It was a time of great change in the world; it was a time of great change in India. While the Middle East was melting down under riots, revolts and revolutions and the ISIS was taking over as the world's most deadly terrorist organization, the USA was trying its hand at legalizing marijuana, making friends with Cuba, and trying to figure out China (well the whole world was trying to do that, while China was busy trying to buy land on the moon), and India was trying its hand at banning beef, religious conversions, pornography, Maggi, controversial books, NGOs, movies, documentaries, western style parties and pretty much everything else that didn't fit into the narrow definition of Indian culture that existed in the minds of a few saffron-clad men in power. It was in such times that I left India - the land of yoga, the Buddha, of unity in diversity, the land of a million gods, and the land of farmer suicides. It was in such times that I landed in the USA - the land of dreams, the land of opportunity and the land of hope and glory, the land of the international police, the land that destroyed the Middle East in the name of waging a war on terror. It was difficult to say which way the world was headed. Some said it was progress, and a majority of the others agreed, but the more I looked at things closely, the more difficult it was to fathom the true meaning of this word - progress, until there was Donald Trump. He made it clear - that 'progress' has no true meaning, no one knows what it means; all it requires is for a certain number of stars to align, and these aren't the celestial stars, these are the stars that light the earth from within it's gravitational pull - the satellites that transmit what funded media channels want them to transmit, capturing people's imaginations in large numbers, keeping them busy with a barrage of trivial news that makes little difference to anyone's life, and keeps them busy enough to keep them from thinking - yes, that is progress - the ideas of a handful of people with power, projected upon the masses that are content in living from sunrise to sunset, from the 1st to the 31st, slaving for a living from Monday to Friday, and barely getting a chance to get their senses together over the weekend, if they can afford one in the rat race they are a part of. China of course was a different story.
Yes, China was indeed trying to own the moon, the very moon that I used to look at while hearing stories from my grandmother, of how an old man and an old lady lived there and how they went about their day making butter from the milk that flows all around the moon; that same moon that I looked at several times, sitting outside the kitchen door, with my mother cooking inside (the smell of mustard seeds and onions being deep fried in oil just before hitting the dal, and the smell of fresh rotis being taken off the tawa and tossed into the casserole) and my father sitting next to me with a glass of whiskey in his hand, pointing to the stars and introducing me to some planets (stars that didn't twinkle) and constellations like the Great Bear and the Orion Giant, with the moon shining brighter than them all. It took a lot of convincing before I was ready to believe that the moon in fact was the smallest of all those objects we saw in the sky, and that it was nearly impossible for us to reach any of them except the moon, which they had reached already, or so they claimed. This was much before the age of Ipads and apps that could show you the entire sky at a glance. These were days when video games were things that could be had if one had a granny who could travel abroad and buy one for you. Three decades, several technological innovations and several philosophy books later, my own existence is sometimes as suspect in my head as the moon-landing seems to be. The difference between the real and the unreal, the video game and the non video game is increasingly blurred - something only reason, guided by my senses, has convinced me to believe. Some believe in Ram, some in Jesus, some in Allah, some in a million other beings that I'm not sure any of them has really seen or met or felt, with a fervour so great that it allows them to take the lives of several others who may not have seen the same apparitions they have. I'm glad to hear that not so many have killed because some others don't believe someone landed on the moon.
I had first heard of America when my father introduced me to Elvis Presley - his childhood hero. He was in college when Jailhouse Rock had released, and he stood in line from 5 AM at Filmistan so he could get to watch the first show on the first day of the release. His friend tells me that he went and watched it every day for the whole first week of its release. Needless to say, I grew up with Elvis all around me. Vinyl Albums that played on the Turntable, Audio Cassettes, Video Cassettes that played on the National VCR and the Sony TV that he had got during his trip to Singapore. Elvis had defined my life in many ways - with his flamboyant lifestyle, his larger-than-life personality, his ability to rock'n'roll, and the insurmountability of death, for even Elvis couldn't evade it, with all his aura and fan following. Nevertheless, I was flying to the land that had produced Elvis - the white man that sang like a black man, thus uniting all of America, and to an extent the whole world. My application for the Fulbright FLTA programme was not free of it's events and hiccups. It started with the form, which takes a month to fill, for someone like me. I took one look at it and almost gave up, but when I met a few friends who had done it before, they convinced me that as long as I saved my work once I was done, I could return in a few days and carry on completing the form - with it's academic record details, job history details, essays, a requirement to attach transcripts of all your academic degrees as a single file - it took me about a month to complete it, and I finished it maybe a few hours before the deadline.
