ABCDs ; The Culture-Conflict. 3

       
                                            

                              (Source : The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri)


              On the day Ashima was leaving her home  and India and accompanying her husband to Boston, she first went to pay her respects to her grand-parents. She had stood, her head lowered, under her late grand-father's portrait, asking him to bless her journey. Then she bent down to touch the dust of her dida's feet to her head.
            "Dida, I'm coming," Ashima had said. For this was the phrase Bengalis always used in place of good-bye.
          "Enjoy it," her grandmother had bellowed in her thundering voice, helping Ashima to straighten. With trembling hands,her grandmother had pressed her thumbs to the tears streaming down Ashima's face, wiping them away. "Don't do what I would never do. It would be always for the best. Remember that. Now go."
          Ashoke had attended to the work of obtaining pass port for Ashima from the regional passport office in Calcutta and finally her visa from American Embassy in Calcutta. It had taken almost a month to complete all the formalities to take Ashima with him to America. It was some time in November that they were to depart from India.
         On the assigned day of their journey they reached the air-port almost three hours before the flight time, accompanied by all the close relatives of both the families in four big vans, with their luggage of four large size suit cases and two cabin bags. Before they checked in their large suit cases they had to complete the fanfare of bidding farewell by their relatives and it took more than an hour before Ashoke and Ashima went inside the air-port to check in their luggage and complete security check formalities. Their relatives had been watching them from visitors lounge till the newly wedded couple  was out of their sight.
         It was a chilly and windy morning in November that they alighted their air-craft in Boston and hired a cab and traveled to the apartment of Ashoke, near Harvard. It was quite amusing for Ashima to find trees along the road with their fall colors, so spectacular that she had never imagined to see such sight.