Strangers and Junk Mails

Finest Blog Winner - Fourth Weekly Pick of December 2011

My wife, son (7 years old at that time) and I migrated to the United States several years back. It was a very emotional migration for us as we had never traveled overseas prior to that maiden trip. We were traveling to migrate to the United States for good (at least in my mind) on a deepavali day. We did not have a slightest idea about where we were going to live and how we were going to educate our son and how long we could survive in a new environment. It is a transfer from a subsidiary to the parent company and I had no option but to take it as it gives a wonderful career growth. We landed at the destination at about 7 p.m. in the evening after 24 hours of traveling and every one of us were dead tired. The excitement of traveling overseas for the first time did not allow any one of us to sleep in the plane. When we landed, to my surprise, I found 4 of my colleagues waiting for my family to arrive, some Americans and some my Indian friends who had migrated to the US earlier. They loaded all of our baggage into the car and helped us unload them into a hotel room where we were supposed to stay for 7-10 days until we find our own apartment.

The next day morning, a colleague came to the hotel to pick me up to go to work. I made some arrangement for my family to get some vegetarian food and left. After finishing the formalities of joining including social security registration, to my shock, I was told that within a week, we need to find an apartment and a car so that I can commute to work. I had exactly 4 days to learn driving in the United States. Even though I used to drive car in Mumbai before that, I was nervous about driving in the US. I attended a safe driver class before I applied for temp license. I joined a Driving Instruction School to get a permanent license. Luckily, I had an examiner who was nice and obtained my license. Then, we went to buy a new car. I had no idea how to negotiate but somehow I cut a deal to buy a new car. We were told that I had no credit history in the US and therefore, someone has to guarantee the entire payment on my behalf. Luckily one of my colleagues agreed to do that and I got a brand new car.

We found an apartment to move in. After all these, my wife already was feeling that the days are not far off for us to pack our bags and leave for India. We had only $ 100 when we migrated (not that we were poor but those days foreign exchange was scarce) and we had to take a lot of advances from my employer to pay for rent advance, car down payment and so on.

We prayed hard and built a lot of courage to give it a try. The day after we moved into the apartment, my wife and I decided to go for a walk within the sub-division. Every person who was driving the car inside the sub-division as well as the ones who were walking stopped to greet, shake hands with us and to ask a lot of questions about India. We got really overwhelmed by this gesture of strangers to make us feel comfortable. Back in India, when we migrated to new places, it took so long for us to get to know the neighbors but in the US it was instantaneous. Back in India, waiting for the mails to arrive and read the mails from our extended family was a great pleasure for my wife. I thought she was going to miss that part. To my surprise, when I returned from work that day, my wife was smiling and told me that we had received a lot of mail today. I started going through the mail one after another and read each one of them. Later I came to know that in the US, it is very common that we receive a lot of junk mail but those mails were the greatest pleasure those days for us. Now, we have lived for many years in the US and we still receive a lot of junk mail each day. Mostly my friends tell me that they do not even read them and just throw them into garbage. I have special respect for those junk mails till today and I at least open before I throw them.

 

Meeta,

Thank you for your fb and for sharing your experience.

Viswa

 

Dear ILT,

Thank you for your kind and wonderful words.

Viswa

 

Sunitha,

Thank you for your kind words. Those junks gave us what we were longing to have i.e. attention and a feeling that we are needed by someone.

Viswa