The next step was the eligibility test, which was at 9 AM on a Saturday. Anyone who knows me just a little bit would know how bad a situation that was, even if you ignored the fact that it was on a Saturday, which I'm not really sure if it was. I had reached Delhi a few days ago and was staying in Brahmaputra hostel, where there was a party the night before the test, which I very kindly obliged to be a part of, with every intention to leave before the stroke of midnight. Well that did not happen. I was actually about to leave, when three girls walked into the party. So, I decided to stay another 15 minutes, and the next thing I knew was that it was 2 am, and that when the party was over, I was walking back to my room with Akash (a previous FLTA who was supposed to give me tips on cracking the test) and a girl, where I played the guitar and we sang songs for maybe another hour, by the end of which the former had ended up passing out on my bed in Brahmaputra and Akash and I had sung some song that came to his mind, the chords to which I invented and we sang the lines, "wherever you are, wherever you go, just be in love, just be in love" maybe a 100 times, besides a few other songs I could play. Well, to cut the story short, I woke up at 8:45 AM, much like a soldier at border patrol during war would wake up when woken up by his superior after their bunker had been destroyed by the enemy because he had fallen asleep. By 8:55 AM, I had brushed and showered, and the girl couldn't decide if she wanted to carry on sleeping or if she wanted to leave, so I got her to step out of the room while she engaged in her thought process, locked the door and ran, about as fast as anyone in Brahmaputra hostel must have ever run, all the way to the IIMC gate. The first auto wallah didn't know where Hailey road was, and neither did I, so I continued running, and the next auto wallah told me he knew the route very well. I asked him to ride as fast as he could without crashing or being caught by the cops, and set out to do what I seem to do best - telling myself, "Well, I'm here now, in this situation; what do I do now?" So I called up Neelu, who was appearing for the entrance as well. She had given me a few missed calls by the time I had woken up, and it was possibly her calls that managed to get me up in the first place. I called her and she started yelling at me, and I told her that I was on the way, and that she should inform the Fulbright folks that "Asher is on his way... cab broke down... he's taking an auto". The story was told, and when I reached at 9:50 PM, I found out that I was only 20 minutes late for the test, since they had started only at 9:30 AM, and that 9:00 was only the reporting time. It was a two hour test, that I managed to finish in time, and that is when I heaved my sigh of relief, hungover like a lake gone dry!
Amit Ranjan was also appearing for the Fulbright exam, Amit Ranjan was a senior of mine from college, whom I don't think I'd ever spoken to in college, except for a few passing conversations at best. He was two years senior to me, and we hence had only one year to interact in college. He was also my senior in JNU, but I had never really lived in JNU, except for the last two years, so my only interactions with Amit were at random house parties where he'd also be present, and we'd go, "abbe, tu yahan kaise??!!" So Amit and I used that phrase once more at the Fulbright office in Hailey road, after the Hindi test, where I had discovered for the first time that 'doodhiya' was a valid word in Hindi, and he had come out of the test having given the examiner a few suggestions on how the test could be improved. So, needless to say, he was a 'little' more confident than I was, and I was elated that they still cleared me for the next round. The next day, we decided to meet outside Amit's house, from where we were to go to Hailey road in his car. I was probably a few minutes late in reaching his house, only to find out that he needed 15 more minutes to get dressed and come down. So I sat there outside the theka that I had frequented so often on weekends, wondering how different a place could look in the morning. I met a couple of dogs who agreed to let me pet them for a while. Amit arrived and we left for Hailey road in his Maruti 800, dressed in formals, shaved, hair neatly done, the passenger seat pushed all the way back to accommodate for my height, the relevant documents neatly filed... what could go wrong, right?. We were still good to reach just in time for our interview slot, and after Amit stopped for a cigarette and smoked it on the way, we wee still good to make it and be only ten minutes late for the interview. Ten minutes is not so bad by Indian standards, considering that both of us had always been at least 2 days late in submitting all our documents, and I had obviously been 20 minutes late for the entrance test just the previous day, so no real worries yet. I did urge Amit to drive a little fast though, which he obliged to do. As we entered Chanakya Puri though, we spotted some cops at a circle, but not before they spotted me - desperately trying to get my seatbelt on. Well, what could have gone wrong, right? By now, Amit was beginning to get calls from the Fulbright office, as his interview was scheduled to be held just before mine. I didn't even know where my phone was, so I'm not sure if they'd called me or not. Nevertheless, we paid the 'chalaan' of Rs. 100, and we were on our way, in time to be less than half an hour late. Amit called up the Fulbright folks and told them what happened, and they told us that it was okay, and the reason they had called was because the person scheduled before Amit hadn't turned up on time, so they were wondering if Amit could have taken their place. However, by the time Amit had called back, the person had turned up, and all the interviews happened to be pushed foward by 20 minutes or so. So when we walked in, we still had 5 minutes for me to get a cup of coffee while Amit got another smoke before he headed for his interview.
