America Through My Eyes – First Holidaying

Days passed fast in America. Without my notice first weekend arrived. I woke up at around 9:30am on Saturday morning; that too when Raju called me. “Wanna have donuts?”

Since I had no other work and the term “Donut” was new to me, I agreed. Donut Den was a coffee shop, straight out of a picture postcard, situated just beside of our apartment complex. We bought coffee and glazed donuts and come out to sit in the sun. Actually we sat under the garden umbrella outside of the shop. There was a cool Pacific breeze coming down from the Palos Verdes. I learned Palos Verdes was the most costliest real estate area after Bverly Hills in California. And it was just the opposite side of the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) on which our apartment complex was. Cigarette, Coffee, Donut – a perfect combination. We chatted for a long time. At noon time we came back and straight-away went for bath. Then we go to KFC for its famous fried chicken. We took the number 1 combo. Two large pieces of chicken fry with mashed potato and coleslaw – Perfect! We came back late in the afternoon around 4pm. Sheikh was out to play football. Here let me remind you Americans, that when we say football, we mean “foot” + “ball” , i.e. soccer; not that structured hooliganism or the deadlier form of rugby. I loved playing football. But I missed this first opportunity to play that in a foreign soil. Next time.

I went to take a nap. Around 7pm when I woke up, everybody was watching The Shawshank Redemption. The movie was rented from Netflix. Nice movie. This Netflix was a nice scheme. Register online, choose your subscription and the movie will be delivered to your door step in original DVD. They had a formidable collection of movies. Still I found its collection could still be increased. It did not had many movies that I knew of, such as, the cult dance movie, Fast Forward.

Sunday morning we did the same thing of going to Donut Den and consumed donuts and coffee. Later it became a ritual for me for the weekends, till I left that place. When we came back Dhrub was jumping around. As per him that was the best day to go to beach. The weather was ideal. So we honored that self-styled weatherman, and headed off to Redondo Beach. Except Shibu, he had to study, everyone else hopped into Dhrub’s car – a Toyota Camry. Huge car. Ample space for leg and head. Dhrub parked the car in a small by-lane a few hundred meters away from the beach. This was because near the beach, there was paid parking of 25c for 30mins. And since we were the greatest fans of Uncle Scrooge, we follow the motto “saved is earned”.

We walked to the beach. Beautiful beach! Unlike beaches in our country there was no hawker, no crowd – a complete serene environment. Bright sunlight reflecting from the water as if million diamonds were sparkling. I got the picture why people call it “Sunny California”. In the bottle green water at a distance where the waves were breaking there were surfers. That was a new thing for me. There were people playing beach vollyball in a permanent court on the sand. There was a concrete path along the sand line. this was for joggers, sketers and cyclists. Fitness freak America!

It was much later, that I understood why they were so much crazy about fitness. Its not just for looking good. Medical care was highly expensive in America. So prevention was better than cure.

There were lots of scantily dressed babes on the beach. Nice eye candy. In fact we were most heavily dressed on the beach at that time. I realized two things, first, not all bikini-clads were beautiful and second, in our beaches if we found any bikini-clad girl, she became an instant sensation to us. Whereas, here these dress is so much plentiful, it did not arouse that much enthusiasm. It was a good proof of the fact that, scarcity made things precious.

Anyway, we sat on the sand smoked a few cigarettes then we went for the pier. Before that we also went to have a feel of the water. In that summer day even, how cold it was! I would not be able to bathe here! The pier was nicely converted into a hangout place complete with shops of all kind. We roamed around for some more time then went to Pizza Hut for lunch and then back to base.

It was Monday again. This week I had to shadow Manu. And next week Manu would shadow me. And the week after Manu would go back home. And slowly I will be the sole responsible person to our project at on site. Foreign locale, unknown work – this was our life in this profession. Everybody in this business started like this am not the first person.

