Comments on: Immigrant

By: Vaudevillian

Vaudevillian — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 23:41:57 +0000

Brilliant read..

ps- Hello from Harrow!

By: Deepa

Deepa — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 12:59:30 +0000

Very nice piece. I moved here last October and spent the first two months looking for a coat that would help me blend in (despite having lived in Delhi, where winter is an actual season as opposed to an imagined one).

By: Madras Chick

Madras Chick — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:42:12 +0000

Beautiful!
And very moving in parts. I went through so much of homesickness and the same “startligly sticking out” clothes when I first moved to the US, I can so well relate to yours. Imagine wearing long cotton skirts (the fashionable ones from India with the bells attached to the hems and the drawstring) to the mall in the March weather!! :-O

By: Banno

Banno — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 06:44:03 +0000

This was so, so well-written. All of us can identify with that startling sticking out, with different colored skins and different colored clothes that look so odd without the sun. And the coat … yes, you could never throw it out.

You know, I used a coat in my kids’ film ‘Lilkee’. Lilkee brings her father’s coat with her to Mumbai, and everytime she’s lonely, or sad or misses her home, she takes it out, and sniffs it. It wasn’t part of my original story, but I just found this strange, typically hilly coat outside the Osho ashram, a day before the shoot, and it just became part of the film.

I missed your move here, over the new year, for some reason. But am glad I got here, finally.

By: dipali

dipali — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 02:27:04 +0000

Very very nice!

By: Anoop Iyer

Anoop Iyer — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 06:05:25 +0000

Beautifully written!

By: Sanjana Ram

Sanjana Ram — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 05:29:22 +0000

“let it be.. you’ll never know when you need it”.. so true!! my grandparents’ houses are filled with junk. I don’t know if it’s a typical south Indian (or even Indian) mentality to not let things “go to waste” by throwing them away, even if they’re well past their prime.

By: a muser

a muser — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 17:43:09 +0000

This story reminded me so much of my first experiences in the US. One of the first things I bought was the ugliest brown down-filled jacket several sizes too large. I looked like an Eskimo only I wasn’t anywhere near Alaska. Now my father keeps that jacket for the times he visits me here.