Home Away From Home –

Other Side Of The Globe

 First time I flew out it was to visit someone, and then I had been unsure too, but it wasn't the same this time. I was flying to a destination common enough for students flying out in thousands every year - U.S. of A., that is - from India. That first trip had been a dream lived and a flight into a dreamland - this was real and a trip to what was to become a home for a few years, and a home for heart for much more than those few years. 

 I had got intimation of acceptance (subject to English speaking skills) while on the first visit abroad, which was in yet another continent, halfway. But then the correspondence had been nowhere for a while after my return, and finally when I asked - those days it was only regular mail, and that took three days to Germany but often two weeks to U.S. - they replied to say, oh sorry, excuse us, it was a delay due to mix up because the students who work here are not permanent - both factors were characteristic of the place, students working to earn money as well as prompt replies (from them - it is not their fault the mail takes long), that I came to admire soon enough. 

 So it was merely three weeks before one needed to be there, when I had finally got papers and had to face various official hurdles - visa, first, and that was being made very difficult that year. Various people, colleagues and so on, had had to give various assurances of eventually returning, and still prove they meant it, and would have to. Such proofs meant little of course, and most of them stay on regularly. I gave no assurance and returned eventually. The miracle was getting the visa. I had had a nice woman officer interviewing and we spoke courteously on both sides and perhaps she was impressed I neither lied nor pleaded - I had given up, hearing all the tales from others - and whatever it is she gave a visa for next few years. Only, the passport wasn't valid that long! Anyhow, that was the first hurdle. 

 Next was to get reserve bank clearance and again, it worked, miracle number two or three by this time - arrangement of money to show - and of course to spend for the ticket - had been another one of course. Then it was time to actually pack up the room in the hostel, go shopping for what one could think of as necessities for the next few years at least in terms o clothes, and go. During the pack-up stage I travelled every day to another town to leave things there, four hours each way, and finally managed to get into the taxi with two suitcases - a colleague walked by just as we were doing that, and asked "I heard you are going abroad", and I just pointed at the trunk being packed with my suitcases, too tired for words. There had been no farewell from anyone in the institute after more than three years of being there, other than this. 

 The flight was nice enough, with a change at Heathrow - with its interminable walks then between the plane and the transit lounge, unlike the wonderful Frankfurt Airport I had seen jut a few months ago, compact and full of so many conveniences with short distances to walk. Things have changed since - now Heathrow is wonderful, compact and attractive in each terminal we have visited in the last decade, and Frankfurt airport that I saw is now difficult to see - one is usually at a terminal and too tired to walk to the central part, and there is walking enough from one gate to another and the anxiety to be there at the next gate in time - on the whole leaving no time to try to see the central part. Anyway then with all the walk and so on at Heathrow and change of airlines from Singapore to BA (- The first one gave earphones for free, the latter charged a few pounds!) I arrived late in the evening, twenty two hours since boarding the plane in Bombay (officially it is Mumbai now - but it was always Mumbai to the local people officially and unofficially; it had three names then, one extra in Hindi as well) but technically it was still the same day, what with most international fights leaving India in the small hours of night and arrival in U.S. being in the evening "the same day". 

 The friend whom I had visited had been informed by telegram a week ago, but the telegram arrived only after I met him so it was no use. Telegrams worked fine in India and in Europe, but in U.S. one had to switch to phone and that was not so easy then, since most people in India did not have phones and it was far too expensive to call, either way. One was far more dependent on ambient society unlike today. 

 Anyhow the friend had written about his arrival and the information helped, and after arriving at a reasonable temporary place to stay - and lugging the two heavy suitcases up four floors, total weight of all luggage more than mine - I went out to look for trying to find him, but it was not as simple as the hometown I came from where one merely had to mention whom one was trying to find and someone - even everyone - around knew and gave directions. I managed to find him next morning and by the evening had found a place to stay, and shifted and bought groceries for the week. This was rather dizzying, hectic pace and it was not about to get any slower. 

