temple, it’s my priority as the elected member to show up for them,” she said. “It is more important to make sure that statewide recognizes Diwali and I think there needs to be more of a conscious push from electors at all levels to get it to the full achievement of being recognized on a larger scale. But from the city perspective we’re working on it.” 

The majority of members of the Vishnu Mandir live in Soundview and have ties to Guyana and the Hindu faith. “Everybody came here for a better life and a better home and I think that fight continues,” Kemraj said. Nearly 12 % of residents in Soundview were born in Guyana, with a high concentration living north of Bruckner Expressway, where the Vishnu Mandir is situated, according to census data .

On this Sunday in October, there were about 50 attendees at the special youth service, who ranged from ages nine to late 80s. Second and third generation immigrants lead the ceremonies. Sunday morning within the Hindu religion is an auspicious time, a staple day of worship — everybody either flocks to temples to pray or prays by their own altars at home.

The Sukul family expects almost 80 attendees for their Diwali weekend celebrations, taking place on Oct. 23 and Oct. 24.  “Almost every year, I have to skip work for Diwali. But when I get a job, I always tell them that I’m a priest, so they know what to expect,” said Sukul.

Small steps are being taken to increase awareness of the celebration. City Hall will hold a Diwali event on Nov. 1 that is also co-hosted by elected officials from various parts of the city, including Farías.

“In a time where there’s so much diversity, I think our community gets a little lost because we want to share our culture, and it’s really sad to see that people are still closed minded or they just don’t know enough to be able to acknowledge what we do and how we do it. So the fight still continues,” Kemraj said.

In the midst of New York City’s housing crisis, in which Mayor Eric Adams has initiated the construction of a tent city for over 10,000 migrants, a huge silver-colored dome-shaped hut made of rigid steel sits between Rosedale and Metcalf — in the middle of Seward Avenue — in Soundview. It’s a reminder that the problem of housing scarcity or affordability is not recent. It dates back almost 76 years, with innovative and arguably questionable emergency housing solutions being prevalent both post-war and today.

The hut is located next to a parking garage that at first glance appears to be abandoned, with a wire fence that is frequently locked surrounding both the garage and the hut.

Technically, it’s known as a Quonset hut and could be one of many that were built in the United States during World War II. They were mostly utilized by the military for a range of things, including barracks, storage, sheds, offices, and hospitals. After that, they were converted into affordable housing for returning veterans who had started families, due to the urgent housing shortage, post-war. The housing shortage however, dates back to the post-depression era between 1929 and 1939. 

WATCH: Bronx Ink reporter Mansi Vithlani takes us inside the hut.

Records indicate that there was an entire neighborhood of Quonset huts in Castle Hill, in the south Bronx, in the late 1940s and early 50s. They were used as temporary housing for returning WWII veterans, nearly 962 families.

The George Fuller construction company is accredited with being the first to produce Quonset huts for the US Navy in 1941. The Quonset hut design however, was influenced by the more intricate Nissen hut design, created by the British during World War I. The Quonset Point neighborhood, a Navy base in Rhode Island, is where the first production site of the huts was located, giving them their name. 

The hut at Soundview is not a remnant of World War II and is now used for storage, according to a New York City Housing Authority spokesperson. NYCHA owns the hut, according to property records. It’s part of Soundview Houses, a development built in 1954. But NYCHA does not know where the hut came from.

A NYCHA spokesperson said they were unaware whether the hut was relocated from another location, such as the Castle Hill hut development and placed in Soundview, or if it was built from scratch for storage. It does, however, serve as a poignant reminder of the housing crisis in the 1900s.

Utilizing NYC Then & Now, from 1951, 1996 and 2004, the Quonset hut in Soundview does not show up until after 1996. 

1951 – No development in Soundview

1996 – No hut

2004 – Hut clearly shown 

1951 – Quonset Hut neighborhood in Castle Hill, Bronx

There was a dire need for veteran housing in the 1940s, and so the Quonset huts were placed in subdivisions, which are divided plots of land for homes for families, as a way to control the ongoing crisis. “The housing emergency was to push public housing again, because it wasn’t there,” said Nicholas Dagen Bloom, a Professor of Urban Policy and Planning.

