The Full Circle
Chapter 1: The American Dream (and Other Myths)
When did the obsession with America actually start? Probably back when I was a gullible kid in the Middle East, watching Small Wonder and wondering why my family didn’t keep a creepy robot child in the closet. America looked like a magical magical planet where everyone lived in 2,000-square-foot houses and nobody ever had to face power outages. Reading Hardy Boys and Archie comics only fueled the delusion. My grandmother (bless her soul) was convinced all Americans were literal giants. I thought they survived on giant hamburgers and milkshakes from the local diner. Meanwhile, our Indian history textbooks allocated roughly three sentences to the entire country (“They threw some tea in a harbor, moving on…”), so my early geographical knowledge was 90% Hollywood movies and 10% Malayali pop-culture jokes about how far Florida is from Washington, D.C.
Then the dial-up internet arrived, and suddenly America wasn’t just a tiny plastic globe in geography class. It was this mysterious land where people actually spent real money on stuff like beanie babies and pet rocks.
The early 2000s hit, and with it came the great Indian IT outsourcing boom. I watched on TV as the twin towers collapsed. Call centers sprouted like mushrooms after lightning. Suddenly, half the neighborhood was named “Steve from Ohio” from 9 PM to 5 AM.
By the time my engineering degree came to its agonizing failure, America looked more like a mirage and far from reality. I blindly signed a job offer without reading a single word of the responsibilities, a classic career move. My daily hustle? Handing out career lifelines to folks like Bob, John, and Carol at heavyweights like Microsoft, Nike, and T-Mobile. Hours melted away as I picked American brains about software architecture and program management, slowly soaking in US culture, corporate healthcare perks, and the dark magic of visa categories. Thanksgiving and Independence Day quietly invaded my calendar, sparking vivid daydreams of feasts featuring oversized turkeys and hotdogs in baseball fields. Chatting with colleagues who had already made the sacred pilgrimage only added fuel to the fire, turning distant visions of Las Vegas, D.C., and San Francisco into hyper-real hallucinations. I craved that flight across the Pacific like a person stranded in a desert. My passport sweated in anticipation.
I played the waiting game while watching co-workers secure business visas and embark on their grand quests. They would return bearing sweet imported treasure like Hershey’s and bottles of Jack Daniel’s, staying up until sunrise spinning wild tales of life in the promised land. I kept telling myself my day was coming, but as months dragged on, shiny corporate promises evaporated into thin air. Scoring a business visa in 2007 felt less like a triumph and more like a classic case of false hope and dashed dreams. Realizing that chapter was officially closed, I packed my bags and pivoted to a fresh gig in Delhi come April 2010. I was still busy recruiting for Stephen, Corinne, and Brian while wrestling with North India’s suffocating heatwaves and endless local quirks. Then, out of absolute nowhere, a golden ticket materialized. A flight to Washington state, the legendary habitat of tech giants like Microsoft and Boeing. Landing in autumn Seattle felt like an icy, glorious relief after surviving Delhi’s crowded, sweltering chaos. I spent my twenty-fifth birthday wandering around Pike Place Market, getting a crash course in their famous fish-throwing corporate philosophy. I linked up with old buddies, made a few fresh ones, and celebrated Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas straight out of a Hollywood blockbuster script. Yet, a persistent ache for family back home made me realize the US wasn’t quite my ultimate cup of tea, or rather, my pint of beer. I hit the undo button on the whole adventure and retreated back down South to my ultimate sanctuary of crisp dosas and steaming filter coffee.
Turns out, the quarter-life crisis is no urban legend. Between 25 and 30, I played corporate musical chairs, tied the knot, and turned down two separate chances to head back to the States. But hey, third time’s the charm, right? In early 2014, I took a quick scouting trip to Silicon Valley to see if the universe was still calling. As the old saying goes, if you want to test your destiny, buy a lottery ticket. So I entered the ultimate gamble: the H-1B visa lottery. And against all odds, I struck gold. Ten months, one snapped knee ligament, and a major surgical operation later, my wife and I touched down in California to reboot our version of the American Dream. My twenties forced me to keep my head down and grind away. My thirties forced me to literally relearn how to walk, run, and hustle even harder. Uprooting your existence to a foreign land, wrestling with capitalism, civic rules, and macroeconomic reality without a safety net, is one deeply humbling reality check.
