The United States of Friendship Part 7- Nadya

http://pinterest.com/spicylisa/stuffed-peppers/

Stuffed Bell Peppers

Take…

6 green bell peppers - tops and seeds removed

3 eggs, beaten

3 cups meatless spaghetti sauce

1 1/4 cups instant rice

1/4 cup finely chopped onion

1 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce

1 pinch ground black pepper

1 1/2 pounds lean ground meat

2 cups meatless spaghetti sauce

6 tablespoons shredded Cheddar cheese, divided

Step 1: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

Step 2: Bring a large saucepan of water to a boil, reduce heat to medium, and cook red bell peppers in the boiling water until slightly softened, about 5 minutes. Drain and rinse peppers with cold water.

Step 3: Stir eggs, 3 cups of spaghetti sauce, instant rice, onion, salt, Worcestershire sauce, and black pepper together in a bowl. Crumble ground meat into the mixture and stir until ground meat is thoroughly combined with sauce and rice mixture.

Step 4: Stand peppers in a large baking dish and fill each pepper with meat mixture. Pour 2 cups spaghetti sauce over the peppers. Cover dish with aluminum foil.

Step 5: Bake in the preheated oven until peppers are tender, the filling is set, and an instant-red meat thermometer inserted into the middle of a pepper reads at least 160 degrees F (70 degrees C), 55 to 60 minutes. Uncover and top each pepper with 1 tablespoon Cheddar cheese.

Step 6 – Place on the beautifully decorated table arranged by your daughters - and get ready to delight your guests.

The United States of Friendship Part 6 – Nadya

I learned how to drive in America. I learned how to cook in America. I learned how to do my taxes in America. I learned Word, Excel and Powerpoint in America. I learned how not to order sandwiches in America. I learned how not to interrupt people in America.

If you’ve read the previous posts in this series, you know I learned some of these things the hard way.

Life in America has been one continuous education for me. But then there is an enduring association between education and migration. Anyone who migrates, whether it’s a villager who migrates to a city in India, or an expatriate who goes to a foreign country to work, has to learn a whole new set of skills and become accustomed to different ways of doing things.

When I moved to America, among the many different things I had to learn to do myself, were cooking and driving and handling car breakdowns. Car breakdowns? Yes, car breakdowns. Back when I was in India, if anything broke down, I would send out an SOS to a brother, husband, relative or friend and expect them to take care of it. Here in the U.S., I learned you had to handle everything yourself,even a car breakdown. In time, it became a habit to call AAA, get my car towed to the nearest mechanic, rent a car, return the rented car when my car was ready for pick up, get back in my car and get back on the road again. This kind of informal education is not just accessible in America, but compulsory. You cannot survive without it.

Formal education however, is an apple of a different color. The hallowed halls of the best American universities and colleges have a steep price tag and are quite out of reach for most people. If your child went to Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, Columbia, U-Penn, Cal-Tech, University of Chicago, MIT with full aid, kudos to him or her.

How about grade school education in America? Is that an apple of a different color? Well, I discovered that public schools were a proxy for location.

In the public school system (which is free), everyone has a “home school” associated with where you live. Your child has to go to this home school. There is an option called “school choice” through which you can send your child to a school close to work, or to your baby-sitter. But if there are no vacancies in that school, you are out of luck.

6 months before Tanita was to start kindergarten, I found out our home school was in the 20th percentile of all California elementary schools based on standardized test results.  In fact, according to Great Schools.org, the one stop web address for test scores, demographics, teacher experience, parent reviews and rankings of all public elementary, middle and high schools in America, the school was a designated “under performing school” and had a rating of 2 on 10.

You can see how this was a “Garden of Eden bite-of-the-apple loss of innocence” moment for me, as it might have been for anybody. How could I ignore information like that? The imperative was clear.  We would have to move apartments.

I looked at several different apartments in San Jose, Campbell, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale and Mountain View and when I found a two-bedroom two bathroom apartment in San Jose itself, associated with a school that had a Great Schools ranking of 8 on 10, it was a huge relief.

For a brief week or two, Cupertino beckoned - a city where every school had a 9 on 10 ranking, but only poky one-bedroom units were available for my budget, so I talked myself out of it.

When the time came for us to move, Steve, Gerri, Krysia, Alfred, Sharon and my sis Rosie all pitched in. Alfred drove the U-haul.  The move took a whole Sunday.

Saying goodbye to my old apartment was sad. Many great memories were created there. I found out later it was not in the best of localities, but I was happy and settled at the time.