“From the 30s definitely until the 50s, there was this dominant view that the city needed to be reconstructed and enormous money was available from mostly the state and federal governments to do this (construction) work until the 1960s,” he added. 

Sebastian Mudry, 77, lived in a Quonset hut in Castle Hill with his parents and two younger brothers from 1951. He was about to start kindergarten at the time. “I loved it because we had a place of our own… We had been living at my grandmother’s…And it was overcrowded,” Mudry said.

LISTEN: Sebastian Mudry recalls his move to the Quonsets.

Mudry wrote about his experience in “A Bronx Boys’ Christmas,” a book about a Christmas party for 50 or 60 of the Quonset hut kids, with one hut decorated with festive ornaments and a feast laid out for the children to celebrate the holiday.

He recalls the hut he once called home feeling luxurious at the time, as they had the kerosene stove. “That kept us warm,” Mudry said. There was also a small kitchen and a bathroom in the hut. “(It) had just a shower, I believe, not as I recall a bathtub, just room enough up for an upright shower,” he added.

LISTEN: Mudry explains the layout of the Quonset hut. 

Each hut was divided for two families by a wall, but sound was able to pass through, according to Roger McCormack, director of education at the Bronx County Historical Society. He explains that although the shelters featured kerosene stoves, they were not favored by the majority. “I know there were a number of complaints that they weren’t heated very well, there were leaks, so it was a short period of time for them to live in,” McCormack added. 

The Housing Act 1949 began new significant federal appropriations for public housing to help with the post-war housing shortfall, and according to Bloom, these projects in New York, were pushed by Robert Moses and his ambition in redeveloping the city. 

Research indicates that Robert Moses, known as the “master builder”,  was appointed to the City Planning Commission in 1941, and that he later served as chairman of the Emergency Committee on Housing. Moses decided to take advantage of the surplus huts that were available after the war which could serve as temporary housing by assembling them on vacant land.

“Robert Moses was not a fan of public housing, he didn’t really run it until the mid 1940s, but then when he did, he turned it into a machine for building. He was called the construction coordinator in the post-war year, so all of the money that came to New York had to come through him,” Bloom said.

Moses’ implicit authority over subsidized housing was fully established once he was chosen by Mayor William O’Dwyer to serve as the City Construction Coordinator in 1946. In 1946 huts in Soundview can be traced to Mayor William O’Dwyer. He requested that New York City receive 1,345 Quonset huts that would be constructed in Soundview Park, spanning 148 acres of land, and that the Board of Estimate and the Public Federal Housing Authority provide the temporary housing units.

“Soundview and Castle Hill was always farmland, it was marshy and particularly in the 1940s, it was fairly inhabited, so that’s why they chose that as a location,” McCormack said.

Living in a Quonset gave Mudry the opportunity to live a typical childhood, playing games such as tag, hide-and-seek, red light, green light, 123, and he never encountered bullying. “It was like a city of Quonset huts… it was a delightful experience, ” he added.

LISTEN:  Mudry recalls his experience living in the Castle Hill Quonset.

Within a few years, the families were rehoused into new NYCHA developments if they qualified, Bloom explained. Following a “$57 million city investment” that had started in 1961,  high rise apartment constructions would begin, removing the Quonset huts in the Bronx and replacing them with modern row homes and apartment complexes with multiple units. 

Almost 76 years later, affordable housing units remain a pressing concern for New York City residents. The city is currently experiencing a housing crisis with more than 52,000  homeless people in NYC. 

“It’s such a huge crisis right now. We’ve been talking about the housing crisis for way too long, years, decades, but I didn’t really appreciate it until the other day looking at numbers about just how big the current crisis is and how overwhelming the need is,” said Brendan Cheney, Director of Policy and Communications at the New York Housing Conference.

“Quonset huts and tents, it’s a story right there, right? New York did this,” Bloom said.

