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…………….
