My Noiseless Memories

Not long ago…

Before arriving at Texas, I had picked up few contact details of the local Indian community at my university and thankfully they sent a senior to pick me up. His name was Kumar and he was from Nagpur. He drove me down to the college dorm after nearly 2 hours of driving while I slept happily in the back of my car without even caring to know or see the country side…

I got a glimpse of my university. It was nothing close to any university that we call in India ‘A University’ (NOM – No Offence Meant). The university was so huge that I just went speechless for most part of the day! I was introduced to my fellow neophytes. Unfortunately, all the guys had already picked up the cheapest rooms available and I had to be put up with an apartment which was costlier by $200 and no one to share… I was new, and I hardly understood the difference between $20 and $2000 dollars. Technically my dumbness was working overtime… I took the apartment!

10 days passed, and the liquid cash that I had got was dwindling. I went around looking for on-campus jobs and after a week search, I got a part time job at the university cafeteria. The cafeteria manager promised me to pay $7 an hour for a maximum of 20 hours a week. I felt great that I was able to get a job to pay my food expenses.

3 more weeks passed by and it was time for me to pay the rent for my apartment. Only then I really felt the money that I was earning from the campus jobs weren’t even sufficient for my daily food expenses, let alone accommodation. I paid the entire rent with all of the last remaining money that I had sucked out of my dad’s savings. I started to face the inevitable question – why did I choose to come to America?

I took a stroll down the park, when a couple of black guys (Now don’t get into the racial shit… I am brown and to me they are black… As simple as that…) came over to me. I knew I was gone…

One of them asked me if I was from Asia… ‘I awed at the stupidity of that question… Seriously Asia…? Asia is not a freaking country… It’s a continent?’ I thought. Even before I answered, the other guy hit me on my back. I grew up watching a lot of movies from Bollywood (Hindi), Kollywood (Tamil), Tollywood (Telugu), Sandalwood (Kannada) and God knows how many woods… So I wanted to put my skills to test… Unfortunately, the more I acted like a Bollywood star, the more I was kicked and beaten badly!

So resisting them was out of scope! What was in scope was to give away the money. They took it from my wallet and they were gone!

When everything was over, I fell there broken and was growling in pain! I knew right away that, I wouldn’t be making it to college for at least a week… There was none to be seen around and none to help me.

That night was probably, the loneliest night I had ever been. I shed helpless tears looking for answers and never got any… That was my first experience of a foreign land which was so unlike India… That night made me feel that I had no reason to live in America as I didn’t belong there… And yes! I even felt that there was no one to care for me…

But as all you smart ass readers would know it, I was wrong…

My Noiseless Memories – Chapter 02

Written by Ganesh Raam

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