Monday I reached office before Manu. Cathy and Dave were busy at their respective workstations. The moment I turned on my machine Cathy peeked from her cube next to mine. “I think the site is down, dear! We got tickets from dealers across the country. Can you please check?”, she said.  What was she saying??!!! I was perplexed for a moment. Immediately I hit the URL on my browser and that damn thing slapped on my face with “Page Can Not Be Found” message. I was numb on my fingers. I was totally puzzled – what to do now!! First I tried to call Manu but could not reach him. Then I called the Server Support Group(SSG). These specialized people were there to look after our servers round the clock. The first thing that came into my mind is that it must be some OS or hardware issue as there has been no new change since the year 2000 in the codebase. They said they are alrady aware of the situation and they think its related to code. I was new and could not defend myself. I tried to run the application in sub-prod envt and it ran successfully. I ran it locally and it ran there too. Kirsten came by,”What’s going on?” “I do not know yet. I will let you know once I found something.”, I fumbled. I knew this was causing lose of business for the client. At this moment Manu entered. I ran to him. I told him the situation. He calmly said,”Rubbish!! Our code does not have any issue. Its their rotton server, that is creating problem. Am gonna set up a con-call with the SSG. You also join and see what am doing there.”

Con-call started. There were 4 person in the call. Manu and me at one side and the Server Engineer and his manager. Initially nobody had the slightest idea of the issue and both sides were trying to push the ball to each other very politely. Then Manu asked the Engineer to check certain server health parameters like memory usage, network connection and all. He was following his instructions. Then suddenly that guy started shouting over the phone, “Sabotage!! There must be a hacking attempt in our system!” Now this is new; like a hollywood movie! There was an uncanny lull for a minute or so. Then first spoke the manager.”
“Why you thing that this is a sabotage?”
-”I have never seen in my 6years of server administration so much of memory usage. Its using 100% and that’s why the server got hung.”
-”Ok, fine can you please restart the box? And if you are so sure of the sabotage then please do a RCA(Root Cause Analysis) next.”
-”To restart a production box I need a permission.”
This time Manu pitched in, “I think you already have a Severity 1 issue at hand. And since the site is down so there is no point that any user will be affected anyway. Please go ahead.”

Server restarted and like a magic everything came back to normal. Much relived now I ran to Mukti. “Hey, what’s that all about hacking attempt?”

Manu smiled like the wise Buddha.”Sometimes it happens. One process in the server goes deadlock and it slowly starts eating up all the resorces of the server. That way sometimes memory gets full. Comeon you should know that!”
-”Agreed but what if it is true?”
-”Fine, you heard the manager. They are going for the RCA, right? We will see then. Now lets get back to work. Shall we?”

That RCA never came. And thus I got the first feel of a real crisis at client place.

America Through My Eyes – First Steps

I had landed on Sunday and from Monday had to join office. There was a problem in public transportation out here. It seemed California was a land of rich people. Everybody had car out here. In a family there could be several cars! Two wheelers were luxury! After all, it was the land of Hurley-Davidson!

In our apartment also we had two cars. Sheikh and Dhrub were the owners of them respectively. Rest three of us got free carpool from them. First day I went to office with Sheikh. His car was also a two door jet-black coup – Nissan 200SX. It had a sleek look. I liked the car. Though automatic transmission had largely taken out the charm of good old driving, still the kid had a good hand in driving. When we reached office I was surprised to see that the parking lot is bigger that the main office building! Crazy Americans! They are taking full advantage of low population density. I heard that it was a rule or something that, a company had to keep enough parking space for all its employees. May be;  this was something that was never possible in our country.

I had to go to reception first. There Sheikh had to introduce me, and the lady gave me a visitor sticker. Now straight to third floor. One good thing I noticed, in US there was no ground floor. Rather the erstwhile ground floor was first floor. One thing at last similar to our country! Sheikh left me at Manu’s cube. After formal greeting each other Manu showed me my cube nearby. In my cube there was a surprise welcome waiting for me! In front of the pc there was a nice welcome note along with a sheet containing useful instructions for a first time user to that machine. I recalled my joining to my company. It took 15days just to get a sitting position in my office! The computer came much late and I had to run pillar to post just to configure that computer with basic things, like, mail and all. But later I came to know that this welcome was an exception. America, or at least this company, is not very different from my company in these matters.

