New Beginnings….

Hello Boston, I liked you from the moment I landed. I’ve been walking around, losing my way and finding it back, every day, on your lovely streets. Your streets are not quite American, they are uneven and have potholes, but I can’t complain. My biggest struggle is whether to gaze at the spotlessly clear blue skies, the Charles river or marvel at the exquisite greenery, trees that are hundred years old, pretty spring flowers (in what is summer here) and the turkeys walking on the roadside! I started with crossing roads wherever I liked (this is the US, you follow road rules and cross only at zebra crossings), remember I am not only from India, but from Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh. However, in the interest of staying alive, I am mending my ways!

A big girl, all alone in a big city, enjoying finding one’s bearings. The joy of getting back to student life, is perhaps much more if one is older. Or maybe this is when I got to do it, so my lenses are coloured. One is in general calmer about life and what it has to bring compared to oneself, twenty years ago! How do I look, what people think of me, what grades will I get, is this the right course, can I do better than the others in class – none of these bothers (silent prayer that it doesn’t). My son is in school and so am I, we exchange notes of our action filled lives, and

Where on earth can one find people from Benin, Palestine, Columbia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Peru, Venezuella, China, Phillipines, Indonesia, Croatia, Kenya, Trinidad and Tobago, South Korea, Cape Verde and a couple dozen more countries under one roof? At a UN meeting perhaps or maybe at the Mason Program at the Harvard Kennedy School. Love these guys already. Their stories are amazing, many of them outright inspiring.

In case you haven’t figured already, quick confession: I am REALLY soaking all of this in.

I know, a lot is made out of the ‘networking’ at these institutions, but perhaps if you’re willing to be yourself, you’ll find such others too. An accomplished journalist bonded with me over how we felt being singled out for being treated unfairly at some stages of the process of getting to university. We admitted several times in one morning, how relieved one felt, hearing that there was another person in the same boat! A lawyer who spends his career working for human rights of those in prison in Venezuela tells me, as we are on a walking tour of the area, how he has a special relationship with India and Mahatma Gandhi, as he not only read and admired his work, but also furtively carried Gandhi’s books in his shirt to people in jail! A Palestinian working on human rights, who hasn’t gone back home or seen family for over six years, as there’s no movement possible into or out of Gaza – I feel lonely and lost just at the thought of not having a home to go back to. The most engaging and both strangely and uniquely affectionate conversations of an Indian with a Pakistani who meet for the first time. The Africans are so so fun, and achievers at the same time, their intense conversations make you feel the politics and economics of Ghana, Gabon, Uganda, Nigeria and Kenya will get sorted anyday now. And you have to see them sing and dance!

It is heart-warming beyond words to get to meet people who are able to share their lives and help make this experience meaningful for others.

Grocery shopping, living in a super small budget, doing laundry and realizing I’ve overwashed my precious cottons, having to fend for oneself in every way possible are all new to me, but my parents will be proud of me for doing rather well! Despite the fun fact that I’ve led the good life for many years, where I was a princess and they managed just about everything for me.

As I write today, I raise a toast to the human stories that people from across the world share and expand my world in turn, and to my folks back home who made sure I could get here!