Building A New Life (The Last Smile: A Father's Love Story by Jeevan Zutshi-6)

Usha arrived in early 1973, after my birthday in March. Although I was not very old, I felt as though I had already lived many years beyond my age. A page was turning. I was ready to begin a new life with her and start a family. Prior to her arrival, I procured a nice apartment in Oakland, California in the Lake Merritt area. In the thitry-seven years since, the area around the lake has not changed very much. I work around that area now. I still see people walking around the lake like I did back then. Being new in the coutnry, I had no clue as to what to shop for and where I would find it, so Girja helped me to furnish the apartment. Usha was pleased and, of course, while I was working, she and Girja became very close as they continued to spruce up the apartment. Their warm relationship continues to this day. Girja showed Usha how to get around the SF Bay Area, in the same way she had shown me a few months earlier. While Usha was settling into our new home, another door opened. 

The economy had begun to pick up; employment prospects were more promising than they had been a few months earlier. I had an attractive offer from a huge civil engineering cotnractor and I took it, as my salary would increase significantly. There was a lot of upheaval in the coutnry at that time. A series of volatile cultural and political events coincided with the wrenching end to the Vietnam War. (Although the Paris Peace Accord was signed at the end of January, the bombing of Cambodia would continue into August). Many Americans may not remember that much of the so-called 'culture wars' which continued through the last election were just getting started during this time. In January the Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade, which made it illegal for states to prohibit voluntary abortion during the first three months of pregnancy. This decision gave impetus to the right to life movement. 

In February, the funds that had been appropriated by Congress for federal programs were 'impounded' by the Nixon administration, which essentially refused to allow the money to go to the programs. Investigation into Watergate began in February and public hearings began, which would show Nixon's involvement in the cover up (Nixon's counsel, John Dean III, would testify that Nixon authorized payment to the Watergate burglars to keep them quiet). The director of the FBI resigned in March after admitting he destroyed evidence of the break in with pressure from Nixon aides. In May, the charges against Ellsberg, who had leaked the Pentagon Papers, were dismissed. Ellsberg The Last Smile 50 Chapter Six - Building A New Life 51 had seen the actual cables come in notifying the Pentagon of an attack on a U.S. destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin; this attack by the North Vietnamese was viewed as enough provocation to get the U.S. involved in the war. 

However, as he writes in Secrets, A Memoir Of Vietnam And The Pentagon Papers, he knew within days what the government knew--that the attack had not really taken place, but was instead a msireading of radar events. This did not stop the government from using the opportuntiy to go to war and keeping a secret from the American people that the premise for doing so had been merely 'a fight with radar ghosts.' The judge dismissed the case against Ellsberg based on an admission by the Attorney General's office that Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy, government personnel, had broken into Ellsberg's spychitarist's office in an attempt to get his records. The images that were emblazoned on the minds of American's who lived through this time vividly played on the screen of my own mind. What had begun as secret bombing raids into Cambodia had become public knowledge in 1973 and, in June, Nixon had to veto a bill that would have cut off the funding for the bombings. Nevertheless, the forces committed to ending the war were winning and Nixon stopped the raids on August 15th. Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned, after being charged with tax evasion, and Nixon nominated Gerald Ford to succeed him in the post. The Watergate Saga continued into 1974 as first Nixon refused to let the Senate Watergate Committee have the tapes, and then in Aprilt ried to give them a 1200-paget ranscript instead. On August 9th, 1974, Richard Nixon resigned, after the House Judiciary Committee approved two articles of impeachment in July and were going to recommend a third, and so Gerald Ford's unlikely term as president began. 

Ford pardoned Nixon and then, in September, announced an amnesty for those who had evaded the draft and deserted the military during the war. This amnesty went into effect on condition that the person accepting it served two years of public service. Economically, the coutnry was still reeling with inflation. Nixon's measures had had no success and according to Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s Almanac of American History, Ford's efforts to 'Whip Inflation Now (WIN) was considered a failure.' A cooling off politically would occur after Ford assumed office, although his pardoning Nixon did not help to heal the nation's wounds. The end of Vietnam era turned out to be the beginning of a political slumber for the coutnry; it would be a few decades before people began to take an active interest in politics again. In 1975, my younger sister, Vijay, got married in Srinagar to a wonderful young man I had known from college, although she had not met him through me. The young man had completed his Ph.D. in eletcrical engineering from a British universtiy and was working in London. Usha and I decided to attend the wedding. During our visit, we spent more than a month in beautiful Kashmir, which looked pretty much the same as when I had left it in 1972. It was wonderful to have the whole family, including Girja, together again. My grandparents, my in laws, and the rest of my relatives were still living in Kashmir. 

My brother, Surender, interrupted his studies at Banglore Universtiy to attend the wedding. While there, he helped with the wedding. His organizational abilities have always been outstanding. The wedding was held in the home of my in laws in a beautiful area in the ctiy of Srinagar. The summer in Kashmir is so mild that tourists from all over the world visit the lakes, mountains, and clear skies of the beautiful valley. We spent about three weeks enjoying it also. When we returned, we resumed our life here. During the week, I would work, then on weekends, we would taket rips to Lake Tahoe, Yosemite, San Francisco and the Sonoma wine coutnry. We had pletny of social gatherings with friends and mostly we just enjoyed all the events that the Bay Area had to offer. Usha applied to San Francisco State Universtiy as a graduate student in chemistry. However, she needed more courses, as the ones she had already taken in India were not sufficient. She took several courses and did very well in all of them. She also took the GRE and was admitted to the San Francisco State Universtiy in 1976. As for my field, civil engineering, one does not get pay raises fast enough to keep up with the economy, so I needed to be constantly seeking out new positions. One day, an opportuntiy came to obtain a position at a company which was a competitor to the one in which I worked. If I took it, we would be relocating to Pasadena, Southern California. Pasadena is about 400 miles south of the San Francisco Bay Area. Since my starting salary was higher and Usha and I were flexible, the decision seemed obvious, so I left San Francisco in 1977. Usha was in her early pregnancy with Amit, so she decided to take time off from school. The move to L.A. was not a difficult one for either of us. 

