Goodbye America

I am sitting here, at the O’Hare International Airport. Where I sat exactly ten years ago, waiting for my uncle to pick me up, as I made my first foray into these United States. It is fitting then as I say goodbye, a full circle of sorts, almost an inverted poetic mime.

I came here as a naïve, skinny, innocent Indian boy, full of principles and hope. I was fortunate that an American University education was very much part of the script, so despite this being a land previously uninhibited by my body, it was the obvious choice. Wide-eyed and eager, I thought monobrows, untamed hair and sobriety was all naturál, and I preached my pride – like me as I am, I don’t need to fit in.

And then the first girl gut-checked my heart, and then another, soon followed by some social punches, and that led to my first American epiphany – I had myself all wrong. I do need to fit in, at least just enough. So, off went the monobrow, and after a beer in Spain with my sister and a trip to the hairdresser, almost everything changed. Even though I spoke with a weird accent, I was suddenly more American than ever, with spiked hair and a red cup of beer in my hand. I not only attended house parties, but we started hosting our own, making sure there was always enough alcohol at our apartment, a thumping set of speakers, and the ultimate utility – a sofa bed. Hip-hop was suddenly bearable and became skeet-skeet melodic after several nights out on 6th street in Austin, Texas. I started listening more to Kanye and Lil Jon and less to Robbie Williams.

My life was suddenly governed by the notion of work hard and play hard. And I worked hard to earn my right to play. I blossomed academically, especially once I realized that I might have had a head start in the theory of things, but my application abilities needed major reform, and that was glorious. I was suddenly double-majoring and minoring, doing laundry for the women’s university soccer team (plus ball tending), and became President of brown-town. But, most importantly, I was surrounded by the right people. I made the best of friends, and amidst all the chaos, those friendships were the ultimate sustenance. I don’t ever want to go back to college, not because it wasn’t the best time, but because I can’t imagine the thought of not making the same friends as I did.

Getting a job after college was not an achievement, it was an expectation. I entered Corporate America, ready to rock, and it was quite the concert. I got a finance gig with a media company, and even though my passions back then lay in sport, I justified the opportunity for the money, the stability and obviously, the work-visa sponsorship.

I entered the workforce brimming with confidence. I was supposed to be stellar at Excel, and a paycheck meant independence. But this confidence combusted quickly. When I saw my boss work his magic, I realized I wasn’t really that good at Excel. Or anything. I was also quite an anomaly in our little San Antonio office – the only Indian person in an office surrounded by Tom, Greg, Matt, Mark, Brandon and Brian. Yes, all white men with the whitest of names, and they were all lovely. By now, I had mastered the art of fitting in. So, I quickly put on the best make-up I could find and slotted myself in.

I worked hard. Really hard. San Antonio is a dead city which was an incentive to work harder. I was absorbing, learning, growing and adding a ton of value. Suddenly, I was actually good at Excel, and PowerPoint, and Finance, and story-telling and analysis. And then, the dream was realized – I won myself a promotion to New York. Here I was, a kid who spent his first nine years in Aurangabad, about to move to the greatest city in the world. It was too good to be true.

New York, you beauty! The city is the best that America has to offer. The diversity, the nightlife, the food, the people and the excellence are all intoxicating. You can pursue whatever you want and find a mini-verse dominated by professionals and experts milking their passions into excellence. It’s intimidating and inspiring. I found my click in the spoken-word poetry universe and started playing for an amateur football (soccer) team. We were just the right amount of committed – it was for fun, but we wanted to win. We had a manager and late-night practice sessions on Wednesdays. Only in New York will you find enough folks committed to a 10-pm “practice” session on a workday. Meanwhile, the dating scene was incredible and tragic at the same time. There were so many single people that flings were easy, but commitment was hard. Why commit when there might be someone else out there that is better? It was fun at first, and then harrowing, all the while, bloody expensive.

Professionally, I worked even harder in New York. I was promoted every year and was soon leading a team of six. They liked my work and wanted to “clone” me. So, I was hiring and training and deploying. The learning curve was steep, and I loved it. I was adding value and working almost directly with the CEO of the company. It was stressful. I was always on call – whether on vacation or late at night. Not quite like a doctor, but close enough. Definitely not as important. The weekdays were especially hard, so the weekends meant it was time to let loose. I partied harder than I should have because I “deserved” it after a long week at work. The weekdays were stressful, the weekends blurry.

This was a time of extremes – lots of learning, growing, earning and “enjoying” but it was also lonely, depressing and conflicting. I was breaking a little. I was hard on my team. I could barely stay in a relationship. And I was starting to not like myself. What’s the point of working so hard and then not liking yourself? What’s the point of working so hard to make some rich people richer? Why am I not putting all this effort into solving real problems of the world? I had made the money, conquered my dreams of being in New York, partied, traveled and I was still unhappy. That’s when I realized this was not it. This could not be it.

Thus, began some good old soul-searching. I started reading again, thinking, contemplating, prioritizing. And then it all started coming together. It was time to take everything my past had blessed me with and do something useful with it. My sister bestowed upon me the concept of social enterprise that had been lying dormant in the back of my mind somewhere. I dug deep to encounter that injustice really bothered me, and how were we okay with this? Poverty, I think, is one of the greatest injustices in today’s world. How can we be landing on the moon and have poor people at the same time? Problems are fun to solve. What if I take what I know and try to solve a problem that makes a positive difference in the world? Fighting poverty through social enterprise? Bingo. So, I quit.

After spending nine years in India and nine years in Dubai, this ten-year chapter in the United States of Immigrants has been my longest, and the most enriching so far. American higher education is the most flexible and the best, especially if you want to learn and grow, but it comes at the expense of innocence. Maybe that’s okay. Corporate America is the most functional economic art in the world, but draconian capitalism allows for the ignorance of morality. While the governments of developing countries are marred with corruption, the private sector of America has its own demons to battle, and the financial sector needs a schooling in ethics. My professional growth came at the expense of some corrosion, and that, for me, is difficult to swallow. So, getting out of Corporate America feels like a liberation of sorts, but don’t get me wrong, I have no regrets. No good adult story is all hunky-dory, and it is the lows that help etch the statue of your principles.

Thank you, America, for everything. You have been the capstone to my learning experience. I am ready to unleash everything that I have learnt where I think it matters the most, and I have never felt more prepared for my next chapter. As you try and prevent yourself from imploding with all the current political turmoil, I will let you be. I am one less immigrant to worry about.

P.S. America, you let me embrace spoken-word like I could have never had anywhere else. You got me on stage, and allowed me to be as dramatic as I wanted to be, as I tried to rhyme my emotions. Cheers for that!