Next Manu introduced me to rest of my team members. Cathey, Dave, Kirsten and a desi Amol. Desi literally means indigenous. But in America the slanged generalization for all the people from Indian Sub-continent were Desi. Funny! One thing I noticed Americans are a bit more animated. They showed off a little extra emotion all the time. Sometimes it feels artificial. Kirsten and the rest of the people greeted me as if I am a film star or they knew me from the day I was born and very fond of me. But later understood this is how American’s behave. It’s their culture. And they expected the same in return.

If you come across an American while walking on the side-walk and accidentally you look into the eyes of that fellow, then you have to greet him with ‘Hi’ with the warmth as if that stranger is your high school buddy! Failing so was tantamounting to rudeness. On the other hand, if we do the same to one of the desi in our own country, chances are that you might get a public beating for molestation. Strange world!!

On the very first day I experienced 3 ‘cultural shocks’. First two were in the break room. In our country this type of room had only coffee machine and drinking water tap. Here in addition to that there were microwave, coke vending machine and a huge fridge. Out of curiosity I opened the fridge. Was astonished to find it jam-packed with various foods. Methought, may be the company has provided these choices of food for all its employees. After all America is rich. A “Snickers” took my fancy. I was about to take it, then I thought otherwise. Better of me told me, this was too good to be true. Let’s first clarify my doubt. It’s just the first day in the office. So I went to the water cooler. Of all the water coolers that I had come across, all had the tap right below the hot or cold water button. So I put the paper glass right below the cold water button and pressed it. Immediately water started flowing from the side of the damn machine! It created a huge mess on the floor. I quickly wiped that out with a paper towel. First day at the office and I was doing a janitor’s work! What luck!

While I was doing so, I realized that the cooler had only one nozzle to pour both cold and warm water. And to my bad luck it was on one side of that. On my way to return to my desk, I dropped by Manu’s desk,”I noticed there were lots of goodies in the fridge. What was that for?” I queried. “It was the collective food of all, who work here. They bring it for their own consumption.” smiled Manu. Cold sweat ran down through my spine. I realized what a mistake I almost did.

Just imagine if I had taken that chocolate and started eating that. And the rightful owner of that entered the break-room and caught me red-handed! Oh my god!!

The third shock came a bit late in that fateful day. In response to nature’s call I was walking down to the bathroom, sorry, ‘restroom’. Unknowingly, I was walking through the left side of the aisle. I was a lady was coming by her right side from opposite direction towards me. Now I committed two crimes unknowingly. First, I did not greet her the usual ‘Hi-Hello’ way, meaning I was rude. Secondly, I was walking on the wrong side and directly blocking her way. This was outrageous and savage. She rightfully punished me with a stern gage. I immediately understood and quickly moved out of her way.

Lunch time! Now I was in a fix. The office compound was huge. It was not possible to walk out and look for road-side food joint. Moreover, I had noticed, there was hardly any. Only option was office canteen. I was hesitant. New place and top of that 3 shocks successfully wrecked my confidence. So first I went to Sibu, but he was going out with somebody else. I went to Kohl, sitting in the next cube. “What canteen yaar(=friend)! Let’s go out.”, he suggested. Seeing me hesitant he added,”Don’t worry, we will go in my car and the expense will be similar to that of the canteen.” On the way to the parking lot he asked,”What do you wanna eat? Chinese, Japanese, Tandoori or American?”“Anything but Tandoori”, I grumbled. “Don’t be hasty on the very first day. Let’s have rice and chicken curry just like mother’s cooking.”, smiled Kohl. I was surprised. How can we have our home style rice-chicken curry in America of all places? He took me to a Malaysian restaurant. It was nice and cozy. He ordered “Curry Chicken”. And a bowl of rice came free. Really homely cooking, only thing was that, they used coconut oil as cooking medium instead of mustard oil.

After coming back to office I started taking knowledge transfer from Manu, as am the reliever of him.

In the evening Sheikh gave me the lift to home. Slowly rest of the 5 of us came in. Dhrub straightaway went for cooking. Rests were on their own. If one was watching TV, then another was on his office laptop either for working or just surfing the net. I was trying to strike a conversation whoever I get hold of. Raju seemed a bit quite that day. He was busy with office work, talking to his offshore team and working at the same time. I learned that we all had one night allocated for cooking. 5 persons 5 working days. For the 2days of weekend arrange for your own food. Good arrangement. My turn is on Thursday.

