A year later...

One year ago, on this day, I landed in this country, and set foot in my new home, that would be witness to our new life together, our happy times, happier phases, our disagreements and compromises, our shared dreams and aspirations, and be our address for some of the years ahead. I had changed home only once before, as a gap-toothed seven-year-old.  Twenty years later, I had hardly any memory of the early thrills, excitement or anxiety I (might have) experienced after moving to my new home. When I walked around the holy fire seven times with my husband at my wedding and took an oath that my heart, my soul would be with his everywhere, life after life, I officially clipped my roots travelling deep into the city that gave me birth, gave me life. While packing my bags in a haste, Ma didn’t appear conscious of the fact that I wasn’t leaving for a matter of a few days or months. Rather I was leaving forever to live in a faraway land, from where I would return to visit her once in a couple of years or so. As I child, I often confused between the concepts of intensity and length. To give a tangible idea of how much I loved my mother, I often said that, “I love you from here to the Americas”. While I was crying uncontrollably in her arms, before leaving for Boston with my husband, Ma mentioned that.

I may not be at home, I may not be around to startle you with my sudden hugs every now and then, but there is a bridge athwart oceans and continents that joins our hearts, our souls.
Ma, it has been exactly one year since I last buried my nose in your hair.

Welcome Home

How can one be so stupid?

I never traveled on a flight before I boarded one for the USA. I used to ask everyone that did, what the experience was like. How it felt to be travelling through the clouds, how it felt to look down at the planet, tracts of lands, hills and mountains, forests and concrete. Most opined, it was boring, more boring than it might seem or you might expect. You can’t move much, can’t take a walk if your knees ache. Sitting in the same position for long hours is anything but enjoyable, they said. Someone shared with me a more terrible fact—fluctuating air pressure may rupture one’s eardrums. So, I took unconfident steps onto the first aircraft of my life that took me to Doha, from where I boarded another flight to Boston. I tried to appear confident until I was asked to fasten the seat-belt. I looked around and tried to see how other people did that but failed. I didn’t want to ask for my husband’s help—we were still new to each other and I had been consciously trying to maintain a confident and street-wise facade--qualities he later told me he never thought I possessed. My husband caught me struggling with the seatbelt and waited for a few seconds before extending his help with a how-can-one-be-so-stupid expression.

I won’t remove my marital ornaments

The flight left Kolkata after three in the morning. I was seated in a window seat right next to one of the wings. To my utter disappointment, I could see absolutely nothing outside, except a part of the pitch-dark sky of the night. So, I started twiddling my thumbs until another moment of embarrassment came along. A flight steward came to serve us food but I was yet to set my table—I didn’t know how to do that. My husband saved me from sheer embarrassment but I am sure he laughed secretly. I am sure the plump man sitting next to him, who slept through most of the journey and briefly woke up just to have dinner, laughed too. I felt shaky and cursed myself for not checking the YouTube videos that showed how to do things on a flight. I am laughing now while writing about the incident. I no longer bother to make any efforts to show that I am not really as silly as I appear. For my husband now knows me well, how clumsy I am. When you live with someone under one roof for a year and love him intensely enough to comfortably fight with him like a younger sibling, you no longer bother about how you look while you sleep, or on your bad-hair days, how stupid you seem to be when you accidentally drop a fork or a spoon while eating at a restaurant or when you fail to cover a forceful sneeze timely. But it was different that time. I was just a few weeks old as his wife and I had to look smart to him.

We reached Doha around 8 in the morning and I looked around like a curious child. Everything starting from the water fountains to the gigantic yellow teddy or the luxury car on display enthralled me like they would a five-year-old. And of all things I wanted to have a piece of gum from the duty-free stores, I no longer remember why. It was at the Doha airport that they asked me to remove my marital ornaments at the time of security checking, to which I said a prompt and clear ‘no’ without thinking twice. I was not well-aware of the power of the officers that check passengers before boarding flights. I was not aware that the ‘Hulk’ish lady officer who was checking me could easily take me to a room for the sake of asking questions and stop me from boarding my flight to Boston if I upset her even a bit or if she wished to. Ignorance is bliss and I was ignorant. She looked at me, blinked. I looked back too, blinking. And a couple of seconds later she said ok.

