20 years
Twenty years ago (05-Aug), with stars in my eyes and big ambitions in life, I landed in Atlanta airport en route to Blacksburg, Virginia. A lot, heck, pretty much everything about me has changed since then, and arguably, much of what I understood and believed was America too.
Twenty years is a long time - this was my first trip outside India and my longest flight ever. At that time, my understanding of America fell into three broad buckets - Hollywood + MTV + Books, websites circa 2000, and long emails from grad students. It is safe to say, the country that I landed in was very different, and back then, in all the good ways. Virginia Tech welcomed me with open arms and gently introduced the American way of life to me, starting with football with a Big East team led by a QB named Michael Vick.
From the loud Lane Stadium to a memorable internship in Boston that introduced me to baseball and those lovable losers, the Boston Red Sox and soon after, the newly minted Super Bowl champions with a lanky replacement QB called Tom Brady, I have come to embrace American sports, admittedly more than cricket (some would call that a heresy).
I remember following the elections that year, you know, the one with the chads. I came from a conservative upbringing but I still hated wars and I found myself rooting for Al Gore, for no good reason. While I was bummed when Bush won, it still felt like democracy "mostly" played out as it should.
Over the past 20 years, this country has given me opportunities that many millions would only dream of. I remember my first online purchase (a book) in 2001 on a website called Amazon.com. Little did I know that I would spend a better portion of my career building breakthrough products as an employee of the company. In 2009, I created an account on a cool social network called Facebook where people posted "statuses". Little did I know I would be employed by that company to build incredibly immersive technologies and products. I have truly been fortunate that this country and the entrepreneurial culture it has fostered has given me those opportunities.
Yet, as I ponder to think, more so these past few years, if I was naive for much of these 20 years or if America specifically, was just much more innocent. I have learned a bunch about this country in the last two decades, and frankly, so much more just this year. I have come to learn and understand about the systemic imbalances in society, of slavery and freedoms and racism. That corruption is no different than my place of birth, India. That political egos are still much bigger than human lives. And that deep rooted racist, homophobic, and bigoted beliefs are still all too present and all too real.
I still believe that this nation can produce greatness - but that it also takes a lot of hard work. And that it takes all of us to make a difference.
I will end with a quote by someone who I greatly admire. On to the next twenty.
No matter who you are or what you look like, how you started off, or how and who you love, America is a place where you can write your destiny.
Barack Obama