In response to the thousands of asylum seekers being brought across the Texas border, Adams ordered the construction of relief centers, referred to as “tent city,” which were initially set up in the Bronx and eventually moved to Randall’s Island as a result of flooding.

“The Quonset huts were really a waystation for a very brief period, and they were erected at the same time the city was launching vast and enormous housing projects on a scale. So there’s that difference. There will be this temporary housing but there really isn’t permanent housing available for the migrants,” Bloom added.

The current housing supply cannot address the crisis as is, and that more federal assistance is required, Cheney explained. “It’s been going on for 70 years, and it’s not, ‘but now we’re finally approaching the end’. No, it could continue for another several years. I hope not, but it’s so frustrating,” he added.

Content warning: This article contains mentions of domestic and gender-based violence.

*Bangla and Bengali are synonymous

K.F. was one of the first to speak. Through a Bengali translator, she described her first marriage —  arranged in Bangladesh  — when she was 16 years-old. K.F. (her name is being withheld for her safety) divorced and migrated to the U.S. where she was abused by her second husband.

K.F. is one of about a dozen South Asian women from mostly the Bronx who gathered in a virtual circle, via Zoom, last Thursday. Several of the women who participate in the weekly session are survivors of domestic violence. 

The circle is led by women from Sapna NYC, the first and only non-profit organization in the Bronx that provides services for low-income South Asian immigrant women. It was formed in 2008 in response to a growing Asian community. In 2008 there were 11,132 residents of Asian descent in the Soundview and Parkchester area, compared to 14,946 in 2021, according to census data.

R.S. sounded frustrated as she spoke about applying for jobs. She’s not able to work a strict 9-to-5 job because she has to look after her child, making it difficult for her to find employment. R.S (her name is being withheld for her safety) was married in her early twenties, abused in her marriage and is now a single mother. She has a master’s degree and wants to gain her financial independence, according to Naurin Islam, Deputy Director of Sapna NYC and translator for the womens’ circle. 

An increase in incidents

When Sapna started providing assistance for mental health last year, they said that between April to June, 11 women received services. In the same quarter of 2022, 34 women received counseling, and in the second quarter of 2022, 187 women were counseled. Now, the number usually hovers between 50 and 60 per month. The women who come to Sapna have either endured verbal abuse, physical violence, or both.

In the Bronx, there were 20,688 family-related domestic incident reports in 2021, compared to 14,728 cases in 2020, according to The Mayor’s Office to End Domestic and Gender-Based Violence (ENDGBV). 

Community Board 9, which includes Parkchester and Soundview, had the highest number of reports of family-related domestic incidents (2,719) out of the borough’s 12 community boards, with the lowest being Community Board 8 (Riverdale and Fieldston), according to the 2021 study.

The city offers support to domestic abuse survivors and their children, and manages a number of Family Justice Centers throughout New York City.

The Bronx Family Justice Center has a disproportionately high percentage of South Asian clients from Parkchester (zip code 10462), Islam said. Additionally, that  Family Justice Center has the highest number of clients who speak Bengali, according to Islam. Sapna serves the entire South Asian community, but because of their Parkchester location, they mostly assist the Bangladeshi American community.

The city data does not break down the number of domestic violence cases by ethnicity, but at the Bronx Family Justice Center located in Concourse Village, Bangladesh is one of the top ten countries of birth of clients seeking support, according to Beth Seibold, Senior Communications Advisor with the mayor’s office, ENDGBV.

“There is very little information about our communities which means that a lot of times, if you don’t exist in numbers, you don’t exist, and your needs don’t exist,” said Diya Basu-Sen, Executive Director of Sapna NYC. 

BRONX FJC:

Bronx FJC clients reported 72 different countries of birth

Top 10: Country of birth for Bronx FJC clients (not including the United States)

In many cases, the women seeking help are subjected to verbal and physical abuse by their spouses and remain compliant since the husband supports the family financially, Basu-Sen said.

“Ladies are confused about what to do and whether they should compromise with their husband. If they don’t compromise, then they have to get out of the house, but this is not good for the children,” explained Laila Khairun-Nahar, who works in Case Management and Outreach at Sapna.

