My Life in a Nutshell

I am a baby-boom child—one among the ten children of my parents. The recently-freed nation, India, was not ready for the unexpected population explosion. There were children everywhere, and they were seen as a synonym of curse and misfortune. The number of people was rapidly on the rise, and the world stood alarmed at the sight without being able to control the increase or to provide for all the people. Julian Huxley equated such rapid rise of population to the cancer of the planet.

I must consider fortunate as I was born as a child of a man who owned a little farm that produced enough food for the family and also had a job that fetched some steady income in cash. He worked as a full-time school teacher and a part-time farmer. Being a school teacher, he believed in the importance of education, and he sent all his children to school. His salary was just enough to pay the college fees. Fortunately, college education was not that expensive in those days. However, the college education did not prepare us for any career. We all came out with degrees in arts or sciences, and then looked for job opportunities in the wide world.

Once again I was fortunate when I got an opportunity to fly to Africa as a school teacher along with Lissy, my wife. Ethiopia didn’t have enough qualified people to teach, and they hired people from India. My job there was based on contract that renewed every three years. By the end of eight years, Ethiopia’s economy grew worse due to civil wars, and I had to look for other ways to survive. That is when I applied for admission to a university in the US for a Ph. D. program, and got here in the US with a student visa status. Lissy and I had Vineeth,our son, by then, and they also left Ethiopia. They went back to India until I got settled in the US.

Life with a student visa was tough. I was not allowed to work, and I had to live with the savings I made in Ethiopia. I was in the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. I couldn’t obtain any financial assistance as I hoped, and I had to quit my Ph.D. program. To keep my visa status, I had to be a full time student in a community college in Texas paying a lower tuition than in a university. It was nothing but my sheer will to survive and God’s mercy that kept me alive and going those three years. Finally, I joined an alternative certification program to be a school teacher and became an ESL teacher in public school. Lissy and Vineeth joined me after a gap of about three years.

The troubles were only beginning. The school setup was nothing like I was familiar with in India or in Ethiopia. The cultural differences made it very hard for me to perform my duties as a school teacher. My visa status changed to H1, which is a visa that permits an alien to work legally. My stay in this country depended upon this visa, which in turn depended upon the job I did. Keeping the job was not easy at all, and this situation made it hard to keep myself sane. But year after year it became easier and easier.

I stayed with my work permit (H1 status) for a long time, and Lissy and Vineeth stayed as my dependents. She was not permitted to work in that status. Vineeth joined fifth grade, and he did well in school.

First I was in in inner city middle school in Houston teaching ESL to the recent immigrants from South American countries. Then I was in Aldine school district for a year teaching elementary. Then  I moved back to Houston school district  teaching in middle school. Meanwhile I got certified in Computer Applications, and I got a technology teacher position in an elementary school. At the end of 20 years of stay in the US, we left the US in 2012.

Although our stay in the US was a blessing in many ways, we had our biggest experience of pain during this time-- our son left us in 2008.

Returning to India, we settled in Kottayam.

On the whole, my experiences have helped me gain a global perspective. The earth has become my home, and all earthlings are my siblings. I can relate to any human being because I am one – a very human being. 

Back to Contents