100 Reasons I love America

[If you liked this post, you might like Return to India dreams.]

I love reading books about self-improvement. And most self-improvement books tell me that I can become what I want to become by behaving like the person I want to become i.e. fake it till you become it. Gretchen Rubin, in her Happiness books, urges us to act the way we want to feel. So, I am going to apply this to a problem I have been trying to solve for the past 15 or so years: to make myself feel more at home in America.

Here are the ways I have tried to solve this problem:

1. Talk incessantly about life in America and life during the ‘good old 90s’ in India. This had the unintended consequences of my friends finding me extremely predictable. So…
2. I decided to churn my thoughts about immigrant life in America and nostalgic thoughts about India inside my head. But, this had the unintended side-effect of driving me crazy. So…
3. I decided to dump these thoughts in the form of a book with two friends which offered me a chance to share these thoughts with the world (theoretically speaking) and also find an excuse to constantly discuss ‘Returning back to India’ with my co-authors. I now had a valid reason — I was writing a book!
4. I could have of course just returned back to India. I did not do that. You can read all about that in the book ^.

Having exhausted all possible human ways to solve my immigrant nostalgia in America (see ^), I decided to trick my conscience into believing that I fell in love with America, somewhere along the way.

Enter #100reasonsiloveamerica.

I quickly realized the hashtag was too long to go viral and so decided to sensibly package the name as the title of this post. If you are still with me, you are obviously an Indian immigrant in America i.e. a desi. We are kindred souls. I understand what you feel. So, let’s try this experiment together and let’s ‘settle down’ in America.

Here’s the plan. Every day for 100 days (or however many days it takes for me to make a list of 100 reasons), I will post about something that made me fall in love (a little bit) with America. When I hit 100 reasons to love America, my conscience and subconscience and unconscience will all sideline any random nostalgic thoughts about returning back to India. They will collectively make me fall in love with America because I will now feel what I made myself feel. Or something like that.

Here’s my reason 1 to fall in love with America (a little bit):

I was walking with my husband and my kids in Palo Alto downtown and there was this gentleman playing the violin. His music was such an unexpected surprise for me. We stood there listening to him and when he finished, my little one clapped loudly and exclaimed, “Gudjobyu!” (which is her version of Good Job). So, thank you America for your unexpected musicians playing in downtowns. They are one reason I love America.

(And here are all my reasons to love America as an Indian immigrant:

1. Musicians in downtowns
2. Libraries
3. Parks
4. Driving
5. What’s up, America?
6. First names

7. to 10. Crowds ok, Food, Kids, Fall Colors

11. Being on Time

12. to 15. My $alary, Swings in Backyards, Self-dependence, Philanthropy

16. to 20. People

21. to 25. TV & More

26. to 30. Food

31 to 40. Work Culture

41 to 50. Words

51 to 60 Space, Silence & More

61 to 70 Society & More

71 to 80 Discovering Myself, Failing & More

81 to 90 Street smarts, cinema, infrastructure and more!

91 to 100 Attention to details, the pursuit of happiness and more!