Here it is, my last day in Chicago and soon this place would be the part of my memories as others. I came here three months ago to have some “US” clinical experience as they say. Was I successful in getting what I came for? At this moment I am not sure about the success but if I break it into achieving my objectives, I definitely did.
Chicago is a beautiful city with the downtown area being the center of attraction. High rising buildings, parks, Chicago river, bridges that reminds of middle ages give a feeling of excitement and pleasure. I tried to think of any Indian city similar to this but nothing came to my mind.
Only thing that I could correlate to India was the number of people I would see on the streets and I felt so good. I realized that being an Indian we are used to see people around us so much so that if you don’t see much faces you tend to get depressed. Such is the human warmth.
I had my fair share of difficulties some of which were good learning opportunities and the others were just annoyances. Like the food, thanks to the stuff I had brought with me I endeavored to learn how to cook and I must say I came out victorious and now quite self sufficient. I expect my culinary skills to be a pleasant surprise for my wife.
As every thing was going well and my expertise with cooking was making progress, my gas and heat at the room was cut off since the home owner was irresponsible enough to not pay his gas bills and so I had to put up for a week without cooking food which was not that bad, thanks to the frozen stuff and microwave but what was hard was to take showers in really cold water. I would dread whole day the notion of taking shower each morning so I found a way to lessen my suffering by loudly cursing the responsible ‘irresponsible guy’ in Hindi with everything I knew. I felt a little relieved but more embarrassed for what I did was childish. So for the next few days I just put up with the cold water bravely. Not to mention sleeping on the floor and lack of a pillow but surprisingly I didn’t miss them much.
For my last month I had to woke up around five and sometimes even half past four to make it to the hospital on time, if you had known me you would have known that getting up early is one thing that is not on my list. So how did I do it this time? Actually it turned out to be very easy just a little resolution, an alarm clock, some will power and that’s it, here, I have given you the ingredients, the answer to the mystery which I along with all the other owls as Sir William Osler would say, were looking for, the key to that great door which we only dreamt of unlocking one day. Easier said than done though.
After catching the earliest trains and changing buses and walking I would reach my hospital but never too early to be considered on time and never too late to totally miss the rounds or case discussions except for once when I jumped onto a subway which took me in a totally opposite direction of where I was supposed to be going and I found myself in the China Town of Chicago and to tell you the truth was little scared of how the whole China Town appeared though it’s name is mentioned in the Chicago Site Seeing Guide available at some subway stations.
On days when nothing went wrong I would observe while getting down from the train at La Salle Metra Station the swarm of people getting down from the train, people who had jobs and offices in Chicago and who like me struggled every day to reach their destinations on time. Finding myself in the waves of people reminded me the Mumbai local train experience except for that the waves in Mumbai were much larger and stronger. Getting down from the train in Chicago is an art as much as it is labor in Mumbai. But even that labor is not without art and even this art is not without labor.
Some of the commuters (commute is a popular word in this part of the world) were more artful than others or at least they thought so and these artful ones would get up from their seats exactly ten minutes before the train halt and stand in queue eager to get down from the train as soon as the automatic doors would allow them to. Needless to say I found myself amongst the more artful ones. And as always there were others who were more laid back, who were comfortable in their seats as if finding an excuse to not to go to work , who were unmoved by the bustling people around, who were less artful or at least the people who were standing thought so. These less artful ones as we would call them kept sitting and waited for the people who were standing to get down the train before them. But such is the stroke of nature that one may find the diamonds in coal mines and one may find the geniuses in the less artful ones. And as always everyone wants to know about the geniuses, who gives a damn about the ‘average’. So these geniuses or the train artists as I would call them were the best of all and enjoyed the best of both the worlds just like an Indian who earns in America and spends in India. The train artists kept sitting until the train stopped , only adjustment they would make was to shift to the edge of the seat closer to the aisle,if available, as it would help them which we will see shortly.
So here is our train just stopped at its destination, the doors about to slide open, the more artful ones almost pushing and I say almost, the less artful ones still sitting comfortably and the train artists making the necessary adjustments. The doors slide open, people most close to the doors flung themselves out and the queue starts to move forward or so one would expect but suddenly the train artists flung themselves into action. They stand up with half of their body still in the seat and look at the more artful ones just standing next to their seat and would give a look which is not a request and which definitely is not a threat but is something subtle but very implying so much so that the more artful one have to wait till they get out of the seat onto the aisle and move ahead of the more artful ones who could do nothing but to wait and receive a Thank You. What a stroke of genius!
