09/12/2024
Story of a connecting flight and a Starbucks coffee…
For all foreign graduates, do you remember when you first packed two 50 lb bags with a carry-on and laptop bag? Remember when all the bags were loaded, and you got into the car after hugging your loved ones, and the car slowly started moving? When I look back to that day, I now realize, that person who left that day is dead now. The moment I crossed the immigration after checking my luggage, my biggest fear was not be at my study table before my dad come home from the office or if I get caught by a relative while having a date at Bailey Road. My biggest fear was, what’s next?
You move into a new country, new home, no hand wash/bodna, learn to use a trash bag, open windows after dim vaji, figure out your courses, semester, social security, work place, colleagues and if you are a dependent, then more like support your partner when wondering every day if you will ever be able to achieve your own dream. Little did you realize, with that last hug to your parents, that you were not leaving to get a better education or support your loving spouse; you were literally ending a life to build a new one. You will never return to the place you used to call “home.” You will crave for DU, rickshaw, fuchka, aarong but once you travel there to relive these, everytime you will realize you don’t belong here. You will get dust allergy, cough, fever, and diarrhea. Everyone will call it winter, but you would want to turn the fan on because winter means zero degrees to you.
The more you get used to with your busy abroad life, you will say, I will be visiting my family instead of saying, “Basay jai.” In the process of student visa, job visa, dependent visa, to permanent resident card to citizenship; you will forget the sound of, “Oi mama jaben or mama vara ta baraiya diyen”. You will buy a house, a better car, have children, make friends, and have a few vacations in a year. Also, you will keep traveling to Bangladesh as a part of your plan and budget. And one day, all of a sudden, while you are traveling back from Bangladesh, waiting for a connecting flight to your destination with a Starbucks coffee will give you the feeling that I will be reaching HOME(?) after this flight.
Maybe this is called second life before the first death !
Courtesy- Ashma Ul Husna
