Transition
The plane moved into the European air space and then, after a short stopover at Vienna, the journey towards the land of opportunities called ‘America’ continued.
It was daytime when the plane entered the air space over the Atlantic sea, the water-body separating America from Europe. The seat belt sign was turned off and the service people started moving down the aisle of the aircraft, stopping at each row and curtly enquiring of the occupants as to their preference of drinks. Justin asked for a chilled can of soda along with a peanut sachet. He was amused at the airline’s offer of peanuts, which is considered the cheapest among dry fruits in India. He nestled his soda can in the receptacle of the arm of his seat, occasionally sipping from it in between carefully picking up a peanut and tossing it into his mouth. Flying through the cirrus formation of clouds was like floating through a dreamland, and for a few hours, Justin was lost in his thoughts.
The announcement on the intercom jolted him out of his dreams, and he heard that the plane was about fifteen minutes away from New York airport. Justin straightened up in his seat and excitedly looked out of the window and there, far ahead, he saw the shoreline of the land called ‘America’. Soon, Justin could also see the big skyscrapers that made up the skyline of New York City. He could feel in his spirit that this was going to be a new beginning of his life. Once out of the immigration area, he proceeded to catch a connecting flight to Oklahoma City to be with his sister, Urmila.
Once the initial euphoria of being in America was over, Justin found that even after four months he had not come across any employment opportunity that would give him hope and as such was completely dependent on his sister.
His sister, Urmila, was a very religious, hardworking and a God-fearing individual. She had migrated to America in the late seventies. After going through a rough patch in her married life, she now lived as a single mother of two young children, still trying to achieve the ‘American Dream’. Although, she did own an average-sized ranch style house with many amenities that were still a dream for a similarly placed family in India, but to cope up with the monthly bills and payments for all those household gadgets of envy, she would many a times work at a second job or stay late for an extra shift. Very soon, Justin learned that living paycheck-to-paycheck was the norm for most people in this country and all those extra dollars were needed to be earned to pay the creditors, car loans, house mortgages, etc. The working conditions were far more stringent here compared to India.
Oftentimes, Urmila, would get flustered when it would take a lot of effort on part of her two children to get used to calling Justin as ‘Uncle’ instead of calling him by his first name, as was the norm there. For Justin, his own name sounded so alien because back in India no one called him by his first name. He was Brother Justin for church people and Mr. Justin for others; the younger generation there would simply call him ‘Uncle’.
On Sunday mornings, Urmila used to go to a nearby town where she attended a charismatic evangelical church. The congregants of that church accounted for one-third of the population of the small town. Justin noted that most of the congregants of the church were predominantly white and his sister’s family was the only one of an Asian origin. Some of the church members worked in big offices in nearby cities, a few drove eighteen-wheeler trailer trucks, some were teachers, others worked in the nearby malls, some worked as butchers in meat shops and a couple of them were in the sanitation department. This seemed to be a completely integrated society—under one roof, devoid of any class stigma. This was quite unlike India where, even in this millennium, one could not find such a unified social gathering.
There was class system still prevalent everywhere in India. Like the railways, where there were different categories for travel in the train that was created according to one’s affluence; or even take a movie theater, where people were segregated according to the amount of money they could pay at the ticket booth.
A butcher in India would never like his child to be identified in the school by the vocation of the father. A truck driver’s role in the society was defined by his vocation and not what he was as a person, and the people working in the sanitation department were a different class by itself. Even today, the world being completely engulfed in the changes being envisioned by the after effects of the Arab-spring, this category of people in India had to be content with the prefix of ‘schedule-caste’ to their names, defining their status across the length and breadth of the country. Indian politicians would not let go this casteism at any cost. Even in this era of Martian landing, they needed the cast factor to evoke passions during the elections, the by-elections, the lok-sabha elections, the municipal elections, the assembly elections, the panchayat elections, the gram panchayat elections, the zila parishad elections and the likes; you name it and you have got one. In spite of the enormous progress made by India in almost every sphere, the caste-system bedeviled the roots of world’s greatest democracy.
Justin noted that in America, class-difference, dependent on social strata was not much pronounced, and may even be termed as non-existent amongst the general populace; however, on scrutiny, one could find some undercurrents based on differences in nationalities and colour. Justin’s observation in this regard was based on his limited exposure to the American society. He gradually started noticing that though the church people seemed to mingle during the service, their interaction on a social level after the service narrowed down to nationality, ethnicity and even colour. This was evident as his sister who was a member of this church for the last twenty years, had minimal social interaction with the church members. He observed that after the initial exchange of pleasantries with the church members over coffee after the service, or the customary exchange of notes on the weather, he and his sister would practically be standing by themselves. Topics of common interest between his sister and the other congregants were literally non-existent. Justin did not think that the pastor fell in the same category, for he always went out of his way to make them feel comfortable.
After all, even Americans were not completely untouched by this globally inherent nature of human beings—segregating themselves on the basis of race, colour, nationalities, etc. In fact, segregating oneself is not as bad as harboring a biased opinion against each other is. Here in America, even though the demarcation of race, colour and nationalities seemed somewhat blurred and such practices vehemently opposed, one could definitely feel the undercurrents.
The very first thing that God thought and said while creating human race is amply clear from the scriptures:
Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in our image, according to our likeness…’. (Genesis 1: 26)
It seems that nowhere in the world, be it developed world, developing world or the third world countries, the concept that everyone is created by God after His own image and likeness is really and truly understood and appreciated by us humans, to shun any thought of preeminence over each other. Even the nomenclature ‘developed world, developing world and the third world countries’ smacks of a great divide in the mind set of human beings.
Justin felt slightly uncomfortable at times by the show of this attitude in this great country. To him, America was the embodiment of Christianity, modernism, tolerance, generosity, fraternity, liberty, equality and all good things about life he learnt over the years. However, in this short span of four months, Justin got very disillusioned about Christianity and equality in America. Even though there were a lot of church buildings, he did not see Christian values being lived here. ‘Equality’, with respect to races and nationalities, of which America is the main proponent, seemed to have very weak bearing in the society at large.