Chapter 2: “Why Is there so much food and cheese on everything?”
I could write an entire comedy special about US taxes, healthcare co-pays, or the high-stakes survival game known as the Bay Area rental market. From a sprawling two-bedroom apartment in Bangalore, my wife and I downgraded ourselves into a Fremont studio apartment slightly larger than a walk-in closet. But hey, the local Indian grocery store smelled like fried coconut, so home was never far away. We budgeted down to the exact penny, proudly carried home our giant brown paper grocery bags like extra strength weightlifters, and celebrated buying a new car like we’d just won an Oscar.
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We mastered the art of American politeness: holding doors for strangers, dramatically nodding while saying “have a good one,” and obeying the unwritten rules of civilized society. We checked off New York, Las Vegas, and Hollywood, taking photos at each location to prove to everyone back home that we were living the dream. Thanks to WhatsApp video calls, our parents could judge our life choices in real-time, though we still missed out on countless weddings, birthdays, and family drama back home.
And then, because life loves a good plot twist, the visa Gods decided we were having too much fun. On a sunny Friday morning in September 2017, our H1B extension got denied. We had exactly seven days to clear out our lives, and hand over our keys. We packed our bags, gave our remaining groceries to friends, and hit the rewind button on the American Dream. Hasta la vista, baby!
Chapter 3: Return of the Jedi
To truly survive in America, three essential topics are non-negotiable: Star Wars, hand-held football, and whatever wild weather is sweeping across the continent. It forms the standard ritual before any small talk or business meeting begins. Remember my grand claim about writing a thesis on immigration chaos? Right after our H1B denial, an old ACL injury miraculously opened the door for an L1 transfer. Funny how destiny works, right? Before we even had time to properly process the madness, we were right back on a flight to the US, ready to reboot our slice of the American Dream.
Life, as usual, shifted gears at lightspeed. Dual incomes unlocked a world of endless travel options. We hopped on a flight to London, watched Arsenal play at the Emirates, and paused in Paris just to admire the Eiffel Tower. Old dreams were getting checked off while fresh ones took their place. We began spending anniversaries at fancy Michelin-starred spots, leased an Audi alongside a Mini Cooper, and steadily climbed up Maslow’s pyramid.
Then COVID-19 arrived and pressed pause on reality. We spent every day staring at death counts like high-stakes stock market indices. I spent nearly ten straight months locked indoors, evolving into a professional hermit inside my own small bubble. Between worrying about distant relatives and collecting vaccine boosters like rare Pokémon, Arsenal matches became my only reliable lighthouse in a very dark ocean.
Once the world opened back up, I threw myself headfirst into corporate ambition. Maybe it was something in the Silicon Valley tap water, but I developed an obsession with making serious money, the kind of cash where you don’t bother looking at price tags anymore. We bought our first real house, booked more international flights, and ate endlessly. A quick return to playing soccer yielded yet another ankle surgery, and turning forty brought its own prizes: cholesterol spikes, persistent tendonitis, and lower back pain. To cope, I jumped into youth soccer coaching, starting with eight-year-olds before working my way up to turbulent teenagers.
While my twenties were pure chaos, my mid-life phase brought absolute clarity. I resigned from my job, took a 3 month sabbatical, and spent my days playing video games, lounging around, and occasionally visiting the gym. I reached out to childhood friends, picked up reading again, and actually hunted for a job for the first time in nearly two decades. I landed a role with real work-life balance, took the US citizenship oath, surrendered my Indian passport, and returned to my homeland on a tourist visa.
Two decades after embarking on this wild mission of self-redemption, I stand looking back at the long road behind me. I’ve bled, sweated, re-evaluated my entire existence, and learned when to walk away. I went from a starry-eyed kid watching American shows on a tiny screen to an actual citizen living out the whole crazy story. Life has truly come full circle.
Advice to my younger clueless self: a few essential lessons from the journey,
- Never turn your back on the people who stood by you during the dark times
- Manage money well. If you don’t need it or can’t afford it, don’t buy it
- If you sign up, show up before time and give it your absolute best
P.S — Maybe this is where AI shows up and kills humanity.
