About
About me and the book
A dream that didn't work
I hungrily read books penned by globe trotters since my high school days. In my mind, I rode bicycles across Europe with Ramnath Biswas and Bimal Mukherjee in the 1930s, rode trains with Paul Theroux in 1970 and even hiked with Dr Livingstone for the source of the Nile in 1840.
By my second year in college, I imagined that I would travel overland for a year to see Montreal Olympics in 1976. It was a daydream because I was naive enough to take concrete steps.
When I graduated, I applied for a passport and ruefully learnt that, unlike the westerners, Indians are not welcome in most borders. A visa is not something that the countries would grant to a young Indian traveller like me if I plainly tell them that I am hitchhiking to see the Montreal Olympics.
So, my daydream crashed miserably, but the real dream started.
The easiest path to proceed
I started counting my marbles before jumping into the dream world tour. I figured out that I needed funds, enough of it, and not in rupees but in greenbacks, a solid story to obtain visas from countries, mastering about fifty sentences from major languages starting from Spanish to Swahili and such things, and I had none.
But I have a technical degree, and I could join an American university only if I claim I would study for a degree. They would even pay for my education and livelihood if I could play my hands correctly. What more one wants! After a couple of tests and lengthy applications, I became a graduate student in the USA. The daydream of a world tour now melted into a reality.
blending into the new world
Best students from India and the rest of the developing world flock to this country for cutting-edge research opportunities. My fellow international students were eager to excel in these. I was a black sheep who came to see and enjoy a new country, and academics was only a ploy to earn my living.
I started doing odd jobs in my spare time that were possibly a grey area for international students. Still, in those days, the authorities hardly bothered as long as one maintained their student status and financial aid. Employers were also uninformed and didn’t care. I got the opportunity to do various odd jobs, from selling the bible in rural Kansas to UPS postal van driving in Beaver county, Oklahoma, and many other weird things.
Serious Indian students often thought I had gone astray. But I never regretted it. Learnt local dialects faster, had more dating opportunities and picked up a boon of my life, the habit of working sixteen hours a day that never left me.
The American schools gave three and half months of summer vacations, a relic of the old days when kids had to help the whole family for growing crops. I took that opportunity for extensive hitchhiking and learnt to live frugally on the road. I hitchhiked to Montreal in the summer of 1976 but could only see a few strange events where gates were open. But I placed myself in a good roadside point with American college kids and cheered for Frank Shorter, an American athlete and a Yale graduate who won the marathon. That was fun, realizing my dream of travelling to the Montreal Olympics.
Finally on the road
Time flew by; I earned degrees, started work, bought the first and then the second car but then what? In the dead of night, my Bengali globetrotter idols like Ramnath Biswas and Bimal Mukherjee appeared in dreams. Even Dr Livingston, in my sleep, urged me to visit Lake Victoria, the source of the white Nile.
I was then working in Chicago. One fine Sunday morning, while jogging in Lincoln Park for exercise, I suddenly thought, hell with it, I would leave this life and wanted to be a hermit, actually a vagabond for a couple of years.
I resigned from work, gave away all my belongings except my prized Jansport internal frame backpack, Eddie Bower Eiger down-filled sleeping bag with a Gortex sleep sac, Armadillo hiking shoes and a couple of cheap dresses that fit in my backpack and left Chicago forever.
Somehow, I felt immense relief and joy when I had nothing left. I was free from any material ties from the world. I realized why Indian holy men felt so rejuvenated when they joined the monastery to become a sanyasi (a hermit). An uncle living alone in the city graciously allowed me to stay in his apartment. When I dropped the keys to the postbox for my uncle, the last tie was cut off, and I adopted the vagabonding life.
Some of the notable incidents that happened in the next two years and sprinkles of my odd job experiences are the subject matters of this book.