Immigrant Diaries

The secret shoebox that distracted me with all those invalubles, held one item that actually triggered the "Chuck Norris for President" post.

It was my little account notebook where every cent was balanced,over my first eight nine months of living in America. This was done till debts were closed in India.

Except for my roomate from those old days, nobody has seen this notebook.

Here are the first three pages..

Lot of "fresh off the plane" memories. Note, how I spelt Pizza (Pietza?!?) two days after landing here. Was rolling on the floor laughing after seeing this and some other entries. Also note, how I learnt to return things in a store (a concept that was really new to me after entering the USA). Still remember asking a college senior, "What do you mean, return the phone? I already bought it! How will the store take it back after I already paid for it and there is nothing wrong with it?" and he said "Tell the store, that your friend gave you a hand me down phone!" and the store will take it back. And "take it back" they did, with an understanding smile and I just could not believe it!

Will never forget having a sleeping bag instead of a bed for nine months and using Kellogs cornflakes boxes as a shelf of sorts to keep all my stuff. We used to watch a hand me down four inch black and white TV, with the two extended antennas which had to be tweaked very precisely to the 0.01 th of a degree, to get NBC, ABC, CBS and PBS. The funniest thing was that someone actually stole that TV, when we were moving from one apartment to another a year later.

Things have changed quite a bit now. There is a 52 inch LCD TV at home, which suggests that the growth is 13 times in 15 years, if of course, one measures oneself by the ratio of the diagonal TV size!

Somewhere, somehow, the lessons in those early days on growing up, taking care of oneself, dealing with debt, having the drive to get over a barrier, have all made me what I am today.

Life goes on, without the precious notebook!

.