I had arrived. The 24 hour flight journey did not seem tiring until I had food and hit the bed. I had not purchased a bed yet, and had to share a pillow with my roommate but I was asleep in a jiffy. Suddenly, there was an earthquake. The whole world was shaking and I was moving back n forth...no, wait. Somebody was trying to wake me up. "Whaa?" I tried to open my sleepy eyes. My eyelids were protesting. "Come, let’s go shopping. You need to buy stuff. We won't get a ride tomorrow."
I resisted the urge to ask "Who are you?" and reminded myself that this girl lived in my new home. I was stuffed into a car already occupied by the driver, a neighbor, the girl who woke me up and my other new roommate fresh from India, tottering sleepily by my side. We drove along in silence as the other two "experienced" Indian students in America argued whether HEB was better than WalMart. HEB has fresh vegetables and WalMart is best for all other stuff, it seems.
We went into the store. They looked at us expectantly, as if our jaws would drop on entering the mammoth shop. But hey - It was just Big Bazaar, without the many floors. Not surprised. We went about picking comforters (never heard of that before), pillows, etc. As luck would have it, I had forgotten to bring a soap case and the store only had designer soap cases starting at $13. I seriously considered giving up taking bath, altogether. The next day I enquired around and realized that we had left home at 12 AM and returned at 3 AM. The experienced people were still operating in IST, obviously.
The next day, my "old" roommate left in the general direction of the university. I had no idea where that was; I had lost all sense of direction. I then ventured out, to take photographs to send to all the expectant folks back home. For one thing, I noticed there was a lot of vacant space. The one statement all newbies like me kept making was, "What a lot of space! If we had this much space in India, we would have built so many apartments to house hundreds of people!"
I had reached the US in the peak of Texan summer. It was unbearable. I am from Chennai and yes, it was unbearable to me. First of all, there were no share autos on the road. No autos. No government buses blocking every inch of the road. One had to walk, if one was a broke student new to the country without friends who had a car. I was looking for part time student worker positions in the university and let me tell you this; GRE/TOEFL is cakewalk for most of us. The real test lies in the numerous walks looking for a part time job and saying "How are you today?, "Have a nice day" even when you are dead tired and the guy just wasted half an hour of your time to finally say that he had no open positions.
One acquires patience and one learns to smile in this country. Whether you mean it or not - depends on you.
We had an international student welcome party in the university and we got a lot of free stuff. One more thing you learn - it is ok to get free stuff. Everyone does. It was fun, going around different stalls in the party hall pretending to be interested in what the people in the stall were saying. But everyone in the stall knew we were interested in the freebies and we knew they knew. We smiled and moved on.
It was funny in a way, going to giveaways, talking to people as if I was an authority on Indian tradition and culture. I could hear my grandmother's satirical laughter in my head. We took home couches and coffee tables. It was fun, decorating the new house and inviting others to show off our interior decoration skills.
The first day of classes was a big event. Everyone mock-ranted about going back to school on Facebook and got a satisfactory number of likes. But the point was, we realized a lot of things later. One had to do homework and read for classes. No marks for attendance, but you will attend anyway, if you intend to keep your scholarship. And you really have to work, if you want to keep your part time job. That was the time most "Westernized in India" types starting realizing the stirrings of patriotic feelings that had been dumped deep inside their hearts.
I still hate Starbucks coffee. I make filter coffee at home but I like the people who smile at me in the coffee shop. I dress up in salwar-kurta for Indian events but still go shopping to Macy's or Forever 21 and exclaim "Woowwww!!!” looking at the collection. I visit Indian temples for the Indian food but I also visit Chipotle and PittaPitt. I still have a bit of jet lag, apparently.
I like it here. But I can't say I love it here. I still love my life back in India. I have arrived, but perhaps, not to stay forever.
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