Mahesh looked around at the gas station. This was not where he thought he would be spending the major part of his career. He thought he would have ended up behind the desk somewhere. Somewhere with a lit up computer with streaming text or numbers with a cursor blipping on the screen. Of course the computerized cash register that Mahesh was standing behind did have a cursor that blinked, but it wasn't the same.
There was a time when Mahesh had all that. He had worked for the Nepalese embassy. He would have probably ended up in a decent position in the next posting. But Mahesh had forgone it. He decided that he would rather take his chances staying illegally in the States than be at the mercy of the bureaucracy of the Foreign Ministry in Kathmandu. Things hadn’t quite turned out the way Mahesh had hoped. Being illegal, he had no work permit. This had put him at the mercy of which ever employer that he found himself with. Mostly what that meant was that he had hopped from one Indian gas station owner to another.
At first, Mahesh had been happy. Working in gas station was a relatively easy job. Punch a few buttons, take the cash, and then do the nightly report. Do it for a couple of months and you get it down to a system. And that was all true. But after six years of doing it, Mahesh felt a bit listless. Was this what his life was all about?
Mahesh tried to tell himself that it wasn’t all bad. He followed the news in Nepal. And whenever he heard about difficulties in Nepal due to bandhs or because electricity not being available, or water shortages, he felt his heart smile a bit. In a perverse kind of way, the suffering that other Nepalese in Kathmandu were going through kind of gave his own difficulties a little more dignity.
Mahesh had looked into getting political asylum. He had looked into paying a lawyer to come up with an elaborate story about how he had chosen not to go back to Nepal and had stayed in the United States because of political reasons. But it turned out that asking for asylum was fine if the person had been in the United States for less than a year. But once the year statute had crossed, it was close to impossible to get asylum unless you had a strong case. Being illegal for six years, Mahesh realized that at this point he may have had to write a novel before American immigration services gave him the time of day.
Hundreds of customers walked in and out of the gas station everyday. What Mahesh always found so amusing was how different he felt if someone who looked Nepali or Indian walked into the gas station. Suddenly he became very self-conscious of what he was wearing and the work he was doing. He would look at their crisp cars parked outside. Some of them would have a lovely lady in the passenger seat or children in the back. And something in Mahesh couldn’t but help wondering if that couldn’t have been him.
Mahesh would try to wave these thoughts away. No matter how much money you have, ultimately you cannot eat more than a thal of rice and dal at a sitting. And you couldn’t sleep in a place that is larger than the size of your body, right? So what was the point in accumulating all that money anyway? But deep down, Mahesh felt differently. He knew it did matter. Perhaps that was why, no matter how much he tried to laugh it off, it did nag him deep below. This was why Mahesh had made different plans.
Mahesh was not one to sit silently twiddling his thumb. He had cultivated close friendships with a few Americans that he felt he could trust during the years. They had been customers who came to the gas station. One of them in particular, Joe, seemed very promising to Mahesh. Mahesh had discussed business plans with Joe. The idea was that Mahesh and Joe would buy a gas station in Joe’s name. Mahesh was going to do all the work in the gas station, and then they would split the profits. Mahesh had been studying Joe for over three years. He had gotten Joe drunk silly just to find out what kind of a person Joe really was underneath the smiles. Could he really be trusted? Mahesh found that Joe for the most part was a pretty sound person.
Mahesh remembered that when he was younger what kind of a mansion he wanted to live in. He knew the kind of girl he wanted by his side. And he knew the make and model of the BMW he wanted to sport around. Mahesh laughed when he thought about it. These days he realized that in his lifetime he wasn’t going to be any where close to being a millionaire. He was ok with that. Just knowing what he wasn’t going to achieve made him sigh in relief. It kind of took the edge off of things. It made it much easier to smile with the simplicity of his life.
But Mahesh went further than that. He deliberately made a point to avoid all the show-offs of the Nepali community. Every time he hung out with one of these professionals who had recently made it in the States, he knew exactly how they acted. These bastards thought they were so slick. They would drop hints about their job and the promotions they were looking forward to receiving. It was so aggravating listening to them salivate.
Instead, Mahesh had his own gang of Nepali guys like him that also worked in gas stations. They used to hang out on off days and play cards. Otherwise, they used to just keep close tabs with each other. He new that he could count on these guys to be there for him when others wouldn’t. It was the closest to a brotherhood that Mahesh had being so far away from Nepal.
Last edited: 21-Oct-10 08:35 AM
