My Travellogue of a trip to America in 2005

Below is a email that I sent to my friends while I was on my first visit to USA(B1/B2 visa).

America for me.


I usually write an email to you about anything and everything in my life. So here is my travelogue on my trip to USA. I didn’t write so far partly because it’s a depressing and very demanding life here. If you need to know what ‘busy’ means, you need to come here. You may know that Americans value there time so much. Here is how. People here reach office at sharp 9:00 a.m. They sometimes apologize for coming 7 min late. And here is the difficult part. They leave office at sharp 5:30 p.m. It’s nothing like our stretchable workdays in India. So you need to squeeze yourself in between this window of time and deliver. No juice\ cigar trips to the nearest pan shops or an evening visit to the Gym before that con call. And they also work from home even after bringing you here. So you’ll still be working with them over AOL even when you are here in USA . People really love the sound of ‘deadlines’. And if you think going to America increases your social status, they think a trip to India is an absolute status symbol. You should know all about restructuring in American companies. So only the survivors in this game get to make a trip to India. And their special skill would be to get work out of Indians. But this doesn’t mean they like Indians.

So that was about the work place. About America, I live in Boston now. And for all the glorious history about Boston, it’s a small city with less than a million population. Now this is smaller than Coimbatore’s. It means people get to build big houses right in the center of the city. You might see information about public transportation. Most government web pages and people would proudly talk about public transportation in their cities. It all means that there would be bus stops every five miles. The best places would get a bus once in an hour and it would always be a long walk to your home if you take the public transport. When compared to India, they simply don’t understand what public transportation means. It’s pathetic. But they make up for it by providing excellent roads. The highways are all 6 lane and the ‘back roads’ are way too much broader than our NHs. But don’t think this proud ‘public’ transportation comes cheap. It’s cheaper to drive a car rather than catch a bus or train for more than 10 miles. And never think about going on a train for more than 20 miles. It’s damn expensive, more or less equal to an flight ticket. And taxis are very expensive too. If you need to do a lot of traveling after coming here, come with a International Driving License and your Indian Driving License.

Here is a note on the American economy and why it makes sense to immigrate here. I bought a bag of Ponni rice from an Indian store for 16$. A pound of lamb meat is 7$. Vegetables come at 2-3$ a pound. But a television in Radio city would cost you just 60$. All Mobile phones come free if you sign a 2 year contract. When I say any mobile that includes all the cool ones you’ve ever seen. With 400$, you can buy everything you need for a home. A T.V, washing machine, a dish washer, a microwave and an electric stove. And a software engineer usually makes above 4500$ a month. Your living expense won’t cross 1000$. And here is the best part. You can buy the mother of all cars, a BMW for a 432$ per month lease. All the mid-size cars in India, the 16 lakhs varieties come at 199$ a month lease. The government won’t let them sell the maruti’s and the Accents we see because they may not meet the safety regulations. A gallon of gas (petrol) would cost you 2.15$ and it’ll be good enough for some 32 miles. Food in McDonalds, a burger <3$ and you’ll get a soda (Coke, Pepsi) to go with it. The most expensive meal you would eat would be 10$.

I understand why they still include India in the third world status. Your life style is so different here just by living in USA. You need not be earning millions of dollars to have a comfortable home with all utilities and a decent car to drive.

The culture: I’ve had an overdose of American porn before coming here. And I was expecting the same. But that was shocking. Many people actually live happy married lives. They have a higher divorce rate. But then 80% of the people I met are God fearing people having healthy families. Not wife swappers as we think. The difference is boys are supposed to bring home a girl friend by the age of 15. If not, they’ll go for a psychiatric consultation. So you’ll see families where the girl’s boyfriend just ‘moved in’ with her. It’s pretty normal for families. To give an idea, that was one of my dirtiest fantasies when I was 15. To be able to live with a girl with her parents consent when you are just fifteen (I actually got to ‘live with a girl’ for some days when I was 16(She was 14) and of course nobody knew it. It was fun sneaking under your parents’ nose and then making it with a girl next door. Don’t ask me where she is now. I don’t know). But now that leaves the other 20%. The pocket fiddlers (A game a guy and a girl play on a subway station or a train after sliding hands into each other’s pockets, nobody cares), the wife swappers and the serial divorcers. But if you compare this to India, we’ve the same percentage of other kind of people. There are the Bangalore girls, who would do more than pocket fiddling on their way to work in call centers. The 20% Infosysians, who would have their own billion-dollar bashes and of course we also have wife swappers, sluts and pimps and also the dirty Instant messagers and sms messagers. The glaring cultural difference I see is, people are free to choose their partners and they don’t care too much about the ‘virginity’ thing.

Racism: Well I heard one of my colleagues say that Indians are the most racist lot in the whole world. We never blend and it’s always ‘phir be dil he hindustani’. We search for Indian stores when abroad, watch Indian movies, listen to Indian music and hand out with Indians. We in India are proud of our dirty roads and stingy trains. And we are proud of our small airline industry, about Infosys and Bangalore. We talk too proud about our Hindu culture and even take proud of our Muslim diversity. But the average American is a not-so-patriotic man. And Americans burn their own flags at protest rallies (It’s not punishable). Many of them are first generation Immigrants and they just blend pretty fast.

I had some difficult experiences in office. A 60 year old man about to loose his job was hurling abuses at Indians. But that’s it. People were very excited to hear about India and about Bangalore. And even the taxi guys know about India. I had a 65-70 year old taxi driver who asked me are you the IT guy? And he was about to take me to MIT. And I had to yell my directions to be heard. And 65-70% of people are above 30 years old, the opposite of what we have in India. So you’ll see old ladies working as taxi drivers and cooks.

By and large it’s a wonderful place to live and raise a family. Only issue is you’ll never blend. You’ll always remain an Indian.