You know how we often hear about some Americans complaining about the numerous immigrants in their country taking their jobs? Yeah well, I think the matter is way beyond complain now. I almost thought I have landed in the wrong country at the SFO airport! Among 20 randomly picked employess at the airport there would be 4 Chinese, 2 Middle Easterns, 4 JApanese, 3 Mexicans,  6 Indians and maybe 1 American! How and when did it become an overloaded melting pot!?
I was pretty drained out from the 16 hours long flight which was virtually endless if you apply Einstein's explanation for relativity, which states, if you are lying on a red hot iron bed, a second seems like eternity. Well, maybe not red hot iron bed, but the incessant chattering of a woman who thinks having 200 relatives all over USA is something to be bragged about, is pretty close to the same level of torture. It all started with an innocent smile before I sat down in my seat and answered her question- "first time in the States?". Before I knew it I was sucked into this black hole of her entire family history and why she thinks her husband's elder brother's wife's distant uncles son is a despicable person and how unfair it is that he has all the wealth she and her family deserves. It does not end with just listening, you have to provide opinions when asked for and if she wouldnt agree it is only natural that you should engage in a debate with her and defend your point. I made it through because fortunately the human race figured out fermentation many centuries back.
After around 8 mini bottles of wine and 15 trips to the bathroom, I entered US territory. I was super excited to meet my sister and bro-in-law after a year and couldnt wait no more. But guess what changes nowhere in the world?! Baggage claim!!!! Seriously, they should use that experience as a reference in all-countries-are-brothers speech. You wait and you wait and you torture yourself by helping others to pull their luggage off the belt and what do they do? A curt 'thanks' if you are lucky and scamper off happily with a loathsome grin on their faces. Dont you just hate the people who found their baggage already while you are still hovering around the belt waiting for your's with a thumping heart?
"Oh there it is! My dirty green suitcase wrapped in sealing wrapper! Isn't it the sweetest thing I have ever laid my eyes on! Yay!! "
Soon the family hug and overexcited giggles followed and we were on the SFO roads.
" So where do we go today? Are we gonna go around the city? Are we gonna check out malls? Are we gonna go to the bay? Are we gonna go stare at historic stuff?"- I was this annoying little jitterbug for the bigger half of the drive.
"relax, we are gonna go home, eat lunch and take a nap"- my sister replied absolutely oblivious to my hyperness.
The best I could do the same day was drag her for a walk around her block. And then I noticed the damdest thing ever- you press the button at the pole to cross the street!
Why, back in India you just wait for cars to feel just enough pity on you to slow down and let you run across the street with hopes of reaching the other side in one piece! Well, now I just hope I still remember to sprint across the road when am back in my country.
The second damdest thing I saw was the Golden Gate Bridge! Thank God for civil engineering and suspension bridges! The bridge that is always covered in clouds and looks like the way to heaven. You almost expect a pearly gate on the other end. That was also the day I experienced my first small talky American. I was on a bench just catching my breath. There was this white bearded man reading a newspaper beside me.
"Dont you think this is amazing?"
"Excuse me?"
"look here, it says 52 locall businessmen have petitioned to remove a Walmart store from their area so there business can stay afloat and the authorities have agreed! Dont you think that's very nice of them?"
"It sure is nice", Mr absolute stranger.
" I myself run a small store and I would react the same way. Sometimes Walmart should understand and contain themselves. It is outrageous the way blah blah blah........."
By this time I had phased out from the conversation.
" .....dont you think so?"
Uh oh...about what? " Yes off course."
That night I visited Walmart to mooch off of my sister (because I am cheap) and I loved it! I wished it would spread and prosper like a parasite.
As ws inevitable, fun was over soon and I came to Corvallis, to my University.
Whoaaaaa!!!! Climate shock!!! This country is freaking cold!!! The last time I felt such a chill was when me and my roomy almost got caught drinking in the dorm room by the warden!
Soon we discovered my run down apartment and the people am gonna share it with. 3 Indians more clueless than I was. 3 tip-top South Indian girls who go ' ikruindepliuiceXkJVxkjv kjv ', after every two comprehensible sentences. They loved the apartment! Even though the management gave us closets without doors, a sink wothout a dishwasher and grinder, a shower that sprays water 360 degrees and a bathroom only half a person can fit in.
The first few weeks followed a cycle of campus hopping-losing my way-going to free lunches offered by Indian seniors-campus hopping-losing my way-free dinners (woohoo)-falling asleep before head hits the sleeping bag.
Then came orientation day and I mingled. I mingled and I small talked and I nailed the use of the sound 'mmhmm' instead of nodding my head vigorously whenever I agreed with someone. Phew! People wanna talk to me and exchange phone numbers! So I wont end up as the lonely foreign student walking around the campus all by herself. Social life: Check.
Now all I have to worry about is to die frozen on the road as the weather gets colder.

