Yesterday Sindhu my elder daughter took the flight to US to join the masters course at CMU Pittsburgh.
All of us including some of her close friends were there at the airport to see her off.
This is a 16 month course which she was keen to get into. With a decent score in GMAT and a good recommendation from her boss and professor she got her admission.Over the course of time other events like getting her student visa, booking tickets etc.. .was happening in quick time.
Thanks to social networking tools like Face book etc.. she knew who her batch mates were from Bangalore as well as other parts of India.She could choose her room mates in her future apartment and knew a lot about their family and academic backgrounds and how they looked like etc. etc.. even before she booked her tickets.
She had all the other information on her apartment how it looks like, which bus to take to the college, how much time it took by walk etc..
The flight time was an unearthly 1.50AM .( I don't know why all international airlines fly out India only in the grave yard shift!!)
The airport was filled with enthusiastic students going to various universities across the USA with stars in their eyes and hope in their heart even though the big news of US likely to get into a double dip recession was all over the media and the US stock markets had tanked over 4% on that day.
For us this was a new transition. The first time in 24 years Sindhu is going to be away from home. Though we knew she was back home after 5 months in December still it was a heavy feeling. The presence of Sindhu's friends helped in keeping the emotional "dam" in check .
Finally when she went in to board the flight we told her to inform us on her arrival at Paris and inform us once again again prior to taking off to Pittsburgh.
Like the millennial tech savvy kids of today she used the free wi-fi service which was available for 15 minutes at Paris to keep us posted about her safe arrival and effectively avoided using expensive global roaming option on her mobile.
In spite of all this we had our moments of tension when she took more than an hour post her arrival to send us an update.
Let me fast rewind in time. - I left for Pilani way back in 1974 with hopes and stars in my eyes for my engineering degree. None of us at home had an idea how I should be preparing for this adventure. Starting from language - None of us knew hindi ( Hindi movies were just getting popular in Chennai and a couple of theaters dared to show Hindi Movies!!). Nobody had gone North of Chenai. Anything beyond tirupathi was north India for us. Somebody said it will be very cold and I should take warm clothes. I had one old sweater which had some holes but thanks to Amma's patch work you could not make out till you were real close.
I found a batch mate who was joining the course with me purely by accident. This was using a social network of a different kind!!. My batch mate's father and my father were at the same bank getting a demand draft for the fees at BITS. They exchanged notes after which I was introduced to my first BITS friend Sudharma.
We became close and were called the "Laurel and Hardy" of our batch. I was well built like "Hardy" and Sudharma was relatively short like "Laurel" . He was all brains in his 5ft 1in frame.
We took the GT express from Chennai central and my father and mother bid us good bye and told me to send a post card as soon as I reach.( we never had a phone. there was only one phone in our lane and it was a big thing to own a phone those days.) I sent home a post card which I guess must have reached them may be a couple of weeks or may be a month down the line.
My first trip abroad was to Germany in 1982. I asked my then Regional Manager MP Kala on how I should prepare for the trip. His only advice was that I should take cigarettes from India as they are very expensive in Germany and you have to buy in packs unlike in India where you could get singles from the road side paan wala. Besides this he said you have to figure on your own and he said that I am being paid enough money to cover the eight weeks. ( I was given USD 500 in which i was expected to pay the hotel rent for 5 weeks.Incidentally the exchange rate for the $ was Rs eight per $.)
I reached Germany Via Paris and this was a eight week trip covering Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland. As soon as I reached I posted a card home at the Frankfurt station informing my parents about my safe arrival. Post my trip I came home to Chennai . I received this card after a couple of days after arriving at Chennai!!
While me and my wife were terribly worried when the update from Sindhu got delayed by an hour not sure what would have been going through my parent's minds when for months together they would not hear from me. I don't know how they kept their cool. Unfortunately both of them are not around now for me to ask this question and get their secret.....
We took the GT express from Chennai central and my father and mother bid us good bye and told me to send a post card as soon as I reach.( we never had a phone. there was only one phone in our lane and it was a big thing to own a phone those days.) I sent home a post card which I guess must have reached them may be a couple of weeks or may be a month down the line.
My first trip abroad was to Germany in 1982. I asked my then Regional Manager MP Kala on how I should prepare for the trip. His only advice was that I should take cigarettes from India as they are very expensive in Germany and you have to buy in packs unlike in India where you could get singles from the road side paan wala. Besides this he said you have to figure on your own and he said that I am being paid enough money to cover the eight weeks. ( I was given USD 500 in which i was expected to pay the hotel rent for 5 weeks.Incidentally the exchange rate for the $ was Rs eight per $.)
I reached Germany Via Paris and this was a eight week trip covering Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland. As soon as I reached I posted a card home at the Frankfurt station informing my parents about my safe arrival. Post my trip I came home to Chennai . I received this card after a couple of days after arriving at Chennai!!
While me and my wife were terribly worried when the update from Sindhu got delayed by an hour not sure what would have been going through my parent's minds when for months together they would not hear from me. I don't know how they kept their cool. Unfortunately both of them are not around now for me to ask this question and get their secret.....
