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Excerpt: Wild Wild East by Tanul Thakur
In this extract from a book on exiled Americans, enslaved Indians and the abuse of the H-1B Programme, it slowly dawns on an IT worker that he’s been scammed
Sreenivas ambled towards the baggage carousel, picked up his suitcases and exited Customs. A 4M colleague, Naman, had also taken the same flight. But no one came to receive them. Sreenivas called Vishnu from a phone booth.
‘Wait, sending the office van.’
A blue Dodge Caravan arrived at the airport. They loaded their bags into the car; Sreenivas took the front seat. The sights on the highway bewitched him: gleaming metal, zipping wheels.
‘You will also drive a car like this,’ the driver Faizan, a Pakistani native, told him. ‘It is just a matter of time.’
Around forty-five minutes later, he cut into a street named Iselin and stopped outside an apartment complex. Sreenivas and Naman lugged their bags to the second floor. In the living room, a ‘Fat Belly Guy’ (FBG) sat in front of a computer monitor.
‘Why did you come to America?’ FBG asked.
What?
Sreenivas checked the two bedrooms and returned to the living room.
‘Why did you come to America?’
‘Is there an Indian store here? I need to buy a calling card.’
FBG directed him to one. As soon as Sreenivas opened its door, a young Indian man at the counter asked, ‘Why did you come to America?’
Why is everyone asking the same question?
‘Are you from Hyderabad?’
‘Yes.’
The man switched to Hindi and introduced himself. A Gujarati on a student visa, he had been fired from six IT jobs. He showed his SQL book and said, ‘You Hyderabadis come on H-1B and take F-1s’ jobs.’
‘Please give me a calling card.’
Sreenivas paid in cash, wished him good luck and left.
He called home and spoke to his parents. Familiar voices in a foreign land comforted him. He entered the loo. A new world. Left tap: hot water, right tap: cold water; a dirty curtain; a white bathtub. Sreenivas came out, drank water and asked FBG, ‘What is your name?’
‘Selvam. Why did you come to America?’
‘My manager told me to join the job.’
‘There are no jobs for me. What the heck you guys do?’
A Tall Man came out of a bedroom, saying he had arrived here in January 2008 and, even six months later, remained jobless.
No job means?
Later, Sreenivas met a tearful man in a bedroom and asked him in Telugu, ‘What happened?’
He had left his wife without consummating his marriage.
‘Why can you not bring her to USA?’
‘Where is the job?’
In the evening, strolling on the pavement, the Tall Man, Dhaval, told him that their flat, accommodating several H-1Bs, was called a ‘guesthouse’. Strange: during his government stint, a guesthouse meant a residence for dignitaries. Not a cramped dump like this. They entered a liquor store. The endless brands — of whiskey, beer, wine — amazed him. On the way back, Dhaval said Faizan stuffed the fridge with frozen food, buying them not from an Indian but a Pakistani grocery store. They discarded the unused packets in a week; he brought new ones. Dhaval demanded food expenses from the 4M management, wanting to buy what he liked. (He never got any.)
People keep food in the fridge for a week? Sreenivas had so far used it only for storing vegetables, buying other groceries, such as milk, in limited quantities every day. But here, everything flowed in abundance. Even alcohol. A huge bottle of Red Label sat on the living room table. ‘Why did you buy alcohol when there is a bottle in the house?’
‘That’s for the friends of H-1Bs here. It’s cheap and tastes no good. I prefer quality wine.’
They poured wine into their glasses and lounged on the balcony. The landline rang.
‘The phone is ringing,’ he told Dhaval.
‘I don’t care.’
Only he and Naman didn’t have a mobile, so Sreenivas rushed to take the call.
Vishnu: ‘Hello P.K., how are you?’
‘I am fine.’
‘Tomorrow, 11 a.m., I’ll take you and Naman for lunch.’
‘Thank you.’
Sreenivas finished dinner and retired to a bedroom. His roommate, the Telugu man, still cried in a low hum. He wanted to savour his wine-induced bliss, so he shifted to the living room, carrying a blanket and a pillow, lying on the couch. Selvam hadn’t switched off the TV. No one owned the place, so no one cared — like a college hostel. His flatmates popped up to use the attached toilet, disturbing
his sleep. Dhaval, as tall as Sreenivas (6’2”), had advised him to sit and pee, as it’d cut the noise. But no one bothered. He fell asleep at around two-thirty.
In the morning, Selvam was watching a speech by Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalitha on the desktop. He had not used the headphones or reduced the volume. Sreenivas said ‘good morning’; Selvam said nothing. He freshened up, made coffee and returned to the living room.
‘You look excited today,’ Selvam said.
‘Yes, I am going to meet Vishnu for lunch.’
Selvam wore a curious expression. Years later, Sreenivas would blog about it: ‘It something like you watch from the other ship while Titanic is sinking where your rejected girlfriend is dying.’ He loathed Selvam’s pity but kept quiet. He finished his coffee and put the cup in the sink.
‘Don’t leave it there,’ Selvam said. ‘Clean it.’
‘The sink is already full with unclean stuff.’
‘Clean it.’
Sreenivas washed the utensils and went to the bathroom. Another new world: warm water from the shower. He had hardly bathed in warm water in India because heating it on the stove took a lot of time. But in the promised land, he just had to turn the knob. He got dressed and wore shoes. A strange confusion pulled him: body in the US, mind in India. Something felt off ... fishy. Still, he was excited about meeting Vishnu; he had brought a shirt for him.
Vishnu drove them to a South Indian restaurant, Mirchi, in Iselin. The sumptuous buffet delighted Sreenivas. They served themselves lunch and took their seats. Vishnu asked him, ‘Do you have any questions?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s fine. Please ask at the end. Let me start with why are we here today? You have a job but not a project. So you don’t get paid till you get a project.’
Project?
‘I have a job, right, then why no salaries?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to explain. You have a job, that’s why you got an H-1B visa. But you don’t have a customer, so we don’t pay salaries till you get a customer.’
His mind froze. His heart broke. It finally made sense — the whole ‘where’s the job’ chatter. He had left India, his wife, his kid for this? What was this world?
A ‘cult’ almost exclusive to Indian H-1B workers. A cult whose first gateway led to a ‘guesthouse’. A cult that would now rule his mind, body and soul.
A cult so old it even had a name: ‘desi consultancy’.
