Debu Majumdar - From the Ganges to the Snake River

From the Ganges to the SnakeRiver

An East Indian in the AmericanWest

By

Debu Majumdar

Published by Bo-Tree House at Smashwords

ISBN 13: 9780983222712

First U.S. edition2012

Copyright 2000 by Debaprasad(Debu) Majumdar

The stories and essays in this book, exceptfor Indians Across the Oceans, first appeared as a jointpublication by Rendezvous: Journal of Arts and Letters (Vol. 33 No.1) and the Idaho State University Press. The book was thenpublished by Caxton Press, Caldwell, Idaho with the inclusion ofIndians Across the Oceans, and is still available in print form.This revised e-book edition is published by Bo-Tree House, IdahoFalls, Idaho.

All rights reserved. Exceptas permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no partof this book may be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, or storedin an information retrieval system in any form or by any means,graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping,and recording, without prior written permission from thepublisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in reviews andarticles. All inquiries should be addressed to Bo-TreeHouse.

Bo-Tree House,LLC

1749 Del Mar Drive, IdahoFalls, ID 83404 USA

For more information visit the Publishers website : http://www.botreehouse.com /

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This e-book is licensed for your personalenjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away toother people. If you would like to share this book with anotherperson, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Ifyoure reading this book and did not purchase this it, or it wasnot purchased for your use only, then please return it toSmashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respectingthe hard work of this author.

Library of Congress Cataloging in PublicationData from the printed edition (ISBN 0-87004-397-8 (paper back):

1. Majumdar, D (Debu). 2. East IndianAmericansIdahoIdaho FallsBiography. 3. Idaho Falls(Idaho)Biography. 4. Idaho Falls (Idaho)Social life and customs.5. Calcutta (India)Biography. 6. Calcutta (India)Social life andcustoms.

Cover Photo of the Snake River by RobertBower

Discover a wonderful childrens book by DebuMajumdar: Viku and the Elephant

Read a of Viku andthe Elephant

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Noteworthy fact for the book

Four chapters from this book were included inthe Memorial volume titled Rendezvous: Fortyyears of History, Politics and Literature of the West (selected from all publications by Rendezvous, an independentjournal of the Department of English and Philosophy, Idaho StateUniversity from 1966 2005), edited by Sharon Lynn Sieber, 2009.ISU Press Price $24.95

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Author on the bank of Ganges by CatherineMajumdar

TABLE OF CONTENTS

by SharonSieber

to 2000 Edition

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Chapter One

FIRST IDAHO WINTER

I clearly rememberthe day I first arrived in Idaho Falls from New York, the day afterThanksgiving in 1980. It was a crystal clear day. The plane flewover long stretches of mountains and lava fields, and I rememberseeing clusters of human habitation separated by wide open fieldsbelow, all connected by one narrow black road. The drive from theairport reminded me of the little mining towns I had seen inColorado. "Oh boy," I thought, "where am I taking myself?"

On December 12, I woke up and foundeverything white, and still snowing. More than a foot of snow onthe roofs of buildings! Looking from our apartment window on West15th Street, I was certain there had been a blizzard through thenight, with snowfall the likes of which we had seen only once inseveral years on Long Island. I rushed to the front door to get aclear view of the snowy landscape, but couldn't open it because ofthe pile of snow. I woke up everyone and shouted with joy, "Snowday todayno school, no work!"

Through the clutter of unopened boxes,playpen and chairs, I threaded my way to the kitchen and startedhot water for tea. My wife and two children came down the stairs,bubbling with happiness: "Daddy doesn't have to go to work today."Had the TV been working we would have known about this storm, butnow we all looked outside with amazement; the beauty of the snowhad covered the otherwise drab neighborhood. We had heard of Idahowinters, but hadn't expected this, especially at the beginning ofDecember.

"Until they clear the roads everything muststop in this town," I told myself. No plows had come to clear theroad, and no car drove by our apartment. I worked diligently andgot the front door open and spoke to my wife, "Let's go out and seehow bad the situation is."

Along the road to South Boulevard there wereno people. Snow-covered pickup trucks in driveways stood as symbolsof the stand-still town. The smell of burning wood filled the air.Black-gray smoke rose almost straight up from the tops of chimneys,and the neighborhood looked stationary and as picturesque as apainting by Grandma Moses.

A man, without gloves, was shoveling hisdriveway, and I wondered how he was going to drive on the road evenif he did clear his driveway.

"When are they going to clear the roads?" Iasked the man.

"It may be a week before they come to thisstreet," he said, and looked at me as if I should know that. "We'llbe lucky if they clear the main roads today."

A few cars were running on South Boulevard.The road was full of snow, but that didn't stop them. "There mustbe many accidents on this road," I thought. But I couldn't see anycars stranded; the few cars on the road had been parked the nightbeforebefore the snow. We walked toward 17th Street and TautphausPark. We passed a few children playing at the Hawthorne ElementarySchool playground. An older woman was with them. "Was she theteacher?" I wondered.

There were more cars on 17th Street, goingboth ways at rather high speeds. I hoped they were good drivers."No one would drive in these conditions on Long Island," I told mywife. Why drive at all? Nothing could be open today!

We walked further south along SouthBoulevard, toward the wealthy neighborhood of Idaho Falls. Talltrees gracefully draped with snow stood next to driveways of bighouses. Here the street was also lined with trees, as a boulevardshould be. In contrast, the row of houses on 17th Street, which wehad just left, looked like small summer cottages at the far end ofLong Island.

We passed by the hospital. It looked lively."I'm glad they can keep the hospital functioning," I thought.Opposite the hospital, the park was white and beautiful; a row ofpines at the end of the field dazzled with snow sculpture. Theround fountain in the middle stood out like a grand wedding cake.But there was no one at the park, no children playing in the snow.The mothers must have kept them in their warm homes on such aday.

It was then that I looked toward thesoutheast and saw the most wondrous sight in Idaho Fallsa row ofsparkling white mountains against the sky. They rose like theHimalayan ranges one sees from far away. I remembered my firstexperience of the Himalayas from my aunt's house in the planes ofSiliguri, below Darjeeling. I stood and gazed at them for a longtime: "What a beautiful place, and we are going to live here."

We returned to our apartment, but I suddenlydecided that I would walk in the other direction to my office onSecond Street to see how bad conditions were there. "I shall beback soon," I told my family.

The road conditions were worse along thelow-numbered streets until I reached Holmes Avenue. Traffic on thisroad was similar to that of 17th Street, with a fair number of carsgoing faster than I thought safe.