New Home and New Faces


We were recollecting personal tales of the times when we first stepped on US soil. Each one had faced familiar situations and had handled them similarly! But the stories seemed so unique and touching.

Let me first recount what happened to good friends from Russia that we happened to get introduced to recently. The couple came to the US several years after 1991 when the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Driven up the wall due to a disintegrating governing system, corruption, declining economy, scarcity of food, joblessness and 2 infants, they decided to leave their own country for good and seek support in the US. Sergei and Lena came to the US without any knowledge (or rudimentary comprehension) of spoken English and with very little money in their pockets. Instead they brought with them lots of hunger, decaying teeth, ingrained fear and undernourishment. As I listened to them I thought nostalgically of India and what it had served me to drive me out of its boundaries! Nothing compared with Communism. I had just finished Varlam Shalamov’s ‘Kolyma Tales’(a referral by Sergei himself) that had forced me to get a sleepless and dreadful peek into the Stalinist era of Communism. Kolyma was as deathly or more than Gulag. As I read the short crisp tales of human woe and suffering caused by another set of human beings, I marveled at the human race; how it had survived, thrived and grown under fear, oppression, cruelty and tyranny. If the Holocaust memoirs had produced bucketful of tears, Alex Haley’s Roots had brought forth speechless anger, Khalid Hosseini’s Kite Runner had given me sleepless nights then Kolyma Tales created inside me an unblemished hatred for mankind. Anyway, I will not digress from my initial light hearted topic. I was talking about Sergei and Lena’s American experiences.

Sergei’s first trip to the grocery store. He has only so many dollars with him. He does not speak much English and has checked the prices several times before calculating the exact change and hands over the money to the cashier. The cashier is her inimitable style asks, ‘Hi, How are you doing’, while continuing to ring the items without lifting her face from the register. Sergei looks at her for a second wondering why she should ask him, a stranger, such a personal question and conforming to his background, decides it safer and less controversial to answer her truthfully. In faulting English he says, “My name is Sergei. I have come from Russia 2 weeks back. I have 2 kids. I live 3 blocks from the store. I have 20 dollars on me and I don’t have a car”. The lady has lifted her face from the register by now and is looking at Sergei as if he’s gone out of his head! In the US, everyone says, “How are you doing” to a perfect stranger and never expect to hear a reply. It is a way of saying, “I know you exist”.

I remember my trepidation at being doled out a similar greeting on my first day of visit to Abhijit’s lab in NJ. His boss smiles, “So what’s up, Julie?” I have never been at a more loss for words. I mutter something stupid and almost run away. At home I ask my brother in law (into his 4th year in the US) what would be the correct answer to such a greeting. He smirks at me, “Hmm…..I took more than a couple of months to figure that out. Don’t think I will give it so easily. Take your time, fluster yourself a bit and find out for yourself”.
I remember another comical situation that my other brother in law narrates to me. His friend fresh from India, goes for a walk around their street. He comes home after a bit and confides, “I think there must be someone in this neighborhood that looks like me”. My brother in law asks him, “Why do you say that?” His friend replies, “Well, everyone keeps smiling at me and asking, “Hi how are you”.

Sergei recollects many precious tales with much gusty laughter and we join in. He remembers frequenting a restaurant with his office colleagues every Friday. He asks for the same dish every time as he cannot understand or pronounce anything else on the menu! And he remembers wondering why Americans always drink water with ice. After several visits to the restaurant, the waiter always gets him ‘his’ dish before he asks for it and always places before him a glass of water without ice!! We end the party with much laughter and warm embraces. It feels good to know people from all corners of the world.

I sit at the playground watching the kids play. There are kids of all ages swarming the place as soon as the scorching sun dips its head. Whites, yellows, blacks, browns and the sweet goldens. I strike a conversation with one such golden skinned man with the blackest of hair and good looks. I learn from him that he belongs to Iraq. 15 years back he came to the US. He has an American wife. He brings with him white twin boys aged 5. The boys are the most talkative I have ever met. They get my entire history out in a second. Only they think India is Indiana. Initial introductions are made with my girls and the twins keep on interviewing me more. I like it. I like the talkative kids. In his Middle Eastern accent the father tells me how he has just lost his job at Wal-Mart. His next question is wistful, “So, have to been to India ever since you came here?” I tell him almost sadly that I had been there last December. His following question makes me sadder, “Don’t you feel like going back and living there?” I mumble some logic and look at his face trying to imagine the miserable stories that he hasn’t told me yet. Yes, I realize every personal immigrant journey is similar yet so unique.

It is my 4th week at the new home surrounded by beautiful blue mountains. This evening I go downstairs following Anu who is trying her hand at a school fund raiser. She is trying for the first time to sell cookie dough and cheese cakes by ringing the bells of unknown neighbors. I keep an eye on her and sit down on the bench next to a white woman. She is watching her kids play on the swing. She seems friendly by her first comment, “I love Indian clothes”. I am not wearing Indian but she does not need to be smart to reason that out from my black hair and brown skin. Jenny has travelled a lot of South American countries while being in the army many years back to make a very intelligent observation. She says, “I hate to watch the news because all they show is negative things about countries; that they are fighting, that they kill each other, that they are intolerant. Its only when you visit a country that you know that there are human beings just like us who have similar problems as we do”. She narrates her visits to Honduras, Peru, Equador and Paraguay. Listening to her talk and not being able to place my finger on her accent, I ask her ‘So are you from Utah?” Jenny says, “I am a Canadian citizen. I came to the US when I was young. My father is French, my mother is Native American”, and she goes on to explain that she has all white skin despite her mother. Her main interest this evening is in Indian clothes. She is a seamstress and loves costumes from various countries. She asks me if I have any saris that I would like to sell. I tell her that I would look in my closet. Of her own askance she tells me that her teenage daughter has just left for Australia with a 22 year old guy that she met last month. I see sadness in her eyes. She says, “I cried for 2 days. I am close to my children (5 kids b/w 19 and 4 years old). I think she is trying to defy me by going away to an unknown land with her new boy friend”. I am more interested in her Native American mother. I ask her where she lives now. Jenny goes on to say that her mother died 2 years back. And without batting an eyelid adds, “She was the meanest woman on earth”. I am taken aback. I don’t think I can apply any of the adjectives that she used for her mother, for mine. A mean mother? I think again and again. Impossible. Jenny says in her curt French accent, “My mother never got happiness in her life and so she never could give us any”. “And your father?” I ask. Jenny says, “He lives somewhere in Kansas, I am not in touch with him. We are 6 sisters, we are not much in touch with each other either’. She seemed to have difficulty remembering in which states her sisters lived. She said, “But I have an uncanny sixth sense. I can sometimes predict or feel something bad that will happen to my kids”. I smile and say, “You must get that from your Mom’s side”. I tell her of my mother and her forebodings about her children’s health that 99% of the times come true. Now its Jenny’s turn. She smiles and says, “I think Indians (you and me) have that clairvoyance!” Jenny’s 10 year old daughter comes back with Anu. Both have collected some checks from neighbors for cheese cakes and cookie dough. It is getting dark, we collect our respective kids and herd them to our new homes. The new homes in the US.