A pacifist in America

Back in 1987, it was my first flight out of the country.  It seemed never-ending.  I was one of the many passengers who couldn't sleep, nor did I find the movie to be interesting.  It was not a pleasant journey, even though it was one hell of an exciting one.

I wandered over to the magazine/newspaper rack.  I don't remember now whether it was Time or Newsweek that I picked up.  I started leafing through that issue.

I was shocked when I read one report.  It was about freeway shootings in Los Angeles.  I was headed there.  Los Angeles was the city where my graduate school was located.  

Shooting on a freeway?

That, too, was my "welcome to America."  

The land of guns and violence.  The wild, wild, west of the movies was also a real thing.  Cue the theme from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.  Well, alright, I didn't know about this movie until after I had arrived in America.

My friend picked me up from the airport.  It was a long drive to his home, mostly on freeways.  I asked him about the shootings.  He laughed.

I was excitedly looking all around.  I was impressed with everything.  I had never seen such an uninterrupted flow of traffic. In India, cows and goats and humans all claimed the road at the same time.  But, not here.  And, all the vehicles were speeding in one direction, and across the barrier on the other side there were vehicles speeding in the other direction.  A gazillion lanes and everybody stayed within their lanes too!

And then the big trucks.  I had never seen such humongous trucks on the road.  Well, except the couple of monstrous heavy-engineering trucks used in the mines in Neyveli.  Whenever those trucks appeared on our street, my brother and I rushed to look at them.  And we always counted the number of tires that rolled past us.

But, here were trucks speeding at sixty miles an hour, and plenty of trucks as well.  Every truck that we passed, I kept staring at it and I always tried to get a view of the driver.  How could just one human drive such a giant with ease!

At one point, my friend mildly suggested that I stop doing that.  "Don't make eye contact with the truck driver."  Ah, yes, the shootings on the freeways of Los Angeles!

A few weeks after my arrival, there was buzz among the Indian students about a group called the dotbusters that had killed an Indian on the east coast.  They shot an Indian?  Was it a continuation of the wild, wild, west, in which they found a new kind of an Indian to kill?

In those first few weeks, I came to understand the American fascination with guns, and about the status of the browns.

Years have gone by.  32 years!

Meanwhile, the American fascination for guns has ramped up with deadlier weapons.  Violence continues against non-whites.  The president says that they are "fine people" and 63 million cheer him on.

This, too, is America!