My U.S. dreams

Last week I was flipping through the pages of my college diaries and saw one of the applications that I had send to a US company, hoping kick off a prospective career and built a stable future in the States, which was always my dream right from the beginning of my college days. If you ask me reason for being crazily in love with The States, I have a lot of things to say about the country which has always fascinated me with for one reason or the other, especially for the freedom to fairly and freely pursue happiness and success. With violence against women, gender bias, lewd comments and horrible eve teasing turning my place messy and less likable, I felt US would be the best place to get the right amount of liberty and happiness that one would always wish for. Seeing the abundance of prospective educational options, well paid jobs, good and neat places to live in, no dowry, no forceful marriages, rigid laws, less domestic violence and rapes, no ‘age-old’ hard and fast rules of society and community, and many other things that I’ve always loved to have in my country, my love for The States increased manifolds every day.  Putting together all these ‘pluses’ and many more enticing factors,  The States turned out to be the synonym of the dream land where I could fulfil everything on my bucket list of professional and personal goals. Although the September 11th attack too away a good share of my dreams and replaced it with chilling thoughts about safety and security, my US ambitions where never completely out of my mind. So, my first and foremost aim after college days was looking for job in the US, and tried as many options as possible to get myself a prospective profession. But sadly I failed everywhere. I was getting rejection mails one after the other from all the employers. Even after being well qualified, no one turned out kind enough to let me enter my dream land, and this made me shatter to tears.

My big dream about US slowly started fading out with the increase in amount of rejection mails. Things were not working out as planned and with no other option left, I made up my mind to take-up the job of a teacher in a nearby school, where I was getting just peanuts as salary.

Looking for a pretty decent salary, I changed a couple of jobs, and took up the job of a content writer in this city, but had my US hopes somewhere in the back of my mind. A few years went-by and soon the global recession started hitting the world, destroying the economy of the most as well as the least powerful countries with equal impact.  Many of my friends in US slowly started losing their jobs, and were forced to come back.  Being employed in a medium sized company here, I was thankfully saved from the hard blow of recession but thoughts about my long lost dream was back with a bang, but made me feel lucky this time for sticking on what I had in hand. I used to wonder why I was never lucky enough to get for myself a good job in US, but after seeing my friends return broken-hearted, I felt god has the right plan for me by making me stay-on here. Losing a well paid job is nothing short of a sudden huge blow on the face, leaving oneself shaken and terribly hurt, and this was what I was seeing on the faces of my friends.  Although most of them managed to find jobs here, there are yet to compromise with their losses.

Then followed a string of tragedies, hurricanes and bomb blasts to name a few, and my dream slowly lost its lustre and shine.  It soon became 'lifeless' and I moved on in life sans my US 'fantasies'.

At present I am happy with whatever I am today, and have almost forgotten all my dreams about move out to U.S.  I think there is nothing happier than living a contented life, with family and friends around to augment the happiness. If at all someone is kind enough to take me to U.S. someday, I may perhaps visit some beautiful places and comeback to my homeland in no time. I know I would have a lot of problems and restrictions here, but considering the contentment that I am enjoying both on personal and professional front, all the other reasons take the backseat.

Olfactory dilemma

Being with a smelly person and finding no good way to let her know how bad she smells is nothing but a curse, and sadly I have been facing this invariably on every day in my hostel room. This not so good friend of mine, with who I share my room,  often sweats so badly but unfortunately takes least care to avoid being smelly.The odour is actually so bad that even I am blindfolded in a pitch-dark room; I will be able to track her down due to her her malodorous aroma. She takes bath everyday and still stinks like putrid egg. But in my effort not make her feel embarrassed, I badly struggle to hide my puking sensation whenever she’s around, thus not revealing how awful she smells. Smells can be subjective, but hers is way too out of the norm and extremely unbearable.  However I am tongue-tied due to the heavy dose of sensitivity involved in the matter, and live on the mercy of agarbathis and room fresheners, to avoid the foul stench.

She’s averagely neat yet smells pretty bad all day long, even after applying her perfume, which unfortunately is all the more irritating than her smelly clothes.  Being with a person who sweats profusely and smells nauseatingly is extremely disgusting, especially when I am back from work, as I will have to try and hold my breath until I open the windows, even after knowing about the flock of mosquitoes that would get in to the room through the windows.  I've have hardly seen her taking any deliberate effort to walking around stinky, even after my pretty long lecture about the need for having a good smelling perfume.

Being smelly is not often due to the lack of personal hygiene, as I’ve heard that even some health problems can make people sweat badly and smell like old shoes. But I think such people should extra sensitive about the way the smell, and should take utmost care about their hygiene, thus avoiding being stinky, much to others’ discomfort.  But so far, there’s not even been a single effort from her end, and this is freaking me out. The other day, I tried telling her not to pile her dirty clothes on the corner of the room, instead wash it regularly, and her answer was shocking. She said she was scared the colour of her newly bought clothes would fade, and for this reason washed her clothes only after wearing it a couple of times. Now that I have found the reason behind the putrid egg odour of her body and clothes, I was thinking about telling her openly about this, as I really don’t want to have any more stink in my room. But my friendship and civility overpowers this urgent need, thus making it unable to reveal this truth boldly.