So my husband is a little nervous about this particular draft, not sure why. Anyway, here goes….
So this assistant manager was moved to my office, and he barely smiled. He was what we would call a Khadoos (grumpy). I did not like him at all and thought he could at least smile once in a way. I did not get his humor. Why was it funny to laugh at the stupidest things? Maybe I was the grumpy one, who knows.
I was moved to another office and did not have to work with him anymore, yay!! But one evening I ended up climbing a curb and damaging one of my tires by the park. It was almost dark, and who do I decide to call for help-that same grumpy manager as he lived down the street. I needed someone to have their headlights on, so I could change my own tire, but he being a gentleman changed my tire. He then asked why I was stalking him? I just stared at him in disbelief and asked why the hell would I want to do that? Like I mentioned before, he has a weird sense of humor. I did not find that funny. I don’t remember how we decided to go for a movie one day, but I guess that was the start of a very interesting chapter. He was not my type, which was tall, dark and had to wear glasses, in fact he was short, white and too chikna.
We were working one morning when one of the employees came running in and said the tower fell. I looked at her and asked her what tower she was talking about. She was scared. We quickly turned on the radio in the car, the second tower was hit. What the hell had just happened? I was just there exactly a week ago and now this. I had all these thoughts running in my head-how did they not see the tower? why were they flying so low? was this an accident? I heard a scream from the office, the Pentagon was hit. We worked in the DC Metro area. Were we under attack? There was so much confusion. We continued to work as we had people waiting. Even though everyone was concerned we had a job to get done. One comment that I heard from one of the managers was “damn Muslims and their jihad”. I was completely taken aback. The next nine hours was chaos as the flood of people from D.C. came through our area as we were only 3 miles from the DC line.
We survived the 9/11 attacks, only to be in the cross-hairs of the Beltway Sniper in 2002. A lot of those shootings were extremely close to where we worked and places we visited frequently. So it was an extremely tense time, but those managers words still ring in my ears even today. What was happening to the world that I loved? So many unanswered questions. But among all this chaos happening in the world, I was beginning to accept this khadoos as mine.
After about three years, he introduced me to his family. I was extremely overwhelmed as it was a large family, and I hadn’t really been around family in years. They were sweet and extremely welcoming. I had crawled into this shell and generally did not let people into my life that easily, so I probably came off as shy or rude. There were lots of kids around and I didn’t do well with so many children at all, I still don’t. He and I talked about getting married, but I informed him that he had to speak with my parents first. For that he would have to travel overseas to my home in India. He had never left the United States, so this was going to be fun. Nothing like travelling to India on a first overseas trip. He had no idea what awaited him. All I told him was to come with no preconceived notions and an extremely open mind. The journey had begun….
americabydefault 