When I arrived in America on a cool, late Spring day of 1996 I wasn't in best of shape and spirit, going through a bad phase in life. As goes the popular Bhojpuri saying - "ZINDAGI JHOOND BAA (Life is all messed up), my life was a mess. My ties to a girl just broke up a month before marriage. I was having a horrible time with my boss at work. Living in Calcutta in the mid 1990s I was looking for an escape route, to travel somewhere far from the madding crowd as my surrounding milieu seemed to be mocking at me. I was insecure, unsure of myself and at my vulnerable best.
Still I had no immediate plans to come to the United States. Being the only son of my parents I was a pampered kid. Living in Calcutta was just an overnight train journey away from Bhubaneswar which I visited every other weekend to eat my favorite fish curry and Mansa Jhola (goat meat curry) cooked by my mom. Like many things in my life, I hadn't planned coming to America at that juncture. It just happened to happen all too quickly.
A friend of mine in the US took my resume and circulated around body shoppers, a term used for the placement agencies who hired folks from India on H1B Visa. From bolt from the blue came a decent offer from a Pittsburgh based Company called Mastech Incorporated (now iGate). So I landed here in the United States and been here ever since.
It was the beginning of a long journey. Four years later I got my US Green Card. A year later on a Fall afternoon my wife and I arrived in Columbus, Georgia on a rainy day to start my new job at the Total systems Inc. which at that time was the 5th best company in America to work for (no. 1 in the year 1999). My first day at work was on October 28, 2022 - exactly 20 years ago.
No sooner I entered into our new apartment, a teenage girl came from nowhere and rear ended my vehicle. The damage to the car was minimal, but perhaps as I was Bonded to the place I was shaken, not stirred. There is a DHAGA (proverb) in Odia - "GHARE PASU PASU MUNDA RE CHALA BAJILA" (No sooner I entered my home, my head hit the roof). I thought this freak accident was a bad Omen, harbinger of worst things to come.
It didn't turn exactly that way. Many good things happened in due course of time, though a few stood out. Our son arrived in our life in the year 2005. A year later I acquired US Citizenship as the same year saw the arrival Facebook as a social media platform. It taught me writing when I joined Facebook in 2009 and haven't stopped ever since. Please excuse me for some self bragging here -currently with nearly 5,000 on my friend list and almost an equal number of followers I have come a long way.
But the most important thing happened to me was my tryst with Total Systems Inc. For all these years I have seen many ups and downs in life and company as a lot of water has flown under the bridge over river Chattahoochee. But what hasn't changed is my unwavering commitment and bondage to the company all these years as I feel proud to be associated with it 20 years down the road.
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