English

You are doing an MA in English. You only travel to the city on days you have classes. You envy those who live in the city. That’s where things happen. You are living in the suburbs to save on rent. You hardly see anyone most of the time. Your neighbours barely look at you. The winter months are dark and cold. The malls close by five pm. In Bombay, staying out at malls until closing time, around ten pm, was a weekend ritual between you and your parents.

You spend hours in the public library browsing books that you had only dreamt of borrowing. You hang around even after classes are done because the campus buzzes with activity. It reminds you of Bombay. During lunch time, you go to Albert Park and eat your tiffin, either rice or pasta, because they’re the easiest to make. You crave for home food, but no one invites you home. You sit on one of the benches and offer a noodle or few rice grains to the pigeons who fly near you. You have not managed to make a single friend. Couples walk hand in hand, making you feel more single than ever.

Classmates smile at you, sometimes, when you make eye contact but you have nothing in common. They are in their twenties. You are the odd one out, in your late thirties. Everyone your age is married. Going abroad for your Masters in your thirties is not something you ever thought of but if not now, then when? Your cousins were surprised. They said things like

-Who takes a loan for an English degree?

-Who goes to New Zealand?

-Why is she not married yet?

Before travelling, in July, you were stressed out about what kind of winter coat you would need to buy that would suffice for the winter in Auckland. You read the biosecurity rules again and again. It had a long list of what you are not allowed to bring, and that the airport has bins for you to discard anything you might not be sure of getting past biosecurity, and if not, you would be fined. You had printed the list and taped it to your wall. You didn’t want to make a mistake. Animal fur was on the list. All the jackets you found online and in shops had fur around their hood and you couldn’t detach the hood from the jacket.

You finally settled for a windbreaker. It helped you get through the two long flights and the lay over, but when you exited the New Zealand airport after midnight, the chill seeped through the coat. The Indian Kiwi girls in your class wear long fashionable winter coats. They don’t look or sound anything like you. You practice the Kiwi accent in front of your washroom mirror.

You are flatting with an Indian girl who is not new to Auckland. She barely speaks to you. When she does, she speaks so softly, you have trouble hearing her. On the other hand, when you talk, you worry your voice is loud enough to disturb the neighbours. It can be that quiet most of the time. You have left notes for her sometimes with a ‘Have a nice day’ and have found them in the trash with ice cream streaks on them.

She brings boys over she meets from dating apps, and they are kinder to you. You have given up on dating but you want a friend. One of the guys who came over even played a game of cards with you before he left. You want to warn her, out of concern, after watching the Netflix show ‘The Lie’ but you don’t. It’s not your place to do that.

She returns from work early on most days so you were tempted to buy her a ticket to the five-dollar Wednesday shows at Academy Cinema but she wouldn’t care for it. She would want an Events or Hoyts ticket instead. She has a secure job, and gets paid around 65,000 NZ dollars per year. You are not even earning minimum wage yet. You have wanted to do something indoors and lowkey like share a meal with her but you haven’t had the chance. You have tried asking her if she would like to go grocery shopping with you but you know you are on your own. Everyone’s on their own here. Or maybe it’s just your experience.

While grocery shopping at Pak n Save, you stare at the ‘Pinky promise’ sign on the Avalanche hot chocolate box. The intertwined fingers on the logo remind you of how much you miss the touch of another person. Especially the way you held hands while walking, with your best friend in Bombay. You had promised her you would stay in touch and call her every day. Now it’s tough to even coordinate call times. You manage to talk to your parents every alternate day but you can sense the heavy burden of expectation through the phone. You don’t buy the hot chocolate because you don’t deserve it. It’s a luxury. You will buy it when you find a job.

You have been looking for jobs for months. While your flatmate is spending time on apps like Tinder, Bumble and Hinge, you are on Seek, Indeed and Trademe. Moans keep her up at night while your loan keeps you up. You have walked into many shops with a hardcopy of your CV but no one has called back. You have experienced winter and fall without a job. It’s summer now. The fact the rest of the world is experiencing winter while the sun rays pierce your brown skin makes you feel even more alienated. You tried working as a kitchen hand for a day because you thought washing dishes in your own home qualifies you to wash dishes at a fast-paced Italian restaurant in the city.

After applying for jobs, you finish your assignments. It gets so late that sleeping feels like a sin but you refrain from checking social media because everyone seems to have a better life than you. You have caught many sunrises amidst Auckland’s characteristic big white clouds hoping you will find an acceptance mail early in the morning. Getting rejections after rejections only makes you more desperate for company because no one tells you why you are being rejected. You are desperate to hear a person’s voice, something that isn’t a form rejection email, though you don’t understand the Kiwi accent. You have never asked a Kiwi to repeat what they have said. You pretend you have understood them.

