Canada Roadtrip.
Sometime this semester we decided to make another trip. Ok, that was slightly wrong. I am never involved with the decision making process. I was informed that we are going to take a trip down to Toronto. Which, the last time I checked was in Canada. Hence, visas would be required. So,, about a week before the trip, we drove down to the Canadian consulate at Detroit early in the morning. Halfway there, I realized that I did not have my I20, or documents of financial support. All a result of not reading emails. To the great credit of my friends, they did not yell at me, as I might have done. In fact, Young Karthik (YK) agreed to drive me down to Detroit on Friday. So on Friday, armed with documents of financial support, documents attesting to my legal status here as an international student, documents verifying that I am, in fact engaged in academic pursuits at the University and not up to anything nefarious/shady, I legged it to the consulate. The bloke at the counter gave me the once over, then the twice over , and asked if I had been here before. I said, yes, on Wednesday, I was too lazy to get all my stuff. He gave me a nasty look. Now there is something about people in law enforcement/immigration, or related fields… they have this look which gives a perfectly respectable legal bloke the heeby jeebies. I got the heeby jeebies. Anyway, I also got my visa. Yeah!
Weird thing happened after that. This Punjabi bloke all dressed up in a suit and tie asked me for some details on the visa process. Turned out he was a US citizen, but he needed help with the visa application for his aunt. Now why would he need help with paperwork? Well, he did, that is all I can say. So YK and I ended up pretty much filling up his form for him. And I noted this: when talking to Indians in Hindi, I generally tend to switch to this really ‘dehati’ accent. Now dehati means rustic. And sometime this overflows into the conversation, especially in a multilingual conversation. And as we all know, Indians who can speak marginally decent English are the most linguistically snobbish people on earth. Hence my continued unpopularity amongst the English speaking Indian students community over here. That explains a lot.
Onto Canada. Or so we thought.
We planned to start driving at 5 am. Chamaree would be driving her Prius. And if YK was Very nice and Very safe and Very conscientious, then Maybe he would get to drive for a Very Short while. Depending on C’s discretion. 5 am would be called ‘kaak bhor’ back home. This translated to ‘crow early morning’, the only reason being, I guess that crows wake up way before other people/birds. But passing lightly over Indian crows and their diurnal patterns, C and I told YK and Young Krishnan (YR) that they would have to be ready AT 5 am, or bad luck. Now having traveled with these people before, I know that such dire warnings have little meaning for them. But we assured them that our threats to leave them behind were for real. Oh, and by the way, Courtney(Co) was also coming along. She lives at AA and knows C through ballroom dancing (an activity I admire, but have no desire to participate in.. but more on that in a later blog.)
And then Katerina(K) called. She had plans to fly to NY as far as I knew. Turned out that those plans had to be scratched because she thought that fall break was for the whole week and not merely two days as per the academic calendar. Oops. She wanted to know if we had space for her. I turned her over to the mistress of ceremonies, C. C hemmed and hawed, and YK saved the day by volunteering to drive his L’Mobile as well. YR decided to drive with YK. So that was settled. Then after negotiating with K about a suitable pick up time early in the morning, C (with nerves suitably frazzled) decided to call it a day.
The next morning dawned, or rather didn’t. Clouds hovered in a peculiarly offensive way on the horizon. C’s Prius pulled up and I hopped in. The L’Mobile following, we drove off in almost complete silence. The Prius is a petrol-electric hybrid, and behaves like a stealth car at times. YR navigating the L’Mobile.
Those offensive clouds stayed offensive, and with time, instead of lighting up, the skies stayed disconcertingly dark. Imagine this; driving along in the early morning, in vague darkness and periodic bursts of rain sweeping across the windshield, very much out of a post apocalyptic scifi movie.
Sometime this semester we decided to make another trip. Ok, that was slightly wrong. I am never involved with the decision making process. I was informed that we are going to take a trip down to Toronto. Which, the last time I checked was in Canada. Hence, visas would be required. So,, about a week before the trip, we drove down to the Canadian consulate at Detroit early in the morning. Halfway there, I realized that I did not have my I20, or documents of financial support. All a result of not reading emails. To the great credit of my friends, they did not yell at me, as I might have done. In fact, Young Karthik (YK) agreed to drive me down to Detroit on Friday. So on Friday, armed with documents of financial support, documents attesting to my legal status here as an international student, documents verifying that I am, in fact engaged in academic pursuits at the University and not up to anything nefarious/shady, I legged it to the consulate. The bloke at the counter gave me the once over, then the twice over , and asked if I had been here before. I said, yes, on Wednesday, I was too lazy to get all my stuff. He gave me a nasty look. Now there is something about people in law enforcement/immigration, or related fields… they have this look which gives a perfectly respectable legal bloke the heeby jeebies. I got the heeby jeebies. Anyway, I also got my visa. Yeah!
Weird thing happened after that. This Punjabi bloke all dressed up in a suit and tie asked me for some details on the visa process. Turned out he was a US citizen, but he needed help with the visa application for his aunt. Now why would he need help with paperwork? Well, he did, that is all I can say. So YK and I ended up pretty much filling up his form for him. And I noted this: when talking to Indians in Hindi, I generally tend to switch to this really ‘dehati’ accent. Now dehati means rustic. And sometime this overflows into the conversation, especially in a multilingual conversation. And as we all know, Indians who can speak marginally decent English are the most linguistically snobbish people on earth. Hence my continued unpopularity amongst the English speaking Indian students community over here. That explains a lot.
Onto Canada. Or so we thought.
We planned to start driving at 5 am. Chamaree would be driving her Prius. And if YK was Very nice and Very safe and Very conscientious, then Maybe he would get to drive for a Very Short while. Depending on C’s discretion. 5 am would be called ‘kaak bhor’ back home. This translated to ‘crow early morning’, the only reason being, I guess that crows wake up way before other people/birds. But passing lightly over Indian crows and their diurnal patterns, C and I told YK and Young Krishnan (YR) that they would have to be ready AT 5 am, or bad luck. Now having traveled with these people before, I know that such dire warnings have little meaning for them. But we assured them that our threats to leave them behind were for real. Oh, and by the way, Courtney(Co) was also coming along. She lives at AA and knows C through ballroom dancing (an activity I admire, but have no desire to participate in.. but more on that in a later blog.)
And then Katerina(K) called. She had plans to fly to NY as far as I knew. Turned out that those plans had to be scratched because she thought that fall break was for the whole week and not merely two days as per the academic calendar. Oops. She wanted to know if we had space for her. I turned her over to the mistress of ceremonies, C. C hemmed and hawed, and YK saved the day by volunteering to drive his L’Mobile as well. YR decided to drive with YK. So that was settled. Then after negotiating with K about a suitable pick up time early in the morning, C (with nerves suitably frazzled) decided to call it a day.
The next morning dawned, or rather didn’t. Clouds hovered in a peculiarly offensive way on the horizon. C’s Prius pulled up and I hopped in. The L’Mobile following, we drove off in almost complete silence. The Prius is a petrol-electric hybrid, and behaves like a stealth car at times. YR navigating the L’Mobile.
Those offensive clouds stayed offensive, and with time, instead of lighting up, the skies stayed disconcertingly dark. Imagine this; driving along in the early morning, in vague darkness and periodic bursts of rain sweeping across the windshield, very much out of a post apocalyptic scifi movie.
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