 That day was an introduction to various things - Boston, transport, Cambridge, Harvard square, Newton and Watertown, and salad bars of U.S. - the concept of salad as in U.S. was a far larger extension of the usual concept elsewhere. Here it was not only raw and green things but all sorts of vegetables either raw or cooked, chickpeas (of course cooked), kidney beans, rice, fruits, and so on. As long as you ate it cold it is salad, and there were salad dressings that are now ubiquitous but were then new to someone from India, and so on. Salads became a way of life, along with sandwiches as lunch alternatives; hot Indian meals were for evenings and weekends, normally. 

 Next day was also first day of the quarter. I had bought a map the day before and went to the place, with a change of a couple of buses or so, and while I was walking to the university someone stopped me and asked directions to another place. Not only that person, born and brought up right there, had not taken me for an outsider and obvious foreigner, but asked me for help with directions and I was able to give accurate directions immediately too. This brought the character of the country forth as no speeches would - one could belong immediately, and generally did, unless otherwise oriented, which then weren't many. I didn't meet any who didn't want to stay. This was home, not the same as the that which one had arrived from but another one could be just as much home in. 

 This characteristic, too, was expressed in all the talks one casually and inevitably had on bus stops and in buses all too frequently - people asked where I came from, said "wow I always wanted to go there", and then asked if I liked it here, if I would like to stay there - and it was obvious they wanted to hear yes, of course I do, it is so wonderful here. This attitude made one feel welcome and at home, in a very basic, very true way. 

 That day being the first day involved getting to the department and meeting the professor who was supposed to grant the assistantship, based on English speaking ability, which I had been unsure of what exactly they meant - but it was done in less than five minutes of a casual chat in the corridor, and I got to know why the stipulation had been put in place. Then it was a couple of other initiation meetings where I met two people who had come from Bombay too - one actually came from my hometown and from a rival school, so it was more than just a language in common. We settled into a pattern of chatting an hour a day on phone every evening. 

 Soon it was a routine - six a.m. rise and bath and get ready and out by seven to catch a bus to the bus stop for the express, catch another bus from Copley at the public library to the university, and teach a class eight to nine; then it was a free office for students to consult (officially there were supposed to be three office hours a week, but in practice it was often well until time to leave at three to rush to catch the express back, about six hours a day - perhaps five, since we did take time off for lunch and I remember chatting with colleagues over coffee); lunch with the friend from hometown, and generally chats with any colleague from the department who dropped by or was around. 

Since the office where I was given a desk was actually a large room where department coffee equipment was situated, and since I sat closest to the coffee at a corner table with a window, anyone who came for coffee would normally say hi and ask if I wanted some and we would chat, politeness on their part and genuine interest on mine - so I had friendly coffees with almost everyone, and got used to telling them exactly what amount of crème by showing the back of my palm to indicate the desired colour after adding right quantity - the rest mostly had black coffee - and chats were usually about the world, since the department and particularly the office (we were about some twenty odd in the office) was filled with people from everywhere.

 A Palestinian sat close and informed me they did not believe in family planning (Indian vague phrase that includes using any means of contraception) since children are blessings of God, and that he was afraid of Indian food because he had to leave within one week when he tried to get his education in India due to effect of spices. He got upset if I so much as mentioned turmeric, and claimed I was terrorising him. 

 A Somalian was much surprised and gratified I knew where Somalia was, vaguely; this was to repeat later with various people - one from Hanover, for example. 

 Another one from Zimbabwe had an argument with me - he said anyone who did not have a car was poor and I disagreed. He said it was difficult to manage if one lived on a mountaintop and had to come down for groceries to market. I thought and said it was not a natural way of life in the first place - humans don't go live on mountaintops if they need to trot down for groceries every day, humans first and foremost settle near a body of water, and seek to grow food, and that is how most human settlements grow. He refused to see the point. 

