Within minutes of taking off, we were flying through a pile of puffy white clouds. It was not only my first flight from India to the USA but also my first time on a commercial airliner. And I was having what I would call a spiritual experience.
A scene from Indian mythology came to mind. Indra, the guardian and keeper of the heavens, would fly through clouds so fast that people could hear the thunder of his chariot without being able to see him. The clouds that supported and enabled his travels were alive and aware entities. At that moment, I was living and experiencing that mythology. I was Indra, part and parcel of the living sky. My heart was experiencing the limitlessness of the sky. It was poetry.
Upon landing in New York, I was received at the gate by a French air hostess. “You dumb immigrant,” she said. She was displeased that my chest X-rays were in my suitcase and not in my hand.
The hostess grabbed me by my arm and dragged me, walking faster than I could with my luggage. She occasionally looked back at me in disgust as we walked the long hallways to the immigration officer. “These dumb immigrants don’t understand anything,” she repeated.
This disheveled, jet-lagged young man from India had just been introduced to America! The reception was unpleasant, and not what I expected.
That first impression was soon erased by the friendly, polite welcome from both the immigration and customs officers. I had landed at Idlewild Airport. I was told my next flight to Kansas City was from LaGuardia Airport, and I needed to take a taxi to reach there on time. Estimated cost: two dollars. Converted into Indian currency, that was a lot of money. But I had no choice.
The taxi driver was a Polish immigrant who had come to this country as a young child with his parents. During our ride to LaGuardia, he convinced me that the distances in this country are very great and there was little chance that I would ever come back to New York again. He recommended that I spend a few days in New York before going to Wichita. He offered to take me into the city instead of to LaGuardia.
“Do you know anyone in town?” he asked.
“I know one man, a Mr. Davis,” I said. I had his name on a slip of paper, given to me by my uncle before I left India. My uncle was the medical officer for a major hotel, where he had treated an American woman the day before I left. He told her his nephew was going to the United States, and she said her father lived in New York. She wrote his name and address on the slip of paper.
“In case your nephew needs any help,” she had said.
“Why don’t I take you to his place instead of the airport?” the taxi driver suggested. He gave me his business card and said he would watch my luggage while I went inside LaGuardia to change my ticket for the next day.
On the drive from the airport to downtown, we went over a long bridge. Tears started to flow down my face.
“Why are you crying?” the taxi driver asked.
“Because I have reached home,” I said. “I didn’t know if I would ever make it back.”
We stopped in front of a high-rise building. The taxi fare was $6.30, which was a lot of money for me, almost my weekly salary in India. I had been watching the meter tick all the way. I took out one of my two $20 American Express traveler’s checks and handed it to the taxi driver, expecting change.
“Thanks!” he said and drove off.
Dumbfounded, I stared at the exhaust pipe of the taxi, which soon disappeared. I stood there with lowered head, not knowing what to do. Then I made a quick decision.
I turned to the doorman, who was standing nearby and had witnessed the scene. It was obvious from his expression that he expected me to complain about the taxi driver. But instead, he saw a huge grin on my face, as if I had been the recipient of a big favor.
“I need to see Mr. Davis,” I said, and handed him the slip of paper that my nervous hand was grasping tightly.
“Ten-o-six,” the doorman said stoically.
“Where?” I asked, confused.
He pointed me to the hallway inside. But I still couldn’t figure out what “ten-o-six” was. After I went back to him three times, he took me to a nearby wall that had a couple of black buttons. He punched one. The wall parted, and a small room appeared. Was this ten-o-six? I wondered. Funny room. The doorman’s hand motions suggested that I get in. Quickly, I pushed my two suitcases and handbag inside the room.
Lo and behold, the doors closed.
I had never seen such machinery before, and I didn’t know what to do nor how to get out. I looked all over the small room—it was made of steel, and there was no way to open the doors. I knew something would happen, but I didn’t know when. I decided to just relax and wait it out. Tired, I sat down on the suitcases with my head resting on both my palms. Fifteen long minutes passed, seeming like an eternity.
Magically, the doors opened, and in front of me was a little old lady, probably in her 60s, with her little dog. They were both startled to see me. The dog stepped back and started to bark.
I raised my hands and apologized. “Pardon me. I have to see Mr. Davis,” I said, and showed her the slip of paper.
“I believe he is in ten-o-six,” she said.
“I don’t know what that means,” I said. I realized that I was rattled, and my accent was even worse than usual. After a few attempts, she finally understood me.
“Ah, ten-o-six means the 10th floor, and the apartment number is 6.” She walked in and punched a button, and the room started to move upward. Puzzled, I was mesmerized by the lighted button on the wall. The little dog was wagging its tail, perhaps trying to cheer up a wonder-struck human on his first ride on an elevator.
The lady went with me to Mr. Davis’s apartment. Through the glass window, we could see there were no lights on. No one answered our knocks on the door.
“I think he’s away for the weekend,” the lady said. We went back down to the lobby.
“He has a country home,” the doorman said. “Most likely he is there for the weekend.
But you can wait it out. He might come back.”
By this time, I was famished. I asked if I could leave my luggage there and go get food. He told me where the eating places were.
A friend in India had told me that in America it was bad manners to go anyplace without a hat. A hat was a must, and the first thing I must do upon my arrival was to get a hat. I looked in the store windows and saw hats for $2.50, $4, and $7. There was no way I could afford those hats. I had only sixteen dollars left to reach Wichita. I was looking for a $1 hat.
