Essay/Term paper: Personal writing: my new life in india

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Personal Writing: My New Life in India


Tap ... tap ... tap ... I looked up to see a blurry figure of my mother
tapping a few fingers on my shoulder. "Sorry to wake you up, Rishi, but me and
Daddy have something important to tell you." She was not smiling.
I got up, now fully awake, wondering what was going on. With my father
standing next to her, my mother crossed her arms and, in a tone that I knew
could not be argued with, stated, "We have decided to move to India
permanently."
I was awestruck. My family is Indian, but I had never so much as
considered living anywhere but Peach Tree Court, a street that had the brightest
green maple trees and fields of radiant yellow and orange marigolds. India was
nothing more than an old family story to me, not a place to live.
Over the next couple of weeks, I ruminated on what life would be like in
India. My brother, who already attended an Indian boarding school, told me in
scratchy long-distance telephone conversations how great life was in India at
his boarding school.
"We have the best futbol (soccer) field in all of India," he said. "It
has an electronic scoring board, and the surface is fluorescent blue astroturf."
This was an enormous motivation factor, due to the fact that soccer is my
favorite sport. "And the food is delectable," he went on, "They serve chicken
curry with juicy vegetables four out of the seven days of the week." I ate
chicken curry every chance I got, so this, added to the soccer field, made the
school sound fantastic.
"The weather is remarkable. The temperature year-round is seventy-five
to eighty degrees," he continued with emphasis, "just like California, Rishi."
My brother knew that I loved California. He also told me that I would get to
visit our parents two times a week, which is very generous compared to other
Indian boarding schools.
My brother's long-distance stories convinced me. From what I had heard,
India sounded like utopia.
Six weeks after my mother woke me with the big "news," my father, mother
and I arrived in India. We left Peach Tree Court, with all its beautiful maple
trees, and flew to India. I stepped off the airplane into the dirtiest, oldest
airport I had ever seen.
A film of dirt covered everything in the airport; the windows, the walls,
even the floor. And the people working there seemed more likely to shrug their
shoulders and ignore the passengers than care at all if anything worked right.
In order to keep my spirits high, I kept telling myself, "Things will be a lot
better once we get to the school."
After a 45-minute drive through a landscape that looked nothing like
California, we arrived at the school. I was starting to get uneasy. The old,
rusted gate that provided entrance to the school shrieked hideously when it
opened and closed. There were fifty-foot tall trees encompassing the whole
campus, so it was very dark and gloomy even though it was only two o'clock in
the afternoon. It was raining very hard; I suppose my brother forgot to mention
that India is known for its excessive flooding during monsoon season. As we
walked through the campus, I noticed that the school buildings had a common
'theme' among them. All of them had an exterior of peeling pink paint, with
white blotches where the paint had fallen off. The buildings didn't even have
real windows, instead they had square holes in the walls with steel bars through
them.
My parents gave me hugs and then left quickly to set up the furniture in
their new home. The following week was one that I hate to think of to this day.
The schools only gave us one hour a day for leisure, the rest of the time being
dedicated to either sleeping, eating, or studying. The 'chicken curry with
juicy vegetables' that my brother tantalized me with turned out to be a gruesome
soybean substitute for chicken. I can only guess that my brother had eaten it
so many times that he had grown to appreciate its garbage-like taste and
appearance.
My brother loved the school (for some reason), and I could tell on my
visits to home that my parents were enjoying living in India, especially without
any children in the house. But all I could think about were the maple trees and
marigolds of Peach Tree Court. That place seemed like utopia to me.