Getting close and paranoia

I am already here and it is my first day at orientation at OSU. Wherever you look there are more international than domestic students and all the internationals have the yeah-I-am-the-American expression pasted on their faces. Well who am I to talk. But it is only natural for me to think that way after all the F.R.I.E.N.D.S and How I Met Your Mother and Gossip Girl ogling though out college in India.
I spotted the advisor assigned to me at a distance waiting at her table, probably expecting me. I walked up to her brushing up my ‘American accent’ (or so I think) in my head and repeating my opening introductory line to her silently.
“Hi, I am Rusha.” Damn it, the ‘R’ sounded totally Bengali.’ I believe you are my advisor. I have a few questions regarding…….’

‘Are you ok’?

‘What? I mean excuse me’?

‘Miss Rusha, where are your clothes’?!!!!

‘Whoaaaaaaaaaaa………..’.

Thankfully, like every other major incredible embarrassing moments this turned out to be a nightmare as well. Phew. It has been a week since my dreams have been coming to such weird petrifying conclusions! This time it’s a wardrobe malfunction, sometimes it’s a humongous wet lizard chasing me around the room while I discuss my course with the advisor, sometimes the advisor is struck by a big chunk of beef in the middle of her sentence and so naturally the university has to expel l a student left without an advisor and twice it has been the advisor herself slamming down a glass paper weight on my temple and yelling, ‘you are so beyond advice you punk!’

If anybody should be blamed for my momentary psychosis, I blame my grandmother, mother, father and innumerable friends who are advising me and warning me all the freaking time!! Let’s start in the descending order i.e. the one with the maximum advice to the one with useless advice.

Mother (off course)- Do not date a firang!
Do not forget your own culture. Listen to Tagore every day. Statistics suggest that 90% of immigrants who have cut all ties with their heritage have gone crazy out of depression and…..and……well depression is bad enough.
Remember you are there to study and study only.
Americans drink a lot! And you are a potent substance abuser. (This despite no former proof whatsoever).
Ask your sister and brother in law for advice before you decide anything at all. (Even though they live in a different state and have never visited Oregon before).
Do not eat junk food. Burgers and French fries are the two major causes of cancer in the western world.
Tag along with the Bengalis there. Join their clubs and associations and participate in their programs. Statistics suggest 90% of immigrants who have cut all ties………….
Do not shop. You are a student. All you need is a pair of sneakers, one pair of denim and a few kurtas.
Do not date a firang!

Father- Everything your mom suggested and do not date a firang!

Grandmother- Try to be at home as much as you can because it is dangerous to be out in an unknown country. English movies show people getting mugged and raped and killed all the time. (Excuse me, but so do Hindi movies grandma).
There is too much sex in America. (This concept developed from a scene in the movie Atonement and that movie is British).
Stay away from firangs.
Eat as much as you can while you are still at home. Once you are off to USA you will hardly find food. (I don’t even know what that means!)

Friend 1- Duuuuuude! I hear booze is cheap there. You will probably end up inebriated and deported.

Friend 2- Duuuuuude!!

Friend 3 (already in some state in US)- Duuuuuude!! We are gonna so catch up and drink till we pass out! (All of it said in a fake, hard-to-keep-up-with accent).

Friend 4- Duuuuuuuuude!! American boys! (that’s all. She expected me to catch some sort of hint from those 3 words).

Friend 5- Duuuuuude!! Please don’t turn into a tramp like my friend XYZ. We hear she has already slept with half her class and keeps her grades up by doing the professors! (Oh k, I am pretty sure these things happen only on chick flicks but, whatever).

Friend 6- May be you will have a friend like Barney and it will be legendary! (yeah, I am sure).

Although, when I think of it, most of us think-we-are-cool Indian students who make it to their dream destination, the US of A, are more excited about our day dreams of acquiring friends who closely resemble the Barneys and Rachels we absolutely adore and are convinced that this is how most Americans are, than the graduate program we have enrolled in. They are funny, pretty and fun with a lot of time in their hands to waste away at a certain Mc Clarens bar or a Central Perk café. We often miss out the point in our imaginations that all of those shows are about only one city in the entire continent and about only a few people and it is just freaking TV! Nothing there is real, not even reality shows! I am sure in the real America other people do not put up with your goofy humor and nonsense so that the fake laughter in the background is appropriate. Why most of the people I call to book an apartment in Oregon hardly speak more than a few syllables to me no matter how sweet and funny I try to sound.

“Am sorry you have to come down here to apply for apartments”.

“But I am an international student and wont be in your country until the middle of this month! I am absolutely unfamiliar with the renting system in US I dint even know it is possible to charge separately for the sewer and garbage! Here in India we just flush things down the toilet or dump garbage at the nearest public garbage pile”! May be she will be amused by my third world poor-drainage-poor-recycle conditions and hold an apartment for me.

“Mmmmhmmm. Well there is nothing I can do for you. Buh bye”.

That is how most conversations go. No funny remarks, no witty comebacks.

Now that the countdown has begun, very soon I will be there to experience things first hand, to deduce how far the Indian concept of US and its people are true. Are the people there really as friendly and small-talk-y as I hear? Are the high school kids really as dumb as my desi immigrant friends’ tell me? Is booze really as cheap as my Old Monk drinking friends imagine? Do college students really sleep with their professors for better GPA and get away with it? Is there really too much sex in America?
The countdown to these answers is on…………….