On some days, acts of kindness keep you going:

-a car waiting at the crossing for you to pass

-a free haircut at the salon

-a free meal at an event

On other days, acts of violence make you want to stay indoors:

-a young boy attacked on the bus

-a man assaulted on the train

-a university student killed at the bus stop

Your windbreaker made you feel safe during the winter but when you entered stores with the hoodie of the windbreaker tied around your face, you were asked to remove the hoodie. This confused you. The hoodie made your ears and head feel warm. When you asked a classmate about it, they said it could be because burglars often wore hoodies during break-ins to avoid facial recognition. This made sense. It had nothing to do with you.

On your way back from Pak n Save, the grocery bag’s straps slip from your hand because of the weight. Your groceries roll down the road. Due to the hilly nature of the road, they tumble down the road in different directions. The cauliflower looks like someone’s head rolling down the road. No one had prepared you for Aotearoa’s hills. A man runs towards the groceries picking whatever he can. You run down the hill, and meet him halfway. He looks at a woman standing beside a car, who seems to be related to him, probably his wife. He makes a gesture as if telling her to hand over a bag. She doesn’t look happy but she removes the folded bag from her purse and he gives it to you.

Together, both of you manage to grab the groceries and place them in the bag. He tells you he is a Fiji Indian. His teeth are black and yellow but oddly comforting. He wishes you luck. You want to thank him but you’re speechless. You grab the bag with both hands. You can’t afford to make a fool of yourself again.

You pacify yourself on the bus, and play and replay the incident in your head. It could have been much worse. What if it was a Kiwi who found you that way? It would have been even more embarrassing. Your clumsiness would have represented all Indians. When your flatmate returns late that night from clubbing, and you hear her slam the door of her room, you download ‘BFF’, the friendship app. Very few active profiles pop up. There are mostly women and a couple of men. You are afraid the women will turn out to be like your flatmate so you browse profiles of the men.

One of the men lives in the city. Though you think about the expense of taking the bus just to visit the city on weekends, you know you need it. Others spend on therapy, this is therapy for you. You have free counselling services at university but you don’t go for fear of being judged. It is a privilege to be able to travel to a new country. You don’t want to appear ungrateful.

You send a message to the man. He claims to have grown from a boy to a man only when he left home in India and arrived in Auckland. He suffered and overcame a heartbreak. He says he will take you out for coffee. You tell him you are a tea person. You take the bus to the city on a Saturday. When you meet him near St Patrick’s church, he says, ‘Aap kaise ho?’ This melts your heart. No one has spoken Hindi to you in a long time. He walks with you to locate the Indian restaurant serving chai nearby. You enjoy the walk because you see many people around. Most of them seem to be tourists for the summer. The sun leaves a burning sensation on your skin. You have not worn any sunscreen. You don’t want to spend on anything that is not necessary. ‘Sunscreen is a necessity. You know skin cancer is common here, right? One of the highest rates in the world.’ After some time, a cool wind takes over, making you feel better.

The homeless on Queen Street catch your attention, some sleep beside shops, some have made small compartments from cardboard sheets behind which they sit. You are happy it isn’t winter. You see one man rummaging through the trash bin on the side of the road, and drinking out of a half-full container of TANK juice. You make a note to buy something from Mc D for one of them when you get a job here. It is Maccas! Not Mc D. Maccas. Not Mc D. That’s how they say it here. Maybe that’s why you have no friends and no job.

When you find an Indian place, A also buys a cup of tea for himself although he is a coffee person. He says before Auckland he had never been outside India and he can understand how you must be feeling being away from home. You tell him it gets so quiet at times in the suburbs that you long to hear a crow, or a honk, or a stray dog like you did all the time in Bombay. You pass a strip club on your way. You tease him that he might have picked Aotearoa for the strip clubs and nude beaches. He laughs and says:

-He wanted to move to a cricket loving country

-His Kiwi clients sometimes mistake him for a scammer because of his Indian accent even though he is not selling them things and that the art of mastering the Kiwi accent is to pronounce ‘e’ as ‘i’. Say ‘hid’, instead of ‘head’.

-He does therapy. He is an avoidant. Relationships scare him because of his heartbreak but he does see girls on dating apps. And he goes for South Asians and not Kiwis because Kiwi girls intimidate him.

He asks:

-Like him, do you also use your Indian number on WhatsApp more than your local one?

-Is Konkani that similar to Marathi?

-What made you pick me? What did you like about my profile?

You answer the first two but you don’t know why you picked his profile. You decide to say something nice because if there’s one thing you have learnt being in Aotearoa is to be nice to others. ‘I miss Bombay. You reminded me of Bombay. Thank you for doing this by the way.’

