The Green Card Diary

Sometimes I look back at the early 1990s and wonder if we were all a little naïve—or maybe just wonderfully hopeful.

Back then, the idea of going to the United States from India carried a certain glamour. For many of us students, America seemed like a distant movie set: big houses, fast cars, effortless success, and a life where talent alone could open every door. Somewhere in that dreamy picture were also dollars, adventure, and perhaps the vague possibility of romance.

Many people have crossed that bridge since then, each carrying their own version of the story. Mine, like most journeys, turned out to be a mixture of excitement, confusion, small victories, and a generous number of embarrassing moments.

Looking back now, I realize that the journey wasn’t just about crossing oceans. It was about learning how ordinary life can become interesting and complicated in the most unexpected ways.

Words, Words, Words

I was late to the game.

While my friends were already taking the GRE and TOEFL, I sat staring at thick books filled with words that seemed to float in space without meaning. Eventually I joined the crowd and began memorizing them.

Vocabulary words surrounded me like mosquitoes.

“Words, words, words,” I muttered to myself while flipping through flashcards.

I didn’t really know where they would be used in real life. I was fairly certain nobody in Bombay ever said things like loquacious or obfuscate while buying vegetables. Still, I memorized them faithfully, trusting that somewhere in America someone might demand such language.

Eventually I took the test and came away with what people politely called a “decent score.” That was good enough.

The next challenge was choosing a university.

This was the era before websites and online rankings. Information traveled through mysterious channels: someone’s cousin, someone’s uncle, a friend of a friend who had once visited the campus.

One person warned me that apartments were expensive. Another insisted the professors were brilliant. Someone else claimed the winters were unbearable.

After sorting through this careful mixture of rumor and guesswork, I somehow landed in a place called Kingston in Rhode Island.

I had never heard of it before.

My First Plane Ride

My first airplane journey felt less glamorous than expected.

I was squeezed between two large passengers whose elbows seemed to occupy more airspace than the aircraft itself. When dinner arrived—bread, cheese, fruit, and yogurt—I stared at it suspiciously.

Was this really what Americans ate?

Back home, a meal had color, spice, personality. This felt like a polite suggestion of food.

Later, when I needed to use the restroom, the gentleman beside me had fallen asleep and was snoring like a motorbike.

I sat there quietly, debating a very serious moral question.

Do you wake a stranger for the sake of your bladder?

Small dilemmas like that tend to stay in memory long after the big events fade away.

Landing in Confusion

Arriving at JFK Airport felt like stepping into a whirlwind.

A tall man grabbed my bags and urged me to follow him toward a cab before I fully understood what was happening. Another large, calm man appeared and helped me exchange some money.

In the middle of this confusion, a woman named Megha offered me a ride to Penn Station.

She was a stranger. Yet in that moment she felt like a miracle.

I tried to thank her properly, but the words felt too small. Some gestures simply stand outside language.

That day I learned my first quiet lesson about travel: kindness often appears exactly when confusion reaches its peak.

Welcome to Campus Life

From Penn Station I took a train to Kingston.

It arrived at 6:30 in the evening on a Sunday. The August sun was still shining, but the station was strangely empty. For a few minutes I stood there wondering if I had made a terrible mistake.

Fortunately a student named Cyrus appeared and rescued me from my confusion, taking me back to his place.

Kingston itself was very quiet.

Too quiet.

During my first week, most of my meals consisted of cereal, milk, and bread. When a few of us tried cooking together, the results were technically edible but emotionally disappointing.

Still, we had bigger worries—finding part-time jobs, locating apartments, figuring out classes. Food quietly lowered its expectations.

Cultural Discoveries

Culture shock appeared in surprising ways.

One day a group of us vegetarians ordered pizza. The waitress asked cheerfully:

“No tomatoes—can I substitute pepperoni?”

We nodded politely, not really understanding.

The pizza tasted wonderful.

Later, when someone explained what pepperoni actually was, one of my friends fasted for an entire week in moral distress.

We learned quickly that cultural misunderstandings could sometimes be delicious.

