SUITCASES: When life goes South, you make a run for the North (quite literally! My journey from India to North America)
3 Suitcases. One very large, one medium and one small. That’s what I remember every time I reminisce the summer I actually made it out of India. This dream of moving to the “Land of the Free” I manifested since age 5…actually being set in to motion in a very unexpected, almost comical way.
You see, that year was different. Not in a “WOW something BIG is about to happen” way! But more like, “Fuck, this is the worst year possible. I am damned” kinda beginning.
After what seemed like the umpteenth fight at home, my family was preparing to leave everything I knew and start over. My entire life – my childhood, my heartbreaks, my career, my life – 30 years in Mumbai were being suddenly overwritten on a whim by my dad to move to the south of India. Like wtf is Coimbatore? I had no idea what to expect and I didn’t want to take any chances.
So while my family packed their lifelong memories in suitcases and cardboard boxes, I packed my entire life in the 3 suitcases to spend my summer in New York. Large, medium and small. Pretty much summing up all my life’s worth within those Samsonite bags. (On a sidenote, maybe that was my first introduction to being zen-like: getting rid of unnecessary baggage and keeping only that which is necessary!) I wasn’t sure how long I would be in the USA as I had signed a lease only for a month – and with my family moving, I wasn’t sure where all my stuff was to go! So I packed it all, and left!
They say, act like you mean it. So I decided to pack my life’s belongings and take them to New York – where I have always intended to stay. This was me, telling the Universe, I was in charge!
Clearly, the Universe has it’s own plans! The first part of my journey with my 3 heavy suitcases began with Paris. The black taxi from CDG airport dropped me by the side of the road to my friend’s apartment – a WHOLE 2 BLOCKS AWAY! How exactly did the driver suppose I would manage to roll 3 suitcases, an overcoat and falling laptop bag and backpack…I don’t know! I learned the beautiful, not-give-a damn French attitude for the first time in this moment. My friend’s French husband was clearly not happy to see this frazzled Indian girl with clearly too many bags and not enough common sense to pack light! You see, whenever people go out on an adventure, they usually have just one bag – almost as if to tell the universe they have space to attract whatever blessings would be coming their way! Not me, I had to have excess baggage!!
After Paris, I had to lug said luggage on to a train to my sister’s in Antwerp. The end of that trip saw her husband having to run with me and my suitcases to the bus stop so I didn’t miss my ride to the Belgian airport toward my final destination – New York!
As luck would have it, I was put up in a 3-storey walk-up in SoHo – ofc I had my then boyfriend carry ALL the bags up to the third floor (not surprised he wanted to break up with me by the end of that summer!) The lease was only for a month – I was in New York for 3 months doing summer school and a very exciting internship at a cafe…each month I had to find and move apartments, safe to say, me and my 3 bags (in all honesty that somehow multiplied to 8 bags of varying sizes!) ended up living in SoHo, West Side, Upper East Side…until we finally found a home in Midtown Manhattan!
By the end of the summer, I had a little more clarity on what I wanted to do once I went back to India. No, I didn’t want to explore Coimbatore; yes, I wanted to embark on my life’s adventures here in New York City – where the air literally smelled of ambition (to outsiders like me!)
I had no idea how it would happen, but the summer definitely taught me, the Universe had finally listened, and I was about to embark on a very big adventure – north of where my family was headed, and hopefully with less baggage the next time around!
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