Today, looking back, I am glad we moved.

If we hadn't, I might never have met Val and Kim.

I might never have met Julia.

I might never have met Denise and Brenda and Karen and Ruth and Lakshmi and Ramani.

I might never have met Elizabeth and Natasha and Becky and Cindy and Kanchan and Raida.

And I might never have met Nadya.

Before meeting Nadya, I had this image in my mind of Siberia as a cold uninhabitable place populated with camps and prisons policed by the Soviet Gulag. (We live our lives in so much ignorance of other people and other countries). In reality, Siberia makes up 77% of the land mass of Russia and is home to 28% of its people. I learned this from Nadya, who is from Novosibirisk, one of the largest cities in Siberia.

Nadya was already living at the apartments when we moved in and we became friends through our kids and started doing many different things together.

We went to Happy Hollow Park and Zoo, we went to San Francisco Zoo, we went to Raging Waters, we went to Golfland, we went to the Jungle, we went to Bamboola, we went to Great America, we went to Gilroy Gardens, we went to Marine World, Vallejo, we went to Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, we went to Christmas events and Halloween events, we went on Easter Egg Hunts, we went to County Fairs; we took our kids roller-skating, we took our kids ice-skating; we took our kids to Sea Ranch, we took our kids to Disneyland; we went and went and went…… like Energizer bunnies.

We discovered we were both great money managers (in fact, I think money management is my chief skill, maybe Nadya’s too) and so while we educated ourselves on taxes and the differences between APY and APR, we also had an eagle eye out for freebies, deals and steals. On Baskin Robbins Free Ice-cream day every year, we would whiz our kids from one Baskin Robbins to another to get free ice-cream.

We found a movie theater in Milpitas, where on Tuesdays, you could see movies for just $2. We would round up the neighborhood kids in our 2 cars and cart them all to the movies.

Somewhere along the way, there was also a transmigration of taste buds. My palate was to become familiar with many different kinds of Russian foods - from Salad Olivier - to shih - to pilmeni - to Nadya's famous stuffed bell peppers, while Nadya would adventure into teeny tiny bites of Indian food, washed down with gallons of water or milk to cope with the spiciness.

Never say no Nadya.

That’s how I came to think of her.

When I needed help with my Mum or Tanita, Nadya would readily pitch in.

Thanks to her, Mummy never missed a medical appointment, and Tanita was able to get a Great America and Gilroy Gardens season pass every year, and have fun with Nadya and her kids during the summer, when school was out and I was at work.

When Mummy died, Nadya spoke at her memorial and had plenty of warm and wonderful anecdotes to share, from having spent so much time with Mummy, even accompanying Mummy to her citizenship interview.

By the time Tanita was in middle school, Nadya had left California. But we visited each other and have kept in touch, over the phone, and even telepathically. Yes telepathically. Read this.

Also, did I ever tell you about the strange experience I had at a deserted Caltrain station one day?

No?

Well, I’ll tell you.

I was on my way to Sales Force, commissioned by Mark Graybosch to help with some Xactly unit testing. I got off the Caltrain, believing the train had stopped at the San Francisco Caltrain station, but instead, found myself on a completely deserted and unfamiliar station.

Suddenly, a creature appeared out of nowhere.

I knew I was having something similar to guest poster Ajay’s “angel experience” and I got gooseflesh.  (If you remember, an angel appeared out of nowhere in Ajay’s life one day, prompting his brilliant Oh Bangalore series, which if you haven’t read, I advise you to do so, and you can do so, here, here and here.)

The creature that confronted me was not an angel, but a tiny smiling mousey man with a bear like face eating an orange. I said to the creature, “Are you real, or are you a figment of my imagination?”

 “My name is Cheburashka,” said the creature. “And I am here to grant you a wish…. a very specific wish.”

 “A very specific wish?” I repeated, intrigued.

“Yes, a very specific wish.  You have a friend called Nadya whom you admire very much. Choose the one thing about her that you admire the most and I will grant you that today…it could be a skill, a personality trait, a character trait, anything you like.”

“Anything I like? Oh, I know. I know. How about Nadya’s chess-playing ability? I have never seen anyone beat Nadya at chess.  Yes, I think I’d like that.  Give me Nadya’s chess-playing ability.” “Are you sure?" asked the Cheburashka. “You have just one wish.”

So I thought about it a little more.  “Oh, I know.  I know”….I said, “give me Nadya’s card playing ability.  She can play any card game under the sun.” “Are you sure?’ asked the Cheburashka. “Just one wish - remember!”

