Monday, October 01, 2007

The US dream...

As soon as I enter IIT, my dream was to head out of this country and go to US. All the fourth year students were doing the same, desperately trying to get to write SOPs, talking all the time about US. The mess tables were filled with stories about adventures and mis(s)-adventures of all desi babus in the US. Everything you heard looked great, US was great, India looked backward.

But I dont know somewhere down the line, as I finally reached my final year that urge completely died down, I did not want to go to US, and I think it was mostly because I did not want to stay away from my family, and I wanted to try myself at job first. But then bangy life since day one has been so happening that never really thought of going off to US.

But anyways, this new marketing job and I was all set to go to US for couple of weeks. So all this thoughts crossed my mind again, and yups I was set and excited to see this new country.

Nothing to write about flight and all, it was as normal and mundane as it is always, with the fake smiles of air hostesses (I really think that thier job is difficult), and small small packets of jam, sugar, and pepper really amuse me. They are much like used to have when we used to play Ghar Ghar as kids, just that they were not as elaborately packed as this ones.

Reach San Jose and there was this friend of mine who picked me up from Airport. And I was so impressed with the roads and all. And trust me he has such a lovely house, ample parking space, and a park and a golf course. I went inside and it had all the facilities, kitchen, hot water and everything. And it was so peaceful, I could sit there and read a book, could just go and heat something in micro wave and eat. All the technolgy for everything, life is as comfortable as it can ever get. I was wondering why dont I think of spending some part of my life in US. this place was fantastic...

But half and hour there, and I started missing something, I did not feel good about it, I was missing noise, and I was missing people on streets, and I was looking for some face to talk to, and it was not there. There was this whole feeling of loniliness that was creeping inside me. Nothing was looking interesting anymore. I did not want to call because I was on international roaming and further was sure most of the India was sleeping. So then I did what I could do best, open the lappy, connected to net, and was on Google Talk, and as always there were always couple of people to talk to :)

More later...
Laptop discharging and no power adapter and eyes full of sleep..

3 comments:

Vaidehi Dongre said...

you are right for most of it. life can be very lonely in US wihtout family or friends. but once u make friends, its not that different either & family can keep visiting :)

Pavitra said...

ha ha...Well enjoy ur time there while you can...and gtalk zindabad! Its amazing how much time I started spending on Gtalk once I came to London! But like Vaidehi said...its all what you make of it! Everything takes time.

Anonymous said...

Well, can't agree more with you. It reminds me of my days there. It all felt comfortable, but more like some luxurious hotel room stay that can never compete with sweet homely feeling. Whatever you do, you are always going to treat it as a foreign nation. At least that's the case with me.