American Dream/Desi Consulting

As the air hostess handed over the immigration forms, Rajat felt a daze from the blood rushing to his head. His dream was coming true, at last.

Ever since he had gotten into engineering and heard all those stories of Indians going to America to live out their american dream, he had had only one goal in life.

Rajat wanted to live in America. He wanted to bathe in american water. He wanted to eat american eggs and drink american milk. He wanted to work in America.

He got that golden chance two years into his job with one of the leading consulting firms. Once he lost out on that onsite opportunity, there was only one way out.

Rajat found a consultant who would file for his H1 visa. Once that came through, he would go to the US, and be assigned to work on a project for some fortune 500 client.

This was too good to be true. He paid $2000 towards the visa filing fee, and another $2000 as a deposit to the consultant, just as security that he wouldn’t chuck the consultant as soon as he landed on the hallowed shores.

Luck was on Rajat’s side. He got the visa.

With bravado unusual for him, he bragged about his plans to friends and colleagues, and virtually spit in the face of his supervisor while resigning his job.

He didn’t mind burning this bridge. He was never coming back.

You and your stupid Indian consulting business. I am a big game player now. I have wasted enough time working with morons. This is going to be the big break i need and deserve.

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Filed under: American Dream, Desi, Humour, India, Stories, Thoughts, sarcasm, satire , American Dream, consulting industry, indian, indians in america, Short Stories

H4 Wives

Asha got off the Continental Boeing 747 with a constipated stomach and a flutter in her heart. She had just crossed the proverbial seven seas over a fifteen hour non stop flight from New Delhi.

She was in America.

The past two weeks had been a whirlwind. She had met Ravi on 20th Nov, and ten days later they were husband and wife.

Ravi was a strapping 30 year old vice president at Goldman Sachs. He had been lapped up from NYU’s Stern school where he had been among the top performers in his MBA class. He had managed to hold off his mother’s insistence for the past few years, but now that he had gotten the promotion he so desperately wanted, there was no stopping her.

All he had to do was take a picture with his Lexus in clean clothes and send to his tech savvy mom. She set up his profile on Shaadi.com and set about finding a suitable match for her son. A shortlist of 25 was prepared and Ravi was summoned to headquarters in Mumbai.

Of all the doctors, engineers, and finance types that his mom had shortlisted Ravi liked Asha most. They got married a week later. There was no time for a honeymoon in a two week leave.

The newly weds were in New york.

Asha used to teach math to high schoolers back in Mumbai. She would have to find work once she was in America. Alas, she didn’t know jack about the visa and related vagaries involved in living the American dream. Ravi was still a few years from getting his green card, and as his dependent, she was in the US on an H4 visa.

She was not allowed to work. Not for money. Not legally, at least.

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Filed under: American Dream, Desi, India, Stories, Thoughts , Desi, h4 visa, immigration, immigration problems, indian, uscis, visa

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

Here’s a video of Steve Jobs delivering the commencement speech at Stanford in 2005. He talks about his life, its ups and downs, and how he got to become one of the greatest men of our generation.

“Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish” he says…

Very inspiring. Fourteen minutes well spent.

Filed under: American Dream, Innovation, SeenAndHeard, Videos , speech, stanford, stay hungry stay foolish, steve jobs

Visa Power

The American Dream may start anywhere – college, well-to-do siblings, parental pressure, but eventually it has to make a mandatory stop to get a colorful stamp in the passport. Its the american visa, and many a bright soul has spent sleepless weeks, months even, going through and fearing that ordeal.

Here’s how it works.

You pay the application fees at HDFC bank, and WAIT for two days. Apparently that is the amount of time it takes for them to activate your application, and only then you can enter their system.

Now starts the interesting part. You need to get a visa appointment date. Sounds easier than it is. You go in to the most user-unfriendly website to check the dates availability, and find out that the dates are not open yet. No dates. “Sorry, no dates are available” (or something to that effect). The beauty is that they don’t tell you when dates will open up. Its all random. Any day they will open up the dates. Some of them. 2-3 days or maybe a week at a time. The ball’s in your court and it is your job to keep checking the site every few days if you want an appointment next month, or probably every hour if you want one next week.

Who needs the IPL to get their adrenaline going if you are a prospective visa applicant?

Oh, and there’s a little twist to make things interesting. They will keep your saved forms for upto 7 days. If you dont get an appointment in that much time (very likely you wont) the application will get deleted. Go fill it up every week. All three forms.

(today was a lucky day….dates available!)

Wasnt always so bad. Till some years back, you could get the next available date whenever that was. Maybe two months from now, but at least you had a clear idea of what you were looking at and could plan accordingly.

Things have got better in terms of the waiting time since then. Apparently the wait to get an appointment is just a few days. Then why all this drama? What about people who need to plan their trips more than a few days in advance and dont have the time and resources to keep checking availability every 60 minutes? So many people have had to reschedule their travel plans because the appointment that they thought they would get didn’t materialize. I know at least two. One of them is writing this.

Is it the monopolistic attitude driving this system? “You have to go through us…just grin and bear it”. Or just plain arrogance? Or is it as simple as dumb people running VFS (the company responsible for the visa appointment process). I have nothing against the embassy. I have found the visa officers quite nice and friendly. Maybe they just dont know what VFS is making people go through to get to them!

Word of wisdom for visa seekers: Never get complacent and think that the wait is 3 (or whatever) days so you will get the appointment easily. You want the visa, you’ll have to earn it.

Of course, getting the visa appointment isn’t the only process that gives people sleepless nights. There is the whole – will i or wont i get the visa question! But that’s another post

Filed under: American Dream, India, Thoughts , American Dream, getting a visa, Going to America, vfs, vfs rocks, visa, visa appointment, visa troubles