Mera Kuchh Samaan—a few of my belongings

My flight to Boston was more pleasant for a number of reasons. Firstly, I had a window seat this time too, without absolutely nothing obstructing the view through it. Secondly, there was nobody to occupy the third seat, which meant husband and I could use the seats as a bed, taking turns, and have a brief shuteye. Thirdly, there was a huge collection of old Bollywood songs on the playlist of the flight, including my all-time favorite ‘Mera Kuchh Samaan’. And fourthly, because I was very soon to reach my new home, in a country where I knew absolutely nobody, except for the man who took an oath to love me and protect me against everything through the rest of my life, a few weeks ago.

One particular phase of the journey left a lasting impression on me—it was when the plane was flying over the Atlantic Ocean. I diligently watched the progress of the tiny digital aircraft, moving along the dotted line that joined the two continents—Europe and North America—across the ocean, on the in-seat screen. I had a strange feeling while watching it—I felt as if it was me, the tiny aircraft was actually me, moving away from my world, from Ma and Baba and all the wonderful souls that gave me love and life, inch by inch to a place from where I would return only occasionally, for a couple of weeks or so, to be with them, to hold them in my arms, to be in the city that witnessed me grow over the years, from a problem child, a skittish teen, to an angsty young professional, the city that is aware of all my secret shenanigans, and my experiments with life. I closed my eyes and felt thankful for the darkness inside the plane. I started crying silently and eventually drifted off to sleep.

Welcome home

I expected skyscrapers, I expected a Manhattanish view of the city while the plane flew over it. But Boston disappointed me. I saw cottage-like houses, I saw spires, acres of fields, lakes, and trees that recently lost foliage. Boston from the sky looked pretty much like a Scottish village or an English small town. It had absolutely no resemblance to what I imagined it to be. And my imagination was largely inspired by the photos I saw on TIME Lightbox of New York or Chicago taken from airplanes.

It was an afternoon in early December, partly sunny, chilly, and extremely windy. One of the first things that welcomed me was a sign, right after I stepped out of the airplane and entered the arrival area. The sign welcomed me in countless different languages. And it didn’t take me even a second to spot ‘swagatam’ glowing in Bengali and Hindi against the illuminated background. It was the first of the countless warm hugs I received from the city, especially on occasions when I wanted nothing except going home. It hugged me, ran its fingers through my hair like an affectionate elder every time homesickness struck, and told me, you’re at home, I am home to you. I felt as if it opened its heart to me, reminded me that I wasn’t away from home, showed me that it knew how to touch my heart, my soul. And I fell in love with it in that very instant.

The immigration officer appeared very serious and unfriendly.

‘How do you pronounce your name? Sh-Shandreya?’ He closely examined my passport.

‘No, Chandreyi’, I corrected him.

A corner of his lips raised a bit, as if he said ‘whatever’.

‘You guys got married recently?’

We nodded, smiled a bit, tried to look relaxed, which we were not, more because of my hypertensed husband, who was terribly afraid of police and immigration officers.

‘Have you started hating each other yet?’

He asked very seriously, looking up from the passport. Three thick folds appeared
across his forehead.

Husband and I looked at each other, didn’t know how to react. And then the officer laughed, ‘Just kidding guys, welcome home!’

About me

When the outer world becomes too chaotic to bear, find yourself a corner and a book.

When you feel the same chaos inside, find yourself a corner, a pen, and a notepad.

I painted, I practiced singing and dancing. At 12, I published my first story in a popular Bengali magazine for children called Anandamela. At 13, my story was published in a book, a collection of short stories for children. But I have never been passionate enough about my passions. Sometimes I feel my mind is like those cameras from the old days, that couldn’t zoom in on any specific object. Hence, I have been jumping from painting to writing to photography to origami since the time I learned the meaning of the word ‘passion’. But I have been true to my love for literature. I believe I have read more words than I have spoken or used in my thoughts. I am not sure if I would have had the motivation to write this blog had I not crossed continents and oceans to find life in a foreign land. I am not thirty yet, married, happy about the gray streaks in my hair, and bad at decision-making. I haven’t been able to find a suitable name for my blog. Hence, Whatchamacallit, a term you use when you can’t remember or don’t want to take the name of something. If you have a better name in mind, please write to me at chandreyi.india033@gmail.com.

