In a New York minute ...(part 2)

Sameer grew up as a privileged only child in a sprawling colonial house in the middle of Lutyen’s Delhi. As a little boy, he was escorted to school by two mustached men who called him, “Sameer baba”. When he was twelve, he was sent off to Woodstock - a boarding school in Mussorie, where he met other boys who were also used to being called “Baba.” Sameer’s story was a familiar one – he went to college in St Stephens, Delhi and for a while he worked in his father’s friend’s firm where he toyed with the idea of taking the civil service exam (something his father wanted him to do), he played with the idea of starting his own business and, briefly, he entertained the idea of being an artist- but it was an idea that sounded ridiculous even to him. He ended up finally going to graduate school in the US - it was a decision that appealed to both him and his parents. Sameer was excited at the prospect of living in another country, and his parents were quite pleased about the fact that their son had been accepted at an Ivy League school – Princeton.

But when Sameer landed in the US, his excitement quickly evaporated. While the university was beautiful and imposing, and he was walking in the same halls that many Nobel laureates had walked down, Princeton didn’t impress him. It was a quaint little town that was trying desperately to be Cambridge, England – but the truth was - it wasn’t. It was a sleepy, preppy town with pretty houses, a canal and an ice cream shop called Thomas Sweets. What bothered Sameer most was the fact that it was so quiet – having lived with crowds of people everywhere – it was hard to reconcile to the lack of noise and chaos.

In those early moths, he spent a lot of time in the library being nostalgic about his life in India. In India, he was ‘Sameer baba’ and people waited on him hand and foot; but here he was a nobody who had to do his own laundry – worse yet, he was that Indian guy who didn’t quite fit in. He often though about his grandmother – she had been the only one who had been upset at the idea that he was going to be studying in the US. She doted on her grandson – for Aruna, Sameer had been the one on whom she had showered all her affections. Sameer thought fondly of all those winter afternoons, when he had sat in the verandah with his head on his grandmother’s lap. As the sun gently warmed his face, he would listen to his grandmother tell him stories of Hindu gods - Vishnu, Shiva, Durga and Ganga. One of his favorite stories had been that of Vishnu’s second incarnation as Kurma, the tortoise – when at the churning of the ocean, he offered his back as a pivot on which to rest the Mount Madera that was being used as the churning stick. He was fascinated by the idea that a tiny tortoise was at the bottom of this mighty ocean -- out of which emerged the Moon, a nymph called Rambha, Parijata - the celestial wishing tree, Surabhi - the cow of plenty, Airavata – the white elephant, and Amrit -the elixir of life.

At times, on grey rainy days, he thought of Savita. She had clearly not been his type – she was a little too dark, she didn’t have the sing-song voice that convent school educated girls had, and though he hated to admit this to himself – but Savita was not in same social strata as he was – she was from the wrong side of the tracks. And yet, he was irresistibly drawn to her. He had been with a few girls before – girls who did meet his eligibility criteria – but none of them had exuded the sensuality that Savita had. And Savita was surprisingly intelligent. In the literary club meetings, she often just sat quietly listening to others, but when she did speak in her shy, halting way – she spoke as if she had not just analyzed the book, but had known and felt the characters deeply. And he remembered the way she smiled – it would start as a tiny spark at the corner of her lips, and then spread slowly through her face like a forest fire.