Awaken

6New York, New York

On August 25, 1981, 11 and a half years after returning to India, I landed at JFK Airport in New York City. In some ways, those years had been a departure; returning to the United States felt a bit like coming “home.”

With $65 in cash and no credit card, I would have to budget every cent until I received my scholarship money from Columbia. I needed an inexpensive place to stay that first night. The lady at the visitor's desk at the airport suggested the YMCA in Times Square. The taxi ride from the airport to midtown Manhattan was exhilarating – and dispiriting. New York looked run down and a lot grungier than my golden‐hued memories of America, with graffiti everywhere – on the trains, on walls, on the sides of buildings. The cab pulled up to the Y, which was next to a pornographic movie theater – something that would have been inconceivable in India. I checked in, squeezed my luggage into the impossibly tiny room, and headed outside to explore the neighborhood. Drunk and drugged people staggered around the street. Prostitutes in tight, shiny mini‐skirts and impossibly high heels stood at every street corner, propositioning me as I walked by.

Stunned, I retreated to the sanctuary of my tiny room.

After a sleepless jet‐lagged night, I took a cavernous yellow Checker taxi to International House, which would be my home for the next two years. Located a few blocks north of the Columbia campus, I‐House accommodated 500 graduate students from over 80 countries. ...