And, the last Sunday it was! I woke up with a start, brimming with happiness. A quick call home, "I will be back soon!", a quick shower, check out and there I have my cab rolling down the Santa Monica roads. I have a long journey stretched out in front of me. Sigh! the boring flight again...but yay! this time I know my welcoming incentive, and I smiled to myself.
Domestic terminals in the US are like bus stands. Everyone and everything is so laid back about a domestic flight here that you hardly feel you are going out of the gravitational force in sometime. Observation, a keen and cynic one to be precise, is a great way to pass off your time...and, so I did. Some quick observations, I jotted in my head:
1. US people are always dressed in the dullest of colors like black or brown or grey. But when it comes to their suitcases or nail colors or hair colors, they are bright ones, for example, bright red, fluorescent green, dazzling pink.
2. People here perpetually have some half eaten cake or peanut packet or rice crackers in their handbags on which they munch on when they are bored. US people, also, love carrying back a half eaten burger, or a leftover salmon fish off their plate.
3. People here move their heads backwards and forwards more than the amount of words they speak.
4. Girls here feel cold only on the upper part of their bodies. Most of them usually wear fat and huge jackets with the shortest of shorts below!
5. Indian settled in the US are sure to recognize your Indian origin and ask you if you know Hindi...and then ask you why you are going back.
6. Kids look prettier and have better skin than any grown up in the US, anytime!
7. Americans do not talk much. Even if they are traveling with families, they either read, or knit or stare at a distance...but they just do not chat. As a result, US airports are unusually quiet places.
8. Kids always carry separate tinsy and cutesy little bags for themselves, where, I am sure, most of their clothes do not fit into.
9. Chinese food in the US is alarmingly awful! They taste sweet, ketchup-y, floury, boiled and oiled! Yes, I did try a Chinese lunch and felt like throwing up!
10. You can be very excited at the thought of getting a day extra to live while going to the US...but while coming back, you will, anyways, have to give back that extra time, when you arrive in India a day later from the actual day you calculate in the US.
Enough of observations...I was waiting at the San Francisco airport waiting to fly away. After all the formalities, I was comfortably seated in an Emirates plane. Goodbye, I waved...till we meet again!
I slept unnaturally during my flight back home...so, missed half of the food that came. Later, I went knocking behind the cabin crew, asking shamelessly for food, who was gentle enough to appease my hunger with a frankie, a packet of rice crackers and steaming cups of tea. I was tired of making friends by then, and hardly spoke to anyone on the flight. And, soon we reached Dubai. Wow! sleeping makes it fast! I now know the trick.
And, the moment I reached the waiting area at Dubai for the flight back to Hyderabad...I felt ecstatic! As the skin colors of the people darkened around me, the languages became more difficult to understand yet sounded so very familiar (what with all the Telegu, Tamil and Marathi blabber around me, I didn't understand a word, yet I felt them to be my own! It's like getting back to your lost children after ages, when you hardly recognize them, yet you feel the love), the volume and amount of chatting going higher, smell of familiar food and of course the dresses turning more colorful...I felt a sense of immense joy and comfort in me...I looked around to see people who relate to me and to whom I relate to with the most subtle yet strong way - with a common word called 'India', with the common taste for spicy food, with the common reasons for laughing out loud, with the common reasons for having tears in our eyes, with the common reason to stand up every time we hear the "Jana Gana Mana"...anywhere.
In the next five hours, I was going out of Hyderabad airport, collecting my luggage, dreading the customs and listening to random Telegu and Hindi all around me. It all sounded like music to my ears now...and when the half-asleep security bluntly explained to me the way out, I just smiled and said, "I don't understand Telegu, bhaiya...but I somehow get what you want to say."
As I sped home in the cab at half past three in the whee hours of an early Tuesday morning, I was welcomed home with a cool bout of Hyderabadi rain and random calls from friends and family all over. I wondered for the hundredth time why is it I love India so much...is it because I look like the others around me here? the food? the warmth? the cool rain? the inability to understand so many Indian languages, yet feeling proud of the diversity? the fact that I can easily wave and stop a cab or know exactly which buses go where? the comfort I get in fighting with the auto drivers if they ask too much money? the friends who all think like me? a family who talks a lot when we go out on vacations?...well, these can't be the reasons.
...I love India for the big reason that I belong to her, and I can always feel how much she is mine every time I say, "I am an Indian". It's the love a tree has for the place it has grown up in...my love for India has grown over the years...all the years I learned to walk, talk, read, write, think, live and love. My roots have grown very deep inside this land of wonders, so deep that if you tug at it, it pains deep inside the heart...and if you pull it too hard to uproot it, I will live without one.
The hotel that I was supposed to put up at Santa Monica had an antique look, which was supposed to be very posh and chic...well, guilelessly, I found it more haunted than anything else. With narrow corridors, dimly lit with those crooked antique shades, ancient designer carpets and brown, ragged paper on the walls...I almost used to dread coming back to the hotel after work. I practically used to run to my door after the lift door closed behind me. I half imagined getting strangled on my way to my room and dying in this unknown land in the hands of some ancient spirit...whatever! my imaginations always run haywire.
