This month, 15 years back, I arrived in Perth…with big
dreams and a very small bank balance. Having wrapped up things in India, paid
off student loans, packed our lives and belongings in four suitcases…it was
like hitting a reset button on our lives, like many immigrants.
The house we rented on a noisy street in Belmont was blue. Literally.
The garage door was not automatic. When we came home every night, we would get
off the car (a heavy door needed two pairs of hands), unlock the door, push it
open while it made that metal screech that makes you cringe, hop back into the
car, drive in, get off the car, close the door and finally lock it. An insignificant
detail, one would think. But it kind of summed up our life then. A bit messy,
screechy and lacking in comfort but not in zeal.
Many of you know the story of the yellow flowers in our rental home. Some of you have read about why we chose Perth in the first place (and
why we love it so much). But very few know that a payment of around $12-$15 (three
coffees and one fries, I think) on our debit card was declined in our first month
here. We had “insufficient funds” after paying the bond money on our rental
home, buying groceries and making a down payment for our car. So, until Amit’s
salary came in (in a couple of days), we could only hope we would survive
without any expenses (our Transperth cards thankfully were loaded…so life would
go on).
Those were the days we finally saw the point in the mental maths
classes from our school days. Converting AUD to INR in our minds, for pretty
much everything we bought (or could not buy), jogged our brain cells like
nothing else did. At the butcher’s one Thursday (late night shopping), we were
surprised (and delighted) to find how cheap mince meat was (after the said
mental maths exercise). We bought 2 kilos of mince (and some other essentials),
pushed our shopping trolley to the farthest point we could (without taking it
home), and walked the rest of the way home (our no-car days). Back home, we
cooked the mince with Jamie-Oliver-esque joy and passion…neither of which lasted long. After our first spoonful, we almost lost our teeth (with no private health
insurance still, losing teeth would have been a terrible tragedy). We bit into….what
felt like….gravel. Why on earth would mince meat have that many bones?! What appallingly
bad quality, for a country that’s known for its dairy and meat, we thought!
Turns out, we had bought “pet mince” (mince your dog would
enjoy thoroughly). That explained why it was so cheap. That would also explain
why we could never walk past that butcher without grinding our teeth, even
months after this incident. But we lived to tell the story :).
15 years on, our mental maths is not so great anymore (we no longer convert between currencies). We have discovered mince meat meant for humans. We have lost teeth and claimed dental benefits from our private health insurance. We have a non-blue home with an automatic garage door (life’s little joys). We have “sufficient funds” for coffee and fries (mostly). But our “meatier” life stories are mostly from 15 years back.
