ALAPPUZHA: On December 23, 1966, when the newly married Dr Thomas Mathew and Ramani arrived at the Detroit Metro Airport from the warm shores of Ernakulam, they were taken aback by the temperature, or the lack of it. It was freezing cold!
“I wasn't worried (before coming to the US),” he writes. “I had secured a good (medical) residency position in the US, and my parents said that before I went, I should get married. So I did. In those days, we were only allowed to bring $8 per person from India to the United States, so now I had $16 (eight each) in addition to some ivory pieces I had brought to trade or sell for extra money,” he recalls.
The couple was featured in ‘First Days’, a weekly series of popular American broadcast network NBC exploring the immigrants’ first experiences in the US, on Thursday.
The series is being organised in partnership with the South Asian American Digital Archive for documenting the first-person stories of immigrant Americans. Launched in 2013,
‘First Days’ has portrayed as many as 180 migrants from across the world in America. Dr Mathew, in the article, shares the story of how they braved the harsh winter in Detroit nearly five decades ago. Mr Mathew, who is a retired general practitioner now, continues his story. Their fight against cold worsened as the temperature quickly dipped further.
Remembering the place which was covered in snow, he says he had never seen snow in his life in Kerala, and had no idea how they had to move around, as his friend who was supposed to pick them up had not turned up since he didn’t know when they were arriving.
“I needed to find a place to sleep for us, and a way to get there. I was expecting to start work in a few months at Mount Carmel Hospital, and they were offering accommodation for medical residents. I thought I could get in there. I found a cab. While meter of the vehicle went up to $50-60, I got scared. I told the driver I didn't have enough money – I still had only $16! Lucky for me, he laughed and turned off the meter!
“We arrived at Mount Carmel and asked for lodging. I didn't know it was a nun hospital. The nuns made me sleep on the third or fourth floor, while Remani, a homemaker, had to share a room on the seventh floor with a nun and subsequently I found an apartment in Highland Park," he says.
As he completes nearly 50 years of life now as an Indian-American medical practitioner, 77-year-old Mathew says he had forgotten that he had bought round-trip tickets for the family. “If I'd known how bad it was going to be that first day, I would have probably used the tickets to go back to India. Now, everything seems easy," he ends.
