A year in the United States…
I have been thinking about putting down my thoughts for quite some time now, and finally I manage…my very first blog, and what do I have for a topic, well yes I do need a topic… I needed something to write about; just compiling my random and trivial thoughts wouldn’t make sense to anyone. After trying to gauge the direction of my thoughts for a few days, I realized that the rudder, of late, has been pointing mostly one way…and that was the completion of one year in this amazing country - that is ‘The United States’. All the best to those who have dared to reach my territory and plan to proceed ahead with reading my first blog.
It’s been a little more than one year and two weeks since I landed in this country – the land of liberty. That fateful Sunday when I landed at Boston after a marathon 37 hour long flight still lingers pretty clear in my mind. The fact that my company decided to send me and a few others, five of us, via the longer route (they sent us via Thailand, Japan, Chicago – Boston) did not perturb me much as I have an uncanny knack of managing to catch a sleep in the most uncomfortable of positions. I was sleeping during the entire flight sans the meals when my colleague would wake me up and also for a brief duration when were flying over the snow clad Alaska Range and we all were trying to capture that beautiful landscape in our cameras. We landed at the Logan airport pretty late in the evening, and not so surprisingly I was still under the shock of being away from my family and home.
On my landing here, there was one thing about myself which surprised me a lot, and it took a few days to figure out what was happening. I was definitely missing my dad, my mom, my sister, my fiancé, my home...and all that I had left back but I was more overawed by this new place where I had landed. The novelty of this alien land and the curiosity of my mind which started evaluating each and every thing that was different here kept the gloom away for a while. I realized later that I could enjoy the liberty of exploring this new place only because I didn’t have to bother about anything, be it about gathering my luggage, reporting missing baggage, assurance that I won’t lose my baggage but will get them in 24 hrs, looking out for a cab, locating our hotel and all those nitty gritties that you have be on top of to carry on. I didn’t have to bother about these as I had Biren by my side, who had been here before and knew all about how to handle these. Of the five people that had traveled together only the two of us were for the same destination, and Biren was to be my roommate later. If not for Biren, my entry into this country would have been more difficult and more troublesome. Having someone by your side, who is experienced, really does help. Biren was not only an experienced fellow he was a ‘walking encyclopedia’ – gifted with such a good memory and so much of knowledge.
I would spare you the emotional melodrama that followed for the next few months as I started missing my family and home more and more each day. Adjusting to the work was not all that easy for me, and that fact that I was recently engaged and had a fiancé waiting there in India for me made things only worse. The lull in our voices when we talked was more than evident and made both of us realize how hard it was to get along like this. Fortunately this ‘long period’ was cut down soon as I was to travel back to India for my marriage. Being able to go back, meet everyone, and spend whatever little time was possible did spare all of us a lot of further emotional turbulence. Good times were back again. Marriage was eventful; writing about it here won’t justify its significance though, as it needs a bigger space and more words. I will make sure that I write about it some time later. So for now, I am back here after my marriage, with my wife by my side still missing my parents, sister, home and friends though…
Let me cut short my long story and tell you what exactly I have been thinking over the last few days, after completing one whole cycle of a colorful fall, snowy winter, drizzling spring and a burning summer. I have been thinking about what I have gained or learned over the last one year and what I have missed or lost. This is what I have learned – I learned that this is a place where people respect honesty so much, I learned that there could be a place where you actually see so many law abiding people, learned that there could be a place where people are ‘so social’ yet so independent (I know of a few colleagues at office, who other than programming also do fishing, farming, gardening, building his own home…and what not), I have learned that the climate here is so extreme from freezing cold to burning hot, learned that you do have to hibernate here for almost 4 months with only 8 calendar months to enjoy the natural beauty that surrounds, learned that you really need to look out eagerly for all the weekends and long weekends that you get and make the most out of it, learned that fall colors really are so beautiful, learned how a snow fall feels and how to drive on two narrow black lines in a sea of white, learned that sometimes it takes more time to try and get inside your car than the time you would spend driving (I am talking about the time it takes to clean all the snow and ice from the car), learned that the sun here might rise as early as before 5 and can set as late as near 9 (fortunately not on the same day), learned that a couple of hours of rain is enough to flood the roads here (and people curse the BMC for failing to plan for a 100 cm rainfall), learned that the system here is so people friendly that they change the time so that people do not have to alter their body clocks and so that there can be some ‘daylight savings’ (sad that car companies only spoil this effort of daylight saving by building cars with automatic system that lets the light on even on a broad daylight, so much for ‘daylight savings’), I learned that though this place is the center of the worlds attention the vice versa is not true – here the world starts and ends here itself - only a ‘Tsunami’ or a ‘Gulf War’ can make them think of an outside world, learned that there can be a ‘world football series’ with only American college teams taking part, learned that here people are so passionate that they will go all out to pursue their hobbies (to the extent that they would carry a boat, cycle or a small home (RV) with their car).
There is so much that I learned about this place that I cannot accommodate everything in writing, I did learn a few other things too. ..like I found how blissful married life is, learned to grow up and come out of the shadows of my parents to run a house, take decisions, manage day to day activities, learned how important it is to have a circle of friends whom you can count on, learned to lose small fights so that you don’t lose a good friend….and a lot more things that have made me professionally better.
As with everything in life (you know the thing about two sides of a coin), I too lost and missed a lot during the last year…staying away from my home, parents sister (and fiancé for some time) has been the biggest loss, I miss those mornings when I could wake up and read the newspaper leisurely having my favorite cup of tea (reading online is no fun friends), those hectic activities during the early morning when everyone is preparing to go their way for work, those congested roads with only a few stretches for non-stop driving (driving an automatic does not give that same kick), those colleagues at office, those roadside no-nonsense dhabas/restaurants where you could munch your favorite tandoors with your friends, those weekends when your neighbors little child would come up to your place and keep everyone on their toes, those evenings where you could go to the temple with your family for silent prayer amongst a sea of people, those moments when I failed to be by my dads side and he had to manage everything alone - be it the arrangements for my marriage or be it those for my sisters engagement…and so many other things which I miss so much…
All this makes me sit and think…well was it really worth coming here, have I achieved what I wanted to, how happy am I the way I am right now, I don’t I have the best answer right now, it will take some soul searching for me to answer that…but one thing is for sure…life goes on, no matter what…but its important that you make those things, that you miss, a part of life. Life is not about missing things and getting used to missing them, life is about missing things, still missing them every day, yearning to get them back...and then one fine day – finding all that you have missed and not missing them anymore….that’s the essence!!
Cheers,
Anand
