Shall We Ever Fall In Love? ✔

Chapter 51 (Blockbuster)

Chapter 51

◀◀ NEW YORK SPECIAL: ONE ▶▶

The busy airport of New York disturbed Jiyasha's mind. She was used to the crowd of India too but the new country seemed very different to her. She hadn't gone abroad earlier in her life and the experience was novice. She took out the visiting card that Amar had given to her. She was supposed to meet Amar's friend at the airport whose name and address were provided in the card. Amar had already mailed Jiyasha's picture to his friend and Jiyasha had also seen how his friend looked like.

While taking a troll around the big airport, Jiyasha's shoulder was tapped by somebody. She turned and smiled at him.

"Good morning Jiyasha. Welcome to New York." the man greeted her.

"Mr. John Patel, am I right?" Jiyasha asked him.

"Yes I'm Amar's friend and had expressed my wish for a cardiologist for my cousin," he said while shaking hands with her.

"He told me so. I'm glad that I didn't have to wait for long at such a mysterious and unknown place," She said pulling her hand away.

John caught hold of Jiyasha's luggage and offered her his help. She nodded and they walked to the place where John had parked his car. He said, "Now we'll have an half hour drive and reach my cousin's place."

John drove the car while Jiyasha sat on the front seat, analyzing the scenery of the city from the window. Everything was so new to her, in fact it looked so different from what her own country was. New York had wider lanes, cleaner streets and water and toilet provisions for the trespassers in almost every corner compared to India. There were skyrocketing buildings and numerous gigantic complexes. In India, she could find narrow and dirty lanes, open drains and street side toilets, a few tall buildings but numerous slums. The traffic in India was also unmanageable unlike New York where they followed strict and bound rules for every citizen.

By the first impression, New York seemed far better than India from a doctor's point of view. They had cleaner environment and they had managed their pollution levels meticulously. Indian government still needed to work hard in checking and maintaining the index of the quality of air and keeping the particulate matters' level below the safety limit. These were what Jiyasha thought for the time being.

"Where are we heading to?" Jiyasha asked when their car halted at a signal.

"To Manhattan, my cousin's place," John replied restarting the engine again.

"Your surname is Patel but you are staying in New York. Are you of the Indian origin?"

"My dad was an Indian and my mother an American. He passed away many years ago."

"Don't you visit India?"

"We did and that was so many years ago when I was in my tenth grade. My mom never liked the Indian culture and we stayed back after dad's death."

"What's wrong with the Indian culture? Didn't she get married to an Indian?"

"She did but dad had inculcated the American culture in him. She liked him the way he was but my dad was a little introvert. He had the Indian feeling inside his heart and he used to visit India accompanied by us. I liked India with all it's culture and people. Whenever we visited, we stayed at dad's ancestral place. When my mother visited India for the first time, women in my dad's family wanted her to perform some post marriage rituals. During the cooking ceremony, she burnt her hand and my aunt applied turmeric or some herbal paste on the wound instead of an ointment. Mom felt so ill-at-ease but the traditional ideas worked like magic. Once I fell sick with viral fever and my grandmother got some person who did black magic to cure me. I was still down with fever and he asked me to take bath with some magical water. My grandmother did that to me and stayed awake for five whole nights beside me and taking care of me 24×7. Lo and behold, I was fit and fine the next week. It really worked like magic but my mom hated it. When I grew up, I understood that it wasn't any black magic but my grandmother's love that cured me earlier otherwise viral fever could go on their own without any medicine!"