Small fish, Big pond (2002)

(This was written in 2002. I just rediscovered it while cleaning out files on my computer, and given that it's probably some of my best writing, I decided to post it)
-----------------------------

In moments of introspection, I wonder why I decided to move to America. I had a good job, visions of a great career, I was in love with presumably the most eligible bachelor in the neighborhood, and guess what! - he was crazy about me as well. We would settle into a nice life, carry on his father's business (which conveniently fit in very well with the fact that I was an architect), we'd go to church every Sunday, and be the epitome of happily married life. Even have some kids on the side. How very perfect!

I suspect that it might have had to do with the fact that I felt life had more to offer. I needed to see more, to BE more. I had to go out there and know for myself that this was indeed the best that was in store for me, and not have to wonder when I was forty whether I could have done better. I had to make my own destiny.

So eight years later, here I am -- a successful single in America, a yuppie right down to my Victoria Secret low-rise-bikini underwear. I live in a yuppie apartment, complete with white American roommate and purple couch, drive a red car, and have a freezer well stocked with Lean Cuisine.

Like my fellow yups, I too start the day at Starbucks, where I wait 15 minutes every morning for my double-espresso latte. Skim milk and Equal ?- have we escalated into a world where nothing is real anymore? Air-conditioning in summer because it is too humid, humidifiers in winter because it is too dry. Seems quite lop-sided somehow.

My weeks are filled with work, and my weekends with the eternal quest for fun and entertainment. Boston is fabulous. Biking by the Charles on a warm, sunny day, hanging out in Harvard Square where summer evenings bring out the street musicians and chess players. Central Square with its punks and weirdos. Eating hot clam chowder on cold winter afternoons, the lingering taste of cream and potatoes melting in my mouth.
Tea at Tealuxe -- the tea connoisseur?s dream come true. Browsing the used bookstores and antique markets for undiscovered treasures, open-House in South Boston when the artists let the public into their studios. Driving to the beach, basking in the sun, wallowing in the heat and humidity, the smell of the sea in my nostrils, bringing back memories of Bombay and picnics at Gorai.
Trivia and pool at Hannah?s with Debbie and Anton ?- just like Cheers where everybody knows my name, Denise?s in Davis Sq. that makes the best ice cream in the whole world. Zipping down Storrow drive at night, looking wistfully at the houses on Beacon Hill, wondering if I will ever have a home with a river view. Walking down Newbury where the pretty people hang out and the rich shop. Jazz at Wally?s, salsa at Sophias, oh! I could go on. And all my friends -- where would I be without them? They are my surrogate family, my inner sanctum, my refuge when I am having a bad day. Ah, life is sooo good!

And yet, life in America can be so extraordinarily strange. Most Indians strive to achieve the great American dream. The bigger house, the better car, designer clothes, kids in private school who will eventually go to Ivy League universities, and hopefully turn out to be doctors or lawyers, and achieve everything that their parents never did, but gave up the love and leisure of life in India for. As for me, I want my kids to be musicians. Pursue my dream, perhaps? "Oh yes, my daughter studies piano at Juilliard", I will proudly say.

Some of us adapt to life here, and morph into some state of wannabe-Americanism.
Most don't, and continue to live in a time warp, always comparing life in America to life back home. Still have a lota in the bathroom, and smell like a curry. Attend all desi parties, and watch Zee TV. Wear salvar-kurtas to work, and shout Indian patriotism from the rooftops. Children meet and marry other Indians (preferably of the same religion, caste and social status), and are frowned upon if they dare to stray from the beaten path.

And then there's us, the 20/30 something "Generation-Xers" with our struggles for over accomplishment. We have to have the great job, two Master?s degrees, the best leisure, and the perfect, most knowledgeable minds in the even more perfect bodies. For some strange reason we are obsessed with our appearance, leading to our pursuit of whiter teeth and perfect skin. Crest white strips and Estee Lauder's NEW Resilient Overnight Lift. Liposuction and breast implants, padded bras and corsets.

Women must look like the latest little hottie supermodel, and to that end we trudge to the gym every day, run miles on the tread mill, do weights, tummy crunches, butt-lifts or whatever the latest exercise fad is - power yoga, thai-bo, or some other sort of bastardized oriental art that the great fitness gurus tote as the latest and greatest solution for buns of steel. The treadmill seems to be the great metaphor of life, I sometimes think. You appear to be moving forward, but at the end of it all you have not gone anywhere. My pet gym theory is "the bigger the biceps, the smaller the brain" - heheh. Women in tank tops and sports bras (complete with emblazoned designer logos), caked with enough makeup for ten people, there not so much to work out, as to be ogled at.

And then there's me! blissfully oblivious to, and quite blasé about the underlying male/female chemistry going on around me. "Oh, check out the guy's butt", the girl next to me whispers to her friend, sweat glistening off her toned abs. I discretely peek up from my magazine, and am rather amused - a worthwhile distraction from a rather interesting article about Kim Jong Il and the nuclear arms race. (Do I see a reason why I am still single? My supercilious attitude problem, perhaps??) High-fiber, high-protein, low-carb diets, soymilk and green tea (so far not together, thank God!). Guilt pangs for gained pounds, elation at lost ones. Forty minutes on the Precor, reading the Economist on the side, burning 600 calories an hour, cursing the sedentary lifestyle that compels me to waste precious time everyday getting some form of exercise so as to not bloat into super-obesity. I think of my mother who walked two miles in the hot sun from the railway station to home, and speculate the irony of it all. I'm sure she wished she had a car to drive her around.

Of course, there's the job and career, which so far have turned out to be very good, and everything I hoped they would be, notwithstanding the pains of climbing up the career ladder - "oh, but you are a woman, and pretty, therefore you're probably not that bright". Fight to establish credibility, and establish it enough to prove that I am bloody good, and better than most of the men out there, who in spite of it still get paid 30% more than I do. Inspired by Kipling, I carry on regardless.

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

And inevitably, all conversations about life eventually roll around to talk about love and relationships -- every fiber of our beings caught between Indian conservatism and American liberalism. Nice girls don't drink, nice girls don't stay out all night, nice girls don't ... nice girls don't .. "Yes Ma, No Ma, three bags full Ma". She's not here, and probably would not even care anymore, so why do I still hear her voice and feel her disapproval? How well our childhood creeds have been indoctrinated! And therein lies the conundrum!

I wonder at the walls I have built around myself, and until I figure out WHY I don't want to break the barriers and let people in, it's going to stay that way. Protection against being hurt, perhaps? Not wanting the pain of ending a relationship? Commitment fears?? I don't know. And so I continue to wait for the super-spectacular, special person who will see beyond the obvious, who will love me for the person inside and not be bogged down by superficialities. Until then, I shall continue to be Barbara Streisand and Donna Summers singing "It's raining, it's pouring, my love life is boring me to tears".

I pull out my guitar and strum "Blowing in the Wind" (finally comprehending the questions in the lyrics) and wonder at the paradox that the world and I have changed so much and yet so little. Bush is in the white house and America is at war -- AGAIN! The Republicans propagate their anti-abortion, pro-life mantra, while Rael clones human beings.

And yet, as I contemplate it all, I realize that I am inexorably happy. I came here to make my destiny, and despite all the ups and downs, the loss of an idyllice life and love that might have been, the confusion and the ambivalence, the freedom of living by myself weighted by the despair and loneliness of not having my family near me, and so on, I think I have. I look back at the girl who left home six years ago full of naiveté and awe, and I say to myself "You've come a long way, baby!"