40 Landed in the American Land

1998                          

It was first week of June, 1998. I received the airplane tickets from an American company Newark, State of Delaware. Ever since, we were busy: visiting relatives, buying items, packing and ready to travel.

With lots of anticipations we landed at John F Kennedy Airport, New York on 12^th June 1998 at the noon hours. From there, we were supposed to fly to Philadelphia and therefore waited at the domestic terminal. Things looked bizarre and we felt that we were nonentity.

          “Several flights services are cancelled and flight to Philadelphia is delayed by few hours due to bad weather,” airlines authority announced. I could not tune to the American accent and therefore I did not understand it accurately. External noise was more than the promulgation and it was not audible and had to pay more attention to guess the announcements.

My wife stayed cool. She thought that I was following everything. Eight hours passed. It was 8 o’ clock night. Both were very hungry. “We are in a lost world,” I felt, did not reveal, but. Huge crowd was there at the inquiry counter. We could not go nearby to the counter and were waiting in the queue for several hours. There was no official announcement about Philadelphia flight for few hours.

I lost my patience and said to my wife, “Please listen to the airlines carefully.”  She nodded and chuckled, but, she was not in a position to take over that job. I showed my anger. She took it in a lighter way and showed her maturity. Time was about 10 o’ clock night.  And at last, we managed to reach the counter. By then, we found that all flights to Philadelphia were called off for that day. On inquiry, the Airlines authority told, “A shuttle is arranged and it takes about three hours to reach Philadelphia; please rush and accommodate in that.”

We rushed to the shuttle around half past ten. It started in another 5 minutes to Philadelphia. On the way, there was a quarrel inside the passengers. They exchanged the filthy and unparliamentary words among them. They made our travel ghastly. We did not have a chance to eat anything for the whole day.

“USA is a developed country but is no way better than my India,” I concluded. It was a momentary reflection based on the first experience. But, I learnt several best practices from the American land later. We reached at Philadelphia airport around 3 o’clock in the early hours. CEO of the Corporate was waiting for a long time at the airport. I spoke to him while I was working as a consultant to Swiss Bank, Basil, Switzerland once. He was far nicer, received and greeted us with warm heart. He took us to Melrose Garden Apartments Newark, State of Delaware in his car; spoke to us in mother Tongue, Tamil, friendly and he put us in a comfort zone.

 A gentleman named Basil Antony from Cape Comorin, India was on ‘bench’ in that Corporate. He demonstrated us to operate some of the basic things on the same night itself: electric gas stove, micro ovens, AC system, electric cooker etc. We cooked, ate and rested.

“When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God”(Leviticus 19:33-34)