I landed in Boston on 20th August 2008. I was the healthiest I had ever been with pink cheeks and bright eyes, thanks to several months at home, being fed by an indulgent family. Endless rounds of "Beta have a nashpati", "Have another roti". and "Should I call for some Rasgullas?". I was being pampered and I didn't appreciate it. Little did I know that I would miss the nashpatis and homemade rotis and sweet Rasgullas for what feels like forever-after.
Anyway, there I was with my shining eyes, freshly landed in Boston to attend the best damn school on Earth in the US of A.
But wait a minute!!! This place didn't look one bit like what they show on television. I was ....disappointed.
You see, I had imagined the United States to be 3,537,441 square miles of beach, with big buildings thrown in and bonney blue eyed boys in boxers and an eternal sunshine. Guess I read too many Archies comics and watched too many Yash Raj films set in New York. But it looked just....normal. They have a subway, like we do. They have an airport, like we do. They have Indians speaking broken English driving taxis, like we do. This is it?
Nice people from SANGAM, the Desi society at MIT, were at the airport to receive us. They shuttled us into, well, a shuttle and off we were to the MIT campus. I was dropped off at my dorm. Tang Hall- A 24 story boring brown brick disaster. I picked up my keys from the front desk and somehow tugged and pulled my two bags to the lift entrance. Wheres the 'ground floor' button on the lift panel? Then it dawned on me, the Americans refer to the ground floor as first floor. This was just the beginning. I was going to discover a billion other such quirks later.
My room was on the 10th floor, Apt 10-B. I entered it. And then I saw the most beautiful sight ever. Wonderful, gorgeous, fantastic, powerful, calm Charles.
Tang Hall is on the very bank of River Charles that separates Boston proper from Cambridge. For the first time after landing in MA, I felt some hope.
Then I went in to check out my room. I shut the door and burst into tears. It was the teeniest, tinniest, minniest, nannoest (yes, I choose to use it as an adjective), microest room ever! One narrow bed, a dresser and the table and chair at which I was going to spend the majority of the next one year. Wheres the bare floor? And it was dark. They did not even put in a lamp or some light to welcome us into our new 'home'. Oh what was I going to do! *Sigh* *Despair*...and more tears.