Mental health stigma and language barriers 

Both directors, Islam and Basu-Sen, point out that a large portion of the population experiences poverty, loneliness, unemployment, low levels of English literacy, and depression. Many are mothers who do not know how to advocate for themselves or for their children.

“Sometimes they probably don’t know (what domestic violence is) because they don’t really think they’re being abused,” said Nafisa Subhan, Program Associate at Sapna NYC. 

Sapna received a foundation grant from the Cabrini Foundation in 2021, to hire a mental health counselor, Arpita Chatterjee, who is fluent in Bangla.

“A lot of domestic violence survivors are now referring their friends and say, ‘Oh, I think you can go and get help’, whether it’s for applications, whether it’s for counseling, whether it’s for the women’s circle, or simply to just build from scratch a new community,” Chatterjee said.

Sapna developed the Mukti mental health program in 2021, and according to their study, 20% of South Asian women reported having personally experienced domestic abuse from a spouse in the previous five years. Nearly 50% of respondents said they knew at least one other woman who had endured physical or emotional abuse. 

“There’s a lot of unmet needs in the South Asian community in the Bronx, and so Sapna was born to address this gap in services and also to create a safe space particularly for women,” Basu-Sen said. 

“In our communities there’s a lot of stigma around mental health, so it’s not necessarily something people are used to doing, such as having a counseling session. So we have the women’s circle that people can either do so they meet other women and feel happier,”  Basu-Sen added.

Volunteers removed 47 bags of trash from the Bronx River on Saturday during International Coastal Cleanup Day. The event, which is held yearly on the third weekend of September, was hosted by The Bronx River Alliance.

This is the first time since the pandemic that the coastal cleanup returns to Soundview Park at such a large scale, according to Victoria Toro, a Bronxite and the Community Outreach Coordinator of The Bronx River Alliance. 

“People are giving up their Saturday to clean up garbage, that’s pretty damn cool,” said Christian Murphy, Ecology Coordinator at the Bronx River Alliance.

There are three main pollutants to the river of which floatable trash is one of them, according to the Bronx River Alliance’s research. 

The Bronx Community Board 9 district’s 2023 budget request, of which Soundview is part of, states there is a greater urgency to “maintain and supervise” the local parks and playgrounds. 

“There’s not a lot of green spaces in the Bronx, and they don’t have as many trees compared to other boroughs in New York City, so whatever we can do to keep these parks healthy and happy is really important to the community,” said Murphy.

Groups of volunteers each concentrated on a specific section of the Bronx River, collecting trash while recording their findings via a tracking sheet, highlighting the type and amount of trash they had collected. 

Ocean Conservancy will use the information gathered from the Soundview event and other worldwide locations to learn more about the types of trash that are entering the environment, developing policies that could have an impact in both the United States and other countries.

“Volunteers are helping collect important data that is going to inform advocacy, policy and action, not only for non-profit organizations, but also political agencies and governments,” said Toro

The 23-mile Bronx River serves as a gateway to the Atlantic Ocean, where litter that passes through New York Harbor and Long Island Sound could eventually end up.

 “There are so many people in the city, this [event] should be as crowded as a marathon,” said Yonkers resident Cadecia Forgnie.

Volunteers most often found wrappers, bottle caps, and plastic bottles along the shoreline. A car engine, half of a dishwasher unit, pacifiers, a fire extinguisher, a kids’ play mat, and a large pillow were among some of the more unusual objects. 

The Bronx River Alliance started the process of cleaning up and rehabilitating the river in 1974, advocating for the equitable restoration of the Bronx River. 

According to their annual report, in 2020 a total of 2500 bags of trash were removed from the river, 1000 native species were planted, and 335K square feet of invasive growth were eliminated. 

Volunteer, Oscar Asencio-Ramos, and his wife have been living in Soundview for 38 years and regularly attend events held by The Bronx River Alliance.

“We live in the neighborhood, we use the park and we want to walk through and see a clean park with no garbage all over the place and the waterfront clean.”