“Just one wish.  Oh I know, I know….give me her ability to be handy around the house - to strip carpet, lay flooring tile, assemble furniture, fix a leak.” “Are you sure?” said the Cheburashka.

“One wish, you said.  Oh I know, oh I know….give me her ability to enjoy everything life has to offer, to go on the highest roller coasters, slide down the tallest water slides, laugh heartily at any joke, play slot machines, play World of Warcraft, read books in Russian and English; dress up as Santa Claus to delight kids and entertain adults, watch every 3 D movie that comes out”.

“Are you…..” said the Cheburashka.

“Sure? No, I am not sure.  Oh, I know, I know….give me her ability to parent kids without fear…..to give them space to discover and grow”.  (It’s a little late for that, I thought to myself, Tanita’s all grown up and …) “I don’t have all day” said the Cheburashka, taking a bite of his orange and spitting out some of the seeds. I almost blurted out “Can you chill?” one of those reflexes you pick up from having a teenage daughter at home. I’m glad I didn’t. What if he had disappeared in a poof of annoyance?

“I am so sorry,” I said, “but it’s really hard to decide.  There are so many choices.” But I then remembered Nadya’s boundless love for animals and my mind drifted off to how much she was like Anita in that regard.  I thought about my Amazon review of Anita’s book “Vegetarianism – One Woman’s Experience”. I have always wished more people were like Anita and Nadya.  I said to the Cheburashka, “I just thought of something…. Nadya’s love for animals. She loves all creatures great and small – from hamsters to cats to dogs to birds, to even alligators. Maybe that will be a wonderful thing”

But then almost immediately, my mind jumped to Nadya’s hospitality.  She is the most hospitable person I have met in my life.  I have never felt so warm and so welcome in anyone’s house as I have felt in hers.  Rosie and Mohammed who have experienced Nadya’s hospitality, have also remarked on it as well.” So I said “Actually, give me Nadya’s hospitality”.

“Ok, then” said the Cheburashka and began to walk backwards. “Where are you going?” I asked. “I am a lip-dub Cheburashka” he said.  “This is the way I grant wishes.” Wow, these Cheburashkas were up with the latest cultural phenomenons, I thought, having just seen the Santa Teresa High lip dub video.

“Can I change my mind?” I said, “I don’t want Nadya’s hospitality, after all.  It’s too much work.  Besides, I need every bit of spare time to write my blog” “Bozhe moi.  You are the most indecisive client I have ever been assigned to” said the Cheburashka. “Not as indecisive as my daughter”, I replied, “She couldn’t make up her mind which college to go to”. “Well, there is a saying, isn’t there - the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree?” smirked the Cheburashka “Yes, that’s an appropriate analogy,” I said, “this apple is not falling from the tree at all.  She is headed to a local college so she will be staying home with Mum for the foreseeable future.”

“Maybe, you are happy as you are, and we should leave things as they are?” suggested the Cheburashka. “Oh, that’s it.  Why didn’t I think of it before?  Nadya’s disposition. She is always smiling and happy.  I think I’d like to be like her. Yes, I’ve made up my mind.  I’d like to have Nadya’s cheerful disposition.”

“Well, Missy,” said the Cheburashka, “Hope you don’t mind if I call you that.  I think the world could do with more people who have cheerful dispositions.  So I say we go with that. It’s one of the hardest wishes to grant though, so I recommend you meditate and read James Allen’s What A Man Thinketh and work on your thought-control at the same time – just in case”

And before I knew it, the Cheburashka had walked backwards until I couldn’t see him anymore. I didn’t get a chance to ask him if I could call him Cheb (following a generational family tradition). Or to say pasib (blagodarstvuyu in Mangaloreanspeak) to him for making me realize what a wonderful, amazing person Nadya is. But I will thank Nadya.

Thank you Nadya for being the wonderful, amazing person that you are. And thank you for being my friend. P.S. A little birdie told me you have a birthday this week.  Happy happy birthday to you.

Dear Reader – thanks for coming along with me on this magical memoir about a cherished friendship.  As you can see, a muse can be a Cheburashka, a bird or even a spider. Happy finding your own Cheburashka and writing your own memoir. In researching for this post, I came across this site in case you are planning a visit to Moscow. One last thing, before I go - quick, can you guess how many times the word apple was mentioned in this post?  Happy guessing and hope to see you next week for the next installment of the United States of Friendship …..M…..a Pearl Seeker like you.