Reading from “Chasing America”

admin — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 19:00:43 +0000

Virginia Festival of the Book, Friday the 23rd March 2012, in Charlottesville, Barnes and Noble store.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0pmypjV0VM&feature=youtube

Chasing America selected for inclusion in the Virginia Festival of the Book, 2012

admin — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 00:40:31 +0000

Don’t miss Deepak Singh when he appears at the 2012 Virginia Festival of the Book in Charlottesville, VA, where he will participate in the panel discussion “Memoirs: Cultural Leaps” and discuss his recently published memoir, Chasing America: Of Lollipops, Night Clubs and Ferocious Dogs. The panel discussion will take place on Friday, March 23, 2012, at 2 pm at the Barnes & Noble on 1035A Emmet Street. The Virginia Festival of the Book, which is in its 18th year, will run from March 21-25, 2012. To learn more about the VA Festival of the Book click here.

The plane landed safely..

admin — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:34:48 +0000

The plane landed safely and it was taxied to a terminal at the Dulles airport. As we got off, we were directed to go in different directions according to the kind of visa we had. US citizens went in one direction, permanent residents in the other direction and so forth. My turn came and the officer gestured me to come up to him.

I showed him my passport and the visa. He looked at it and keyed some numbers into his computer. He then asked me to put my finger on a machine to get my finger print.

“Are you sure you were born in India and not Pakistan?”He asked me with a stern looking face.

“Yes, I am,” I answered, looking at him, puzzled.

“What is the purpose of your visit?”

“To be with my wife…”

“Where did you meet her?”

“Lucknow, India.”

“Where did you get married?”

“India.”

“How long are you going to stay in the US?”

“A few years…”

After flipping through my passport for the fifteenth time, “…alright, you are good to go,” he said, not being able to find a reason to interrogate me further.

I walked away from him thinking what in my passport – issued in India – suggested that I was born in Pakistan. I was born in Lucknow which is at least five hundred miles from the Pakistani border. Wondering why he asked such a question, I looked at my watch to adjust the time and I noticed the date – 10^th September – a day before the 9/11 anniversary. Maybe that explained the police officer’s behavior towards me.

I took a deep breath, thankful that the hell was over and that I had finally arrived in the United States of America – the land of the free, the promised land.