Now the problem is I never cooked in my life – never needed to. If it was just for me then I might manage, but the problem is what am gonna cook everybody else was going to eat that. So the food had to be edible. Seeing me worried everybody tried their best to boost me up. I took no chance. Straight away went for egg. Eternal egg! So on my turn the menu was egg curry and rice. It passed fairly. I was at the top of the world at the first shot I made something edible. Raju even asked me,” Are you telling the truth that you never cooked before?”

America through my Eyes – The Flight

I was entering the international terminal for the first time. The feeling was comparable to the first day at school. I knew nothing, had to learn on hte rope for the first time. Saw a person was calling all passengers who had suitcase for wrapping that with polythene sheet, obviously for a price. Slowly I walked up to the Singapore airlines counter. There was an elderly booking clerk setting behind the desk. After submitting my ticket I asked her almost apologitically, “Excuse me, can I have windowseat?” After going through her computer screen, she informed me that I could have a window seat till Singapore . But from there onwards it woould not be possible. So I asked for isle seat for the second leg of the journey. But that is also denied. So I left it to her discretion. I got the boarding passes.
Now the next hurdle is weighing of check-in luggeges. The weight came as 36kilograms. 4kgs more than the permissible limit for each check-in luggage. My heart was throbbing, as if, I have just made  100mts sprint world record. It was beating more so as the guy just in front of me had to pay an extra charge of 1800 bucks for extra weight in his luggage. To my utter surprise, the guard standing there did not say a thing. He simply put that luggage in the conveyor belt for loading. Good bye suitcase, see you in States.
Next stop was at the immegration counter. Seeing me profusely sweating he smiled and said, “First time, I presume?” “Yes”, I replied with an uncomfortable smile. He gave me an I04 Form to fill up. While I was filling he started hob-nobbing with me, a typical charecteristics of our community. Some of his relative has also been to Us from our company itself. And its not that frightening to travel international etc.etc. He was visibly upset when I admitted that I don’t know his that famous relative. I thought of arguing that its next to impossible to know all of the 100 thousand plus employees of our company, but stopped short. It was futile to logic with some people.
Now the final hurdle, – security check. There I was asked to open a specific pocket of my cabin luggage. Out came the most deadly weapon in the world – a nail cutter! The security person keenly examined it and somehow let me pass. What a relief!
Inside, it was a sprawling lounge. I was looking for a place to seat, when somebody called me by my name! I was surprised to here my name, specially here of all places! To my utter disbelief I saw Naruda, big brother Naru! What a pleasent surprise! He was an ex-colleague of mine in this same company. He left the company some time back. “What on earth are you doing here?”, I asked after sitting next to him. He informed me that he is now with an Australian energy company and currently posted in Jakarta. He came home on vacation and now going back. We will take the same Singapore Airlines flight to Singapore. There on we would part ways, - he to Jakarta and me to LA.

Public Address System called for boarding of our flight. First, Business Class, then us. Sometimes I wonder, the world has harped long for equality and abolishment of class system. how fake it is! Anyway, the plane was almost empty. On each row there was hardly more than 2 passengers. On my row I was only one in the 3seat block along the left window. Naruda had a seat 4-5 rows behind. After everybody settled down, he came over to sit beside me. Dot 11:55pm the plane took off. The city below first became a LEGO city, then disappeared behind the clouds. I have seen this so many times before. Still it catches my fancy! Good bye motherland! It would be long before I see you again!

Now started the interesting part.

Naruda, being a veteran of long distant flight, instantly became my guru. He professed that to fight the plight of a long distant flight in the crampy seating of Economy class, there is nothing like drinking to the throat and be oblivious to the surrounding. So we started our drinking spree. As if we were competing against each other. We settled for Jhonny Walker Red Lebel, as that was the best available on board. On the rocks it was! The airhostess first complied our request for a refill for first 3-4 times. Then she learned it quickly that we were not going to stop any sooner. So she brought a tray with a total of six glass, 3 each. This stopped us bugging her till the end of our journey till Singapore. Drinking makes me silent where as Naruda became elloquent. And he stopped chattering only when the plane touched down in the Singapore airport.