Santa Monica was in the Los Angeles county in California, and the notable differences of this place with Orange County was definitely quite attractive and lovable. The people here go out, party and enjoy their evenings - and, that was a big thing after the lazy streets of Irvine. On my arrival here, tired as I was from the whole day at office and the journey, I did not want to waste a Friday evening. Me and the Indian colleague went out for a scrumptious dinner at an Indian place - not to mention how taken aback we were to see a plate of bhindi sabji (ladies' finger curry) costing us 15 dollars...why, we would be able to get a shop full of ladies' finger at half this price in India! We had a relatively better dinner that night (India! Ahh, the land of spices!) as we gorged on to Biryani (garnished, strangely, with green peas), tandoori roti and butter chicken. The sea was close by to our hotel and we thought of going for a midnight walk along the Santa Monica Pier. Friday night as it was, it was totally lit up by colorful lights...giant ferry's wheels and other different rides were in full swing, and it hardly seemed so late. We checked into a beach side shack and had one of the most delicious Margaritas. We waded into the freezing sea waters, sat on the wet sand and only remembered to look at the time when we saw the sea waters were slowly advancing towards us due to a high tide.
Walking in the US is always a pleasurable experience, so walking back along the pier, and then along the sideways lined with restaurants and bars to our 'haunted' hotel even after 1 in the night was something I adored. The weekend that followed was a fabulous one! Saturday, as we had planned, was spent at Universal Studios. Going there wasn't much fun as we couldn't get the desired bus and had to take a cab all the way to that place, and that definitely burnt a hole in our pockets...a huge one! But once there, things were pretty fascinating. The Studio tour, the 2 hour wait for it, the spider crawling on my bag (yes! even US has spiders to scare me!), the different rides and the photo clicking sessions took up the entire day. We had a weird lunch of mashed potatoes, chicken (which looked like yummy tandoori murgh, but turned out to be a boiled-burnt chicken piece with over-sweetened tomato ketchup) and loads of coke. In the intention of not burning another hole in our pocket, we took the train, and then a bus back to our hotel. I won't term it as a brilliant experience though, as we had a couple of drunk black guys staring at us on the station stairs, a bearded old man wanting money at the bus stand (poor as we were with converting every dollar into rupees, how could we help US beggars!), an old lady who refused to answer us when we asked for the bus number and a sad, cold dinner at a sidey restaurant.
We were experienced travelers on Sunday and we booked a tour with an agency to go to Disneyland. This was something I was really looking forward to and yes, Disneyland did not fail to amaze me! With all the awesome colors, rides, music...Snow White, Cinderella, Pirates, Frog Prince, Alice in Wonderland...I almost had a peek into my childhood! The day went by in a jiffy and after a gorgeous firework show at 9 in the night, we rushed for the return bus. Tired, sleepy and dusty as we were, we were amazingly happy at our day's experience in this fairy tale land. We reached without hassle unlike the previous day and walked past the wonderful Third Street Promenade. Now, this Promenade is another of those places which I will remember forever! It resembled...ahh...a little bit like Indian roads on Diwali. The Promenade is a long lane that winds past the middle of Santa Monica and connects the beaches on one side and the main road on the other. The whole place is always lit up with the most colorful and pretty lights (the best ones I have seen in US so far). The lane is lined with the most chic of shops and restaurants to the regular cheap eateries as well. And, the best part of this place, were the street performers! A guy who plays the guitar with such magic melody that you are bound to get glued to the place, a girl who dances like a feather, twirling and twisting all over the place, a singer who plays the most awesome country songs ever...well, the Promenade is a place where you can't just go off from! We returned late that day, grumbling at the thought of office the next day and dropping off into bed like we haven't slept for ages!
The whole of next week my colleague was away to another place for work. I was tired of adventuring by then and spent a decent hotel-office-hotel week. I tried new eating places here, made friends with two Zimbabwean cab drivers who spoke about cricket, became real chummy with the office canteen girl who would pack me a box of marshmallows everyday, walked along the Promenade almost everyday and sat staring at the sea waves every night from my hotel window. It's been three weeks now...I want to go home, to India, to Hyderabad...
That Friday, I felt an immense amount of happiness in me! Two more days, and I am off to my own place...and in spite of all that you may have to say about India, I was jumping at the thought of returning to the land of real colors, of sunshine, of loud laughter, spicy food, warm air, drizzling rain, friends, family, love and joy...my real fairy tale land!
My colleague was back that Friday and we had an Indian dinner, a pleasant walk, and grand plans to spend the last Saturday in Amrika! Saturday dawned bright, sunny and we spent the day in a lazy, random and exploring way. After a long morning at the beach, we went for shopping. We went for dinner to an Italian place along the Promenade where we cheered with sparkling wine for the great time we had in US and how it made us re-realize our love for India!
"Good night Amrika!" one last time I murmured before wriggling into the warm blanket. Tomorrow I am off...back to my nest, back to my comfort land!
