It was way back in 2001 that I came to the US with my husband. I came here with a lot of dreams and hopes of a new life. My husband, who is a scientist, had an offer to work for his post doctoral research. Everything was not hunky dory when the visa process started. I was, in a way, both scared and excited at the thought of moving to a new country. Scared, yes, because we came here in September 2001 and the day we had our appointment to go to American consulate to get my visa was 9/11, when terrorists attacked the World Trade Centre.

We were watching the news on television the whole day and when they showed pictures of some suspects, it compounded my fear. Most of those suspects had beard and some kind of turban on their heads which made a few people think that they were Sikhs, who also grow beards and wore turbans. We heard that some angry students in New York attacked a Sikh temple protesting against that attack. One Sikh even got killed in the riot. However, we came to the USA in Cincinnati Ohio, exactly on September 26, 2001.

I was excited after landing here as I am ambitious and fearless. It was sort of an adventure trip for me to which I was looking forward to for a long time. I come from very lower middle class family from India. I had an image of America and I was thinking that I would get a lot of new opportunities professionally. I was hopeful that I would get a better job in America compared to India. I was excited, happy and scared at the same time. But what I was looking at most was freedom. I had an impression that I would feel more human—I mean equal to men. I might have more opportunities to work as an artist and might be much more successful than I was in India.

I felt happy those days because I got married to the person whom I believed that I was in love with. We came here within three months of our marriage. So I was living in a dream world as a new bride. I was looking forward to start a new life with my husband, who sounded very promising to me. I thought it was a win-win situation for me. It was a life with a person who loved me—a person who was highly educated and I thought he would respect me. He already had a job offer in America and I thought we wouldn’t have any economic issues either. In addition, I hoped to get more opportunities to advance in my career. So, it looked like a perfect world.

At first we did not have much problem regarding our accommodation. The company where my husband was to work took care of everything including finding the apartment, paying the rent and so on. Money was not a problem. But I had to struggle to find a job. The rules for working were also different in the US. I found that I needed a licence to teach. Since we were new to this country and city, I was busy getting to know the place and people around. We met both good and bad people. I learnt that other than skin colour and language, there wasn’t much difference between people from India and America. Yeah, culture was different, people talked more about baseball and American football instead of cricket and Indian football. They spoke about ice hockey instead of normal hockey. People spoke in English instead of Hindi.

Now when I am talking of comparing life in India, the reader must understand that I knew India before September 2001—my understanding about India stops there. India has changed a lot after that. My understanding about America started from September 2001 and grew from there. So I am comparing America after September 2001 with India before 2001. So, I do not think that it will be a fair comparison. But truthfully, I did not find much difference in people. As I said earlier, America too has both kinds of people—the good and the bad. We lived in localities where there were people who did not hesitate to indulge in heinous acts and then there were also Americans who didn't hesitate to help us. Yet, there were lots of things different too.

The very first thing I focussed on was to get a job for myself. I was not worried about money and housing conditions as my husband was taking care of all that. It was more a hobby than a necessity. I was bored sitting at home and waiting for my husband to come home after work, which was never an 8-5 schedule. As a scientist, he never had a fixed work schedule and most of the time he worked at nights too. I found myself alone at home often and was getting a little depressed due to loneliness.

At first it was more about learning about this place, finding a job, making new goals. It was not as much fun as I thought. I realised that rules were strict. Well, looking back, I thought BFA and MFA degrees were enough to find a good job. I decided to teach art in schools. But I found out that I needed to have a licence to teach art. Then I realised that we needed licence to do most of the jobs here, licence to teach anything in schools, licence to open a day care, licence to become a human resource professional and so on.

So, after struggling for three years to get a full-time art teaching job, I decided to go back to college to get another art degree; this time a major in arts education to get the licence. Since I planned this at a time when my work visa expired, I was not allowed to work for the next four years. I had to depend on my husband. We both planned at this time to have kids and grow our family so that when I would be eligible to get a job, our kids would be ready to go to school. Though it seemed like a perfect world from outside, my insecurities and dependency on my husband didn't subside. I had to depend on him for everything and slowly I started losing confidence in myself. I always thought that my career was not as important as my husband’s.

Around this time, I started to realise that this was not a dream marriage. During that time, I had several awakening experiences, mostly unpleasant. At first I thought that it was normal to have fights and differences, but that we still loved each other. We have two wonderful daughters. I had no other relative here in this strange land. My marriage and my husband were my world. I was not interested in knowing American politics, economic situation or its different culture. I was more interested in finding a job. If you had asked me around two years ago, then all I had was complaints about the world and how people around me mistreated me. But today, I can talk about all that I have learnt about myself and how I have grown into a better human being.

As a girl growing up in India, I always felt like a piece of somebody’s property and not a human being with emotions. In my parents’ house I was a prestige issue. If I talked or laughed loudly, I was pulled up for not being disciplined. I was always confused and wondering what wrong I had done. I was adventurous, ambitious and fearless by nature, so I wanted to try whatever I could to achieve my goals, but it was difficult. After passing high school I took up a part time job before finishing college, but a little later I decided to return to college to study full time and get some degree. In this, I decided to follow my heart and instead of trying to become a doctor, an engineer, a nurse or a lawyer, like most of others do in India, I chose to earn a degree in fine arts and become an artist. The four years in college and then another two years in Shanti Niketan were full of fun and excitement.

Little did I know then that art would fetch me good income one day. It was during this time that I met my future husband and fell in love. At that time I felt I was the luckiest person on earth. Though professionally, I would wonder if having a degree in either science, architecture, commerce or law would not have been better than a degree in art because such degrees would have helped me get a higher paid job. However, I felt lucky because the person whom I fell in love with was finishing his PhD in science. So, I was very proud of myself when I learnt that he had got a job offer in America. Today I am different. I am on my own and live alone with my two children. I have learnt more about American theories and styles. I have two Masters’ degrees, one from India and one from America, two wonderful children, a great paying job! America has been my alma mater on life.