Next, I looked for the cheapest restaurant available. I went into a small, narrow place, barely a counter with just a few people sitting on bar stools and the cook on the other side. He was a large man wearing a white chef’s hat and a T-shirt with his belly sticking out. I didn’t know what American foods were nor how to order. The only thing I had heard of was a hot dog.
“Hot dog and a cup of coffee,” I said.
“White or black?” I didn’t know if he was talking about the hot dog or the coffee.
When I asked, he blurted out “Coffee!” and gave me a quizzical look.
The cook was also an immigrant, from some European country. We both had a hard time understanding the other’s accent. Besides, I had never heard of white coffee in India. We drank tea.
“Black,” I said timidly, not knowing what was going on. He plunked a big mug of coffee on the bar. “Could I have cream in it?” I asked.
“You ordered black,” he said sternly.
The hot dog was served on white sandwich bread. I had never had a hot dog before. It tasted terrible. I didn’t know I was supposed to put catsup and mustard on it. I was starving, so I took a few sips of the coffee, my face grimacing, and a couple of bites of the hot dog, and then left the restaurant. I was famished—but not that famished.
Families were sitting outside on their front porch stairs because the weather was hot, and they had no air conditioning. It was mostly women and their children, including teenagers. Many of the women were fat, wearing flowery dresses and no bras. They were talking to their neighbors, even across the street. It was a loud scene. Coming from India, neighbors hollering at each other was a familiar scene for me.
And that is exactly what was wrong with the scene. The America I knew was from advertisements in magazines, with beautiful, slim women dressed in pretty clothes. These women did not look anything like that. Was I in the right place? Were these the “maestros” that I had come to learn from? I did not realize that I was in one of the poorer sections of New York, where immigrants lived.
After making three trips back to check if Mr. Davis had come home, I asked the doorman where I could stay the night. He told me about a hotel that charged $2.50 per night and gave me directions on how to walk six blocks to catch a bus that would take me there.
Balancing two heavy suitcases and a shoulder bag with a broken strap, six blocks seemed like 100 miles. When I caught the bus, I had no idea how to pay, so I handed all the money from my pocket to the driver, and he counted out the right amount. I sat down near the driver’s seat, and the bus started to fill up until all the seats were taken.
Then an elderly couple got on. I had been taught that whenever an older lady enters a bus, you must offer her your seat. My mind was saying, “You are dead tired. Keep sitting.” But my heart was saying, “Stupid, don’t you know who you are? Get up!” I looked around, and no male had gotten up to give his seat. I got up and offered her my seat.
She said to her husband, “Charlie, sit down,” and he sat down.
I could have torn her to pieces. I was thinking, Lady, I got up for you, not for Charlie! My heart had just won the battle, and then it went to war again.
When I arrived at the hotel, the person behind the counter showed me to my room. There was a community bath and shower. I stunk, and I hadn’t slept in three days. When I took a shower, I didn’t realize the hot and cold faucets were placed on opposite sides from how they were in India. The first gush of water out of the shower scorched me, so I took an ice-cold shower.
The next thing I remember after putting my head on the pillow was the sunshine hitting my face through the windowpane. I had slept like a log.
At that point, I was so hungry I didn’t care how much I spent on breakfast. I went to Howard Johnson’s across the street and ordered toast, eggs, and milk. It tasted especially good after going such a long time without food.
When I returned to my hotel, the receptionist said Mr. Davis had called the night before. The receptionist had pounded on my door for a long time, but I was so tired I didn’t wake up. Mr. Davis had asked that I call back when I got up, so I called him.
Soon he picked me up at the hotel. He was the kindest, gentlest man, a retired stockbroker. He thought I was a friend of his daughter, and that I had a message from her. She was traveling around the world. I told him I had never met her.
He took me back to his apartment. His sister and some other friends had come to meet me. They fixed sandwiches for lunch, and then Mr. Davis showed me around New York City. On our way to the airport, we had dinner at a fancy restaurant.
The doorman had told Mr. Davis about my being stiffed by the taxi driver, so he asked me if he should try to find the taxi driver and get my money back. I told him I had the taxi driver’s business card, but I wanted to start my American trip by focusing on people like him, and not like the taxi driver. His teeth pressed to his lower lip as if he was trying to hold back some emotion. He looked at me for what seemed like a long time. His eyes could not hide his feeling of admiration. Gently, he offered me some travel money, but I told him I still had $16 left, enough for my trip to Wichita.
From the restaurant, he called Mr. Graham, my sponsor, to tell him I had arrived. “Oh, that son-of-a-gun made it,” Mr. Graham said. I didn’t know what that meant. I thought it was another way to say “son-of-a-bitch.”
I flew to Kansas City, and then took a taxi to the bus station downtown for my trip to Wichita. The wait was several hours, so I left my luggage in the care of the person selling tickets and went for a long walk. The night air was refreshing and invigorating. I passed a theater where a movie had just ended, and couples were strolling back to their cars. They were young, slim, and well-dressed.
One scene particularly caught my eye. A young couple, perhaps in their twenties, stopped in front of a large window at the Jones Department Store. The young lady, in high heels and a red dress that flowed in the wind, was holding hands with the young man, who was dressed in a dark suit. They were looking at the mannequin in the store window. The beautifully dressed mannequin was supposed to be wistfully strolling in a garden as if she had achieved her dream and had not a worry in the world. The young couple was looking through the window as if that mannequin expressed their dream. The floodlight coming through the window highlighted the tenderness and fragility of the couple standing in the dark street. It was a magical, dreamlike scene.
“Ah, New York is not America,” I said to myself. “This is America.”
Like the couple in front of the store window, I, too, was going for the dream.
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