Christopher McCandless says it well: “The joy of living comes from our encounters with new experiences, and therefore there is no greater joy than having a horizon that changes constantly, that each day has a new and different sun.”
As a teenager, the West, as always, seemed the epicenter of possibility and opportunity. Through this article I want to share my experiences as a young immigrant in the western world during the last 20 years. I was only fifteen when my parents decided to move our base from India to the United States of America. Being a young teenager, like everyone at that age, I was very excited about Immigrating and becoming a US citizen, exploring that part of the world that I had read so much about in books. Coming from an Armed Forces background, my life has always been adventurous and fast moving with exposure to many states, cities, cultures and the wonderful diversity that is India. Like all Fauji (army) children, as they are called, I lived in a very adventurous yet protective environment where we are somehow pampered to the core with comfort, safety and down-to-earth joys of living. I loved that life.
I finished my board exams and we traveled to the UK first for a holiday which was wonderful and fascinating, being my first international exposure and then I arrived at the dream destination of all of the USA. The first few weeks were like a dream, where everything was perfect, we vacationed in Washington, Orlando, and Seattle. Then, little by little we got into the realities of life and the challenges of new immigrants. I joined a school where I felt lonely and strange because my accent was different from most and I couldn’t understand the spoken language of many students well and vice versa. My way of thinking and also the concept of my public school education was very different in India, but soon my teachers began to understand the inherent strength of my educational knowledge base, including the grammatical correctness of my written English that was lacking in my classmates. . Along with this, I joined a summer job at the airport where we were supposed to help passengers in all aspects, language, disability, location guide, etc. The first day I helped a passenger to a particular destination at the airport, she gave me a $5 tip. I took the money but as soon as I got home I cried my heart out to my father telling him that in India we tip the poor and here I am getting a tip. I felt small. My father tried to explain to me what the culture is here and that there is nothing wrong, that is the way to show courtesy, but I was too upset to understand. So this was my first experience in the new western culture. My work continued through the summer, and I still remember at the end of the summer, if I didn’t get a tip, I used to get mad because I didn’t make enough pocket money. I met an elderly gentleman, a co-worker who, I learned, had just retired as a senior manager from Boeing.
He told me that he didn’t necessarily have to work, he could sit in his big house and just garden. She got there just to have fun. In another case, we found a war veteran, a US Navy officer, who was driving a taxi. He said that he did it for pleasure as in no other occupation does he meet so many strangers that he enjoys interacting with. There I learned the value of human dignity. No job is small, and no job makes you feel larger than your natural size. The political and business class here has a lot to learn from them. Then I went back to my school. Little by little I was adjusting to the new environment, but I missed my life in India very much. At any given opportunity, he would be ready to rush back to India. Over the next few years I experienced many aspects of the new society, some good and some thought-provoking. We often traveled to Vancouver in Canada, just two hours of a wonderful scenic drive. Another thing I learned is that when living abroad, Indians are more consistently Indian than they are in their homeland, where they remain rudderless.
My life continued with periods of stay in India and America. People in India envied me while I envied them. Then came a stage in my life where I went ahead and got my professional degree and joined Bank of America in the Investment business. I was doing well professionally and so far I had no conflict with Western life. We usually traveled to India once a year and now I have also started to see positivity in my new country of residence. I began to realize the scope of the opportunities there. The quality of life, whether you are rich or poor, is essentially the same, as you eat similar foods, you get all the basic comforts of life quite easily, there is dignity in work, dignity in whatever work you do, and most importantly , not corruption at the level of life of the common man. It took me many years to understand this, but now I know for sure that who I am today is due to multiple exposures in my life. I’m not saying that as an immigrant there wouldn’t be problems, there definitely would be because we come from different cultures and backgrounds and went through the pains of transformation. But that’s all a phase, like the first time a little boy is hospitalized and cries under a sheet.
Today, my family members are well established in the United States, their children are doing very well, and they receive the best education and opportunities. I have lived in the US for 15 years and have had many opportunities to see the world, west and east, both offering a quality lifestyle for enterprising fortune seekers. I am back in India, just as comfortable and running my own Immigration and Visa company after completing my Masters in International Business. Myself, as an immigrant who has seen the best of life in India and then experienced the struggle of a new immigrant, a phase where one wants to return to life in the country of origin, now in a phase where that I love the worlds equally for what they have given me and my family.
Today I am the General Director of AKKAM Immigration and Related Services that provides solutions and meets all the requirements related to immigration, study visas and related services to multiple destinations around the world. I feel that all immigration consultants and agents can authentically guide clients if they have experienced the realities, challenges and opportunities in immigration business themselves. I would always advise all my clients, friends and family that life is a unique blessing, spread your wings and experience the movement towards the Horizon, much awaits you, distant dreams, some dark clouds and wonderful colors beyond the Horizon.