My piece on an experimental artist

Graveyard

A story about people working night shifts took me all the way back to the time when I used to work on graveyard shifts to serve clients living on the other side of the globe. Like many others, I had an ambivalent opinion about night shifts. True, that I didn’t like to sleep through the day, wake up late in the evening with a heart heavy with all the depression in the world, and walk sheepishly onto the floor to start another busy night with hardly any opportunity to indulge myself with even five minutes to take a walk around the floor. But on the other hand, night shifts were much peaceful, for there were absolutely no distractions or disturbance, especially in the form of some pesky souls. On some rare occasions, when I had the time to take a look through the glass wall behind our workstations at my city, adorned with countless twinkling jewels of lights, at the billboards faraway—probably the only things bustling with life that late at night— or the cars swooshing up and down serpentine flyovers like fireflies, life felt wonderful every time, despite the hundred reasons I had (or so I thought) to justify the constant lion wrinkle between my eyebrows.

I liked night shifts for one, actually two, more reasons—food, whatever you liked and as much as you liked, and good music. We used to be entitled to an incredibly generous allowance for dinner per night. So every night, after we logged into our systems and browsed through some hundred emails received through the course of the day, there would always be someone volunteering to ask everyone what they’d like to eat, make a list, and make calls to the nearby takeaways that remained open through the night. I was known for my special liking for the so-called boring old Bollywood songs from the black and white era which I played on my system despite pretty much everyone complaining that they worsened the already depressed mood all the more. Sometimes some would protest by playing one of those typical auto-rickshaw numbers, proven to be greatly effective to bring those back to consciousness that fell asleep in the middle of the shift. One more thing energized us like nothing else--calls from delivery guys, who arrived with the food we ordered and waited outside the restricted area of the floor to receive payments. Once the food would be in, the team would wake up as if after a long hibernation, looking perfectly fresh and happy. Even the one, who had been sleeping with the head tilted back and the mouth slightly open, woke up mopping the thin stream of dropping saliva off the side of the mouth, without anyone having to shake them awake. We had a wonderful and kind lady in the team who bought a complete set of plastic cutlery with plates and spoons enough for eight to ten people to use at the same time. Sometimes we didn’t even bother to serve ourselves food on separate plates. Instead, we ate it straight from the aluminum trays in which it would be delivered, like siblings or close friends. The food would inevitably be spicy and oily to the point of being unhealthy. You can’t expect fresh or healthy food in the middle of the night. We knew it well that in most cases what we ate was at least a day old. But the lure of chicken Schezwan rolls, bacon-wrapped-chicken, or Mongolian fried rice was too hard to resist.

You can’t work night shifts without trading ghost stories. When that wasn’t enough to induce goose bumps or send chilling sensations through the spine, we watched horror short films, sometimes when the workload would be moderate especially post 2 in the morning. I was one of those fearless souls who could never gather the courage to visit the restroom alone. Our washroom was pretty far from where our workstations were, near an enclosed area for the department of ethics and compliance. I was particularly afraid of the desktop screens there that appeared to come alive every now and then on their own. While passing the area, I tried not to look at them, sometimes shielding my eyes to avoid accidental glances.

I worked night shifts for two weeks a month, for two years. I loved it as much as I hated it. I hated it mainly because it gave me pimples and I didn’t like to wake up near dinner time, while my parents would be having their late evening tea in the living room. A few weeks after leaving my job I was riding in a car to the airport with my newly married husband and three large suitcases. I was going to leave my parents, my friends, my realm of comfort to live in a place that was unknown, unseen to me, much like a distant planet. I promised myself not to cry, for I didn’t want to see my parents in tears. And then I realized that I was riding down the ever-familiar EM Bypass, leading to Salt Lake, Sector V, where I worked for two years. I suddenly had a strange feeling as the car drove past the ‘T junction’ commonly known as Airport-Gate 1, as if I was not going anywhere, I was not going to leave. Instead, I was going to work at night as I usually did, to serve clients living on the other side of the globe, eat unhealthy food, listen to old Bollywood classics, return home the next morning to Ma and Baba, and fall fast asleep without bothering to wake up for lunch. And then I found myself giving in and breaking the promise I made to myself. Tears welled up in my eyes and the car took a left turn to the airport.