What happens when you travel half the world from Bharat, 23 hours in a stretch, sitting with your legs cramped? You land in America. The wonderful looking, beautifully illustrated, so in news, Amrika. Forget the jet lag, forget the food, forget the friends, it’s the place where you miss your buckets and sprays more often.

After blowing up almost half of the hard cash that I had got, in 2 weeks itself, I realized it’s going to be tough to be what I was when I was earning. And yeah studies. But I knew I had to do this. To fall out of the pattern. To see this life.

And as I see, there are two kinds of people here. The kind who are friends with you because they had no other option. And others who care for you only if they want something from you. So in a couple of months I managed to screw up my mid terms, fracture a finger on my left land, stay up all night, and started drinking coffee. Some of the challenges I hadn’t clearly prepared for. I’m still here though and I won’t quit yet. I have had this feeling of being astray since a long long time, but something kept me going.

I won’t say I’m a technology savvy person. But I accept technology. I read about it. I know how Whatsapp works and makes money, but had no clue on how to block someone until a year ago. We share a love-hate relationship. I am more of an old school person. I like retro. I like radios. I like television sets. Like to stack those vcd’s. I talk about old movies and old novels. Given that I am really not interested in fancy cars or high tech gadgets or Avengers, I find it difficult to find alike people in USA. At-least most migrated Indians don’t share the same thought. I don’t hate them either. Everyone grows up wanting to be that popular person in the group. The one who gets praised, who is talked about. I was that once too. Thoughts grow with us. And now with all the respect and love from my family, I feel no need of any bigger appreciation.

A constant fear, though, haunts me. That I don’t know enough about anything. Sports not enough, physics not enough, machine learning not enough, politics not enough, cinema not enough. This fear keeps me going. USA accentuated this fear. Meeting the variety of talent in graduate school. With time though the beautiful campus, broad roads, different cuisines loses its shine. The education stands like any other immovable effort of science, among the failing infatuation with development. Amidst all the talk about USA being a happy house, reality check can be shocking. The many homeless people on the streets. The constant fight to not be judged. The untimely strikes and protests for everything that’s required and more. I don’t know if its the pleasure of being in the so called best country in the world or the sudden enlightenment as soon as someone lands here, many stop working hard and start whining. If you question them, a reply is shot at you, “you don’t know about our lives” . This probably makes me different from many. Earn whatever success you crave, has been fed into my system as a default.

This world is not a bed of roses and it is not supposed to be. No one in this world can survive without pulling their own weight. I never had anything easy for me either. I was taught values which made me believe that I will survive only if I work hard for that. And I am not successful yet. I still need to work harder. This thought which I inherited from my parents, surroundings and education is a reflection of true India. A farmer’s life indeed. Maybe because of this, I feel the urge to go back to India. For someone who believes a lot in research and democratic growth, I get many questioning eyes on me when I express my wish to go back to India and live in a village. No I don’t want to be the hero for that village. I want to be a part of it. The simple life which always eluded me.

Today, I am a scared man, bounded by his obligations of delivering a rich lifestyle which is equivalent to a better lifestyle in the materialistic world. But the old calling persists. And no matter how long one domesticates that inner Bengal Tiger, it is a wild animal. I await to see the day, when I will be living with the cows and buffaloes. Where people meet beneath the banyans and share the troubles only to fight them again next day. Where people believe. If there is any definition of a true society, we already have seen it. And it’s not the one without troubles, nor the one with a lineage of Audis and Mercedes. It’s the one where one wakes up at 4 am to work on a farm with a strong pride of serving the country people.

And If you agree with me, if you fall in that 1% of retros, and wish for the life filled with trust, common goals and societal prosperity, let’s dream together. With time, our little courage to dream might become someone’s courage to live it with a smile.

Cheers to USA which strengthened my dream. Uniquely it can make you believe the façade that life is within the glass walls. Or it can give you a vision of your country as a woman. Sometimes young and beautiful, sometimes old and haggard. Lamenting the state of the country, but with a promise of a better tomorrow. Hope has driven us to the edge of the universe, why stop now?