The first year

She entered her room and sat down on her bed, trying to decide what should she do now. Her first thought, what will she have for lunch and dinner? She just got her groceries done, thanks to her father, but about 30 minutes ago, she said her goodbyes to him. He was returning to India after spending nearly 3 weeks with her, trying to get her settled in her new life. Tonight, for the first time in almost 25 years, she will have to make her own arrangements for food. Before the weight of this feeling could sink in, she grabbed her laptop and sat down to do some mindless net surfing.

While classes at her university had started, there wasn’t any serious workload yet. It was the beginning of the semester. She didn’t even have her full curriculum yet. Before she arrived, everyone had tried to warn her about how tough graduate school was going to be and she believed them too. So, before the workload began, she just wanted to enjoy the freedom of having nothing to do, nothing to worry about (except food, of course!) and no one to answer to. She was alone, she was free to do as she pleased, something she had conceptually wanted throughout her teenage years! With not a single wild bone in her body, the most exciting thing she could come up with was to watch a few movies on her laptop. In between movies, she looked through the pictures they had taken over the last 3 weeks when her father and she spent time in Los Angeles and Chicago sight seeing and unwinding.

In Chicago, she and her father had taken a trip down memory lane (for her father, anyway) of when her parents lived there many years ago. The two of them walked the streets where her parents had walked all those years ago, taking in the cool breeze blowing over from Lake Michigan. They visited the hospital where she was born. She didn’t remember any of this but watching her father’s face light up in excitement, listening to him recount how those neighborhoods used to be back in the day and seeing how he was reliving the memories in his head of when he first arrived with his wife and started their own lives alone in a foreign country, made her feel nostalgic too! Both of them couldn’t help but feel the gaping hole tearing into their hearts throughout the trip as they missed that critical part of their tight knit threesome but somehow, walking through those streets, eating pizza, talking about old memories, made it feel better, like they were whole again, the three of them together.

Within a week, she settled into a routine. She was starting to get familiar with her surroundings, her new apartment that she shared with 2 other girls who were coincidentally from the same native part of India as her. Soon, it started getting busy. While weekends were mostly spent catching up on homework or bonding with room mates, weekdays were spent preparing for classes, completing assignments and spending time with group study team mates. Her classmates were an eclectic bunch! They were from all over the world. At orientation, she found out that her classmates came from 29 different countries, how exciting! There were a ton of Indians too. As expected, most of the Indian crowd hung out among themselves in the beginning. She was of course, invited to their gatherings and for the most part she would skip. Being painfully shy, she struggled to blend in so any social bonding was restricted to the study buddies they made due to group study. Over the first few weeks in the first semester, she ended up bonding with 2 girls. One of these two was what she would later learn to be an ABCD, American Born Confused Desi! This girl truly exemplified the concept. The term itself sounded quite derogatory and she was scared to death that she may be perceived as one by her peers. She was desperate to avoid that at all costs! The other, practically took our leading lady under her wing as an older sister, something that has endured to this day! By this time, most who had spoken to our leading lady, knew about her recent tragedy. So, everyone, naturally was just nice to her. She, however, was skeptical.

The first semester was rough, to say the least. In the span of 5 short months, a lot happened. These were probably the most crucial months of her life.

As soon as she started her first semester, in addition to courses, began her first real job search. When she had landed her first job back in India, it was all arranged through her undergraduate school. Pretty much everyone, was guaranteed a job in one or the other company that would come for campus placements. But here, she was on her own. Yes, there were companies coming to her school for company placements but here, everyone had to fend for themselves. More importantly, everyone came from different backgrounds, different levels of work experiences and very different levels of general street smarts. Our leading lady felt very much like a fish out of water. A “shy, low on self confidence” girl, she realized for the first time how uncomfortable the realities of the world were. In India, if nothing else, she could request her father to help her get an internship through his contacts. Here, all her father could do was advise her. He was completely unfamiliar with this world. This was one of the first wake-up calls of her life.

During the first couple of months, she was enthusiastically learning how to cook! Sometimes, she watched one of her room mates who was very skilled. Sometimes, she would try youtube and sometimes, she would just go with what her gut said. Naturally, the first few times, her attempts were disastrous. But one fine weekend, she was finally quite pleased with herself with her attempt at making some “rajma” (Indian kidney beans)! She made more than one serving and after her first serving, she couldn’t control her urge to finish the whole pot. She indulged and over ate, just that one time! It was so good, she couldn’t help herself. Soon after, she fell sick. Whether it was the rajma or something else, we will not speculate. She got so sick, that she was bed ridden for a couple of days. To make matters worse, her room mates were both out of the house for the weekend. There was no one to look after her, get her some medicines or comfort her. It hit her, for the first time in almost three months, that she could not even call the one person who was usually the person to comfort her in such situations, her mother. It was then that the loss of her mother finally sunk in. Tears would come streaming out. It was the first of many such occasions over the next few years. She realized that she was on her own. She had to find the strength to get her own medicines and take care of herself as there is no one else to do that for her anymore. This was another wake up call.