 The initial hot weather soon gave way to colder weather, and unlike the pattern in north India one never knew whether the next day would be twenty degrees colder or hotter, unless one listened to weather forecast. That became another routine, and I learned to call time and temperature or even better, weather, before getting up in the morning. But often the cold at bus stops was unbearable, and I would look at other office goers and especially the women who were in nylon stockings and skirts - the compulsory uniform of women, office workers and so on - and wonder how they survived. 

 The landlady invited me for dinner at Xmas if I was not doing anything else, and I said ok, but was a bit embarrassed and tried to go out to visit a friend. That day was COLD!! I had to walk down to the usual second bus stop, no service on the road we lived on, and on the way there was a Howard Johnson's where one crossed a bridge over the highway below - and that day I went in, it was so cold, ready to tell anyone who asked what I was doing there that all I needed was to warm up a little before proceeding to the bus stop, all pride shelved by the cold. No one asked or bothered me and the pathetic need of survival did not take down dignity of someone that poor in the rich surroundings only due to their more than courtesy, their assumption that I had a right to be there and minding their own business until I was ready to ask for their services, so I was left to warm up and feel better, and in five minutes I went on.

 There was just one more guy there at the bus stop, and we shivered there, standing - it was so cold my bones turned to water, and I understood why people dance, if we did not move and stood still as normally would it would be colder. He did move as in a dance although it was clear it was due to cold rather than wish to dance at a bus stop. Finallyafter an hour he gave up, since two buses had failed to arrive and the likelihood was none would. I went back too. 

The landlady and her son were much amazed I had dared to go out - it was minus five Fahrenheit, and with windchill factor it was minus forty, they said. I lost my fear of cold, the unknown factor of the new home, that day on. If I could survive that and be fine, I felt quietly confident within, then it was going to be all right - and it was. 

 It was another home, certainly while I lived there, and since then has been so for our hearts - for when I met one I married that was the first thing we exchanged information about - Where are you from? - and when it turned out we had Massachusetts in common we knew why we felt at home within less than a second of meeting. When we visit, which is not often, we feel at home as soon as formalities of immigration are over. It has a lot to do with the country, the nation, and its people.

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 I still miss a great deal of those things close to heart, the brilliant autumns and cold winters and uncertain springs of New England - no autumns are as brilliant as in that region with the bright crimsom hues topping the usual yellows and at best orange of elsewhere, and Europe is all muted dull reds and browns with its own beauty of an oriental carpet, but the bright New England autumns are unmatched with the sapphire blue skies and bright clear golden sunshine and cool breezes and the trees decked out in red, scarlett, crimson, orange, and a bright yellow at the very least. Winters are sharp with cold and wind and snow one wades up to knees through if one steps off the sidewalk into grass, bracing cold bringing one alive in a way cold of Europe with a lesser cold but deceptive chill does not - there one thinks one is ok and knows one is not, until suddenly one's back hurts and one knows definitely. Spring in Europe has flowers blossoming everywhere, fragrant and colourful - New England has blossoms struggling with snow that refuses to leave and sometimes falls again right up to April or even May, and still the crocuses and magnolias bloom, right up to when winter gives in and suddenly it is summer. And what a summer, with deep shades of maples cooling one when it does not rain, which it does most weeks.

 More than most other things though one wonders if the beauty of Tanglewood was a dream, but no, we visited in recent years and it is every bit as beautiful and more as we remember. Perhaps we might have another summer to experience it all again, or more. Who can know what future might bring! Meanwhile, there are wonderful memories we share much of.

 We don't argue about our very different languages, rather they give us another area to communicate about. But invariably for years whenever I spoke of Boston and its many wonders, he would argue Amherst was better. Last time we visited we saw one another's home towns and more, and he was happy I conceded the beauty of his past homes and towns. New England after all is what brought us together - perhaps something deeper at another level, but the more obvious was we both feeling at home together in missing New England and recognising it in one another.

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