The plane reached Singapore at dawn. There was light drizzle outside. Now I was so drunk that I could not stand on my own feet. I was frightened like hell. How would I walk out of the plane with my cabin luggage? let alone find my terminal!! Naruda was rock solid, after all a veteran of drinking world! He literally became my gurdian angel. He held me by elbow and supported me out of the plane. It was so clean posture that a passers-by will think two old buddies as going for a walk. Or atleast I thought so. After scanning my boarding pass he decided which way to go to reach my terminal. As we walked I found a fascinating mode of transportation. I was all along thinking this as a great idea to have some sort of mechanism as escalator in plain level which will speed up a person’s movement to one direction as well as will help an aged person or a lazy person like me to move in one direction without putting a single step forward. Travellator - broke my hope of joining in the league of great inventors. When we reached my terminal, it was totally deserted. As my flight is the next one on this terminal and we reached there two and half hours early. Naruda had to immediately bid adieu as his flight is in less than an hour. Here on am totally alone. Even when I reach US then also I will be alone till I make new friends there. I know nobody over there. But I was in no mental state then to feel the magnitude of the situation. I hurriedly sent him off, I had to catch up sleep.

It was too noisy when I woke up from my slumber. After all the queue is about to form for security check-in. The sleep has made me fresh. I saw a cyber kiosk nearby. Went there and keyed in some mails to my friends and family about my whereabouts. Then hurriedly came back to the queue.
At last I was caught red-handed with the weapon of mass destruction. The officials there did not allow me this time to travel with the nail cutter. They took it in their custody and gave me a slip which I need to show to the airlines officials at LAX airport. Upon receiving that slip they will hand me over the instrument. It was the biggest plane in Boeing stable - 777. Double decker. But it was filled to the gas tank! My seat is the second from the right in the central column of 4seats. I could not see the take-off this time. Next stop is Tokyo. It will be a half hour stop for refuelling before crossing the pacific for long 9hrs flight. Frustrated, Uncomfortable with seat, I ordered for another series of Red Lebel. Now on the pattern was drolling and awake only when having food or another round of drink.

The flight reached Tokyo at local time 6:30pm. Sun was still up. Passengers were asked to disembark from the plane as they wanted to clean it. It was already stinky. I was much relieved to get off. With my duffle bag I followed the rest of the crowd to our designated wating lounge. Then after reaching there I started surveying the lounge and its surroundings. This airport is totally different from Singapore. Singapore was more like a shopping center than an airport.

An interesting event happened before re-boarding. Another set of security check. The Japanese security personnel did not knew Queens language and I did not knew any international language other than that. The communication was solely in the world’s most primitive form of communication – sign language.  But probably my sign language did not satisfy them,  so I had to remove my shoes, belt and what not. Half naked, I passed the security check.

The plane took-off for the last lap of the journey. Its a 9 hours flight over the Pacific. I was a bit uncomfortable with the idea, as if there was and need for emergency landing then we are doomed. I saw in the monitor in front of me the flight path of bow-shape and the convex side towards the north. Its not just me, even the flight planners also had the same fear of mine and that’s why they kept the path as close to land as possible. I smiled to myself. After the take-off all the windows were closed by the air hostesses. That ended the contact with the outside world. Now one can’t tell if its day or night. Its depressing. I decided to engage myself in waching movie in vein. So again I had to fall back to Red Label. Only problem was, drinking for such a long duration resulted in dehydration. And water was scarce on the plane. Necessity is the mother of invention. I found a novel way to quench my thirst. I was taking all the drinks on the rocks. I did not let them take away the empty glasses. Rather I kept the glasses aside to let the ice melt. Voila water!! A few drops; still precious.

Slowly fatigue, exhaustion and thirst took the better of me. I slipped into a trance-like state.  My this state was accentuated by the fact that right after take-off from Tokyo all the windows were closed down by the airhostesses. What followed is a grim darkness punctuated by the reading lamps burning here and there.

I was feeling drowsy. It was like that for several hours; interrupted occasionally by the tap on my shoulder from the airhostesses for the sole purpose of food servings. Then suddenly opened the window and a burst of sunshine flooded the entire area. Since the plane was flying high up, the sun rays were totally horizontal.