As a child, she had always been a mediocre student. Not knowing what her true passions were, her parents guided her every choice leading up to arriving in the US to pursue an MBA. Now, in grad school, she had to find her own way. Her parents could no longer make decisions for her. She had to make a decision around what she wanted to study, because in MBA, one has electives. Based on the electives, there is a major and thats what guides one’s career path. She began to realize the weight of that choice. While she struggled through the emotional roller coaster of a tough first semester, barely scraping through the core subjects all the while feeling overwhelmed with applying and getting rejected by countless jobs coupled with feeling homesick and alone, preparing to make the choices in her electives that would eventually make her career – this was the last wakeup call she needed.

Soon, it was her first Christmas in America. Her father was going to visit and they were to meet in Chicago. She had always considered Christmas special, thanks to her mother, who would give her a gift every year, even if it was a small token. This was the first year they would celebrate Christmas without her. After an emotional few months, seeing her father for Christmas and New Years was a mental relief. While the sorrow of missing her mother stayed with her, spending those few days with her father gave her the recharge she desperately needed. When she returned, she could feel that something had changed within.

The second semester began. With another load of tough subjects, the search for an internship over the summer intensified. The pressure started mounting as students had started accepting offers and it was now a matter of pride to claim that your summer internship was secure. The added rigor of studies and job hunt was coupled with partying with fellow students. Most weekends, there would be invitations to head to the local bar or discotheque to waste the night away in carefree merriment. Our leading lady always turned these invites down. Eventually, she stopped getting invited. It was during this time, that she struck up a new friendship that would carry her through the rest of the first year at university.

A senior of hers decided to take some interest in our mysterious and lonely leading lady. They happened to meet at a small house party that she ended up deciding to go to. She usually avoided such gatherings like the plague but for some reason, she chose to go to this one! He was an eccentric young man, mostly shunned by his own peers for being a little off beat in his ways of life. Seeing her stand in a corner on her own, fidgeting with her phone, he decided to walk up to her and strike up a conversation. And with that, these two struck up an odd but amusing friendship! They would pull each other’s legs, meet up at each other’s house to spend hours of time talking about each other’s backgrounds, occasionally meeting up for dinner or a movie. She began to relax in his company. She was desperately looking for someone to bring some levity in her life and finally, she found it. Whether this could be something more than a friendship, one couldn’t say at this stage but it was certainly a breath of fresh air in her life. It helped her overcome her loneliness and gain some confidence in herself. Shortly thereafter, she secured an internship at a fortune 500 company with a very handsome salary. This was to be the first of her many hard earned accomplishments! Before you knew it, the second semester had ended and she was off to a new state to start her internship!

At this point, it hadn’t even been a year since she first set foot in America as an adult and she had already started seeing a life for herself there, a fresh start with a new outlook towards life.

In May, as soon as the second semester had ended, she had packed up her stuff, moved it to storage and moved to a different state for her internship. She was lucky enough to find a job that provided housing and transport to and from her office. It was all very fancy. While she took her first professional step in America with a lot of nervous energy, it quickly turned into one of the most fun and pleasant experiences of her life there. Right from the first steps into Boston airport to the cab ride to her accommodations to the first day at the new office, she could almost feel her heart jump out of her body due to nerves. However, with each step she took, she felt a little more courage seep in that she really could do it. She could make it there, alone, without her parents. She was finally stepping out from underneath their shadow.

That summer, she was among the few fortunate individuals to work in a group of interns and found a team that was fun loving and made each day of the three month internship more memorable than the previous day. In addition to work, there were events organized specifically for interns to get to know one another and have some fun. These events ranged from city tours to formal networking social events. While networking was a challenging task for her, as luck would have it, the group of interns she worked with were always by her side so she never felt the pressure to meet additional people. In fact, she started coming out of her shell on her own, surprising no one more than herself as she mingled with strangers effortlessly. During weekends, she also spent some time sight seeing around local sights, learning about the place that could potentially become home if she were to convert her internship into a full time offer and come back after completing her MBA.

As the weeks went by, her confidence started to grow. Yes, there were moments where she had her doubts if something went bad during the day but things turned around quickly and she was able to move past these doubts. She was starting to earn and with that she was also starting to understand the value of being mindful with spending. This was probably the first time her maturity was put to the test. As she was earning, she began to get the urge to buy things. However, being simple minded, she couldn’t figure out what to spend on. Never having had too much money to spend in the first place, she was not extravagant with her spending but her father’s constant advice would always play on her mind making her conscious of never going overboard in excitement. All she ended up splurging on was food. At these times, she would remember her mother telling her stories of her grandmother who would say that one should never scrimp on food. If there is one thing you should do when your desires want you to do it, its splurging on food. It did sound like some very sound advice! In this way, before she knew it, it was time to say good bye to this fun little phase of life and return to University to complete the second and final year!

There was a lot of hope and anticipation for this next year. It would decide her future. She was nervous but also confident that she had beaten the odds of surviving having been through an emotional and tough first year. She had never imagined a life outside the shadow of her parents, outside the protective walls of their strong unit. She had never, in her wildest dreams, imagined that she could go even one day without talking to her mother at least twice a day. But, here she was, one year behind her. Not only did she manage to survive, she felt like a new person. She felt like she had found wings. She was still strongly tied to her father, looking to him constantly for advice but things were different now. She could make her own choices now. She was her own person now. She had the confidence that, even alone, she could actually make something of herself and that she had what it takes to fight for a place to call her own, outside the confines of the familiar. Also, just maybe, she could also be an ABCD but with a twist – an American Born Confident Desi!