April 2000 : Meanderings Part 3

April 2000 : Three months in the US

Well, life has been chugging along and the last few weeks since Radhi and Aryaman got here have gone by faster than the weeks when I was here alone. Haven't really settled in yet (the apartment looks like a carpeted playground without any furniture). In the meantime, I still look at this country and find lots to amuse myself with ...

One of the things you learn if you go to a "convent school" in India for your early schooling, is some fixed things about pronunciation. For instance, we were taught that in a sentence that ends with a "?" - one must raise one's voice slightly at the end, to imply the question. The Americans obviously missed out on this useful learning, and they seem to have a "?" tucked away at the end of most sentences when they speak. The way they speak sounds kind of like this - " So we went to this bar? And then we had some drinks? And there was this cool band playing? ....." And so on. You get the point - try speaking any normal sentence, like this and you'll know what I mean!

From my office window, there is a small wooded area I can see across the road. Right in the middle of this, there is a parking lot, in which there are always about 50-60 cars parked. I'd often wondered who parked their cars there, since all the office buildings around seem to have their own parking. I was told the other day, that this was a parking lot for the construction workers at the new site next to it... For several moments I was fazed. My image of a construction worker is that of seeing a tottering tearful Nirupa Roy carrying bricks on her head, dressed in rags. These construction workers who drive in their own cars to the site seem to be from another planet !

Corporate America seems to love jargon. The number of new phrases I keep hearing is awesome ("AH-sum"). I made a list the other day of somethings that needed to get done, and my boss asked me if the list was "mee-see" ... After seeing my totally vacant and zapped expression, he deigned to enlighten me that he was saying "ME-CE" - which stands for "Mutually Exclusive and Collectively Exhaustive" !!

Mean time, I have learnt several new phrases. My current favorite (note the 'Merican spelling of that word, guys !) is a word that goes - "KYNA-KHOAL". Its a word that describes everything from a promotion, to a new movie. "I saw American Beauty over the weekend, and its kyna-khoal" ... or "I'm developing this model to predict delinquencies and its kyna-khoal" ... Its incredible how "kind-of-cool" can describe most experiences...

One of the high points in DC is the "cherry-blossoms". There are these dozens of cherry blossom trees, around the White House area, which peak in blossom for about a week every year. The whole public (and of course the media!) waits for this and then proceeds to go nuts about it. Every day in the paper, there will be a "cherry watch" box which monitors how the trees are doing, and what day the blossoms are likely to peak, and then half of America comes out to watch them... Like touristy immigrants we went too, to see what all the hype was about. The trees were, well ... pretty. But we enjoyed the hotdogs more! Aryaman of course was thrilled to see so many people.

But - its easy to see why Spring is such a big deal. The whole landscape is changing every day from the barren winter look it had. There is bright sunshine, flowers coming out everywhere. End-April and May are supposed to be the best.

Radhi, meanwhile, is grappling with all the options and choice thrown in her face. It takes her an hour to navigate any aisle in the supermarket trying to decide just which kind of milk to pick up (out of 6 choices), which eggs (out of 5), which butter (4), which cheese (435), which knives set (5 in our price band) ... She has started driving around (with Aryaman in his child seat behind.) And of course, she is learning to cook. Aryaman in the meantime, is delighting in having Mommie around all day to himself. He started playschool last week, and I am having horrible visions of his getting an American accent!

We've acquired a couple of pieces of furniture that we needed. Some stuff for Aryaman's room from Ikea and stuff like that. The evening we bought that stuff, I almost wanted to leave everything here and come right back to India. We had bought a bed and mattress for his room (really nice looking thing - bed with a slide and all that). The stuff comes in pieces in long cartons, which you obviously have to assemble yourself at home. The part I had forgotten was that you had to LUG it back home also yourself. Huge heavy bulky pieces - and we had to get it in the car. Lifting it, getting as much of it as possible to fit into the trunk of the car (sticking out 1/2 a mile). Then tie the mattress on the roof of the car... all YOURSELF. All this while it was drizzling. ... Kept getting misty-eyed about the ease of having everything delivered home in India for 200 rupees !! My heart was also breaking because there was the distinct possibility of doing severe damage to the one-week old shiny new car !! Then I had to get up to the apartment, and the carton collapsed while I was fitting it into the lift (sorry, elevator)... AAARGH!

But YES, we bought a car last week ... the Honda Accord (Honda City ka bada bhai !!) Quite an experience shopping for that one. Did most of it on the Internet, and waited for the dealers to then chase us with a hundred calls and offer us better and better deals, and all that jazzz. But its a lovely new toy that gives me deep excitement looking at it and driving at it.