DEPARTED FROM
Mumbai, India
ARRIVED IN
Houston, Texas
YEAR
1996
NOW LIVES IN
Palo Alto, California
TRANSCRIPT
I'm Gautham Bordia and I'm 18.
And I'm Ajay and I'm Gautham's dad.
Baba, how was your first day in the United States?
It was about eighteen years back. I came here to work and you and your brother were year and a half old twins. And the first thing that struck me as I landed in Houston airport was how few people that I saw. We came from Bombay, from the airport, which was full of people and activity, and then the same flight, when it landed here... people almost appeared to vanish.
Where did you live at first when you came?
So your aunt and her husband, they lived here in Houston and when we first landed we went to their place and we lived in their apartment for a few days while I interviewed and got into my job. And do you remember any of your early days in the United States?
I remember very few things. Things that are insignificant. I wouldn't remember any big events or anything, just random flashes of memory.
Your favorite spot in Houston was the zoo and the duck pond next to the zoo.
[Laughs] Yeah, I don't remember...
We went there fairly regularly because you wanted to feed the ducks and chase them around.
I'm not sure I remember that.
Those were great days.
Oh... did you think that maybe living for a few weeks in the United States that you'd stay here permanently?
Actually, we did not. When we came to the United States it was really the seventh country I was visiting and the sixth for work. By that time I had gotten so used to going to different places for work and moving on to somewhere else. Coming to the U.S. was very similar. The big difference, it later turned out, was that we came with kids for the first time. With you and your brother. And once you got settled down, it wasn't very easy for us to move.