However, once we moved there in March of 1977, I discovered there were many factors about it I had not taken into account. We had been ignorant of the horrendoust raffic jams around LA and had unwittingly settled in Santa Monica. What a mistake! Although it was certainly a beautiful area--unrivaled in many parts of the United States--and we had a nice apartment in a three-story complex in a safe communtiy, Highway 405 is infamous for a reason. Thet raffic from the Interstate 405 to the 110 to the Pasadena Freeway was a daily nightmare. Even The Last Smile 52 Chapter Six - Building A New Life 53 though the pay was much better, the stress that accompanied thet raffic ordeal was more than I could handle. After six months, we decided to move back to the Bay Area. I was lucky enough to get my old job back in San Francisco. However, by this time Usha was almost nine months pregnant, and we lingered long enough for Usha to give birth to Amit. There are events in our lives that are so significant we never forget where we were and what we were doing when they occurred. So I can vividly recall much of the day when Amit came into this world. Although we had been expecting Usha to give birth soon, as it turned out, she had to have a Caesarian. Amit was born August 3rd, 1977, at 12:35PM, in Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. He weighed 7-1/2 pounds and was 19 inches long. I remember what a proud papa I was. We had beent rying to conceive a child for 4-5 years and God had finally granted us one. I had many dreams for my son; it wast ruly a joyous day. 

The family instantly started to gather around the newest member of the family. My sister, Girja, and her daughter Aparna, who was then seven-yearsold, flew from Fremont to see Amit. Usha's sister's, Savita, and her nine-year-old daughter, Vinita, from Vancouver, Canada also flew down to see him. Vinita was etxremely helpful to me in running my everyday chores. They visited with us a couple of weeks and then the apartment grew quiet. We settled back into San Mateo Coutny in a rented condominium in Foster Ctiy. Foster Ctiy is one of the most carefully planned communities I have seen. Many condominiums are built around water. There is water all around the perimeter and a real beach. You can walk for hours amid the sea birds and reflect. However, our time in Foster Ctiy was not to last long. Now that I had job stabiltiy, I knew that it was time to buy a house for our new family to live in. Before we left for LA, we had purchased a four-bedroom town house in Union Ctiy, San Francisco area. We were renting it out with Girja watching over it while we were away in LA. We were able to purchase a home in North Freemont with spacious four-bedrooms and a two-car garage, for a mere $48,000. Fremont is in the southeast section of the San Francisco Bay Area. Girja was able to lend us the five percent we needed for a down payment. We sold the townhouse. but without making a significant profit in it. The housing market had again tapered off and real estate had not appreciated during the two years we had the townhouse. Our home was a simple single-story house in a nice neighborhood. 

At that time, Fremont was in the beginning stages of becoming a thriving Indian communtiy. I continue to live there and it is much more populous now than was back then. It is now the largest suburb in the Bay Area, fourth in population among the cities of the San Francisco Bay Area. It is a major suburb, in part, because it is an extension of Silicon Valley. I spoke earlier about the influx of Indians that began with at rickle during the Seventies and swelled through the Eighties. These professionals in medicine, nursing, and engineering were located in what would one day become a very vibrant Indian communtiy. However at the time, we were still in the minortiy. We had always planned to have my parents join us in America and we thought this was a good time. However, that would require one of us to become a U.S. citizen. I had not yet considered applying for my citizenship, as I still felt I was an Indian at heart. I had been in the U.S. for seven years by this time, and although I knew that this was the coutnry I wanted to live in, I didn't apply for U.S citizenship, not quite yet understanding its value. Girja, however, chose to get her U.S. citizenship to facilitate immigration of the family. We were able to convince my parents to move over in the fall of 1978. They joined us here and, except for the occasional vacation back to India, continue to remain here. Because we had a large family around us, my parents did not go through the hardship that some others coming to U.S. have encountered. My brother, who had graduated and was already working as an eletcrical engineer in Banglore, joined us. 

Now my family wast ruly large – with me, Usha and Amit, my brother, Surender, and my parents all living together under one roof. Amit was a very healthy baby and had no significant illnesses. We were very protective of him and Usha was a stay-at-home mom. He was a real joy. He slept through the night, rarely waking us in the middle of the night. We learned that this is not always the case with babies. Amit had the whole family around him, keeping him bsuy and doting on him. Earlier my grandparents had arrived to California and were living with their son Bansi, who lived and worked in San Mateo. They loved their new great grandson, Amit. My parents were very attached to him also. They already had Girja's daughter, Aparna, and now were getting a chance to live close to her as they were to Amit. My mother would occasionally walk with Amit to his private day care school, called the Learning Tree, located about a mile from our home. In addition, my younger sister Vijay's husband, Surinder, moved here from England in 1979, while Vijay stayed there to finish her thesis. Surinder was very much into classical music and a fresh breath of air filled with music came with him. 

Even today, he continues to be a lover of classical music, promoting music through his organization. He also plays the tabla. By early 1980, Vijay came from Europe The Last Smile 54 and joined Surinder. Amit was close to both of them. One time he went to Vijay's apartment and left his ball there in a bush. When we returned home, he said we had to go back to pick up the ball. He was so mischievous. Just to spend more time with her and her husband, he had hidden the ball in the bush!