The next step was the eligibility test, which was at 9 AM on a Saturday. Anyone who knows me just a little bit would know how bad a situation that was, even if you ignored the fact that it was on a Saturday, which I'm not really sure if it was. I had reached Delhi a few days ago and was staying in Brahmaputra hostel, where there was a party the night before the test, which I very kindly obliged to be a part of, with every intention to leave before the stroke of midnight. Well that did not happen. I was actually about to leave, when three girls walked into the party. So, I decided to stay another 15 minutes, and the next thing I knew was that it was 2 am, and that when the party was over, I was walking back to my room with Akash (a previous FLTA who was supposed to give me tips on cracking the test) and a girl, where I played the guitar and we sang songs for maybe another hour, by the end of which the former had ended up passing out on my bed in Brahmaputra and Akash and I had sung some song that came to his mind, the chords to which I invented and we sang the lines, "wherever you are, wherever you go, just be in love, just be in love" maybe a 100 times, besides a few other songs I could play. Well, to cut the story short, I woke up at 8:45 AM, much like a soldier at border patrol during war would wake up when woken up by his superior after their bunker had been destroyed by the enemy because he had fallen asleep. By 8:55 AM, I had brushed and showered, and the girl couldn't decide if she wanted to carry on sleeping or if she wanted to leave, so I got her to step out of the room while she engaged in her thought process, locked the door and ran, about as fast as anyone in Brahmaputra hostel must have ever run, all the way to the IIMC gate. The first auto wallah didn't know where Hailey road was, and neither did I, so I continued running, and the next auto wallah told me he knew the route very well. I asked him to ride as fast as he could without crashing or being caught by the cops, and set out to do what I seem to do best - telling myself, "Well, I'm here now, in this situation; what do I do now?" So I called up Neelu, who was appearing for the entrance as well. She had given me a few missed calls by the time I had woken up, and it was possibly her calls that managed to get me up in the first place. I called her and she started yelling at me, and I told her that I was on the way, and that she should inform the Fulbright folks that "Asher is on his way... cab broke down... he's taking an auto". The story was told, and when I reached at 9:50 PM, I found out that I was only 20 minutes late for the test, since they had started only at 9:30 AM, and that 9:00 was only the reporting time. It was a two hour test, that I managed to finish in time, and that is when I heaved my sigh of relief, hungover like a lake gone dry!
Amit Ranjan was also appearing for the Fulbright exam, Amit Ranjan was a senior of mine from college, whom I don't think I'd ever spoken to in college, except for a few passing conversations at best. He was two years senior to me, and we hence had only one year to interact in college. He was also my senior in JNU, but I had never really lived in JNU, except for the last two years, so my only interactions with Amit were at random house parties where he'd also be present, and we'd go, "abbe, tu yahan kaise??!!" So Amit and I used that phrase once more at the Fulbright office in Hailey road, after the Hindi test, where I had discovered for the first time that 'doodhiya' was a valid word in Hindi, and he had come out of the test having given the examiner a few suggestions on how the test could be improved. So, needless to say, he was a 'little' more confident than I was, and I was elated that they still cleared me for the next round. The next day, we decided to meet outside Amit's house, from where we were to go to Hailey road in his car. I was probably a few minutes late in reaching his house, only to find out that he needed 15 more minutes to get dressed and come down. So I sat there outside the theka that I had frequented so often on weekends, wondering how different a place could look in the morning. I met a couple of dogs who agreed to let me pet them for a while. Amit arrived and we left for Hailey road in his Maruti 800, dressed in formals, shaved, hair neatly done, the passenger seat pushed all the way back to accommodate for my height, the relevant documents neatly filed... what could go wrong, right?. We were still good to reach just in time for our interview slot, and after Amit stopped for a cigarette and smoked it on the way, we wee still good to make it and be only ten minutes late for the interview. Ten minutes is not so bad by Indian standards, considering that both of us had always been at least 2 days late in submitting all our documents, and I had obviously been 20 minutes late for the entrance test just the previous day, so no real worries yet. I did urge Amit to drive a little fast though, which he obliged to do. As we entered Chanakya Puri though, we spotted some cops at a circle, but not before they spotted me - desperately trying to get my seatbelt on. Well, what could have gone wrong, right? By now, Amit was beginning to get calls from the Fulbright office, as his interview was scheduled to be held just before mine. I didn't even know where my phone was, so I'm not sure if they'd called me or not. Nevertheless, we paid the 'chalaan' of Rs. 100, and we were on our way, in time to be less than half an hour late. Amit called up the Fulbright folks and told them what happened, and they told us that it was okay, and the reason they had called was because the person scheduled before Amit hadn't turned up on time, so they were wondering if Amit could have taken their place. However, by the time Amit had called back, the person had turned up, and all the interviews happened to be pushed foward by 20 minutes or so. So when we walked in, we still had 5 minutes for me to get a cup of coffee while Amit got another smoke before he headed for his interview.
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