A for Amreeka
Deep down perhaps every Indian middle class young boy harbors a dream of visiting America. It is shaped in many cases by a desire to replicate relatives in the family who have been to the land or in most others by the exposure to soft culture of Archies, Hollywood and Mcdonalds. If you are a graduate techie being turned out of those myriad engineering colleges of India, then the US of A is your ultimate onsite destination.
Unlike the previous occasion, this time my journey to the airport from my house is smooth. That’s because my flight is before the mad rush hour at midnight and beyond and also because the day is dry and there aint any rain to clog Delhi roads. Check in is slow and it takes me 15 mins for reach the counter from the end of the line. It takes another 10 for the check in counter official to weigh my baggage and get my boarding pass out between his chuckles and jokes with a colleague. There are somethings even a swanky modern airport cannot change.
The immigration officer is interested to know what Accenture (my employer) does. By now I am tired of giving this explanation – despite the huge sums that we spend on television advertising, people still do not know us. Or well at least the average common man doesn’t. Even the urbane ones who might be watching English news channels where our advertisements are a regular feature are clueless when the name is mentioned. Neither have past full page ads in newspapers been of any help. I am also tired of referring to the firm as the one with Tiger Woods ads. No one seems to have a clue about Woods. So now, I just let it be – I politely inform the immigration officer of our scope of services. He asks whether we are still recruiting. I sense this as an inquiry of an interested father for his kid than that of a customs official. He says the outlook is improving and that things shall change in the next few months. As evidence he points to the upward movement in the ‘market’. I want to believe him, I am flying to the States – someone must be needing my services.
Emirates has an in-flight entertainment system that simply captivates me. There is a good variety to choose from amongst movies, TV shows and songs (the 13 hour flight from Dubai to JFK had about 20 new movies on the menu along with countless older ones, including Hindi classics such as ‘Golmaal’ and ‘Chupke Chupke’). There is an informative section that tells you about the movement of the flight and metrics such as altitude, speed, time at the destination and the distance travelled. What takes the cake are the two cameras installed on the exterior of the plane whose live feed can be seen on the screen by passengers – the first camera is on the nose and the second on the underbelly. It’s a treat to switch either of those on during take off and landing. I didn’t miss my window seat on both the flights courtesy the cameras.
New York is cloudy and damp when I land. The last few minutes of the flight witness my attention being captured by an engaging conversation on the seats to my right between a US national of Somali descent and an white American lady from Florida. The Somali is bemoaning the state of his nation, his inability to meet with his Syrian wife and kids and the plight of his family back home. Conversation turns then to the scourge of piracy affecting the seas of the coast of Somalia and the lack of action by the international community to correct the state of affairs in the nation. It is difficult to escape the passion of the Somali as he stresses the failures of his nation and more so of those who could have prevented them from occurring.
‘Khanna as in Vinod Khanna?’ asks the woman at the prepaid taxi service counter at JFK upon seeing my passport. She is of Thai origin and finally helps me with a reservation after two of her colleagues tell me that their cabs don’t travel to the town where I am staying (Parsipanny in Jersey, an hours’ drive from NY). She informs me that she met Shatrughan SIngha at the JFK once and is aware how actively both the above mentioned actors are involved in politics.
There is a debate going on in America after President Obama subtly switched his stand on torture investigation and stated that Justice Department officials who approved of torture techniques may be investigated. It’s the first indication that the Bush administrationmay be hauled for its brave efforts to ‘change the world’. The Republicans of course are up in indignation and Dick Cheney has issued a war cry. On my cab drive, we are listening to a radio station which is blatantly Republican. The radio jockey after interviewing a dumb bimbette who claims she made her two daughters to run up and down a mile long road on a cliff so as to stop them from fighting each other, then proceeds to take calls. A caller says that torture is not what is done to Al-Qeda but what was done to victims of 9/11, that watching people jump from burning high rises is torture. This jockey then in a grave somber tone that sounds straight out of a campaign race proceeds to tell ‘American people’ that they are not safer than they were pre 9/11, that the current President has no stomach to fight enemies of the nation and that torture is done with the aim to achieve the ultimate good of ‘extracting information’. Next morning at breakfast I watch a Fox news telecast that is debating the same – it has three panelists on the show, two of whom are blatant republicans while one tries to strike a middle ground. The anchor again reminds us that torture yields information that is essential to save the country. The President is castigated by the Republican leaning panelists of succumbing to left wing liberals while deciding to investigate tortures. Listening to this debate, you wouldn’t be surprised that Americans are so reviled in the countries which are the worst sufferers of Islamic extremism. You would also not be surprised that despite 8 years of ‘war on terror’, the US still has no clue about the root causes of the threats faced by it.
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