‘Why thank you? I joined BFF because I know how lonely it gets here. I don’t see anyone sometimes for days as I work from home. I don’t even go to the grocery store as I buy everything online. You’re missing Bombay na? Let’s go to yahan ka Marine Drive,’ he winks.

You both find a trash bin, throw the paper cups in the correctly labelled bin, walk past Britomart station, and towards Queen’s Wharf. You see a small house on a raised platform near the water. ‘That’s an artwork I guess,’ he says, following your gaze. You take a photo of it and upload it to Google lens. It is called The Lighthouse. It’s modelled after a house from the 1950s and it is made by a local artist Michael Parekowahi. He follows you up on the deck and peeks into the windows.

You read the article featured on the Auckland Public Art website, you tell him the person in the centre of the house is Captain Cook. And that the decorations in the interiors are constellations. You show him the photo of how the house looks at night. He says, ‘Wow, that looks good man. We could have gone but I sleep by seven, sometimes six. Sorry. Just a habit. You can stay around and check it out as the sun sets like around nine now but going back by bus late might not be great. Be careful.’

You tell him you like observing individual houses as that’s all you can do in the suburbs. Every house has its own individual personality and yet they can all look alike at the same time. And it gets depressing. Sometimes you’re just looking at the houses for some sign of life. As you walk away from the art piece and walk towards one of the benches near the water, you see a huge cruise ship leaving the port. He asks if you have ever been on a cruise. You say you haven’t and you know that they are expensive. He says you must try out the ferry to Devonport at least. It’s affordable and it only takes ten minutes each way.

‘That sounds pretty cool.’

‘Haan Devonport is pretty. There is a cute Persian cafe there.’

You take photos and videos of the cruise ship. Once the ship is on its way, both of you sit on the bench. You tell him you miss Bollywood songs and sometimes you play ‘Bombai Nagariya’ on loop. He starts to sing the chorus of the viral Marathi song ‘Gulabi saadi’, but doesn’t know the rest of the lyrics. You search for the video on YouTube. An ad from a money transfer app reminds you to send money back home. It’s like the only ad you see often. You want to get rid of it because it reminds you of your debt but for that you have to go premium and that requires money.

You click on ‘Skip ad’, and the song drowns your worries about money, if only temporarily. Until the lyrics make you think about whether you should become an influencer. Maybe that will bring you income. But what will you influence people with? Your relatives and ex back home will laugh at your situation if you show them your reality. The video reminds you – forget having a supportive partner, you don’t have a partner at all, and the Marathi makes you yearn for even a few hours in Bombay but you are approximately 12,000 km away from home.

Before leaving, you ask him if he has any tips for finding jobs, and he asks you if you are allowed to work. You say, ‘Yes, twenty hours.’

‘It is tough. Things were easier before the pandemic. Why don’t you volunteer somewhere? Start somewhere, anywhere. That’s how I started. Kiwis really appreciate volunteering.’

You ask around for volunteering opportunities. You become a volunteer server at Wednesday’s free lunch where most international students turn up. You help make ham sandwiches. You enjoy the brief break from routine. There you meet people from different countries. Some are on working holiday visas, some are on social work visas, and some are locals, having moved here ages ago. They speak to the students about the love of God. When the students leave, you ask the other volunteers if they know of any jobs. ‘It is tough. Keep trying, and keep praying,’ they say.

You find an opportunity on Seek volunteer. It is a role to teach English to migrants. You barely get time away from classes, assignments, grocery shopping, laundry and cooking but you really want this. You have to take two buses to reach the Centre but you do it because it gives you a purpose. The students are kind and they love your style of teaching. You plan lessons for hours that make it fun to learn nouns, verbs, adjectives.

One day on your way back after a fun lesson where students learnt to keep up a conversation in English for a minute, you get off the bus in the City to go to your lectures, and a person looks at you with hatred and says, ‘Go back to your fucking country. You don’t even know English.’

This leaves you shocked. You aren’t able to focus in class. You want to go back and tell that person that you are studying an MA in English and that you’re teaching English in your spare time because you love it so much. When you go home, you want to talk about the incident with someone. The guy from the app has ghosted you after he made an advance and you said you were not ready for more at the moment because you want to focus on your studies and finding a job. Your flatmate is out clubbing. You take a packet of Maggi, pronounced as ‘Majji’ in New Zealand, boil it on the gas, and hit refresh on your inbox for a response on the fifty job applications you just made. You click on the ‘Sent’ applications on the job portal, and reread each line of your cover letter, even the identical ones because you hope there are no typos or grammatical errors. You can’t afford to fuck up.