With the plane moving so fast, the light rays were playing like kaleidoscope. As if some little kids were playing in the field. Total surreal experience.

I blinked my eyes and looked at the monitor, the GPS system shows that the plane was flying over the San Francisco towards South East. In an hour or so she will land in LAX. I got the message - no more sleep.

Due to the dehydration teamed up with alcohol my mouth was totally dried up. My tongue felt like dried straw. I thought, we will get out of this shit-hole very soon. Lets check out the toilet. Armed with the world’s smallest toothbrush and toothpaste, courtesy the lovely air-hostess, I went to the toilet. I was really impressed by the compact design of that matchbox of a space. Though I had previous experience of flying, those were in domestic routes, shorter duration. Never felt the need to go to the toilet. This was my first experience of the toilet of an aeroplane so to say.

Touch down!!

Everybody seemed relieved that at long last their feet will be on firm land again. In the mean time I have already filled up the mandatory I-94 form, required by any foreign national landing in US soil for immigration purpose. To help me fill this I had a print out of a similar form already filled with my details. So I took my duffel bag and set-off for the gate to disembark. The airport was no doubt clean but shabby. It need a face-lift. Actually after seeing Singapore and Tokyo airport my expectation was sky-high. I think am becoming an expert in airport aesthetics. Any jobs?

Anyway, we were led to the Immigration area. There was a huge crowd queuing to get into America – The Land of Dreams!

While standing in the line for my turn two things happened. First, I saw people carrying one green colored form along with the I-94, which I did not had. I enquired about that and learned, that was a declaration form about what am carrying in my luggage. I had to leave the line to go to a desk at the wall to fill this form. This was one funny form. It asks questions like if am bringing any agricultural product, or, any seeds! Though I had some rice with me, I worte ”NO”. As that was for me to eat and get the feel of my far away homeland. It also asks how much money am carrying with me, etc., etc. After filling the form I again came back to the line. Now happened the second thing. It was scarier than the first one. When I left home, Ma (=mother) gave me some Siddhi(=Cannabis) in a small packet for good luck. In our religion Siddhi has a profound presence. The name Siddhi itself means “success”. There is this believe that consuming or simply having this in person can bring in success or in other words, it can help to overcome any obstacles that may come in your way. I forbade Ma that it could be dangerous to carry that to US, as there, it is totally banned and can bring in severest punishment. But at last, poor me carrying that dangerous element in my purse in my hip pocket, standing in the queue at the immigration area of the LAX airport. And there came this dog and its master to sniff me. I was stone -statue, trying to cover my hip pocket with my duffel bag, hanging from my shoulder. After some agonizing moments this dog proved that he is still man’s best friend and moved on without raising any alarm.

Next was easy. The immigration officer asked me some trivial questions like why came to US, how long am intending to stay, etc. And the process ended with a photo and fingerprint of mine. I moved to the carousel for my luggage. Seeing a Singapore airlines personnel standing nearby, I walked up to her and showed her the slip that I was carrying from Singapore for my nail-cutter. She talked to the walkie-talkie and informed that the thing has not reached yet, so I can go to the Airlines counter outside the airport to report that. I gave up. Will see if I could get any other thing to trim my nails. I took off to the exit with the trolly having my luggage.

There was a huge crowd standing outside. I took out my company ID and started dangling that. A bespectacled guy apporched me.

Kohl came with Raju to pick me up from the airport. Raju is going to me my room-mate. We went to the parking lot. First shock! Never saw a parking structure before. Second shock! Never rode a coup before. His toyota was a coup. Raju let me seat in front. He told me this is the custom here. Whoever comes or goes back got the priviledge to ride in front for the first and last time respectively. Everything was new to me. And I had only my Nokia N70 to use as camera. So I stretched out my hand and started recording in video mode. Kohl asked, “You have desi fag?” I smiled to know that in the land of Marlboro my fellow countrymen are still looking for their own country products. I said, “Actually Ma packed my bag so I could only brought one pack of Gold Flake in my pocket.” He took one of them. I had to let him had it. Afterall, he took the pain in picking me up from airport!

“So, how are you feeling in America?” asked him.”It is not that scary as I thought. Here also people walks on the ground, it seems.”, was my reply. Our destination Torrance is a subburb, around 30miles south-west of Los Angeles.

