Montage-Part 3

The Taliban would throw a serious spanner in the works for our planned migration to the US in 2001. Appa was supposed to fly to New York on 9/11 but obviously his flight was cancelled. While I only vaguely recollect the years of our moves between India and Nigeria, the memories of what transpired that day remain ripe. This stuck not just because it was a world event but because of how much it disrupted life for several years after. Maybe even permanently.

Amma tells me that on the day Appa was supposed to fly, our flat had been pretty much emptied. Amma, my brother, and I also had our visas to follow him a few weeks later—except for two mattresses, some pillows, and blankets. We had sold everything—the fridge, TV, and the beloved computer! We really did think it was a matter of days or weeks before we moved. I can only imagine that American visas were a mere formality to secure back then because I have never known getting an American visa to be anything short of a pain in all my living years.

Without a TV or a computer at home, we were probably among the last to learn of the events of the day. Looking down, from our first-floor flat’s window, we could see a small crowd gathering in the common garden area of our flat’s campus. Crowds were not unusual as we lived in a very social apartment complex, but the general commotion of the congregation had an unusual tension to it. We’d seen this energy when someone lost a family member so we headed down to see what was going on.

Once we got wind of what they were discussing, we gathered in Appa’s brother’s flat; my uncle lived five minutes away from us—with his wife, daughter, and Paati (my grandmother)—in a different building of the same complex. There, we watched the dramatic news footage of the planes flying into the twin towers and their fiery collapse.

Appa’s flight was, of course, cancelled but he’d eventually fly into the US a few days later.

It would be almost 2004 by the time Amma would join him there.

The details of those years are hazy for me but I remember that we would end up at the American consulate in Chennai over and over again. This went on for about three years before we’d have new visas again. Why we needed new visas remains unclear to me but Amma has tried explaining to me that it had to do with Appa’s company name being different to the one in our passports; I am not sure she fully understands it and I do not probe her because I see how emotional she gets talking about it.

Her voice turns angry and then shaky—even 20 years later—as she tells me of the many trips the three of us made to the consulate in Chennai. Doubts raised at the interview about whether my brother was really her son because he was “so much taller than her and looked nothing like her”. At eighteen, he was no longer a minor and given the general post-9/11 immigration climate, our new visa application was being scrutinised with intense skepticism. My brother eventually told Appa that he should be removed from any future application as it seemed clear that he was the bottleneck to Amma’s and my move.

So we tried this strategy. Amma and I would eventually have our visas granted but our applications were submitted separately. Reducing the multiple points of failure to a single one for each person.

Amma continues to tell me that her visa was secured under extreme duress. For someone who didn’t have a university degree, her immaculate English was being looked at with incredulity by the consulate workers interviewing her; they did not believe that she wouldn’t do what all other Indians like her do, after landing on American soil: work in a gas station once for extra money. This was something her spousal visa didn’t permit. Amma made clear that she understood the rules and didn’t wish to break them. She was pushed from one room to another for more questioning over a couple hours, which didn’t include the six hours of queuing outside the consulate, in Chennai’s sweltering heat (we had done this a lot more times than was humanely acceptable). She eventually had a nervous breakdown. Her tears became sufficient evidence for the interviewers to finally grant her a visa. This was likely around 2004.

I don’t remember much of how I eventually got my visa approved in the same year—Amma tells me I went to Chennai and did the whole interview on my own. While the queuing to enter the consulate was expectedly long, I don’t remember it being particularly hostile, unlike when the three of us went as a unit; I suppose being young but also looking it (unlike my brother) helped a bit.

Amma and I would eventually make the trip to see Appa in the summer of 2004; she would stay back with him while I got a summer vacation with them and saw a lot of the east coast of the US. I remember this being a very fun break—I think I gained over fifteen pounds in two months by gorging on an infinite number of pizzas every night while binge-watching FriendsI can’t tell anymore why I liked the show because I can barely stand it now..

We also travelled a lot! I remember visiting DC, where the National Air and Space Museum blew my mind; Boston, where I touched John Harvard’s shiny shoe without knowing much about Harvard University’s legacyThis links to not having a computer, in my opinion. But maybe also just not having a means to consume any media at home for three years.; New York City, where I remember eating one of the best slices of pizza, somewhere in the Empire State Building; and Orlando, where I remember riding the Incredible Hulk Coaster several times in my three days at the Universal Studios theme park¹. I remember the super-sized supermarkets with everything a teenager might want—junk food, comics, and gadgets—all under one roof. I was pretty sold on America by the time this vacation was done. The varieties of non-spiritual experiences made the idea of living there at some point very alluring. America definitely felt like the land of abundance.

I came back to Bangalore to finish my final year of pre-university schooling. The plan was to also take the SATs that year to then study at an American university. The SATs were paper-based back then so I don’t think I was on a computer to prepare for itI am still quite shocked at how bad my memory is about these things. But writing this is definitely helping a bit to work my way forward.. But I can vaguely recall that this is around the time I would start to get some minimal computer exposure at an internet cafe near home, with its dial-up connection; I think this may have been to look into university applications. Also, my brother was in Bombay at the time; we would speak over the phone back then, just like how I spoke to my parents, who were living in Connecticut. While I didn’t really use the internet much during this time, it marked the dawn of my internet era.