My Move to India Permanently
Tap ... tap ... tap ... I looked up to see a blurry figure of my mother tapping a few
fingers on my shoulder. "Sorry to wake you up, Rishi, but me and Daddy have something
important to tell you." She was not smiling.
I got up, now fully awake, wondering what was going on. With my father standing next to
her, my mother crossed her arms and, in a tone that I knew could not be argued with,
stated, "We have decided to move to India permanently."
I was awestruck. My family is Indian, but I had never so much as considered living
anywhere but Peach Tree Court, a street that had the brightest green maple trees and
fields of radiant yellow and orange marigolds. India was nothing more than an old family
story to me, not a place to live.
Over the next couple of weeks, I ruminated on what life would be like in India. My
brother, who already attended an Indian boarding school, told me in scratchy
long-distance telephone conversations how great life was in India at his boarding
school.
"We have the best futbol (soccer) field in all of India," he said. "It has an
electronic scoring board, and the surface is fluorescent blue astroturf." This was an
enormous motivation factor, due to the fact that soccer is my favorite sport. "And the
food is delectable," he went on, "They serve chicken curry with juicy vegetables four out
of the seven days of the week." I ate chicken curry every chance I got, so this, added
to the soccer field, made the school sound fantastic.
"The weather is remarkable. The temperature year-round is seventy-five to eighty
degrees," he continued with emphasis, "just like California, Rishi." My brother knew
that I loved California. He also told me that I would get to visit our parents two times
a week, which is very generous compared to other Indian boarding schools.
My brother's long-distance stories convinced me. From what I had heard, India sounded
like utopia.
Six weeks after my mother woke me with the big "news," my father, mother and I arrived
in India. We left Peach Tree Court, with all its beautiful maple trees, and flew to
India. I stepped off the airplane into the dirtiest, oldest airport I had ever seen.
A film of dirt covered everything in the airport; the windows, the walls, even the floor.
And the people working there seemed more likely to shrug their shoulders and ignore the
passengers than care at all if anything worked right. In order to keep my spirits high,
I kept telling myself, "Things will be a lot better once we get to the school."
After a 45-minute drive through a landscape that looked nothing like California, we
arrived at the school. I was starting to get uneasy. The old, rusted gate that provided
entrance to the school shrieked hideously when it opened and closed. There were
fifty-foot tall trees encompassing the whole campus, so it was very dark and gloomy even
though it was only two o'clock in the afternoon. It was raining very hard; I suppose my
brother forgot to mention that India is known for its excessive flooding during monsoon
season. As we walked through the campus, I noticed that the school buildings had a
common 'theme' among them. All of them had an exterior of peeling pink paint, with white
blotches where the paint had fallen off. The buildings didn't even have real windows,
instead they had square holes in the walls with steel bars through them.
My parents gave me hugs and then left quickly to set up the furniture in their new home.
The following week was one that I hate to think of to this day. The schools only gave
us one hour a day for leisure, the rest of the time being dedicated to either sleeping,
eating, or studying. The 'chicken curry with juicy vegetables' that my brother
tantalized me with turned out to be a gruesome soybean substitute for chicken. I can
only guess that my brother had eaten it so many times that he had grown to appreciate its
garbage-like taste and appearance.
My brother loved the school (for some reason), and I could tell on my visits to home
that my parents were enjoying living in India, especially without any children in the
house. But all I could think about were the maple trees and marigolds of Peach Tree
Court. That place seemed like utopia to me.
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