Kohl drove through CA-1, aka, Pacific Coast Highway to my home away from home, Willow Tree Apartments. I learned later this road is the one of the most beautiful roads of California. It runs north-south all along the famous coast lines of California. Fascinating scenic beauty are plenty and strewn all through the road.

After unloading the luggage from the car I followed Raju to our apartment G-101. Immediately after I entered the room, I fall in love of that. It was a beautiful apartment. It was a 2BHK Apartment in advertisement lingo, complete with wall to wall carpeting. I did not had a calling card, so I took the same from Raju, as a loan, and called home to inform that I have reached safely. Also informed that my next call might take some time as I need time to settledown here. Raju had to go somewhere. Everybody else were not there in the house. So before leaving he gave me a comforter and a pillow as he felt I was dog tired of that long journey. He asked if I need any food or not. I was full and was tired so curtly refused that.

After he left I went for a bath after almost 24hrs! Here again I was at loss. All the light switch seemed on as they are pointing downwards but no light was there! First I thought its ‘power-cut’. Then I reasoned to myself, ‘C’mon, its US. Everything is plenty here.’ So I fiddled with the switch and was astonished to find that it turns on when the switch was pointing upwards! After the bath I straightway went to bed. It was noon time. But I was fast asleep.

In the evening one by one all my fellow room-mates came. Shibu, Dhrub, Sheikh and ofcourse Raju. Sheikh had went to San Francisco for pleasure trip. So he came at the dead of the night.

My life in America started!

America through my Eyes – The Begining

Am not a great believer in palmistry. But from childhood everybody whoever read my hand, the first thing they would say is that, “Boy! you have no foreign tour.” Since our country is considered to be the land of mystics every other guy here knows a thing or two about palmistry. Or atleast they claim about it. Its actually a very good excuse to hold the hand of that pretty face in a conservative society of ours. Most of the time the prediction vary immensely form one person to other. In my case this statement always was constant. And that irked me! Slowly it bore into me that I have to prove them that atleast once I will go to a foreign land, and that too, not as a tourist.

But as I was growing up and struggling to make a room for myself in this crowded world, it seemed that I would never be able to make it. My wish of reaching out atleast for once would remain as a day dream. But from childhood I am a fighter. I had to be. Everything came the harder way for me, or atleast I felt that way. So I always worked my way keeping that dream of mine in mind.

In the course of time, I got a job in this company which has a global reach. I knew it from that day of joining; this is it. Am going to make it now. It is bound to happen now. It happened in a year and half later. I did not force it. I did not asked for it. But one fine day I was asked to file for the visa. July 11th was the day for my interview in the American Consulte. That was the first time I entered the consulate. That first experience was, itself, overwhelming. First was the security check; comparable to any high-security prison. After that I entered the courtyard along with a bunch of other suitors. We were then escorted inside. The first problem was the door. I never seen a door without a handle. It was really strange to me. I was fumbling when a man approached. Bestowed a disgusted look on me, and pushed the horizontal bit on  the door and the door clicked open. I was astonished to learn that! Inside, compared to the room, there was a huge crowd. I was under the impression that the “Interview” will happen in a room with one or more consulate official seating at the table and there will be chair for me. But to my disbelieve what I found is that it is just a window, like the one you can find in any railway ticket counter or a movie ticket counter.

There was a huge queue standing to get the green signal for the “Land of Oppertunities”. It was an interesting mix of crowd. There was this old couple who wants to meet their son thousands of miles away. There were these musicians who wanted to try their luck in America. I saw there were two persons taking the interview in two counters - one is a stunning blonde and one is a bulky old man, who with beard and proper dress can fit to be the Santa. I was called to this gentleman.
“Good Morning!!”, He greeted me. I reciprocated. “We need to take your fingerprint. Left index first.” I obliged. “Very well sir! Wish you happy journey to the United States!” I was taken aback! I was expecting some sort of grilling. This was surprising to me!! I waited for a few sec, uncertain, but when I saw him bundling my paper with a rubber band, I gingerly left the window. AM THROUGH!!
Never in my life I got through something so easily.