The Economics of Pride

Soon my life settled into a rhythm: classes during the day, work early mornings and late nights.

My job was in the cafeteria washing dishes.

I hated it.

My ego complained loudly, reminding me that I had once been a respectable engineering student. But my bank account spoke more persuasively.

At $5.50 an hour, I worked two shifts.

My pride refused to let me ask my family for money. So there I was, scrubbing plates and quietly paying my bills. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was honest.

Sometimes adulthood arrives disguised as a stack of dirty dishes.

The McDonald’s Incident

One evening my friend Patel—who was strictly vegetarian—decided to try McDonald’s.

He stood confidently at the counter and ordered, in a strong accent:

“A double cheeseburger without cheese and meat.”

The employee paused thoughtfully.

After a moment she handed him two slices of bread.

Technically, she had fulfilled the request perfectly.

Patel looked at the bread for a long moment, then walked to the condiment station and decorated it with ketchup and mustard. We ate our minimalist sandwiches with great dignity.

Those were simpler times.

Snow and Silence

Winter arrived like a magician and a bully at the same time.

Snow transformed the town into a beautiful white painting. I ran outside like a child, throwing snowballs and even tasting it just to confirm that it was real.

But the cold was relentless.

Days grew gray and quiet. I missed Bombay—the noise, the sunlight, the spicy food, the endless movement of life.

One evening while driving with my friend Chandra, we passed a lone jogger running through the snow.

Chandra rolled down the window and kindly shouted:

“Do you need a ride home?”

The jogger looked at us with complete confusion and continued running.

We drove away quickly, realizing that kindness sometimes looks suspicious.

When the Excitement Fades

After the initial excitement faded, reality arrived.

I had little money, my studies felt overwhelming, and the cold seemed to settle inside my thoughts. Some mornings were heavy with homesickness.

Everyone around me found their own strange coping strategies.

Rajesh discovered meditation and invited mysterious visitors who sat cross-legged for hours. Raghu discovered cooking and enthusiastically invited people for meals that many politely declined after the first visit.

Sheela went shopping constantly, always surrounded by admirers.

And there was Suresh Reddy, who wore the same long winter coat year-round. You could smell his arrival long before you saw him.

Campus life had its own quiet characters.

Small Islands of Kindness

Thankfully there were also moments of warmth.

Chandra and his family often invited me to their home for proper meals. They took me on family trips and even taught me how to drive.

Those evenings—filled with laughter, burnt vegetables, and nervous driving lessons—felt like small islands of comfort.

I slowly realized that community isn’t built through grand gestures. It grows quietly through ordinary hospitality.

Unexpected Company

Around that time I met someone unforgettable.

She was tall, blonde, with faint marks along one side of her cheek. At a party I found myself staring awkwardly while pretending to be interested in the snacks.

Our early conversations were clumsy and filled with nervous laughter.

But slowly we became friends.

We shared coffee, small walks, and jokes about our cooking disasters. It was nothing dramatic, yet those moments felt quietly special.

Romance, I discovered, rarely arrives with fireworks.

More often it arrives with coffee.

The Name Problem

Another challenge was my name.

Over time it went through many creative variations—shortened, stretched, mispronounced, reinvented. Eventually I stopped correcting people.

It became part of the experience.

My friends suffered similar fates. Some names were simply too ambitious for casual conversation. Many adopted shorter versions just to help everyone survive. Others tried different tricks. Take Muthukrishnan Swaminathan for instance. He diligently spelled his name at every given chance - M U T H U K  R I S H N A N   S W A M I N A T H A N, at times going to the extent of saying M as in Monkey U as Umbrella T as in Tom... 

Language, like travel, requires compromise.

The Letter

Years passed.

I graduated, found a job, and eventually applied for permanent residency. One day a letter arrived from the immigration office.

My hands were shaking slightly when I opened it.

Inside was a small green card.

Simple. Unremarkable. Just a piece of plastic.

And yet it carried the weight of years—tests, confusion, loneliness, friendships, small triumphs.

Holding it in my hand, I realized something quietly profound.

The journey had never been about reaching America.

It had always been about becoming the person who could survive the trip.