fresh off the plane

Can­not be­lieve it has now been 15 years for me liv­ing in this country. 

I will nev­er for­get the plane ride that brought me here, changed my life so dra­mat­i­cal­ly, the look on my dad’s face as he bid me farewell at the air­port, the blue track pants I wore dur­ing my jour­ney, my hair that I cut su­per short (I had heard ru­mors about hair­cuts be­ing very ex­pen­sive), the guy who sat next to me, Gau­rav, a to­tal stranger who I chat­ted with for hours.

I was 23 and brave, and in my heart knew I would fig­ure this out. I was go­ing to Amer­i­ca, to the land where dreams come true and even though I hat­ed leav­ing home, I was equal­ly ex­cit­ed to get my own taste of this great coun­try I had only seen in movies or from the end­less tourist videos my broth­er sent dad and me.

I will ad­mit, I had nev­er heard of Sacra­men­to. I was sur­prised to hear that San Fran­cis­co nor Los An­ge­les were the cap­i­tal of Cal­i­for­nia. But then again, I was mov­ing to the Gold­en State and all was good, till I em­barked on my first car ride from SF air­port to Sacra­men­to. The gi­gan­tic fields, gold­en hills, and graz­ing cows with no hu­man or high-rise in sight, thwart­ed my Hol­ly­wood ver­sion of big cities buzzing with peo­ple, traf­fic, arts, and romance.

I read the sign for Valle­jo with a ‘j’ ver­sus ‘h’ and re­mem­ber be­ing laughed at. At that mo­ment I was shocked to re­al­ize I had been mis­pro­nounc­ing San Jose from the days my broth­er had sent dad a map of Sil­i­con Val­ley, which he in turn framed and hung on his bed­room wall. It still hangs in our Kolkata flat.

As I laid my first step into my in-laws house, I was im­me­di­ate­ly rep­ri­mand­ed for my hair, clothes, and was giv­en a book­let on the his­to­ry of Amer­i­can women, asked to watch a show by this lady named Martha Stew­art, and at our first din­ner to­geth­er, asked to learn to make spaghet­ti. From there on, each step was a les­son to be learned on how to seam­less­ly blend into the In­di­an pop­u­la­tion liv­ing here for years, walk the walk, talk the talk, and not be that awk­ward FOB Desi.

My crop tops were soon to be re­placed with blous­es, my pants with sa­rees, and every week­end I would have to adorn my­self in bride-like at­tire and show up at homes of friends of my in-laws and com­pli­ment the home cooked food they had la­bored on for a whole week. I stum­bled upon an en­tire­ly new world of how to cook and freeze food for 70 peo­ple, Mikasa and Nori­take chi­naware, and end­less crys­tal vas­es, bowls and plat­ters that were the in­evitable gifts for our hosts. I was nev­er quite sure what pur­pose those gifts re­al­ly had, to lat­er find out they would be re­cy­cled as fu­ture gifts to fu­ture friends such as me.

My first ap­pear­ance as the “bride” in Sacramento

I failed mis­er­ably. I nev­er had enough jew­el­ry on me, or my sa­rees were too sim­ple, and worst of all, I spoke my mind. 

I hat­ed eat­ing any­thing from the freez­er and the par­ty left­overs stuffed in Zi­ploc bags from the hu­mon­gous alu­minum trays brim­ming with food made me want to throw up. I did not want to go to par­ties, I did not want to spend mon­ey, buy­ing gifts for peo­ple I did not know and worst of all I did not want to be some­one I was not. It made me feel like I was the vil­lage id­iot who was brought into civ­i­liza­tion and now re­quired to be taught to be a cer­tain way so I was no longer an em­bar­rass­ment to be pre­sent­ed to the out­side world. I had trav­eled far and wide to know ad­just­ing to a for­eign coun­try was hard, but I also knew it did not re­quire you to sell your soul.

I guess all of it was not bad. I re­mem­ber invit­ing friends over to our place for din­ner one night, get­ting drunk, pass­ing out, leav­ing my guests to clean up for the night. What can I say? That’s how I par­tied in my 20s. I was thor­ough­ly em­bar­rassed by what I did, but I guess I was break­ing the shit­ty mold I was thrown in to. It seemed like I had land­ed up in an­oth­er In­dia far away from In­dia that ex­ist­ed only in pa­thet­ic tele­vi­sion soap operas.

On the oth­er hand I was try­ing to make the most of my new Amer­i­can life with un­lim­it­ed ac­cess to a com­put­er, In­ter­net, and a new Juno email ac­count. There were things I was be­gin­ning to en­joy like my walks to the li­brary, our $5 Chi­nese din­ner, and dis­cov­er­ing the Block­buster store.

For some rea­son in my mind, weath­er in Amer­i­ca was al­ways cold. I re­mem­ber my sis­ter-in-law men­tion­ing to me once how co­conut oil in this coun­try was al­ways sol­id. That my dear read­ers, is nature’s ther­mome­ter for Ben­galis. We de­ter­mine the weath­er based on the sol­id or liq­uid state of our hair oil. 

Lit­tle did I know, Sacra­men­to is HOT. One af­ter­noon out in the lake had turned me sev­er­al shades dark­er. This was hor­ri­fy­ing on lev­els only an In­di­an woman can un­der­stand, es­pe­cial­ly when you are un­der the im­pres­sion that this glo­ri­fied coun­try is also sup­posed to make you fair. That is what a friend’s mom told me in her mo­ment of shock and con­fu­sion at her first en­counter with me here. I was an anomaly.

Be­ing an anom­aly was only the be­gin­ning of my jour­ney here. It helped me ven­ture out, find my­self, learn the true essence of this coun­try and its peo­ple, and helped me carve out a place for my­self in this world.

My first Tahoe trip

 

—mala paul

Flom­mist Mala Paul is a pro­tégé of the god­dess of ten hands. Form to form­less all in a day’s job. A moth­er, de­sign­er, dancer, food­ie, fash­ion­ista, blog­ger, who is al­ways ready to be the change. Copy­right © 2016 Mala Paul. Pic­tured up top: Mala’s first vis­it to Point Reyes.

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