On reaching office I told to my supervisor that am through. ” Good. In that case prepare to fly by this weekend.” He snapped. It was Tuesday and he is asking me to go to the other side of the world on Saturday! Is he crazy? I begged him like anything to postpone it for atleast a week, but in vein. So I had to start a fanatic sprint to prepare myself. I did not even had a proper size suitcase to pack my belongings for such a long stay. (I was told the assingment was atleast for a year.) Bought a V.I.P. suitcase of jumbo size. Somebody suggested me to buy a suit as there might be some office party with strict dress code. I did not had one. And did not had time to choose. So just stormed into the Reymonds showroom and they butchered me like a well seasoned meat. Someone told me that the cell phone I had, would not work there as it had to be “Triband”. Frankly, I didn’t know what triband was, to begin with. So went into one Nokia shop and they milked me as well. I had to buy a N70. Bought some spices. Who knows I might not get the red chilli powder over there! And all my food would be tasteless. I couldn’t take that risk. I did a crash course of cooking with my mom - the greatest cook of all time. Besides all these I also had to followup with my office bureaucracy of getting the ticket and foreign currency and all. I had to go through a medical test to ensure that am not carrying any deadly virus to the States. On top of that, I found the perfect apartment that I was looking for past one year. And the bank people also got this oppertunity to make me dance to their tune before they could give me the loan. it was Thursday when I was at the medical center for the tests when I got the call.
-”Hey man! guess what…”
-”What?” I said.
-”uhu, you have to promise to treat me first.”
-”Cut the crap man. I am in no mood to play these kind of games. Talk straight or am gonna hang up.” Rupak was getting on my nerves with the petty joke. He was taken aback with my cheesy reply.
-”Cool down yaar, my friend. Your journey date is postponed to next Saturday.”
I screemed so loudly in joy and disbelieve that everybody in that clinic was surprised. I got one more precious week to prepare!

One incident I must mention here. For US visa petition I needed a special size photo. Its somewhat different from normal “passport size” photographs. 5cmx5cm size with many other size specifications.I went to our local studio. As soon as I mentioned the size the retorted,”Going to US, eh?” Had to admit. Immediately the price came as 100 bucks for two. Where the normal passport size photo costs around 2.5 to 3 bucks, this is outrageous. I snapped,”Why are you charging so much? Is this some kind of fine for being the so-called fortunate one to make it to the US?” I did not wait for the answer. Later I found some other shop where I got it done for just 15 a piece.

The week flew by like a rocket. Suddenly I found myself packing exacly the way Jerome K. Jerome described in his book, “Three Men in a Boat”. It was Friday evening and my room was looked like it was ransacked by some hoodlooms. Mom and Lali was helping me to pack. At around 2am in the morning the packing seems to be over. Rest of the night past almost sleepless thinking what are the things that I forgot to pack. Each time something came to my mind; it came with the immense urge to open up that jumbo suitcase and check if I packed that stuff or not. And stopped short because of the dread of opening that mammoth. Next day morning onwards various people came to meet me for the last time. The feeling was like, I was sentenced for gallows and my well wishers are bidding farewell. It was a heavy-set atmosphere. In the afternoon I rode that battered scooter of my father to help Lali catch the bus. Evening time Goju and Ari came to see me off. And then we set off for the airport. Mom, bro, sis-in-law and puchki, the little one, my only niece, accompanied me to see me off for the journey to the unknown.

It was July22nd, 2006 and the flight time was 11:55pm. It was a Singapore airlines flight. Fisrt stop Singapore. There I had to change flight to Los Angeles plane which, before reaching LAX, will land at Tokyo to refuel for the 9hrs flight over the Pacific. The total time was around 24hrs. Phew…

I was feeling pain especially looking at my mom’s face. She was trying hard to put on a smiling face, more so to hold back tears. We left home at around 8pm as the reporting time was 2hrs prior to the flight time. We reached the airport at 9:30pm. At the gate I took a trolly to houl my giant suitcase and my duffle bag. Touched the feet of my mom, bro and boudi, sis-in-law to show my last respect, probably, for a very long time.

I pushed through the gate of the International lounge. Here on am alone. Totally alone…..

                                                                                                (To be continued….next part – The flight)