The American Dream of a Quaint Girl

 Time is a fluid concept – this has been well established in countless writings. How a person experiences it makes all the difference. It has been two years since the day I came back to India for good from the US. And almost four years since I first started living there. Life has happened since then, and I am a different person than the one sitting in front of her laptop 4 years ago. I am here today to take a walk down memory lane. Come walk with me….

It is never about the city that you live in; it is always about how it makes you feel. My journey began in Chennai, and for a long time, I couldn’t accept Nagpur as my home. Both these cities offered fewer opportunities to explore my inner self. When I moved to Bengaluru in 2018, I faced a lot of situations that scared me on the inside. Only to realize that I am enjoying myself rather than wanting to cower in a corner. As years went by, the adventurer in me started peeking out. I enjoyed the process of stepping out of my comfort zone and discovering a part of me.

By no means had I turned into a full-fledged wanderlust, whose feet would never stay at home. I still enjoyed the quiet company of myself, reading books, cooking, or anything that piqued my interest. By the end of 2021, life had become bleak. Then came that call in December of 2021, “Do you want to go to Houston on an expat assignment?” Oh, what a heady feeling it was! The smile on my face won’t stop. The impulsive in me said yes without a second thought. I was thinking, or rather not thinking, what could possibly go wrong. The next four months were a blur of happy-go-easy moments. After 3.5 years, I began living the life I had dreamed of in Bengaluru. I cannot attribute my change in behaviour to my upcoming expatriation or my letting go of the self-imposed constraints.

After mountains of paperwork and logistical challenges, I arrived in Houston. Every day, I end up with a new problem. I would resolve one, and another would crop up. Looking back, those problems were trivial. But as a new immigrant, they seemed like the end of the world. I was in the most unfamiliar territory of my life. Learning to drive was the scariest of all. My first solo grocery shopping gave me a panic attack. Setting up my house took a while, but there I was, figuring it out, one day at a time. I can laugh now that the first month there, my payroll got mixed up, and I wouldn’t get paid for another month. But at that moment, I cried my eyes out in the office bathroom. Thanks to all the good people in the office, I got paid shortly after, and things went back to normal.

I recall these incidents to highlight that sometimes you must learn the lessons in your own way. I don't question the justification of my reactions. It is about me experiencing things in my own space and time. These problems (I would now call them experiences) left me scared to try anything new for a long time. Until a conversation with a senior colleague who was visiting from India. He remarked that all my problems were good problems. Things that are annoying but the things that truly matter are fine. Your health, family, and job are going well. Instantly, I felt a fog lift from my brain, and I became grateful for the opportunity I had.

My tryst with driving was scary but bold. In less than a month after starting to drive, I went on my first solo ride. I drove from Houston to San Antonio. A drive which normally takes 4 hrs took me 5+ hrs. I learned that I was a poor navigator. I learned that 90 mph means 145 kmph, and that scared the living wits out of me. I had to pull over at a gas stop to calm myself. When I went on a road trip with my cousin, he offered the driving wheel to me many times on the beautiful California roads. But my fear was happy to let me be the backseat passenger princess for the entire 2 weeks. Not 3 months later, I did a 2000-mile solo road trip to New Mexico. To date, my driving skills are passable at best. Parking within the lines in one try is more luck than skill.

I started trying out new things. If only to get out of the house where I lived alone and had no friends in 5-mile radius for the initial 6 months. I got a library card, joined a book club, bought a cycle, and got out of my shell of certainty. By the end of that year, I was an expert on relocation, finding the cheapest things, good vegetarian restaurants, and the best tricks to learn how to drive. Thus starts my journey of exploration into the hidden things within me. Every adventure I had in the physical world was also uncovering hidden treasures within myself. The process became more important than the end goal. I looked forward to new places, donning new hats, and living a life that I had never imagined.

A few months after living this high, things started taking on a downward spiral. The tension back at home increased. The worries and sleepless nights became a constant companion, and focus became a distant companion. Neither work nor personal life was able to give me satisfaction. At home, I wanted to be in the office. In the office, I wanted to go back home. The struggle intensified as months went by. In mid-February, it was finally decided that I would be back in India by the end of the month. Thus started another struggle to move back and logistical arrangements. The farewells and goodbyes became harder and harder as I inched towards the last day. The check-in at the airport was no piece of cake, but I made it to the flight and to India.

Looking back, I realize that March 2024 is so hazy. There are some vivid memories that I keep reliving, and yet some days, I don’t even know where or what I was doing. It is like looking at my own life from a third person's view. As months passed, the grief of leaving Houston piled up. A life where freedom was mine in every sense. I kept questioning why I cannot recreate it here in India. It has taken me two years to realize that it was about my state of mind and not the place. The craving to go back to the US, no, to that life strikes quite a few times. My mind replays stories of the US in every conversation, not because it was the US. It is because it was a time of self-discovery and the joy that the process of discovery brought. It was not my location or the bank balance that gave me happiness. The location and salary were strong enablers. I was happy from the inside out.

Things for the last two years have not been easy to put it mildly. I have learned that I am my own person. I have learned to worry about only the things that I can control. I have learned to voice my likes and dislikes. I have learned to make peace with things. And I am still learning to sustain this. My ‘American Dream’ gave me freedom from my own limitations. My stint in America was a booster to a better me, a better life. The sustenance of past learnings requires continuous efforts, and I fully intend to do whatever it takes.